[NEW PATCH] uNature - GPU, Interactable Grass. Interactable Trees, MultiThreading and more!

uNature's instancing is broken in 2017.3. Read this post.

 

Hey!
I tried to look at it a few times but couldn't really fix it with the time I have... I will be in a steadier place in the army in a few weeks and then will really be able to put a lot of work into the project... Sorry for that... :/

 

Try to check if it's indeed because of the GPU Instancing being active (in the foliage manager, access the prototype and see if GPU Instancing is on) If that's the case try disabling it for now.

I promise that I will rewrite the instancing approach and will make it all faster once I get into a steadier place in the army and I will be home more often... It shouldn't take more than 5 weeks.

Meanwhile I am really doing my best to answer asap on the support email and try to fix minor issues that I can fix on the weekends

 

Okay got some reports regarding maps on old uNature versions not working with new versions. An upgrade-tool is provided here. Simply export (Window/uNature/Upgrade Tools/Export) on the old version, and when importing the new version just click import. (Exported data can be found on the Assets folder)

Going to be pushing some updates during the next few weeks to get uNature into a stable place where its fully usable for who ever is using it currently. Sorry for the development in the past few months, got into the army as I wrote down and only last week settled down.

Hopefully a good future is ahead for us (maybe some new systems in the future)

Elroy

 

Hey guys Its Yum Kippur in a few hours and so wont be online till tomrrow evening (around 27 hours)
Sorry!

 

Hi Elroy,

Every time I paint my grass and attempt to "copy foliage" it simply disappears. I'm getting a message after pressing the copy foliage button that says "Would you like to remove the current unity grass". I click yes, there is a delay where nothing happens for a good 15 seconds, and then my grass disappears. Any thoughts?

Thanks--
will h

 

Hey,
That could happen because of a few reasons -

1. Make sure in the FoliageManager window that you have the terrain layer inside the Generations Mask, if you dont, add it and update heights.

2. Make sure you have a UNSeeker attached to the main camera.

3. Try to disable GPU Instancing on the prototypes (on the foliage manager window) as its bugged on a few unity versions.


Let me know how that works out,
Elroy

 

Your link to your upgrade tool is broken. https://mega.nz/#!LNJD0aJD!J3ooe7ACZutgp173Iu-zueRE16oYOXHbL9n-PWa9ns0

 

I have an upgraded version for who ever wishes,
Upgrade from 2.2.1 to 2.4.x

 

I've not got unature in one of my projects but I get this error. How do I remove it @ElroyUnity

 

One question.

If I have foliage manager in one scene and then another one in a different scene, can I additive load the other scenes to have foliage and managers still work? In other words, can we have more than one foliage manager in the scene?

 

I posted a script here a few messages after that, will be home in around 2 hours and find it again. If its not here then I sent it in a PM, will check

Uhmm not possible atm, but you could potentially save the foliage data and when you use the additive load feature just load it through the main manager.

Use the foliage manager - GetDetails and SetDetails for that

Let me know if you encounter any issues, will do my best to help

 

Humm.. interesting, so we can somehow "save" the foliage data from each scene, (into scene data?) then use foliage manager in the main scene to populate the grass again? How about removing the grass? Also through supplying some "data" ?

-- Edit --

After watching through the foliage manager and get/set detail video, I have the following questions :

1. Does it work (painting) on the mesh terrain? Over multiple meshes?

2. I can see that the manager uses chunks and texture maps to store its data. So how do I expand into a new "chunk" ? If I just start painting on the new chunk, will it create a new one and assign all the necessary texture for me?

3.This brings up some interesting issues for working with multiple scenes. How do you suppose to have managers per each scene and then perform get/set on them? Do I disable the other managers in the other scenes before saving the scene? If I destroy the manager, then will that also not get rid of all my grass settings so I can't re-edit the grass later stages?

4. I thought of this idea : So, if I force set up my scene to have only one chunk per scene. (be it 512x512 say..) then it supposed to have that data stored as in texture right? So then when I additive load second scene for example, then would it not be easier to reuse the texture maps from the second scene's manager and just apply it on the main manager? Would this kind of thing be possible? So like .. SetChunkTexture(x,y, texture); where x and y is chunk grid position.

5. With grass data saved in the texture in 2D way, I guess it is not possible to have grass on the ground and then have a overhanging rock to not have grass right? What I mean is that we can't have layers of grass settings?

 

Also.. what is the height range of the grass placement? It is using height map of some sort so.. whats the range?

 

Will be in the office in a few hours and provide answers to the more technical questions as I am on mobile now, but -

5) True you can’t have layers of grass BUT you can choose what will have grass and what wont (by using the generation mask)

6) the height map max is if I am not wrong 8192. The minimum is the Y of the main manager.

