[ON $20 SALE!✅]Infinigrass-GPU Optimized Interactive Grass-Trees-Meshes,work on mobile,HDRP-URP

The main perk of v2.0 will be a per LOD control of shadowing, this would be nice to have on mobile, as the further away shadows are not as important as frontal ones. You can also cut in all levels (frontal ones too) the LOD shadow cutoff is user adjustable.

 

Fully procedural environments and weather created with InfiniGRASS v2.0 and Sky Master ULTIMATE.

InfiniGRASS is on -33% sale for two weeks !!

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Already saw the sale this morning. Now I have SkyMaster and InfiniGRASS.
Lets see after the new year if I can get some new ideas for both which would be handy for my (and maybe other projects)

 

Great , i will post a demo using both Sky Master and InfiniGRASS v2.0 soon as well

 

If I buy InfiniGrass now should I pay again to upgrade to v2?

 

Hi,

The plan is to create a new version, InfiniGRASS ULTIMATE and have an upgrade from the current pack for around $10.

There will not be a rebuy of the whole system for sure and will only come as upgrade to what is currently in the store.

This is still TBD and depends on sales, reviews and how much more will need to finilize the system, so it might also just be a free upgrade to the current pack by the time of release.

 

InfiniGRASS v2.0 WIP Demo guide:

A few notes on the demo, the current limitations and the WIP:

Spoiler

- The batches are not yet all optimal, the system can essentially do huge batched models and pool them independtly of the ground formation, currently the batch creation is still WIP and in the regulation process and is also regulated in combination with the automatic batching happening in play time (though the goal is to pre-pool everything, for instant get in game time and zero overhead from in game batching)

- Some batching is happening in play time currently, the final demo will have all grass-trees pre loaded in the pool and batch only when absolutly needed (if the pool is chosen carefully may never need to batch in play time)

- There is no LOD stages for all grass - trees implemented yet

- There is no shadow control (per distance or LOD level) implemented in the demo (will be in the final demo)

- Everything is created on the fly, land generation, planting and growing the grass. The land and planting positions can be pre-determined if full procedural mode is not required (land is finite for example)

- Memory consumption in editor is reported steady (around 450MB for the demo), though the windows reported memory while playing the standalone is higher and is probably because of the terrains that are not recycled (the terrains and planted positions remain in the game as the player moves, so they could be taking up the extra ram, why this is not reported in the profiler is still under investigation)

- The shader is forward rendering based in the demo, the final system will also have support for the full deferred Unity 5+ mode, which further reduces draw calls

- There shader is not yet using GPU instancing, a version with GPU instancing is already created and polished and will be available in v2.0 or v2.x cycle, to further reduce draw calls.

- The grass patches density and placement thickness is WIP, so in the demo there is probably areas or biomes that use more thickness in grass than nessessary, so there may be lots of overlaping that will be avoided after the placement system gets the final tweaks.

- The demo uses multiple image effects that can be heavy and do not yet use the new unified image effects of Unity 5.4+. Use the "Only grass" button to gauge the performance of the grass system (this is also including the land generation and planting though, that can also be avoided if not needed)

- Use the biome icons to enable different grass-trees-decals (rocks etc) as the new lands are created. When going back to these lands the previous biome will remain, independently of the currently selected one.

- The grass shaping is enabled only in the region up and right of the cave (in relation to the initial player view when getting in on the demo) and as far as the single control texture used in the demo allows (so near the cave is a good place to test the shaping). Also not all grass can be shaped yet in the demo (WIP), the main grass is shaped with right mouse button. The final system will assign more textures are needed to cover all areas in the big procedural world case.

- Some biomes are heavier than others due to the still WIP regulation of grass density and batches, the heaviest are the low grass (3rd button in upper row) and Tall red tree (3rd button in lower row). The two left icons in bottom row do not enable different biomes, but rather change the texture of grass in various ways, the first toggles main grass and distant forest style and the 2ond toggles between various grass textures for main grass.

