[RELEASED] Castle Valley Collection #1 Huge Desert Photogrammetry Pack

Home Page:
http://www.goatogrammetry.com/

Asset Store link for HDRP version:
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/environments/castle-valley-collection-1-hdrp-165031

Asset Store link for Standard Pipeline:
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/environments/landscapes/castle-valley-collection-1-165032

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https://twitter.com/goatogrammetry

Discord for quick and easy support or to talk game art:
https://discord.gg/kMskCsA

Real photogrammetry from the redrock desert of Central Utah made specifically for game world creation!

Over a year in the making, I'm happy to finally present Castle Valley Collection #1 to the unity community.

So far, photogrammetry has a reputation for being too high-poly (twigs and pebbles with 2K textures and 5K triangles), nothing matches with anything else, and awkwardly shaped geometry thats really only good for setting up a scene for a specific camera angle.

Now take a look at the Castle Valley Collection with a game developer's discerning eye and you'll see-- This set has the right shapes and sizes to truly block out a whole wide world with towering cliffs and vast canyons, and also has the pieces you need to get the little details right.

I hope you like it and I'd love to hear back from people about what you want to see in Collection #2!

 

amazing quality, makes me feel bad i don't make a desert game
will keep an eye for your other stuff

 

An update on the patch I'm working on:

I've found several prefabs that had one or more LODs that had un-optimized UV2 (baked light uses this). They're fixed.

I'm adding a full demo map due to popular demand. It turns out a lot of people want to use the collection to set their own work in for the purpose of showing it, and they don't really want to dig in to the level-design world. Totally makes sense but it didn't occur to me before. So expect an update within the week.

 

Today both the Standard and HDRP versions of the Castle Valley Collection got updated. Here's the detailed rundown:


All prefabs with problems with the UV2 (baked lighting) problems are fixed. But since UVs got changed, you'll have to re-bake your maps Sorry! Mainly it was UV2 being a copy of UV1 on shared materials causing a big waste of space, or a typo making a certain prefab's LOD2's scale .7 instead of .07! It had to be fixed.

By popular demand, I added an example scene (sort of a PVP deathmatch map) found in the demo directory. I suggest adding that simple camera controller script that comes with HDRP or one of your own characters and camera controllers so you can move around in play mode. I cant guarantee the post FX will work with every version of Unity- Thats the thing they change every week or two.

The sage brush and trees have been changed to NOT be static. I found out static terrain trees are a no-no. All plants will take their lighting from probes. Also Sage's most distant LOD3 no longer casts shadows just for optimization's sake.

I added a version of the sage brush with the vertex normals pointing upward. This evens out the shading on the branches. It may or may not be an improvement for your scenes, so try it out! Also, for the standard version I've added more shader options for the sage brush. There's now a version that randomizes the tint between 2 colors based on location, and also a transmission shader (based on the example Amplify Shader with my branch movement added). Some of these shaders cause some artifacting with the forward render path's ambient occlusion post FX, but I guess thats normal and you can try them out and see which work best for your project. HDRP's leaf shader was complaining (sometimes) about a missing _Color parameter, even though it had it. So I changed it to Albedo and it seems to work now.

Obstacle 10-13's albedo texture was slightly too bright and didn't match the rest perfectly. Its been adjusted.

I've turned off the vulture script's debug message flag. I left it on originally-- Annoying!

Material-based occlusion sliders for the ledge and rock pile materials has been lowered slightly-- It was too intense originally.

Remember to leave a review! Thanks!!!

Here's a screenshot of the demo map:

 

Wow these look amazing. Any chance you could do a build of the HDRP version so we could see what the final product looks like?

 

Hum, nah, gotta say I don't think I have it in me to make a build-- Its time to move on. I've been working on stuff for upgrades and marketing and web pages and promo videos with props and stuff for months and I'm very ready to start on a new pack. Doing a build would force the perfectionist in me to work for weeks and probably only get a couple sales from it all. I've had very bad luck with paid advertising, and posting cool stuff on reddit/twitter/etc. gets very few views and upvotes. Besides, I think people would be more excited about seeing Collection #2 or the war ants come together faster.

