Planets 1.4.1 Meet new PBR shaders, multiple lights, environment. Amplify Shader Editor support!

You are welcome

 

So is it the mask of the planet that causes the appearance of detail being drawn as the planet rotates or is the shader doing some sort of LOD draws?

 

Not sure what you mean by that.... and don't want to guess but there could be a variety of reasons.Can you post a screenshot or two?

 

I think it was the height map tile setting was too low. Now it looks excellent, nice planets indeed. It says Up to 4096 texture resolution on the asset store but all textures seem to be 2048, its fine just wondered if correct?

The RGB textures look a little like normal maps, is this how it picks where to shade the colours you assign in the shader inspector settings? How would one go about making them from generic RGB textures? thx, I really like what I'm seeing.

 

Thank you. 2k textures are mostly land details and normals however there are 4k gas giant textures, clouds and ocean masks.

The RGB textures may contain different land details in channels and the shader uses them to mix it together to build layers of water, land and its details like mountains or sands depending on the planet type. You would also need a normal map to add a bit of height to that.

So with terrestrial planet type it takes ocean/land mask and normal and builds water, shores, land, vegetation and so on layer by layer.

As you have probably seen the textures are power of two blended with help of pole gradient from belly to pole.

So making your own texture is pretty easy I would say. Take one of the height maps as a reference and generate your own 3 channel seamless height texture. Use a tool like CrazyBump to generate normal from one of the channel and put that back into Unity.

You can use this tool to generate your own maps as well as ocean/land masks: Link

With all that said I suggest starting with something much more simpler like playing around with different texture variations. You can also create new height maps by simply swapping their channels around, however make sure to use the appropriate normal so it fits in.

You can use any texture to normal generator to build your own normal map. For example: Link

Please also note there are many different techniques used with the planet pack so the approach I used with shaders may vary from planet to planet, which also leads to completely different texture sets.

There are lots of planet prefabs included that will meet every expectation to finish a game. And still if you need to change the way they look you have all the available options to tweak them and make sure they are unique without even adding your custom texturing.

Hope this helps and let me know if you need anything.

Cheers,
-Alex

 

Thank you Alex, very helpful. Stu. I will share my results very soon.

 

Hi Alex, is it possible to have the diffuse setting on planets effect the bright side of the planet some how, like it does on the dark side. Let me explain, if I set the diffuse power to negative levels the darkside goes bright white, if the camera is set in the right place the atmosphere will really glow along the edges of the planet, when combined with Blooming effects you get some awesome blooms only problem is the camera is on the wrong side of the planet relative to where the sun would be. On the other side you just see a bright white planet but what I need is a bright white light side and dark darkside.

What im doing is fly by sequence from darkside to lightside. The sun is behind the planet and I want the light to bloom as you fly round and then I will turn up diffuse as it goes round the planet to get rid of bright white.

Hopefully you can understand what Im getting at? Heres a pic of bloom from wrong side, the diffuse is set to negative levels.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/5nl6997y9...C__Mac___Linux_Standalone__Personal_.png?dl=0

 

Hey,

Yeah this extreme glow spots appear when the atmosphere adds with the white side as you have negated the power value. The problem is these are limited to terrestrial and oceanic planets only. I don't think it's worth changing the way shader lighting works just because of the effect.

So what I suggest is to play with the atmosphere settings and put the sun on the background while increasing its intensity to pop the bloom effect. Try lens flares on the bloom script. Also you could probably use some third partly lens flare asset to help setup your scene, especially when you have the sun distanced away, it would be the best option - Link

Something else I have to mention which might be of some help is changing the angle where the atmosphere becomes visible:



Line 203 Atmosphere.shader

You can change the existing 0.5 value before the multiply sign to see how it behaves. The default is 0.7. Setting it to 0.5 shifts the atmosphere a little. See for yourself!

 

I've been using sun flares, that example was fairly dry, I was thinking the bloom will preside the flare. Once the flare hits the viewer tone down the bloom effect and circle round, should look good. Flares on there own look a bit odd as they suddenly pop up, it's hard to give them natural curves of intensity that are natural looking. I'm using EasyFlares at the moment so maybe should check out ProFlares but I've found it to be pretty awesome for sun flares.

