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

Discussion in 'Assets and Asset Store' started by s7, Jan 8, 2015.

  1. s7

    s7

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    Hey hurleybird, thanks for posting this and I will definately take a look into it. Works fine with Unity 5.3.1p1 though.
     
  2. s7

    s7

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    I've checked the planet example scenes, including the sun scene, and it works just fine on 5.3.1p3. Running DX11 mode, deferred on a PC machine. Just wondering what may cause this on your end? Any specific settings or anyhting like that?
     
  3. Nanospin

    Nanospin

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    Hi Thanks a lot for this very good asset.

    Just an issue. It seems I have a scale problem with the geometries. see the attached capture.
    Do you know how I can solve this issue ?

    Thanks :)

    Arnault
     

    Attached Files:

  4. s7

    s7

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    Hey thanks a lot! Looks like a scale more than one unit is applied to all the planets in the scene. See if the transform scale value has anything to do with this.

    Also did you check on the other examples?

    Thank you!
     
  5. Nanospin

    Nanospin

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    Hi Thanks for your help and your reactivity :)
    I appreciate a lot !

    The transform looks good. Planet and Atmosphere are set to 1.
    But the 3D model have strange scale factor:
    1 for Geosphere001
    1 for planet_ring
    0.3937 for 1node (use for the planet itself). I don't know if it is related but it corresponds to a conversion factor between inch and meter units.

    My concern is that the scene seems to display to big planets (tried for sun demo, and it is the same) and even bigger atmospheres...

    It is probably easier to modify the transform scale for each object. I don't mind unless there is a cleverest solution :)
    For a planet radius = 1, what atmosphere radius would you advise ? (and for the corona, rings ? )

    I attached two capture, the first one shows the 1node mesh scale; the second one, the size of the atmosphere.



    Arnault
     

    Attached Files:

  6. s7

    s7

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    Thanks for the update. This is very strange and I am not sure why this is happening. Looks like a broken package import. Also I haven't seen anyone reporting similar scale issues before.

    By the way what is your Unity version?

    With that said, there are different ways of approaching this:

    1. You can try to create a fresh project and import the package again to see if it makes any difference.

    2. Try playing with the import scale, and see if that helps the example scene.

    3. In the end you can ignore all the issues with the examples and go ahead with modifying the import scale of the planet's mesh to set it to the desired size, matching your project scale. First goes the planet surface, then you can tweak the atmosphere scale. It should stand out a bit, just enough to avoid visible artifacts. The atmosphere has a material parameter that sets the vertex offset. This allows for preicse alignment of the mesh. When its done and everything is aligned, you can use the transform scale on the parent to scale the whole thing at once.

    The sun coronas should stand out so the rings cover the surface, and its mainly up to you how to position them. Also make sure you have soft particles feature on, since rings use it to fade themself at the quad vs sphere intersections.

    Thank you!
    -Alex
     
  7. Nanospin

    Nanospin

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    Hi Alex,
    I run with a quite old laptop now (a dell xps - 2009) with DirectX 10, unity 5.3 (can't remember the exact version, I am not at home...) It will retire in the next few months :)
    I will try these solutions as soon as possible and let you know. Thank you :)


    Ps:
    Importing in a new project solved the issue. Thanks a lot for your help.
    Now I have to figure out what is wrong with my project :)

    Congratulation for your work :)
    Arnault.
     
    Last edited: Feb 2, 2016
  8. Nanospin

    Nanospin

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    Hi Alex,

    Noobie question again...
    The rings on gas planets receive shadows correctly and are very nice.
    But my planet does not. I have activated Cast Shadows and Receive shadows options on the mesh renderer but still nothing. I tried to produce an eclipse with a moon but still nothing.

    I have noticed that you often talk about a soft shadow option in the F3DSun script; but I don't have it.

    Did I forget something ? Thanks a lot again

    Arnault
     
  9. Bigleux

    Bigleux

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    Hello,

    I recently bought your pack and I must say the planets look great.

