Planetary Terrain

Hello!
I have a question:

Is it possible to create biom zones? For example a part of the planet is like northpole a part of the planer is desert, an other part of the planet is rain forest and so on. Is that possible?

 

You could change the shader for each sub section. I think getting the shaders to transition between the zones might be a bit tricky.

The alternative is to have a look at RTP shaders and use the global cour map.

 

Hi HenryV,

I'm getting the following error:
"Serialization depth limit exceeded at 'Planetary::Node'. There may be an object composition cycle in one or more of your serialized classes."

Cheers

 

Hi

Does this work on mobile? Has anyone done any tests?

Also, has anyone used this alongside Space Graphics Toolkit?

Thanks

 

I use Space Graphics toolkit with it and find it works wonderfully together.

Not tested it on mobile personally. It can be quite resource intensive though, depending on the scale of planet you use, the number of LODs, the number of collision meshes, shaders etc. all of these variables are up to you and they all can greatly impact the results you get.

 

On page 9

 

Ah thanks, I missed that. Cheers

 

thinking of purchasing this asset
does it support ufps / acparkor ?
does it support shooter ai ?
does it support terrain holes?
does it support SUIMONO water system ?

just a bit concerned about gravitational and world shape issues meaning all other packages become non functional

then if its a choice between a planet that does not work with other packages
or a flat surface then flat surface wins (unfortunatly)

 

With some modifications SUIMONO can work as a sphere and be usable with Planetary Terrain, however you will probably need to re code buoyancy.

 

Did you ever get the shadows to work?

 

Yes, and No. The issue is linked to the material/shader and I know nothing about coding shaders, All I know it that if I switch from the Planetary Terrain Bumped material to a basic bumped diffuse I get my shadows back. However you can obviously not have your multiple textures and colors without PT's material.

 

Edit the shader and replace the last line with this:

FallBack "Diffuse"

 

Amazing, thank you very much.

 

Heres an update, we're heading into custom territory now though, but its still very much planetary terrain,
I thought id mention skirts are turned OFF because vegetation was being generated underneath the terrain which was very costly.

*still alot of placeholder art in the vid

 

Wow; you've come a long way since the last post - that looks awesome!

How big is the planet? Are you using RTP for the planet shader or something else? Love the transition to space, any tips on how you made it?

 

Hello all,

I'm considering to buy this product but what i need to know is if the developer is still working on the product and will it be continued to Unity5
And can this be used for a MMO?

Cheers,

Xander

 

It looks amazing so far. Keep up the great work.

 

Developer is gone?

 

Thanks guys, there's been heaps of work between the last 2 video's and we're not slowing down just yet.

DSebJ - That small planet has a radius of 300000! I have been testing up to 2 million units but we have done quite a bit to make it possible, like changing the way subdivisions are loaded and unloaded, increasing the texture resolution on lower subdivisions, getting it running in DX11, connecting the foliage renderer with the 'new loading system' and we have also created a custom object placement tool for moving and collision objects.

We are using RTP but the fog system has been removed from the shader code so we can use standard unity fog on the RTP surface. The atmosphere is still in early stages really, we've added a bit of a shake as you enter/exit the planet but there's still plenty more work to do to make atmospheric flight more of an event.

Xander - The developer still drops in from time to time, it is my understanding he is a bit busy with work atm but i expect to see him return. I can't speak for Unity 5 but it could totally be used for a MMO with some serious work.

 

Edit: Ok I've sorted out my own problem. The Unity sphere is too low poly so I switched over to a high poly sphere and Aubergine's atmospheric scattering looks way better now. I also went back to DX9 to reduce that multi colour problem. It's also important to follow Aubergine's instructions at his webpage http://tamer.co/articles/atmospheric-scattering.

Fyi, the planet in these latest pictures is 10,000m in radius






Original Message:
Does anyone know how to implement Aubergine's atmospheric scattering or how Henry did it? My results are terrible at the moment and I'm trying to understand what I'm doing wrong.






First Edit: Same thing in a clean project. Btw I'm using DX11, when I disable it the problem lessens but it's still there. I'm still quite illiterate with respect to shaders.

 

Got PT working with our games specific art style, rocking that 70's Sci Fi look.

 

Is it Possible to use ats Colormap Shader with this Asset?
I got RTP3 but it doesnt Support diffrent UV Tileing on ever Texture. ats Colormap Ultra does.
Would be nice to use it.

 

That looks pretty nice. Sharp, clean and simple.