So if you set the Y to -1000 it means the range would be -

-1000 to +7192

 

I am not sure what's happening.. when I paint some grass, it creates grass wayyyy above the painting ground. The collider on the ground looks good. The Foliage Main Manager [DESTROY ONLY FROM FOLIAGE MANAGER WINDOW!!] object is like -500 units below... ???

 

I found out what's happening.. There was some other trigger collider surrounding the level.. Humm.. Is it possible to only draw on a specific layer? ( or game object with tag? ) Can't seem to find this option anywhere..

 

Also , for some reason... when I am in the play mode, the grass does not show in the game view.. but it shows in the scene view.. very strange.. I have tried the example scene and while they are all terrain examples, they seem to still show after hitting play.

I feel like the grasses are being culled for some reason..? When this happens, (just after pressing play) grass from both scene view and game view disappear for a brief moment. And then grass reappear in the scene view, but not in the game view.

 

Here is setting.. as you can see nothing but grass and a single plane.??

Using Unity 2018.3.f2 BTW...

Just tried it in a brand new project with just uNature. Created simple plane painted grass, hit play. Boom... grass not showing in the game view. The grass is still in the scene view... So nothing to do with my project setting. Wasted like 2 hours on this ... getting increasingly frustrated.

 

Ohh... I think I needed to add UNSeeker.. to the player.. Darn..

 

Yes on the foliage manager window select in the generation mask the layers you want

Haha yep

 

after fiddling around I was able to get things going at last. However, I have noticed that there isn't much culling going on like this one :

https://forum.unity.com/threads/released-gpu-instancer.529746/

At the moment I am drawing like 300k polygons for the grass, which I think it can be lower.. if better culling is implemented.. humm

 

Yep, that's on the roadmap but basically the key issue with making the culling better is that the way uNature works is that it creates big chunks. I will add an option to reduce the size in order to get better culling

 

How big are the chunks? Do they get frustrum culling?

 

The patches try to be as big as they can (while staying under the mesh vertex limit) and yes they are

 

Ok sorry for delay - here are the answers for the rest of the questions.


1) Yes, you can paint on any surface really as long as it has a collider. (Again, its a 2d height map so you can't draw mesh ontop of a mesh) But it will be changed when I get enough time in the army to work on the next uNature.

2) Yes exactly SetDetailLayer does it automagically for you. If you wan't to do your own logic and get a faster method that works for your needs you can do it manually (following the source code)

3-4) Yes exactly. That would probably make the most sense. You can read the texture from the chunk and then assign it to the main scene chunk

 

Hello, what is your Email?

 

Hello,
eeproductionssupp@gmail.com

 

My issue is shown here.

Fixed it by re-adding the Unseeker script to the character itself not the parent.

Ran into another issue when I try to build.
https://imgur.com/a/8peOJhE

 

Hey, bro why don't you reply me in gmail?

 

Not sure, can you send me your mail on PM?
I will filter my inbox

 

decsec512@gmail.com

 

Yep, seen it now, it was in a different folder for some reason,
Will reply now

 

Hey, EE Productions!

Everything works fine but it's hard to control. Sometimes I can't move around in the scene to paint grass properly unless i press play to do the trick. Grass flickering all the time sometimes it disappear I don't know why

 

Hey,
Regarding freeze of editor and flickering - both known bugs, will try to fix freezing this week and submit, regarding the flickering will look into it

 

Bought the asset several months ago to test. Now I'm starting to work on it for real this time. Can't wait until the bug's fixed

 

Will hopefully send you a fix today

 

About grass flickering during runtime.. that's the most annoying thing. But no rush, take your time. I can wait. Since the problem's not yet fixed. I will work on other thing first for now

 

Absolutely agree,
trying to get a fix asap

 

Ok guys a little update for both uConstruct and uNature -

As you have noticed updates went down during the past few months during to my military service but I plan to comeback big time.

For that - I need anyone who have used either one of the system to give some points that he would like to improve so I can make it all happen.

The first things that come to mind -

uNature:
- better performance
- less memory usage
- reduce scene size
- easier UI
- ?More Features?

uConstruct:
- better demo
- fix some batching
- improve sockets and snap points
- improve performance, memory and the save&load system


I dont have an ETA about when it will be done but I promise to make sure it will be super good before releasing.

Elroy

 

If possible, can you make grass look shiny like Ghost Of Tshushima ;-p

 

Will look into it

More suggestions are welcome!

 

Next month, is it possible that you might release new update? Because I'm about to get back to work on it this time

 

Probably will take a bit more than that, pretty stuffed with army. But I am planning a big update, just taking a bit of time till everything calms down

 

Are you a soldier?

 

Yes

 

Hi,
I can't find any tutorial or documentation about unature where painting about painting on a mesh cna you guide me?

 

Hey,
You don't need any thing special, its the same as using a terrain, just make sure you have a collider on that mesh.

 

Hi, there!

Will you release update soon?

 

Still working on it