    Unfortunately, I just cannot get them to work in my project because of the issue described in posts #146 and #149.

    My planets have a dark side that I'd like to get rid off. I tried putting a F3D Planet and F3D Sun component but it just does not work with my setup. I am trying to achieve a "Endless Space" result, with planet fully visible from camera view, rotating on themselves.

    Here is what I do:
    -Instantiate a planet (prefab) with the F3D Planet script on it (no orbit). It is on a "Planet" layer.
    -Have a F3D Sun component on my camera, directly looking at the planet.

    Result = Planet appears white (ambient light). The other side of the planet is displayed correctly.

    Things I have noticed:
    -F3D Sun component does not save my layer setting when exiting my scene in edit mode. I set the layer to "Planet" but in-game, it is set on "Default".
    -The planet is displayed properly if I manually hit refresh after changing the layer (Default -> Planet in the editor while the game is running).
    -Autoupdate is set to true, but like I said, I have to manually refresh for it to work (just changing the layer from Default to Planet does not work).

    I think the simplest solution to my problem would be to edit the shader so as to get rid of the "Dark Side of the planet effect". Problem is shader are a mystery to me which is why I bought your awesome planets in the first place.

    This is on Unity 5.3.3f1
     
  10. s7

    s7

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    Hey thanks! Glad it worked. Sorry for my late reply, I dont receive notification from Unity forums sometimes, though I am available via the email.

    Let me know if you need anything :)

    -Alex
     
  11. s7

    s7

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    Hey,

    Sorry for my late reply, I dont receive notification from Unity forums sometimes, though I am available via the email.

    These shadowing features between planets are no longer supported due to performance and visual issues. If you had a chance to get the planets before the update, just send me a word via support@forge3d.com and we will try to fix it.

    Cheers,
    -Alex
     
  12. s7

    s7

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    Hey Bigleux,

    Thank you for your questions. I just replied you over the email.

    Cheers,
    -Alex
     
  13. Bigleux

    Bigleux

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    Yes, thanks for your support. Great asset!
     
  14. Aetherblade

    Aetherblade

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    Hey S7,

    Firstly, awesome work you did with this pack, the quality is really great!

    I do have a question I hope you can help us with though. We want to use the script on the stars to cast the soft shadows on the orbiting planets, which works fine with a single star. We are however using multiple stars, sometimes in fairly close proximity.

    Can you help me out setting it up so the shadow is calculated based on whichever star(s) is/are closest instead of calculating all planet shadows of a single star in the scene?
    I added a WIP screenshot of the sort of situation we might have to deal with. I would like the planets in orbit around the stars to have their lit up site towards the star.



    Hope my question makes sense, if not, ask away XD.
     
  15. s7

    s7

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    Hey Aetherblade,

    Good question you have however the shadows are no longer supported and been removed from the package due to perfomance issues.

    I will try to help you though, just make sure to drop me a word at support@forge3d.com and provide some more details on your setup.

    Cheer,
    Alex
     
  16. GameDevDustin

    GameDevDustin

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    +1 for mobile support, it is the only thing that is keeping me from buying this asset at this time. While I plan for my game to be PC/Mac predominantly, I do want to release to IOS and Android for tablets as well!

    There is such a magnitude of increased value to expand beyond just the pc/mac platforms that the demand for assets in the unity store to support desktop and mobile is pretty huge imho.
     
    DCrosby and s7 like this.
  17. ArthyShow

    ArthyShow

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    Hi I got you awesome asset, but I have a problem when I try to create my first planet on the tutorial.
    I have the exact same setting, but my planet are really dark an I didn't know why.

    I'm on Unity 5.4
    Thank
     

    Attached Files:

  18. OmranNarmo

    OmranNarmo

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    hi
    thank you for the great shader

    I want to use it to create the solar system and I have the textures, but when I apply the texture to the material, it appears
    wrong, please check the attached image to see how it appears on forge 3d shader and on standard unity shader

    thank you !
     