 

Hey ive purchased this, Ive imported it and everything into unity but everytime i generate a planet I just get a pink sphere, and when i look at the materials that was added to it, they are pink also, how do i fix this?

 

In the scenes folder there are some materials. I just duplicated and edited one of the TexturedPlanet ones and then applied it to the Terrain material slot under the Shader tab.

 

thanks, though that didnt work, but it seem like when i turned off Directx 11 option and re-imported the pack it seem to work fine, so does that mean that this isnt compatible with DX11?

 

it doesn't work with dx11 out of the box, this has to do with the shader code for the planets textures.

 

Thanks!

Does anyone know if someone has combined a toon outline shader with PT terrain shader? Something that would give a borderlands look to the planets, while keeping the multiple terrain textures and bump maps.

 

Is there any way to use the PT terrain shader with normal maps, detail maps, and beast shadow maps?

 

It took me a second to understand what you meant when you said "OPP to Begin, but Spaghetti code FTW", (that it's good he started with other peoples property, aka the Planetary Terrain, but then created his own custom version).

 

Actually that's just my new sig...I was saying WholeNewStudio's project "Looks pretty cool..good work!" but it got gobbled up in the quote somehow.

 

When I started programming I had a TRS-80 color computer with BASIC...so later when I starting programming in C it was all spaghetti code, because that's how I started. I would build my own loops because I was comfortable with sequential coding...after I got my CS Associate degree I kinda went too far the other way, really got into the whole idea of Object Oriented programming. It really is a powerful and useful concept...but you can "over organize" to the point it becomes a hindrance to what you are doing. So I think it's a bit of a balancing act, you want to start your project with an outline, a solid structure using OOP techniques...but you have to spaghetti to finish. It's inevitable. The way it's "supposed to work" and the infinite number of little issues that arise that have to be sidestepped through "creative processes" is just the process.

So, shorthand to that whole thought process; OOP to Begin, but spaghetti code FTW.

 

Whenever i save and try to load a module i get this error

Code (csharp):

1.  
2. ArgumentOutOfRangeException: Argument is out of range.
3. Parameter name: startIndex
4. System.String.Substring (Int32 startIndex) (at /Users/builduser/buildslave/mono-runtime-and-classlibs/build/mcs/class/corlib/System/String.cs:333)
5. Planetary.TerrainModule.Load (System.String filename, Boolean randomize, Single seed, Single frequencyScale) (at Assets/PlanetaryTerrain/Scripts/Nodes/Saving/TerrainModule.cs:130)
6. Planetary.ModuleEditorWindow.Load (System.String loadpath) (at Assets/PlanetaryTerrain/Scripts/Editor/ModuleEditorWindow.cs:68)
7. Planetary.ModuleEditorWindow.OnGUI () (at Assets/PlanetaryTerrain/Scripts/Editor/ModuleEditorWindow.cs:126)
8. System.Reflection.MonoMethod.Invoke (System.Object obj, BindingFlags invokeAttr, System.Reflection.Binder binder, System.Object[] parameters, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture) (at /Users/builduser/buildslave/mono-runtime-and-classlibs/build/mcs/class/corlib/System.Reflection/MonoMethod.cs:222)
9.  

Any help? Just simply clicking new , then saving and then attempting to load does this.I can load the prepackaged modules just fine.

 

Be patient people. HenryV come here every two months. It will not be long.

 

Hey guys, one of our testers reported this is happening on an intel HD 3000 and up (Tested on the HD 3000 and the HD 4000).



I did some research and apparently the Intel HD 3000 supports DirectX 10.1 and Shader Model 4.1 so why aren't the shaders working? This is really important for us since a lot of users run these type of chips nowadays (most apple users do at least). Is there any fix or does anyone have any idea of what is causing this?


UPDATE:

Here is what the log says:

Direct3D:
Version: Direct3D 11.0 [level 11.0]
Renderer: Intel(R) HD Graphics 4400 (ID=0x41e)
Vendor: Intel
VRAM: 256 MB

WARNING: Shader Unsupported: 'Atmosphere Inverted' - Pass 'FORWARD' shader state not supported
Shader 'Water': fallback shader 'Transparent' not found
WARNING: Shader Unsupported: 'Water' - Pass 'FORWARD' shader state not supported
WARNING: Shader Unsupported: 'Water' - Setting to default shader.
Shader 'TexturedPlanet': fallback shader 'BumpedSpecular' not found
WARNING: Shader Unsupported: 'TexturedPlanet' - Pass 'FORWARD' shader state not supported
WARNING: Shader Unsupported: 'TexturedPlanet' - Setting to default shader.