- Place rock button will place a rock that is enabled for grass adaptation, grass recalculation is happening when the player is moving, so place the rock and move a bit to see grass adapt to it.

- There is cases where the automatic ground adapt will remain active even if player is not moving, this is WIP to address (as should only remain open when player moves and only remain always open on demand if there is an actual need to full real time adapt of grass for cases like exposions changing the landscape). This behavior can be used in the demo to sample how a full real time adapt is (e.g. at some points only rotating the camera will adapt the grass to the rock in full real time)

- Place vertex grass will spread a vertex grass patch on the ground around the player, this grass is using a rendertexture system for grass rotation and wind (which is more realistic but a bit heavier than the pure GPU approach in the default shader) and has specular highlights in the grass (but not yet translucency emulation like the default shader)

- The cloud prests are not done (so use only the default clouds at demo start) and land types and styling is also WIP

- Some barks do not yet use the ground adapt system (the shader for barks that will support snow is WIP) so will remain on a ground level even if tree is planted in a hill-mountain.

- The birds system is rather heavy as it enables three separate particle systems, so is to be used only for showcasing the effect than the performance and is adviced to be turned off for performance evaluation.

- Rivers are ground adaptable as well (e.g. place rock under them to see the adaptation)

- The grass is re-adapted to ground based on the "Shape grass every" distance, when place rock is active this distance is reduced to recalculate placement at smaller intervals to showcase the adapt effect. For best performance set this highest possible.

- The demo is built using DX11 and the grass with the new vertex shader placed using "Place vertex grass" is DX11 (will be adapted to DX9 for final version as it is using more textures than needed currently). Also vertex grass has no control for specularity yet (will be in next demo version)

- Move to night time using Sky Master Time of Day control to enable the flash light for local light interaction with grass showcase.

- Blur effect is default on when entering the demo, use the "Cinematics on" and off button to toggle it off for extra performance (toggle cinematic effects on and then off to disable it)

- The lands and planting is happening in a brute force approach, the final system will create grass near the player as priority first and then move to further away and out of view lands.

- Out of view grass batchers are not yet occluded (WIP)

- When batching happens there are artifacts due to the new ground placement shader, handling this is WIP (this is no issue if pre-pooling grass, the demo has pre-pool only for a few grasses for now, also WIP to have all pre-pooled)

This is the latest InfiniGRASS v2.0 WP demo, it is still WIP but polished enough for a first showcase. Comments on the system and performance with and without the extra effects ("Only grass" option) and suggestions are welcome.

The demo is a stress one, as it creates everything on the fly (land, grass placement, grass growth etc) and showcases the new full procedrual mode for very big variety and worlds. A lot more optimizations in performance are also WIP and will be in the next demo (details in the spoiler above).

InfiniGRASS v2.0 WIP demo (for Windows)
Procedural foliage planting on real time generated lands, on objects (e.g. rocks) & foliage generation - pooling:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-QCdE1dswQBajFPbHhJRXVCd1U/view?usp=sharing

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Thanks, I'm going to buy soon.

 

Great, let me know for any questions.

I also have an offer with Sky Master ULTIMATE until the 15th, so if buying that system and review, i can send InfiniGRASS for free (in case you would be interested in both assets as used in the procedural demo).

Users of both systems will get various extras as well, like the above linked full world demo (which requires both packs) and all future versions of it and Beta access for my new InfiniLAND system (which will also be in the full world demos in various forms, the current demo uses the CPU generator and i am workin on implementing the GPU generator as well for real time erosion).

 

A few shots from InfiniGRASS v2.0 WIP (Sky Master ULTIMATE on volumetric lighting - clouds & weather)

InfiniGRASS 2.0 allows full pooling of grass - trees - foliage (for no extra play time allocations for any size world) and adaptation to ground of any batch size and original shape (maximum possible performance and optimal use of pooling) with a unique method.

