Path Painter - Paths, Ramps, Roads & River Beds for Unity Terrain

It should not be a problem. It's worth noting that as you feed your points to the API, currently you will get straight lines between the points, so you will want to space them accordingly. Looking at your picture the spacing looks good for this. (I may explore a smooth curving option in the future, if there is interest for that.)

I never tested on IOS/Android, but here is the test that was built in all supported Unity versions (5.6+) before releasing the last update:
https://frankslater.itch.io/simple-path-painter-api-tester

There is a simple script in there that uses the Pegasus spline to drive Path Painter.

Update:
I actually went ahead and installed the android SDK to test on Android in case that helps:


I have no way to test on IOS, sorry.

 

I can test on iOS - thank you

I need a bit of help figuring out how to actually in script pass my Vector3 list to your API.

Can I download the API Tester project file from somewhere and look at it?

Or once I have path painter installed, is there a line of code I can use.

Like PathPainter.points = MyListOfPoints;

Is there an API Reference?

 

Oh I just bought Path Painter and I can see in the release notes theres an example using Pegasus splines - ill take. look at that and the documentation and see if I can make it work with any list of points

 

Yes, reference is included in the documentation (Although I now saw that I must have been pretty tired when I wrote it. I just took a note to fix grammar for the next release.). In fact it contains what you see above as an example.

Here are the relevant pages:








Help will be available when you are coding as well:




Let me know if you get into any trouble.

 

Oh, I just missed your comment while I was replying. Let me know if you get into any difficulties.

 

Thanks Yeah the documentation was very clear and very helpful, nice work. I literally had a basic path painting in a couple of lines of code. Here's what I came up with

Code (CSharp):

1. using System.Collections;
2. using System.Collections.Generic;
3. using UnityEngine;
4. using PathPainterAPI;
5.  
6. public class NodeToPath : MonoBehaviour
7. {
8.     public List<Vector3> nodes = new List<Vector3>();
9.     public float size = 3.0f;
10.     public float embankmentSize = 25.0f;
11.     public float evenRamp = 0.3f;
12.     public float elevation;
13.     public Painter.EmbankmentCurve embankmentCurve = Painter.EmbankmentCurve.Mound;
14.     public int textureIndex;
15.     public float textureStrength;
16.  
17.     private void OnEnable()
18.     {
19.         SetupPath();
20.     }
21.  
22.     public void SetupPath()
23.     {
24.         Painter.Size = size;
25.         Painter.EmbankmentSize = embankmentSize;
26.         Painter.EvenRamp = evenRamp;
27.         Painter.EmbankCurve = embankmentCurve;
28.         Painter.Elevation = elevation;
29.         Painter.TextureIndex = textureIndex;
30.         Painter.TextureStrength = textureStrength;
31.  
32.  
33.         Painter.Paint(nodes);
34.     }
35. }

I'm playing around with the road. I only ran into two issue



1) The road texture isn't painting on the terrain but maybe that's because I am using MapMagic and or a custom MapMagic shader?
2)it only paints path on the main terrain. Im guessing that Path Painter chooses the active terrain? Is there an option to paint across tiled terrains even? My pathfinder (im using the free AdHoc one https://forum.unity.com/threads/nav...nfinite-and-multi-terrain-sets-w-demo.261075/) can cross tiles and my terrain is procedural. My idea is to have start and end points on the edge of each tile and generate points then paint the roads.

Anyways not urgent - you need sleep When you are rested if anything comes to mid about either that will help.

BTW I am looking for better ways to automatically paint paths between two points on a terrain - I think that's kind of the holy path grail for a lot of procedural terrain designers.

If I can figure it out I can add roads to my upcoming game It would be so nice to have a road running through these woods.

 

btw I tried the api path on a regular non MapMagic/non microsplat train and it didn't paint a texture so im sure theres something im missing in my script if anything stands out? Maybe its because the new terrains use terrain layers and not textures?

 

WilderLess looks gorgeous @protopop!

Yeah, I had a proof of concept for that mid 2018, but I haven't had the time to progress with it since.

I would probably add texture index for the embankment as well in your code (you can keep it -1f to disable it). That can help getting nicer looking paths.