    Attached Files:

  19. s7

    s7

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    Hi Imranovi,

    Standard Unity shaders won't work with that kind of textures because of the different type of UV mapping used in Planets. The sphere mesh included in the package has two UV sets and use a gradient map to blend in between the pole and the belly of the sphere in such way resulting in a smooth transition of a square tiled texture. That applies to the surface of a planet and may vary per shader type, however, and based on your screenshot, and you are trying to recreate the Earth surface, and there's a land/water mask to start with plotting your terrain zones. The tiled textures should come to help in the last place filling such zones and creating the relief with mountains and so on, think of it as a layered approach where you can lay down the necessary parts on top of each other ending with clouds on the very top of it.

    I used LunarCell to create such land/water masks in Photoshop, and Planets pack has a variety of them. You can get the plugin here: http://www.flamingpear.com/lunarcell.html

    Or having an actual spherical mapped Earth texture you can produce the output similar to the included land/water masks by doing some manipulations in your image editing software. You should also be aware of the channel mapping used by the shaders where red channel is the actual mask, and green stands of the shore zones to be colored later in the shader.

    Hope you will find it helpful and feel free to let me know on any further questions.
     
  20. Shadowing

    Shadowing

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    Do you think you will do more updates on this package in the future?
    I still think this planet look still needs work on. I think the way the water looks needs to be improved.
    Also when the asteroid/meteor thing you are making coming out?



     
  21. s7

    s7

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    Hi Shadowing,

    Can you please specify the prefab name and which color space do you use? There are lots of material settings you can tweak to make it look good, and these settings are very specific to the scenario you put the planet into.

    Planets will undoubtedly receive an update, and I have huge plans for further improving the package by adding the baking feature and a modular editor with a PBR master shader framework. I have several successful examples waiting for me to jump in and start working on them as soon as I finish something first.

    The good news with the asteroid flight prototype as it has all chances to hit the store with the AI module in the end. So at this time I am in a "publish it all" mode before the next iteration of the updates.

    I am taking my time to make sure to deliver the quality before quantity, so there's no ETA on these, though my concern is to ensure you get the updates as I keep my promises right.
     
  22. Shadowing

    Shadowing

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    Ahh ya for sure man. I'm a big fan of your stuff. You definitely know what you are doing and I'm loving all this new advancements in your other assets.
     
    s7 likes this.
  23. LividTheDream

    LividTheDream

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    Hi, your asset look great. Just one question to determine if it suits my needs...

    Does it support you being able to fly in up close to the planets or is it just intended for the planets to be viewed from a distance?

    Thanks in advance!
     
  24. s7

    s7

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    Hi LividTheDream,
    You can fly pretty close. For example, if you position the camera on a high to medium orbit, it will work, and you will notice no pixelation. Getting closer trying to land won't work, though.
    There's an easy trick if you'd like to have low orbit shot but that locks you into static camera position, meaning you won't be able to fly around the planet. Check it out I'm using the same technique in Wasp asset video:
     
  25. jtsmith1287

    jtsmith1287

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    This is what I needed to read. Spend $45, save countless hours. Any chance there will be a black friday/cyber monday sale for this asset? ;)
     
  26. s7

    s7

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    I can't confirm anything on Planets yet, but the upcoming updates;) Though, you can get Sci-Fi Effects -43% OFF during the Birthday Bonanza, which it taking place in the Unity Asset Store right now.
     
  27. jtsmith1287

    jtsmith1287

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    I already own that package and I think I got it full price. Oh well. I'm down with supporting the developer! I'll probably pick up this asset soon once the project needs something other than white balls floating in space. :)
     
  28. s7

    s7

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    Sent you a PM...
     
  29. jtsmith1287

    jtsmith1287

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    These planets are just amazing. I'm having fun just exploring them in the editor. One thing I noticed almost immediately though was the cloud quality. It wasn't so good and it really bugged me, because it really stands out against the otherwise fantastic and highly detailed planet surface.
    notSoGood.PNG
    I then saw that it was compressed RGB and I figured out why as soon as I changed it to true color.

    better.PNG

    I suppose it's just the end goal that really matters. After changing all cloud files that looked bad, I probably increased my project size by 300-500Mb. For our project, it's worth the extra size for the higher fidelity, but we may explore decreasing the 4k textures a little bit to see if we can get some space back.
     