InfiniGRASS v2.0 WIP demo (for Windows):
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-QCdE1dswQBajFPbHhJRXVCd1U/view?usp=sharing

 

A few pics from the InfiniGRASS 2.0 demo (WIP for adding the new water and glass shaders of Sky Master v3.5, to sample them alonside the infinigrass generated foliage and world)

InfiniGRASS v2.0 WIP demo (for Windows):
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-QCdE1dswQBajFPbHhJRXVCd1U/view?usp=sharing

 

InfiniGRASS is on -33% sale for a limited time !!

Make sure to grab the asset before the discount expires, early next week.

 

UPDATE:

A few videos from InfiniGRASS v2.0, with distant forest brush auto adjusted on ground and Sky Master ULTIMATE lighting.

The new technique InfiniGRASS v2.0 uses, allows the pooling of batched items of any size over any ground, for 100% pool utilization and maximum draw call optimization with zero in game batching (pool can be pre-filled in editor time), for true ultimate performance and streaming.

Essentially the system can fill a whole map with a few draw calls for vast grass fields per grass type (up to the 64K limit for batched models, which will create another draw call for example at this point). Then can pool all that grass in other lands for procedural maps with extremely little allocations.

The new demo version that has many more enchancements and new features will be released early next week.

 

UPDATE:

Two more things have been added for v2.0, one is billboard shader and a more advanced one for doing billboarding at various LOD levels (WIP) that will adapt to batched models. The adaptation to batched models is a bit tricky since i have not seen similar implementations, usually they are separated quads that do the billboars, but i have a clear vision on how to do the billboarding work also in batched models and working towards making it possible for v2.0 initial release.

A system with snow patches is also in the works and close to finilized, which allows deformable snow that will also grow gradually over the base ground on snow weather for ultimate snow realism, this is combined with Sky Master ULTIMATE snow weather to accumulate snow gradually. I am tweaking currently the shader and will post a video soon. Also i am considering a DX11 tesselation based shader version, for allowing more detailed snow deformation with less detailed initial snow patches (though the patches are handled like grass, so having detailed ones close should not be much issue)

The issue where the grass placement calculation would sometimes stay on in the current WIP demo (usually at calculation distance borders, if the player slowed down) has also been fixed and now the performance is maximized on that regard and will only do the update in the proper intervals that affect performance in a tiny way when they happen and happen only when needed.

 

UPDATE:

A new Planter script is now available for download on PM request, this script can be attached to a prefab with collider and spawn grass on collision.

I will post videos of the functionality soon.

 

InfiniGRASS is on -33% sale for a limited time !!

Make sure to grab the asset before the discount expires, early next week.

 

New planter on collision system (available on PM request) videos:

InfiniGRASS is on -33% sale, last day !!! The regular price has been submitted to the store and pending review.

 

InfiniGRASS v2.0


A few more hours left for InfiniGRASS -33% discount, until the store review is passed !!!

 

UPDATE:

A few major performance boost changes are now done on the system, making it even more robust and lightning fast !!!

A summary is below, these changes will all be integrated in the next version of InfiniGRASS v2.0 procedural stress demo.

- fixed issue where grass placement calculation would sometimes stay on in calculation borders (while not needed)
- fixed delay in Global Grass Manager due to checking all sub Grass Managers, now only the close by to player are checked and handled as needed
- fixed delay in Global Manager lateUpdate due to pool pre-fill code (did many iterations that were not needed when pool was not yet filled)
- Added performance optimization in batcher for player position grab (cached transform etc)
- Fixed issue where sometimes LODs and tree re-appearence would not work properly (delayed or no LODs enabled)
- Removed batchers from fence and rock holders of Source Grass Manager, so wont be copied in the procedural mode for the cloned Grass Managersm which would increase overhead

There is still a lot of extra optimizations to be done to finilize the system, but is already lighting fast and a new demo will be released soon with the new performance boosts, multiple interactors system showcase and dynamic snow growth over ground system first version (snow patches on top of land, blending and going above ground gradually as snow grows)

 

A few more pics from the vertex grass and new shading, this grass also has special per blade wind (optionally) which is a bit heavier (this mode is used in the demo), a version with the global wind will also be available.

This grass can be pooled around the map for extreme detailed areas and auto adapts to ground with zero extra expense or performance loss for the placement !!!