Hmmm, by the info above I can't really tell what the reason could be for that. It could be a number of things.
I checked in case it could be a bug where the painter forgets the values you are setting there before the paint call, but this worked for me:

Code (CSharp):

1.     /// <summary>
2.     /// Test Paint
3.     /// </summary>
4.     public void TestPaint()
5.     {
6.         ResetTerrain();
7.  
8.         PegasusManager manager = GetComponent<PegasusManager>();
9.  
10.         List<Vector3> nodes = new List<Vector3>();
11.         Transform target = manager.m_target.transform;
12.  
13.         // Let's move to the beginning
14.         manager.StepTargetBackward(float.MaxValue);
15.  
16.         while (manager.m_totalDistanceTravelled < manager.m_totalDistance)
17.         {
18.             nodes.Add(target.position);
19.             manager.StepTargetForward(flowSlider.value);
20.         }
21.         manager.StepTargetBackward(float.MaxValue);
22.  
23.         Painter.Size = sizeSlider.value;
24.         Painter.EmbankmentSize = embankSizeSlider.value;
25.         Painter.Elevation = elevationSlider.value;
26.         Painter.EvenRamp = evenRampSlider.value;
27.         Painter.TextureIndex = (int)indexSlider.value;
28.         Painter.EmbankmentTextureIndex = (int)embankIndexSlider.value;
29.  
30.         Painter.Paint(nodes);
31.     }

Is it at all possible that your textureStrength is 0f or less, or that the textureIndex is invalid or the same as the the one your are painting on?
Sorry I haven't used MapMagic or microsplat. They don't need an update or anything when you otherwise paint on your terrain, do they?

Terrain layers are supported. What version of Unity is this?

I definitely recommend you to try and play with the GUI. That will help you troubleshoot and also see if things work with MapMagic and other things you have. Also you can quickly try different settings in the GUI, and once you find some you are happy with, you can use those in your API calls. (I numbered the texture index settings on this picture for convenience)



Note: There is no undo for the API painting at the moment. If you use the GUI, Unity undo will do it's job as usual.

Yeah, Path Painter was created in Unity 5.6 and sadly multi tile wasn't a consideration back then. That has been a problem since, due to the live shaping capabilities and I had different ideas to solve that. I came up with a couple of techniques that may help with some optimisation and could allow some planned future updates. I currently have the guts ripped apart to try and assemble them utilising these new techniques to see where that takes us.

The API currently only paints on the terrain your nodes start on. You may be able to use this information to get it working in the meantime, but I don't know what you can get out of that.

I will understand if you don't want to wait. At the end of the day I could be hit by a bus tomorrow.
(In fact Path Painter release was delayed by close to a year because someone sent me flying from a motorbike and I landed on my hands.)

With or without Path Painter, I hope to see roads running through your woods some day!

 

That’s cool that you ride a motorbike , and awful about the accident. How terrifying. I hope you’ve fully recovered because that can be very traumatizing.

Very grim about the bus - although true, let’s hope that does not happen anytime soon to either of us

This is very helpful, thanks for all of this. Path painter comes closest to what I’m looking for and I don’t regret buying it no matter what happens. I’m super impressed by the simplicity of the API -I wish more assets were like that.

Great idea about using the GUI to troubleshoot.

I’m using unity 2019.2.8 but I only upgraded from 5.6 a few months ago and my main games still use 5.6 - that was an awesome engine, stable and performant. Probably the most challenging thing for me using unity is upgrading legacy projects - I decided to move to the new one and implement a modular, carefully vetted project structure to minimize this in the future. So far, so good

 

Yeah, I recovered pretty much fully. My wrists can be nagging sometimes and I can't do some sports with them, but that's normal I think. It was actually just a small bike and I'm not riding since.

Sorry, I didn't mean to be grim. All this was probably one reason why I was very happy when the possibility to collaborate with Procedural Worlds on this came up. This way I know users will be looked after.

Yeah, I know what you mean. I also have a 5.6 project I really need to dust off soon.

Let me know how you get on with the GUI troubleshooting. In the meantime I'll do my best to hurry things up (although the time I can spend on Unity is a little limited at the moment) and will let you know if I make any concrete progress.

 

I think it’s ok to be a bit grim cloudy days as well as sunny ones are a part of life.

 

Hello Everyone,

We know some of you may be confused about the recent developments and I would like to help clearing that up.

Path Painter is a 3D Haven product and I'm proud it was published by Procedural Worlds.
I speak in the name of 3D Haven when I say I am very grateful to Procedural Worlds, Adam, Rand, Peter and the PW Team for looking after it.

Adam welcomed me to the asset publishing world with kind words in 2018:

and I'll be forever grateful to him.
We wanted to go in slightly different directions, so Adam and myself just saw this as the next evolutionary step for us.