Thanks for your reply, Im going to have a play around with the shaders and abuse those values. On further thinking I could just have 2 instances of the planet and sun and deactivate after the bloom. It really does look wicked when animated and you creep around the surface. Maybe I can tweak the atmosphere glow to be emissive beyond 1.0 and it should bloom but thats just a guess, it seems like its capped or not emissive at all? I'm still learning CG and vertex shaders. Thanks again.

 

No there no cap for the emissive values on the atmosphere. You can animate it from script and make it bloom.

Also ProFlares will let you construct your own flare. Takes time but it's worth it.

 

That angle change is useful, and makes the planet atmosphere shape more subtle. I've modded the atmosphere to do what I wanted, right now I'm feeling like a badass. Learnt a lot just from that mod.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/6k6bn8c3ymt2j6t/FromSpace_unity_-_Welcome_to_Mars_-_PC__Mac___Linux_Standalone__Personal_ 2.png?dl=0

 

Ok so here it is with flare and bloom together, thought you might like to see. What I need to suss now is how to rolloff diffuse glow as the camera changes position in relation to the sun. Any tips? Thanks. Stu

https://www.dropbox.com/s/j6ht8cx0vv4ied2/DarkSideOfMars.png?dl=0

 

Is there a way to change the blue astrosphere color/transparency? I read in the history of this thread talking about a shader setting going to check that out.

 

This blue tint around the edge looks like ambient color to me. Have you tried changing it?

Also if you want faster response send me an email at support@forge3d.com. I usually reply within an hour or so while the forum won't send notification sometimes which will make it much more longer.

 

Looking good. Im not sure tho did you use the inverted values or not? Anyway can you make a screenshot of lit side of the planet?

Have you changed the code within the shaders to achieve this sort of effect?

 

Hi,

I bought this asset a while ago and integrated them into my project.

In my game, I am looking at a scene from above using an ortho cam. The space ships are floating above the planet, so to speak. The thing is that I see a major performance drop when zooming in, i.e. when the planet fills the view. I don't know if this problem can even be solved. I just assume that the root of the problem is too many transparent pixels filling the view?

I lack the knowledge to further investigate. I can only say that I see nothing unusual in the Profiler. In the Rendering tab I can see the Batches/SetPass Calls/Triangles/Vertices going down (zoom in) and back up (zooming out), as expected.

Few observations ...

1) When the application loses focus and regains it the shader effect of the planet is gone. Looks a bit silly ...

2) I have so many star systems with planets in my game that variety is an issue. I will not buy LunarCell to solve this problem. I don't have the time, for one. If you did what Imphenzia did - offering expansion packs with planets - I would propably buy them from you. Or expand the existing package with more materials based on existing textures.

3) The shader setup is quite complex, far more than I expected. And even if I understood the setup we are back to the time argument again. I already own Imphenzia's SpaceUnity - Do you see any way to convert his materials to your system?

4) It would be really cool if your package included an Earth planet object.

Hm ... Can you make that part of the package? It's likely that other people need or rather: don't need this feature too.

 

Hey thanks for your feedback.

A profiler screenshot might help. Also what was your hardware configuration?

1. I'm afraid this is a more bigger issue than you might think. I'm having a similar problem when the app loses focus with the UI elements disappear. This is not a shader issue and I won't be able to do anything to help with that.

2. I might add more land/water masks to the package later on.

3. The material (shader) setup is advanced but it is not as that complex to make you pull hair on your head. It is always a matter of time when you start using new tools. When you figured out how to make new materials, you can write something to generate a random planet for you, and since you mentioned the variety of planets in your project, this could be a solution.

4. Sorry this is more like a deep space planets, rather than a solar system model.

5. I think I have posted something on how to disable shadows. If not I'll prepare a more detailed tutorial and post it soon.

 

Just bought the Asset, and the quality is amazing. Definetely worth every penny.
But what is happening to my sun here? The further I move the camera away, the more grey it becomes.

Spoiler

 

Hey thanks. Is definitely the fog. Either set the fog color and exponent either open the sun shader and go to line 30 and you should see this (I have already added the fog instruction which disables it):

SubShader
{
Tags { "RenderType"="Opaque" }
LOD 200
Fog { Mode off } // ADD THIS LINE TO DISABLE FOG
...