I am also adding controls in the demo for the vertex grass patch, to adjust shading and shaping on the fly.

 

UPDATE:

The vertex grass control are now done and will be included in the next demo version

The Global Grass Manager is now fully optimized as well, taking very little at all times for the full procedural infinite world stress case, so the demo is getting closer to full optimization on script level (remain to optimize the batched models as well for the new ground adapt system that allows any size of bartched models, for least draw calls possible and also apply the new deffered mode shader for even less draw calls and finally GPU instancing that will come in v2.x cycle)

I will post a demo with the script optimizations and vertex controls included soon (before the final demo where all optimizations will be in)

 

Hoping to see this working with Mobile Open GL2.0. and perform, well, already bought other NEW assets claiming to work for mobile, and sadly do not. InfiniGrass 1 works , but wish performed better for mobile. Its decent..

So hoping to see InfiniGrass 2 soon with Open GL 2.0 and 3.0 support . any idea when this is releasing...Had to delay my game more, since another asset failed me, with not supporting these features...Would pay extra for this support....No one does this right... for Open GL2.0 .. Ugh.

 

InfiniGRASS v2.0 will have shadow control that is one major aspect affecting mobile performance and also pooling. Note that the ground adapt system in v3.0 is based on SM3.0 and i cant say if will be 100% compatible with SM2.0 ( assuming SM2.0 is same as OpenGL2.0 ), i will try to see the extends to which this may be possible. The pooling though is independent of the ground adapt system, so this and the shadow aspects will make a difference for sure.

 

ya, 42% of users still use devices with Open GL2.0. so hopefully it does otherwise , not to so rude, mobile would be useless, since developers cant afford to lose almost 50% of there player base. in a few years it won't matter since less users will have Open GL 2.0. as much. But right now its matters greatly.. This is one of the issues I been running into..

Now Infinigrass 1, does work for 2.0 which is good, but as I said performance is decent, just wish it was better. So hoping I guess we will see... If you need anyone to test for mobile let me know...I do own Sky Master , Infinitree and Grass. So let me know I will be happy to test it to see if it works..I have beween 8 and 14 devices, with Open GL2.0 `and 3.0.. Known tablets, phones mainly. Let me know.

Thanks


Now if you need to do something Custom for Open GL 2.0, I would be happy to pay for it..Since at this point, I need something that performs, great and works for those devices.. I bought a few assets on the store, and they just don't work or perform well, Unity has had this issue for awhile with grass and Trees . Mobile its been terrible. Sadly.


https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html#OpenGL

this is what we the developers have to take into account when making our games, otherwise we won't be able to stay in business. So keep this in mind if possible. Alot of assets right now are only working/supporting the newer devices...Which makes in impossible to hard to survive as a mobile developer due to this ..... many devices sold for 50 bucks not long ago, so there is alot of users still using Open GL 2.0 SM 2.0

 

To further clarify, the system wont change in the core handling of grass, so SM2.0 and OpenGL 2.0 is still supported and will be further enchanced by pooling of the grass patches, and the shadow control that will remove uneeded far away shadowing (or all shadow cast from grass for lower end devices).

The only thing that may not be available is the new ground adapt method, the rest will all work 100% on all platforms and old mobiles as in v1.x.

 

oh ok, good news then. Good to hear, thanks for clarifying . Sadly many devs are ignoring the fact that 42 % devices are still using 2.0.

Looking forward to the release. of InfiniGrass 2.

 

Grass with terrains

Without terrains


Happy New Year and best wishes to everyone !!!!

The next version of the full procdural stress demo for "InfiniGRASS ULTIMATE: GPU grass, tree & mesh optimizer - streamer" is almost ready and will be released early the coming week. I have now super optimized the scripts and will be doing a few more optimizations to the batched models. This demo will be the closer to the final performance (the previous one had nearly none of the major script optimizations)

I attach a few images of the profiler with and without terrains, to gauge the performance of only grass. This is a full scene so has grass, trees and rocks, all using the system and optimized, for a global foliage and general meshes optimization approach. Also all shadows are active with shadow cast and receieve on the grass, rocks and trees.