  30. s7

    s7

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    Yeah, it's the extra cost you pay for getting the quality here. I don't even know if this getting noticed much. Anyway, adding just a few uncompressed in the scene shouldn't hurt though.
     
  31. Steve-Tack

    Steve-Tack

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    Hi @s7, I'm replying to a post from January 2015. :) There was an issue I ran into right away back then where using MSAA on a scene caused white "sparkles" on planets with atmospheres.

    I ended up switching off MSAA and going with post AA, which allowed me to go ahead and use HDR and deferred. I'm still working on the same project, which is now in Unity 5.4.2. I've tried several post-AA solutions, and have never had great results with any of them in my particular game.

    Unity 5.6 is going to support HDR and MSAA, but in forward rendering only. I don't have a particular need for deferred, so HDR / MSAA / forward rendering is going to be really tempting to switch to. That may make the game far more suitable for VR down the road as well.

    Do you happen to know if the issue was fixed in 5.x? The only time I've seen an issue was with the Planets atmospheres, for whatever reason. When I get time, I'll download the Unity 5.6 beta and see how it goes with MSAA and the Planets asset.
     
  32. jwvanderbeck

    jwvanderbeck

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    Is there any documentation that I might have missed in regards to setting the various parameters in the shader? Up until now I had been just using the prefabs, but today I started tweaking some of the values in one but absolutely nothing changed visually, no matter what I changed. For example I changed the water colors to red colors, yet the water is still blue.
     
  33. jwvanderbeck

    jwvanderbeck

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    Le Sigh. Ok please ignore me. In fact, point and laugh.

    Turns out I mistakenly had two planets on top of each other. Geesh.

    I'll show myself out.
     
  34. jwvanderbeck

    jwvanderbeck

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    Is there any way I can scale down the sun without the shader on the planets also scaling down the light?

    I want to make my sun closer and smaller to fake it being farther away, but the shader on the planets is reacting, well, correctly when I don't want it to :p
     
  35. s7

    s7

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    You would want to adjust a few things in its shader based on the new scale you set. Mostly it's the depth fade value to make sure you get no visible intersections. Other than that, the sun scales properly. Glad you have the previous problem resolved by now :)
     
  36. Mazak

    Mazak

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    HA HA points AHAHAHAH

    Then all of a sudden remembers: I did the same thing....
     
  37. greentreelabs

    greentreelabs

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    Hi,

    I've purchased this package, looks terribly cool but I'm stuck with a few things:

    1) How do I render full planets like you did in this image? I mean, without the sunset/dark side.

    upload_2017-1-10_14-25-22.png

    2) any hint about how to render on a transparent background? I need the planets as flat transparent PNGs.

    Thanks!
     
  38. s7

    s7

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    Hi greentreelabs,

    The first thing is to switch to Linear color space and toggle HDR on your camera. A bloom image effect should do the most of it. You can also add a color correction and sharpen in the end. One thing to keep in mind is the self-shadowing feature which is no longer available due to performance issues, but the gas giant rings which will catch shadows from its planet.

    You will need a mask to establish a transparency, and that is possible by disabling all the image effects completely and render with a white color on a pure black background. Make sure to disable any Lighting options affecting the final image. Then you can capture the mask and the original planet using image capturing software or anything else which is a right tool for the job and finally combine the layers in any image editing software. The atmospheric layer could use the additive blending mode on top of the composite.

    This should give you the general idea and if you have any further questions, please let me know
     
  39. greentreelabs

    greentreelabs

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    Thanks for the prompt answer but you'll forgive my ignorance...

    How?

    I did it but the result is absolutely identical.

    Do you mean in post process aka Photoshop?