We were lucky that Unity and the Asset Store made it possible to do a crossgrade, so existing users can just upgrade for free. I am truly grateful for everyone involved in making that possible.

We definitely don't want this to negatively affect the experience of anyone, and we hope to even improve your experience if that's at all possible.

At the beginning things may be a little slow, but we hope to get up to speed quickly.
3D Haven aims to provide great products and service to make your game development journey a lot of fun.

Some of you may remember that Path Painter was featured as one of 'the very best from 2018' by Unity: https://assetstore.unity.com/g/best-of-2018

We aim to live up to that legacy and be one of the best publishers out there in 2020 and onwards as well.
Stay tuned.

 

I can't wait to see what new features you add!

 

Thanks for clearing it up Frank, I saw my version was Depricated andf wasn't happy to say the least.
But after a bit of investigation I found the same logo Free and well here I am.

Personally I am NOT a Fan of Procedural Worlds I've purchased a number of assets from them they've never lived up to the hype, I just don't like them. I'll not buy anything from them again ever.

Slightly embarressed to say I've not tried Path Painter yet even though I bought it a year ago, I think I got it at an introductory price watched all the videos and thought I'm going to need that at some point.

I'm looking forward to using it and I'm glad you're working on it.

 

Glad you got it sorted.

Thanks. Get in touch if you bump into anything or want to share your experience.

 

Many thanks indeed!!
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/terrain/path-painter-163352
Nice.

 

3D Haven was recently interviewed by 80LV.
Check out the article to get some insight behind the scenes and learn about Path Painter's development, features, and more: https://80.lv/articles/review-path-painter-tool-for-unity/

https://80.lv/articles/review-path-painter-tool-for-unity/​

 

Hello Everyone,

I regret to inform you that major disruptions are expected due to the rapidly evolving virus situation. Unfortunately some sudden measures coincided with a change of situations that left us stranded. Due to this, I won't have access to a workstation and means to provide proper support, and I will have limited access to the internet (if any). Let's hope this situation won't last long, but it's hard to predict at the moment.
In the meantime I'll aim to keep an eye on things whenever I'm able to in case anyone needs help. Unfortunately this will also cause delays with the upcoming update.

Stay safe everyone.

 

@frankslater we’re all affected by this virus :/ stay home, stay safe!

 

It was brought to my attention that Path Painter does not seem to be in the Spring Sale.
This is not intentional and we are looking into it with Unity.
I want to avoid you paying more, so please make sure not to pay the full price for it until we get to the end of this.
If all works out well, you could save enough to get another asset, or to buy a hot dog, or just save for later.

 

The sales problem's been corrected. Thanks for everyone who reported it!

You can grab Path Painter for half price here: https://bit.ly/2TQDblK

Let us know if any issues.

 

@frankslater Hi Frank

i have some whishes regarding Pathpainter:

1. Open up PP and provide more Data for customizing and adjusting PP. => no more dll which is a plus for happy customers!

2. Manipulation of already created paths!

3. Bether integration with 3rd Party tools like VSP.

Thanks in advance

dan

 

Hey @dan_wipf,

Yes, opening up would be nice. Maybe we can do that one day, but for now there are some factors which suggest strongly against it. It became clear that while most people would like that for all the right reasons, others would ruin it for everyone.
In the meantime, I'll aim to cater for the user's needs with the API to give them flexibility and customizability.
I suspect users will be able to do more quicker with an easy to use API, than digging into thousands of lines of code.

Your other two requests have been fairly high on my list of things to explore and I already have some plans about what to try for them.
There are just a couple of things that I want to explore first, which I think are a bit more urgent for the majority of users.

Can't wait to get home and reunited with my equipment to be able to move PP forward.

Best,
Frank

 

Is it possible for users (and me) just to ask for an uncompiled version of Pathpainter?

 

You can submit a ticket in the support system for something like that.

 

I noticed that Path Painter now has a TradeMark symbol in its name.



Where is it an officially registered trademark and what is trademarked? That wasn't there when I bought it in 2018. Since all trademarks can be read online, can you please provide a link?

Thank you.

 

Thank you for your interest @Rowlan.

Path Painter has been a trademark since much earlier than that. You may have seen the symbol as early as 2016-2017. I was now asked to make this obvious in the store as well.
The symbol wasn't there in the previous listing itself, but since you are looking at it on the store, a trademark is already implied.