The performance is from my old 2010 core 2 duo CPU PC, with xbox one level GPU and recorded in Unity editor (thus has some extra overhead from the editor which would not be in the actual game build).

 

Looks like you've been busy, but I messaged you on Facebook a couple months back and didn't get a response. I was curious what the instructions would be for automatically spawning grass on a terrain rather than painting it. I use the asset MapMagic for procedural terrain generation and would like to use Infinigrass for grass on that but cannot brush it all on.

 

Hi,

Please use the support email as Facebook notifications do not work, i had many messages lost due to this and i only recently found out that there is such a big issue with the Facebook notifications.

The system supports real time growth, and a sample code is in the v1.7 demo. The way it currently works requires regulation of density, since planting lots at once can cause spikes.

I have devised a planter script as well for planting upon collisions, i can send this as well if required.

The coming v2.0 will use pooling of the alredy batched models, which means you can stream these very fast and without exra allocations or batching and on any ground without any placement procedures, this will be ideal for large worlds, you can see how this works in the latest WIP demo linked above for inifnite world.

Let me know for any further questions

 

Hey nasos, is this still scheduled to be in 2.0?

 

ok, your product description says to reach out on Facebook. You may want to change that.

I don't necessarilly want grass growth or growth on collision. I simply just want grass to appear on my terrain without having to brush it. Maybe with some varying settings.

Since I'm using MapMagic I can automatically create prefabs or models that appear throughout the terrain. Is there a way to easily incorporate this with spawning the grass on the terrain?

 

Any news on when Infinigrass 2 will be released?

Thanks!

 

Yes, it is done in v2.0 already and is under tweaking. It is one of the methods to fill in maps with automatic grass-foliage

 

I have been working on automated grass creation for v2.0 and will be able to grab maps on the fly and plant them (or plant in editor time and grab the planted grass).

In the current version it is possible to plant a map using one or more Grass Managers and ungrow the grass and then prefab the system and let it grow gradually (with gradual mode) as the player goes near. This though can create spikes if the grass is too dense and models too polygon heavy, so needs carefull regulation.

In v2.0 the grass batches can be pooled on any map area, thus the above v1.x issues are all addressed.

 

Hi,

I am working fully on this to get the first Beta version ready and is getting closer. I can send the latest demo on demand as well to test the performance and infinite world, plus the various features and combination with Sky Master ULTIMATE.

 

Will you be putting the beta version up on the asset store or do we need to contact you privately to get in when it's ready?

Thanks again!

 

Hi,

The Beta will be available for all InfiniGRASS v1.x users when is ready, so i will annouce that here and then with a PM of invoice i can send to everyone interested.

I have PMed the latest demo version for reference of the WIP and features

 

Hello! I'm fascinated by InfiniGRASS it looks really awesome!! I'm really interested in buying it but I just would like to know about a certain feature.

I noticed that you can dinamically recolor the grass in the Asset Store demo but when i recolor the grass it recolors all the grass. Can you recolor only certain parts?

I would like to achieve a similar effect to the picture only reversed where you recolor the grass close to the character.



can it be done in infiniGRASS?

 

hi, sorry for the late reply, seems that somehow i missed the forum notification on this post (or one was not produced), i have replied in the email today, let me know for any further questions

 

Using Sky Master ULTIMATE next gen volumetric lighting, shadowing and clouds with InfiniGRASS v2.0 grass, trees, rocks and foliage:

Sky Master ULTIMATE v3.4.7 has been released at the Unity Asset Store and the system is on -50% sale ($45 vs $90).
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Hi nasos!!!

Could you explain here in the forum how it is done? It's just that he was interested in the question he asked xinoHITO1

regards

 

Sure.

About grass coloration, the current grass system has a patterned tinting system for color variance, where you choose frequency of the effect (so low frequency will give big patches of different colors, high will give local variance) and is globally applied per grass type. You can have any number of grass types with different such color options.