UPDATE 2:

Changing to Deferred lightning and disabling DX11 had some good results. Things became a bit better but it's still way too far from how it should look:
What it looks like:



How it should look like:


Here is the log:

Direct3D:
Version: Direct3D 9.0c [igdumdim64.dll 9.18.10.3257]
Renderer: Intel(R) HD Graphics 4400
Vendor: Intel
VRAM: 1008 MB (via DXGI)
Caps: Shader=30 DepthRT=1 NativeDepth=1 NativeShadow=1 DF16=1 INTZ=1 RAWZ=0 NULL=1 RESZ=1 SlowINTZ=0

Shader 'PlanetaryTerrain/TexturedPlanet': fallback shader 'BumpedSpecular' not found
Shader 'Water': fallback shader 'Transparent' not found

Any help would be really awesome.

 

I bought Planetary Terrain a few days ago, mainly to support its development : it looks very promising (and sometimes literally gorgeous if you turn off the default water, use good textures, good light and add some nice subdivision levels...) but it isn't really useable atm - at least on Mac.

Just an example : on two different machines running OSX 10.9.4 and Unity 4.5.2, the module editing GUI behaves quite strangely. Some elements disappear and reappear randomly, but there's worse : I can't even create new modules, nor connect/disconnect nodes inside existing modules. In short, the perfect show-stopper

With a more polished version and proper documentation (this 11 pages pdf is way too short, and the only available video tutorial is outdated...) PT could become a real must. Let's just hope that such a beautiful project won't suffer too much from other priorities, and will rather live the long life it deserves.

EDIT : ok, I found how to connect/disconnect nodes and it has nothing to do with the platform... didn't have understood the way it works : you don't drag the cables, you just click on the connectors. I would strongly suggest a more intuitive interaction scheme.

Also, there seems to be a problem with memory management : once you have generated a terrain, modules can't be edited anymore - and if you try to load new modules, they just display incompletely. The only workaround is to reboot Unity.

 

Another remark : it's good to be able to preview your module edits on a planet mesh, but the process to apply changes on the current scene is really tedious. Each time you press "save", it's in fact a "save as" function that is called... and it doesn't even remember the previous directory. I will see what I can do by tweaking the code in ModuleEditorWindow.cs, but would have preferred to spend this time on new planets...

 

To be honest with you bro...this is a great asset. But sadly, I'm still the ONLY person on earth whom still can't get their plane to align towards the terrain when flying. I just can't figure out how to make my plane rotate. I'm able to get my characters to walk around (but every once in a while they'll fall through the ground or slowly start rising towards the clouds).

Therefore I've stopped using this asset. I'm just making my planets the old fashioned way (Using Cinema 4D). No more seamless exploration for me it's been to much headache.

I know I'm doing something wrong, but I've given up on trying.

 

@ataloss : not ready to give up right now... we'll see in a few weeks

As for now, I managed to make a slightly better module editor window that will take the working directory into account and will spare us a few annoying clicks while tweaking nodes !

I added a "Save as..." button, and now the "Save" button will just store the current module without any warning, like a standard save function. The current directory will be kept for the load and "save as" functions, until you change it or create a new module.

As for the default directory, I replaced it with the Unity project's Assets folder (rather than "/" which always brings you back to the volume's root)

Won't reproduce the whole script to avoid exposing Henry's code, but here are the mods that can be done inside ModuleEditorWindow.cs to get these results :

1) On line 4, add :

Code (CSharp):

1. using System.IO;

2) Replace the "Save" function with :

Code (CSharp):

1.     public void Save(string suggestedName) {
2.             if (savepath.Length != 0) {
3.                 settings.Save (savepath);
4.                 AssetDatabase.Refresh ();
5.             }
6.             else SaveAs (suggestedName);
7.     }
8.  
9.     public void SaveAs(string suggestedName) {
10. if (savepath == "") savepath = "Assets/";
11.             string tChoice = EditorUtility.SaveFilePanel("Save module", savepath, suggestedName, "txt");
12.             if(tChoice.Length != 0) {
13.                 savepath = tChoice;
14.                 settings.Save(savepath);
15.                 AssetDatabase.Refresh();
16.             }
17.         }

3) Replace the first part of the OnGUI() content (between the beginning and "switch(view)") with :

Code (CSharp):