    I don't understand a word here o_O

    Do you have an example file, like the one you used to render the image I posted?

    Also, why the planets ignore completely any light I add in the scene?
     
  40. s7

    s7

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    Linear color: https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/LinearLighting.html

    HDR should be enabled on the camera to make sure the bloom effect works properly. You may or may not want to use a 3rd party image effects for that such as SE Natural Bloom which you can find in the Asset Store. You can also check Cinematic Image Effects made by Unity which is Free.

    No, there's a chain of image effects you can apply to your camera the way I did this a while ago. You can see that on the screenshot you've mentioned. There's no need for Photoshop just yet and all that can be achieved without leaving Unity.

    So if you want a flat transparent composite, you will have to do some manipulations since you said you want flat PNG's with transparency.

    There's no example on that since this is a very specific topic and as far as it is you want to turn a 3D asset into a 2D sprite. Please correct me if I'm wrong but that might be a bit challenging if you're just started with Unity and stuff. Nevertheless, I'll be more than happy to help you out on that.

    Lastly, the default lights won't work since it's easy to composite with a custom light source and mix several cameras together. So you don't need a default light source but the custom F3DSun script on any game object that will pretend it's a sun center which will be used to compute planet's lighting. See the examples included with the asset.

    PS email me at support@forge3d.com for faster response times
     
  41. refiner1981

    refiner1981

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    Hello, I purchased the Planets, want to ask, mercury, Venus, Mars, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, respectively is which?
     
  42. refiner1981

    refiner1981

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    Hello, I bought a Planet, want to ask, in resources, mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, which resources are respectively?Lava_01 is Venus? thank you
     
  43. MarkRhainer

    MarkRhainer

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    Hi!

    I am experiencing a specific problem with planet upscaling: it has an 2048x2048 texture but looks surprisingly... pixelated with its scale up. Is there any way to improve planet render quality?

    Thanks in advance.
     
  44. Retrokat

    Retrokat

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    Hi there,

    I'm having trouble with the assets in Unity 5.5.2 - eg Sun_blue is all blown out. We've had a similar problem with other assets in the same update, but most of them we could sort out by using a new shader or unchecking 'specular highlights' box - but there isn't anything like that in your shaders (eg Sun, Sun Carona etc). Let me know if you need a screenshot, although we had the same problem on multiple computers so I think it should show the same way for you.

    Thanks! I love your assets and want to be able to keep using them :)
     
  45. s7

    s7

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    Hey Kat,

    Thank you! It could be that you're using incorrect sun prefab. There are two versions of each planet and the sun that cover Linear and Gamma Space lighting in Unity.

    Here's how you can check which one your project uses: https://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials/topics/graphics/choosing-color-space

    Make sure that you pick the appropriate prefab depending on your color space settings.

    Hope this helps!
     
  46. PavelCuprum

    PavelCuprum

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    Hello!
    Is WebGL supported?
     
  47. s7

    s7

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    Hey Pavel,

    WebGL and mobiles are currently not supported.
     
  48. Jason-K

    Jason-K

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    I have a question. I've been using the pack and the planets look great. I see they're all set up with a "light side" and a "dark side". These seem to be based on something other than the position of light sources in my scene, but I cannot figure out what.

    I'm trying to get a planet set up so players can fly around it without having a purely dark side. If there's a way to light multiple sides of the planet, such as multiple light sources, that would work well. If that's not possible, then I could achieve a similar result by moving whatever it is that determines which side of the planet is light to be at the camera's position. The problem is I cannot figure out what determines how a planet is lit so I don't know what to change.

    Is there something I can adjust to alter a planet's lighting that you can point me too?
     
  49. s7

    s7

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    Hey there,
    The Planets come with a custom light source in a script named F3DSun.cs which you can add to any game object in your scene to act as a light source for planets. Have a look in one of the example scenes just to check how it's set attached to the sun. Also in your scenario, you can attach F3DSun script to the camera and that should be the key to it. Hope this helps!
     
  50. s7

    s7

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