On a possible temporary radial coloration effect (e.g. blaken grass around player as he moves), i also dont have similar implemented, though it would be trivial to add, as i already pass the player position so the grass could be made to be darker around him, this effect will follow the player.

If this is needed to be permanent (stick to the place it initially was created from a burn spell for example) is trickier, but can be supported in various ways in the coming v2.0 where i keep permanent grass changes since i implement a new burn system that changes the material of the models on the fly and add a new shader which can be darker and also have radial burn (radial is not yet implemented, though is trivial to do)

I am also working on global grass coloration from the ground, this uses a single texture, but i could add another texture for permanent coloration effects of other scope (e.g the color burn) in v2.x cycle.

 

Hi everyone

Two new WIP demos are available for everyone that wants to test the full procedual and non procedural modes and latest updates to v2.0 system

One is with pre-planted and pre-created land and is not using streaming land creation-planting (these are used for infinite worlds in the full procedural demo) and the other is the full procedural world demo (heavier for stronger PCs) that has the ability to change the various brushes while creating the new lands around the player and create various biomes on the fly.

The system can also do planting on the fly on pre-created terrains, so the biomes can be changed on the fly in the case also where the world land is not procedurally created.

I can send the two demos in PM on request.

The demos do not yet use LODs or shadow LODing or the new batched billboards system, these will all be in the final demos and system and are the current WIP to integrate to the system and demos

 

Hi again, I'm using SEGI too but seems InfiniGrass shader is forward only! SEGI only supports deferred shaders.

 

Hi,

I have created a pure deferred version for v2.0, i could refine a bit and send it over though for the current version, as it is compatible with v1.x too

Let me know the invoice in a PM and i will send the shader early the coming week.

 

Hello, I had a couple quick questions.

I'm interested in using Infinigrass for a randomly generated game. I build a dungeon out of prefab rooms. I want to define the floors of the rooms as having randomized grass with some specific paramters in the editor. Everytime the prefab is instantiated it should get some random grass based on the parameters set when the prefab was created. Is this already possible? Is this what you're working on for 2.0? Is 2.0 already available to owners of 1.0? I hear you offer a 2.0 demo at least to your customers. Is that a compiled 2.0 demo, or like a beta of the source?

Thanks for your time.

 

Does the grass work on consoles? off course the Nintendo Switch is not out yet but I would like to know if there are any theoretical reasons why it might not work? like for example it would need a special compiled dll for each platform.

 

Hi,

It is already possible to prefab the grass manager with grass in ungrown state and bring in game to recreate the grass (there will be randomization per grass patch). The issue is that creating the grass requires batching in play mode and while batching is multithreaded, can create spikes when grass is created if the desnity is high and depending on the grass type too.

In v2.0 there is a pooling system where you pre-batch the brushes and use this pool to grow the grass, this reduces allocations and requires zero in game batching, so is much faster in the creation phase.

Both versions are super fast after this initial batching happens though (v2.0 is based on v1.x batching)

v2.0 will also allow rule based grass growth during play time, without any pre-planting.

v2.0 is in the works and the Beta will be available to InfiniGRASS users, at first i will hold a closed Beta with reviewers of the pack and then an open Beta for all current users shortly before release. The v2.0 will be a separate pack (InfiniGRASS ULTIMATE) as it is many times more systems than v1x (v1.x is only a small fraction now of what v2.0 offers) and will be a $10 upgrade from v1.x

 

Hi,

Yes it should work ok, my shader is based on a general shader created with ShaderForge.

Though for special cases like this to be 100% sure i can send a sample of the shader to test with, let me know and i will create a test version asap

 

> It is already possible to prefab the grass manager with grass in ungrown state and bring in game to recreate the grass (there will be randomization per grass patch).

Hmm I'm not entirely sure this is what I mean. Let's say you have a room and two types of grass. I'd like to randomize where the two types of grass are planted in the room, rather than pre-placing grass patches and getting a bit of randomization on each. Basically I want to use perlin noise to paint the ground with different kinds of grasses.