Hope this helps.

 

How to remove shadows from shaders
This quick guide will help you increase performance by removing shadow calculations for planets.

Spoiler

1. Find F3DSun component in your scene (usually its located on the sun) and make sure Enable soft shadows check box is unchecked.

2. It is safe to remove sphere collider component from the planets as its no longer used.

3. Open Atmosphere.shader and go to line 205:

float shadow = AddSmoothShadow(i.posWorld);
return float4(saturate(saturate(shadow + 0.0005) * finalColor * ndl), 1);

Comment them out and make a new return statement. You should get something like this:

//float shadow = AddSmoothShadow(i.posWorld);
//return float4(saturate(shadow + 0.0005) * finalColor, 1);
return float4(finalColor), 1);

4. Open PlanetPS.cginc and go to line 111. In GetPlanetData function replace pData.shadow = AddSmoothShadow(p.posWorld); with pData.shadow = 1; Repeat the same process for GetMoonData on line 148.

5. Open Ring.shader and goto line 95. Comment out shadow = saturate(shadow) * AddSmoothShadow(i.posSun); leaving you with only a parent gas giant as a shadow caster.

Don't forget to save your changes!

 

Hello! Wondering if anyone has had any success or failure with these shaders and ps4, thanks in advance for any replies.

 

Hey can you tell me what shaders from the list look pink on PS4?

 

It looks very nice...from away distance.
I want to know how close a planet can be approached before seeing a "bad pixel effect".

 

Spoiler: Close enough. Will post another screenshot later using different approach.

 

Ok, I buy (but in my game the camera will come to touch the planet's atmosphere)
Are asteroides included in the asset?

 

No. Its a screenshot from another project and its using Planets package.

 

Spoiler: Posting another closeup with a better resolution planet

 

I have this result without Planets asset.

...at 4:30 and 6:00 you can see my planets.

Can I try a single planet of asset to see if the result is best, before buy?

 

Unfortunately there are no samples other than product page provides. Have you tried the web demos: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/26903 ?

 

This looks so great. Never realized the planets were so high res, only used them for 3d skyboxes until now. I hope you don't mind me asking: Is this fog you used to "fade" out the asteroids near the sun or just the bloom covering them?

 

Thanks! Its the fog mainly, tho the bloom is there as well.

 

Anybody having any issues with 5.2?

I see white planes on the sun.

 

Can you upload a screenshot please? Also what color space do you work with?

 

I sent an email

<< David

 

Thank you for everyone your emails and attached screenshots. The issue with sun coronas is now being investigated and it is a priority number one to me at the moment.

I will report back to you on forum and with email with a quick solution as fast as possible as well as updating the original asset on the store.

Stay tuned!

 

Heres a quick fix for white sun coronas

Open SunCorona.shader and goto line 48. Comment empty pass line. It should look like this:

// Disable Dynamic Batching
// Pass{}

Don’t forget to save!

 

Thanks!
Perfect fix

 

Thank you so much for this. The "Planets Demo - Linear" scene jumped from 50-60 fps to 150-200 fps for me.

Also thanks for the 5.2 corona fix.

Cool video, well done.

 

Hi, I just updated from 5.2.0f3 to 5.2.1. I haven't even tested my project in the Editor yet, I only did a build in 5.2.1 to check if another, unrelated bug/problem was fixed. Checking the Player.log, I now see new output that was not there before.
I will further investigate. I don't even know what this means for my project yet or if it even is a problem. But just to let you know here's the excerpt from Player.log, new in 5.2.1 compared to 5.2.0:

Code (csharp):