To avoid confusion, 3D Haven is also a trademark.

I hope this answers your question.

 

Thank you, but that didn't answer my question. Where is it a registered trademark and what exactly is trademarked? You certainly have web-links for that like every other registered trademark has.

I followed the links on the asset store page. The email one, i. e. using 3d-haven.com from support@3d-haven.com points to facebook and the contact information is this:



That's not a mandatory contact information of a registered trademark. And the other link points to this:


Which is neither a contact information. Moreover it violates law, every website must have a disclaimer with proper contact information. It rather looks like you say it's registered, but in reality it doesn't seem so. I'd like to clear the confusion, so that your trademark isn't violated

So I'd like to know where is it registered exactly, where can I verify that it is registered? I'd also like to see what the ramifications are if someone uses this registered trademark.

Thank you.

 

is it working with Microsplat based terrain ?

 

Hi. Hope your are doing good. need a solution.
I used Path Painter. But after that, I am not able to stamp any Spawner. It is showing Normal maps missing on terrain Terrain_##. [Render Texture is null for this terrain] Pls tell me how to rectify this asap. Thanks in advance

 

Hi @f1chris,

I hope my answer on Discord helped.

 

Hi @rahul2909,

I hope you are well yourself.
What are you stamping?
What gives you these errors?
Render Textures and Normal maps aren't generally in the realm where Path Painter operates, so first we need to figure out how it can be connected.

 

Any new features?

 

HI @frankslater . First I created GAIA for mobile and VR and used stamping rocks, tree,grass. etc. Its working fine. But whenever I use Path Painter. After 3/4 modification in path and I am trying to stamp grass again for the same terrain. Then It is showing "Normal maps missing on terrain Terrain_0_0-20200514-144007" for all stamping. So I am confused what I missed.

 

Hey @SickaGamer,

No new features out yet. Pandemic difficulties and other things held back progress.

 

We need to figure out what that Gaia error means and what could cause it. I'll talk to someone and let you know if I find out something.

 

I searched and found the answer @rahul2909.

This can happen with Gaia if Draw Instanced is turned off for the terrain:

Path Painter turns that off while you have painting enabled (it still uses a brush visualisation that's compatible with older Unity versions to work even on Unity 5.6. That visualisation however needs Draw Instanced to be off).

Turn off Path Painter painting while you are stamping:



If by any reason you still bump into this, you can also re-enable it on the terrain (marked on the picture below) and that should resolve your stamping problem.



I'll take a look to see if Path Painter doesn't take care of it in some circumstances (for example if you close it with Paint enabled) and I will also explore the option to use a new visualisation in newer Unity, while still using the old one in older versions.

I hope this helps.

 

Thanks a lot @frankslater

 

Any update on what the trademark is about? Is it about

* the name?
* an algorithm? if so, which one?
* anything else?

Most importantly: Where can I see the proof that it (whatever in detail that may be) is an official trademark?

Thank you

 

@frankslater Is there a reason why you are not answering my questions about the trademark and license details? It's been months already. I can't seem to find any license information that you claim to have. Neither in the packages, nor in the documentation inside the asset itself. All I could find is the Extension Asset license of Unity, but that's just the standard license.



Thank you very much!

 

I looked at optimising/improving the import and compile processes while working on the upcoming update. Spent days testing and tuning across all the different Unity/.Net versions since they behave differently (100+ test cases). The testing was done with the released version (not the WIP update version) and at the end I decided to push out a small update that contains these optimisations and improvements. It landed today:



Let me know if you have any comments/questions/issues regarding the update.

 

@frankslater Does the update finally include the license details in the package?

 

This is not a forum to get legal advice, so don't expect people to educate you about law and expect to be ignored. You really need to move the kind of conversation somewhere else. I wouldn't be surprised if Unity removed it because it has nothing to do with the forum (it's no conspiracy if that happens).

You don't understand trademarks but that's okay. I'll try to give you a few loose pointers but the information provided does not, and is not intended to, constitute legal advice.

He doesn't need to and shouldn't provide anything you are demanding. He could use what you seek as defence in court if there was a dispute in which you claimed that you've traded a Unity product with the same (or similar) mark before him, and so he was not supposed to use it (because that could be used for a bunch of nefarious things, like misleading people who are looking for your work and so on).