1.         GUI.Box(new Rect(0, 0, 325, 40), "");
2.         GUI.Label(new Rect(10, 10, 60, 20), "File:");
3.         GUI.Label(new Rect(335, 10, 800, 20), savepath);
4.  
5.         if(GUI.Button(new Rect(60, 10, 60, 20), "New")) {
6.             New();
7.         }
8.         if(GUI.Button(new Rect(125, 10, 60, 20), "Save")) {
9.             if(savepath != "") {
10.                 int last = savepath.LastIndexOf("/") + 1;
11.                 Save(savepath.Substring(last));
12.             }
13.             else
14.                 Save("New Module");
15.         }
16.  
17.         if(GUI.Button(new Rect(190, 10, 60, 20), "Save as")) {
18.             SaveAs("New Module");
19.         }
20.  
21.         if(GUI.Button(new Rect(255, 10, 60, 20), "Load")) {
22.  
23.                 if (savepath != "")
24.                     loadpath = EditorUtility.OpenFilePanel("Load module", Path.GetDirectoryName(savepath), "txt");
25.                 else
26.                     loadpath = EditorUtility.OpenFilePanel("Load module", "Assets/", "txt");
27.             Load(loadpath);
28.         }
29.  

Hope this helps. I had no time to modify the whole GUI layout approach, but it surely could be made much better than the current one.

One could also think of a "save and generate" button, btw... which would mean one click less

 

How would something like this scale in a MMO game. Also any Idea how to paint grass on the terrain? if that is a viable option currently?

 

Thanks for these updates, iv been trying to solve the issue with the gradient node, it doesnt properly save/load with new modules. Have you had this issue?

 

I think an open source planetary generator would be very needed.

It seems everyone would benefit from having much needed tweaks from other peoples projects on a asset of this scale and complexity. Tweaks concerning navigation, AI, shader compatibility, gravity etc.

Not to put down the work of HenryV, he has made an amazing asset, and has clearly spent a lot of time perfecting it. But such an asset would be greater if there were different additions for different game styles i.e. fps, flying, strategy, gravity puzzles. So that nobody would have to reinvent the wheel for every game they produce.

I'm not implying that developers are entitled to these changes of course.

 

What's the state of this add-on currently?

I've taken a look at the last few pages, but it seems like people are having varied experiences. Some seem to be getting good results, while others are running into issues they can't seem to solve.

I'm working in Unity 4.5.3 on a Mac (10.9.4), and my needs are fairly simple: I want to make a small planet that the player walks around on in a first-person view.

Is the add-on usable in my environment, or are the bugs too much of a burden?

 

What you want to do is pretty simple with this add-on.

Things get more complicated when you start adding in fast moving vehicles, going to space, implementing multiplayer and whatnot.

 

Quite happy with the changes I have made to the shader.

 

Very nice. I got a bit of a Borderlands vibe in terms of how the terrain looked. Cool shader fx!

 

What are you guys using for the planet shaders? I've found it difficult to get a mix of detail when walking and not having a huge amount of repetition when flying in from space. Also with big (say 50k radius) planets, I notice massive seam issues. I'm trying to get it working with the RTP shader set and just haven't been happy with the results.

 

I agree, I cant seem to get my planets to look correctly, place objects or trees on the surface, or get space ships to align correctly or even stay on the surface once I get them there..

I got the character properly walking on the surface without falling through...finally after like 30 attempts...

Honestly I think it might be easier just to make a planet out of a plane in blender(hollow sphere)...then break up the sections where you want the poles and other such tidbits, use lod stages and other things to only load parts of the planet near the character, this should let me put some proper roads,buildings,trees,animals etc on the surface..

HenryV made a nice asset ...but its not even letting me sculpt the planet without errors..

^^^Yet another person that seems to have no issue making the asset work for them...unlike me..
Also your video reminds me of Kerbal Space Program....I assume thats what you were going for

 

I agree that it is a great asset. My own complications with it does not diminish how great of a tool this is. It's sparked my imagination so much so, that I've filled up three 70 page notebooks with ideas.

But I do have a lot of questions (more than answers), as I continue to use...fight with this asset.

1. How will NPC's navigate?
2. Will their be an issues if I decide to rotate the planets (meaning will everything I placed on the planet loose their coordinates)?
3. My spaceship can't stay on within the planets atmosphere. Every time I start to fly, I fly higher and higher till I'm out of the planets atmosphere.
4. Fast moving vehicles will they be able to navigate and stay within a planets atmosphere?
5. How will the NPC handle combat on the ground, underwater and in space?
6. Will NPC be able to drive on the ground without falling through the seams (at times I fall through the seams).

It seems like this asset is pushing Unity to it's limit (from my perspective). As I said it's a wonderful asset and looking at what most of you have created so far is amazing and inspiring to me (even though I'm having a hard time).