1.  
2. WARNING: Shader Unsupported: 'FORGE3D/Planets/Ring' - Pass '' has no vertex shader
3. WARNING: Shader Unsupported: 'FORGE3D/Planets/Ring' - Setting to default shader.
4. WARNING: Shader Unsupported: 'FORGE3D/Planets/Gas' - Pass '' has no vertex shader
5. WARNING: Shader Unsupported: 'FORGE3D/Planets/Gas' - All passes removed
6. WARNING: Shader Unsupported: 'FORGE3D/Planets/Gas' - Setting to default shader.
7. WARNING: Shader Unsupported: 'FORGE3D/Planets/Lava' - Pass '' has no vertex shader
8. WARNING: Shader Unsupported: 'FORGE3D/Planets/Lava' - All passes removed
9. WARNING: Shader Unsupported: 'FORGE3D/Planets/Lava' - Setting to default shader.
10. WARNING: Shader Unsupported: 'FORGE3D/Planets/Sandstorm' - Pass '' has no vertex shader
11. WARNING: Shader Unsupported: 'FORGE3D/Planets/Sandstorm' - All passes removed
12. WARNING: Shader Unsupported: 'FORGE3D/Planets/Sandstorm' - Setting to default shader.
13. WARNING: Shader Unsupported: 'FORGE3D/Planets/Moon' - Pass '' has no vertex shader
14. WARNING: Shader Unsupported: 'FORGE3D/Planets/Moon' - All passes removed
15. WARNING: Shader Unsupported: 'FORGE3D/Planets/Moon' - Setting to default shader.
16. WARNING: Shader Unsupported: 'FORGE3D/Planets/Terrestrial' - Pass '' has no vertex shader
17. WARNING: Shader Unsupported: 'FORGE3D/Planets/Terrestrial' - All passes removed
18. WARNING: Shader Unsupported: 'FORGE3D/Planets/Terrestrial' - Setting to default shader.
19. WARNING: Shader Unsupported: 'FORGE3D/Planets/Ice' - Pass '' has no vertex shader
20. WARNING: Shader Unsupported: 'FORGE3D/Planets/Ice' - All passes removed
21. WARNING: Shader Unsupported: 'FORGE3D/Planets/Ice' - Setting to default shader.
22. WARNING: Shader Unsupported: 'FORGE3D/Planets/Oceanic' - Pass '' has no vertex shader
23. WARNING: Shader Unsupported: 'FORGE3D/Planets/Oceanic' - All passes removed
24. WARNING: Shader Unsupported: 'FORGE3D/Planets/Oceanic' - Setting to default shader.
25. WARNING: Shader Unsupported: 'FORGE3D/Planets/Thunderstorm' - Pass '' has no vertex shader
26. WARNING: Shader Unsupported: 'FORGE3D/Planets/Thunderstorm' - All passes removed
27. WARNING: Shader Unsupported: 'FORGE3D/Planets/Thunderstorm' - Setting to default shader.

 

Hey, thanks for your feedback. I will take a look at this warning messages and reply back to you.

 

EDIT: I now play-tested my project in the Editor, and yep, all the assets are pink now. Obviously I didn't change anything going from 5.2.0 to 5.2.1. Your shaders + CG files are all in the same folder as they were before (Assets/Shader/ in my case). When I select the shaders in the Inspector, the error markings show up, too. Only the atmosphere shaders seem to be unaffected.

***

When I build my project the build process is successful, but the Console still throws errors:

Code (csharp):