You mentioned that the symbol wasn't there in the Asset Store earlier and you received the answer for that. It's unusual to use it on a store front because it roughly means "Please be advised that this is being traded. It's a trade mark.".
I can't think of anything better than a store front to tell you that so it's completely unnecessary there.

For example, as you can see the symbol has been on this video and in this case it makes sense:

Notice the date: Nov 29, 2017

You seem to be hung up on registration but that was created for cases where it would be impossible or hard to determine who used a mark first (as you can imagine for a lot of cases, especially in the past). Unity Assets have very good dated records of who traded and bought what and when.

 

This forum is exactly the place. And you are not the publisher. The new publisher clearly refuses to answer trivial questions which are:

What is the trademark about?

* the name?
* an algorithm? if so, which one?
* anything else?

 

Again, the answer to your questions would be someone explaining to you what trade marks are and how they worked. I don't think the publisher or anyone here is qualified to properly do that.

This is why I think you're lost. This is not the place to get properly educated about such things and you shouldn't demand that from a publisher.

You keep using accusing, aggressive tones. This tells the rest of us that answering you is futile. (Exhibit A: my answer you just replied to)

Did I miss something? Where did the publisher refuse anything? Do you exaggerate often?
The publisher didn't invent trade marks. He doesn't have to explain them to you. It would be bad practice if he did.

It's possible that the publisher is ignoring narcissist, manipulative, mythomaniacs and people with toxic personality disorder.
I personally see nothing wrong with that.

 

Probably the best thing to do.

 

Please don't be offended if I ignore everything that's not fit for the positive, friendly, creative environment we want to create here.

This space is for people who want to create and enjoy their passion, and I'm intent on keeping it that way for them.
There are not many things to ruin my day better than seeing people bickering and manipulating on twitter in the threads that would otherwise get my creative juices flowing. We are not going to do that here.

We want people to get inspired, have friendly conversations, help one another and get help or a boost with their creative journey.

There is a place for everything. If you want to get into pointless arguments, give out about your problems and be negative, this is not the place. If you can't be friendly and positive towards others, this is not the place for you and I respectfully ask you to carry on somewhere else.

Even if you are legitimately frustrated with something, and you are at the point where you can't talk about it calmly, please submit a support ticket or vent in private. We will do our best to help you out as always.
You can submit support tickets here: https://3dhaven.freshdesk.com/

If you do things this is not the place for, we will just think that your goal is to make a scene here and bring down the forum, and that's not welcome here.

Thank you for your understanding.

 

Point in case of safe environment for creators, even I found myself uncomfortable to post any progress updates and pretty much anything here for a long while now. Let's remedy some of that.

I have been exploring the dreaded seamless multi-tile support that have been on my roadmap since 2017.


Dreaded because Path Painter is not a 'just paint below the brush' tool, so I had to rip it completely apart and come up with elaborate strategies (tried so many things I can't even remember) to hopefully have the performance that will allow it to do everything it needs to do across many tiles and all (and work well across 13 Unity versions).

------------------------------------

Some progress:




Testing an auto layering solution in Unity 5.6 (Intended to essentially automatically propagate missing textures you are painting on tiles, so you don't need to manually set them up for each tile. This is I believe how new Unity versions work, so staying consistent with that to avoid creating systems that can be confusing for users.)


------------------------------------

There are still a lot of little things that I have to hook up, click into place, and there is the question of performance without getting into more advanced technologies. Also tons and tons of testing, finding elusive things and figuring out solutions for them.

Note: It looks promising at this stage, but still not a guarantee yet (As I always say, don't buy something for what it may become in the future. Get it if it's what you need right now.).

I'm aiming to run with it as fast as I can, and then I can ideally build more things on it that have been long awaiting.
(There is a gigantic list of things on possible roadmaps we have discussed in the past.)

 

Thank you, this is also an answer. Not what I expected though to the simple question what your Intellectual Property and Licenses are exactly about, but a public statement nontheless.

Congrats on being in the Power Tools Bundle sale.

 

OK, so I realize this is probably not possible, since this is a modification of the terrain and splatmap, but is there any way we can change the layer of a path? Or "record" the path, or convert to a GameObject?

I need to be able to tell when the player is on the path (or, more importantly, NOT on the path), and I currently do that by testing the layer of the surface they're in contact with. If the path could have it's layer set, or be an object that I can collision test versus just being the terrain, that would be nice.

Again, I don't know that it doesn't do this, I just suspect it can't. If it can, can you please let me know how? If not, maybe we can develop an option to create and invisible selection as a mask or GameObject?