1.  
2. Shader error in 'FORGE3D/Planets/Sandstorm': Can't find include file PlanetData.cginc (on opengl)
3.  
4. Compiling Vertex program
5. Shader error in 'FORGE3D/Planets/Sandstorm': '' : Include callback failed at line 67 (on opengl)
6.  
7. Compiling Vertex program
8. Shader error in 'FORGE3D/Planets/Gas': Can't find include file PlanetData.cginc (on opengl)
9.  
10. Compiling Vertex program
11. Shader error in 'FORGE3D/Planets/Gas': '' : Include callback failed at line 43 (on opengl)
12.  
13. Compiling Vertex program
14. Shader error in 'FORGE3D/Planets/Oceanic': Can't find include file PlanetData.cginc (on opengl)
15.  
16. Compiling Vertex program
17. Shader error in 'FORGE3D/Planets/Oceanic': '' : Include callback failed at line 59 (on opengl)
18.  
19. Compiling Vertex program
20. Shader error in 'FORGE3D/Planets/Ice': Can't find include file PlanetData.cginc (on opengl)
21.  
22. Compiling Vertex program
23. Shader error in 'FORGE3D/Planets/Ice': '' : Include callback failed at line 55 (on opengl)
24.  
25. Compiling Vertex program
26. Shader error in 'FORGE3D/Planets/Ring': Can't find include file PlanetData.cginc (on opengl)
27.  
28. Compiling Vertex program
29. Shader error in 'FORGE3D/Planets/Ring': '' : Include callback failed at line 38 (on opengl)
30.  
31. Compiling Vertex program
32. Shader error in 'FORGE3D/Planets/Terrestrial': Can't find include file PlanetData.cginc (on opengl)
33.  
34. Compiling Vertex program
35. Shader error in 'FORGE3D/Planets/Terrestrial': '' : Include callback failed at line 88 (on opengl)
36.  
37. Compiling Vertex program
38. Shader error in 'FORGE3D/Planets/Moon': Can't find include file PlanetData.cginc (on opengl)
39.  
40. Compiling Vertex program
41. Shader error in 'FORGE3D/Planets/Moon': '' : Include callback failed at line 48 (on opengl)
42.  
43. Compiling Vertex program
44. Shader error in 'FORGE3D/Planets/Lava': Can't find include file PlanetData.cginc (on opengl)
45.  
46. Compiling Vertex program
47. Shader error in 'FORGE3D/Planets/Lava': '' : Include callback failed at line 66 (on opengl)
48.  
49. Compiling Vertex program
50. Shader error in 'FORGE3D/Planets/Thunderstorm': Can't find include file PlanetData.cginc (on opengl)
51.  
52. Compiling Vertex program
53. Shader error in 'FORGE3D/Planets/Thunderstorm': '' : Include callback failed at line 57 (on opengl)
54.  
55. Compiling Vertex program
56.  

 

Can you confirm it works for both OpenGL and DirectX with your build and in the editor? Don't mind the errors

 

Can't confirm DirectX, all Mac OS X here. Also note I edited my last.

EDIT: The shaders from the Forge3D Sci-Fi Effects package seem not to be affected.

 

Thanks for the update. I have tested Planets on Mac OS X with Unity 5.2.1f1 here and it seems to be working fine. No errors or warning has been noticed while in the editor or build.

 

What exactly did you test? The original Asset Store version? Keep in mind that I (manually) applied the two fixes that you provided here in the thread: the pink texture fix for 5.2 and the removal of self-shadowing procedure. Maybe it was those two changes?

 

Of course the original one. That sun corona fix doesn't have anything that might affect all the shader files as it seen in the log. Also the shadow removal has nothing that changes shader framework structures. You've striped several lines of code, so I don't think it might become an issue.

Can you test it with a fresh project and send me an update?

 

Hm, I opened a older test project with nothing but your Planets asset in it and the errors do not occur. Everything seems fine, including the manual modifications I made as mentioned in this thread. It's not a 100% fresh project and 100% fresh download. I created this maybe with Unity 5.0 or 5.1.

I will investigate further. To me it looks like the .cginc files can't be found even though they are still in the folder along with your shaders. You are also referencing Unity internal cginc. files, as far as I can see. Under what circumstances would those not be found? And why would this be an issue only in 5.2.1 and not 5.2.?

EDIT:
In case of Forge3D/Planets/Gas he complains about Gas.shader line 43. That's the include of Planet.cginc or PlanetLighting.cginc. Right? They are in the same folder. Do I have to follow certain naming conventions here?

 

You can try to backup your project and delete temp/cache folders. Restart Unity to rebuild everything. This would be the first thing I tried if I would in your situation.

 

Bingo. I deleted the F3D Planets Shaders folder. I re-downloaded the Planets asset from the Asset Store. Re-imported only the Shaders folder. Sure enough, everything back to normal now.

Please believe me that I am not making this up. You saw the screenshot. I updated from 5.2.0 to 5.2.1 and that caused the problem. Maybe just for fun I will try to reproduce the problem by moving the shaders somewhere else ...

 

This could be everything, and what I suspect is the project / shaders were rebuilt incorrectly after you updated to 5.2.1. Unfortunately I have no idea what you've changed and if theres anything that you missed in there. If you say everything works fine now with the original shaders, you might just try adding those changes one step at a time, so it brings it to the state you had before (no shadows, coronas fixed) and see how it reacts. Or you might try what I suggested in the previous post.