I did make a video that shows an overview of what it took to make that unicorn you see in the promo video. It did NOT trend.

 

Hey guys. Another video, this time its an actual tutorial discussing my philosophy when making LODs. This is all stuff I learned while making Castle Valley Collection #1, and so naturally Collection #2 is going to be even better!

 

I want to purchase this but unsure if I should get the regular version or the HDRP version. Is there that much difference between the two? Can I convert one to the other pretty easily?

 

I was toying around with this asset today in combination with the latest Malbers assets (took the idea from the ad screenshot of Malbers) and have to say it's easily among the top assets of the Unity Asset Store. Absolutely AAA quality. Great job, highly recommended!

Here are a few shots with Horse & Rider:




And a few with Elephants

 

The only real difference is the detail texture is different in HDRP, and the plant shaders are too. If you buy one, and need it to change to the other version, just email me and I'll try to get you a voucher for the other pack. Unity needs to add a tool to the asset store to do this automatically. I tried to make an upgrade path but it didn't allow it. Ah well. In any case, its a pain to convert just because of the number of mouse clicks so I'm happy to treat people to the other pack free if I have enough vouchers.

 

Had a lot of fun with this asset today and thought I'd make a video with the scene I posted above

(everything ingame, realtime)

 

That is so cool! Thanks for the post. I love seeing stuff like this.

 

This weekend I finally had to time to take a deep dive into this asset and I can say after tearing it apart and putting it back together that this is truly one of the gems on the asset store. I actually took the asset apart because currently I am working on a low poly style project. I say style because the project has the look but is in fact not really low poly, just has a faceted style. I was looking for an detailed collection of rocks and cliffs for this style but really could not find anything that was in the look that I wanted and my modeling skills are not the best when I remembered purchasing this a few months back. Well, after opening it up and doing a little bit of conversion on the demo scene, below is the current result.

Apologies to anyone that is offended by the conversion of such a great photogrammetry asset to a faceted style but I do really like the current result.

The scene above is just the demo scene put into play mode. I will make a better overview of the demo scene shortly.

 

A longer video showing more of the entire demo scene and then the individual converted assets.

Last one in this series. I added a castle in the background.

 

@KeithBrown, Wow that looks great in low poly!

Ok folks, time to release a little teaser from Castle Valley Collection #2
This is just 2018 standard pipeline for now, so its not looking its best yet... (I find its easier to upgrade to HDRP than to downgrade to Standard.)



Collection #2 will work with #1 style-wise and include more of the things I found to be the most important from collection #1 as I created actual maps. Its coming along, but I'm not sure when it'll be released yet. The quality is better than ever.

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

BLENDER VERSION AVAILABLE

Also FYI, I've released a Blender-specific version of CVC#1
https://blendermarket.com/products/castlevalleycollection1

 

Big visual improvements coming. I discovered how much better surface scans are (made with my new camera rig) than the fakes I had been using (made with Materialize). Its night and day when used as a detail-texture! Here's an occlusion map just so you can get a sense of the kind of detail I'm talking about:



I'll retro-fit collection #1 to use this kind of map too, when I come out with the big update for it.

 

New Video coming tomorrow. "Apollo's Dream II" Using tons of assets, as usual. The music is always an original composition.

Hope everyone enjoys it, the scene and music has been in the works for a long time. We are glad we are finally coming to a final product.

Keep an eye on our YouTube for the new video.
https://www.youtube.com/user/silverthorndavid/videos

 

Apollo's Dream II is now live!
A ton of work went into this one, I hope everyone will enjoy it.
Creating beauty with Unity for a Virtual Experience with an original soundtrack is a lot of fun and I hope it shows in the video.

Castle Valley helps create a wonderful environment for this old west experience. Awesome asset!

 

Haha it didn't turn out to be what I was expecting at first. Animals show up. Then they're wearing hats. And then more and more of them. As a member of the "Truth in emoticons movement" I did in fact LOL.

You really build the world large. I love seeing how different people use the CVC#1 assets. People do things I didnt think of, or stuff I thought would be impossible. Seems like you have trouble with the fog and transparent windows! Is that the standard pipeline using aura or something? I'm guessing it is because I didnt think HDRP could do grass yet.

Anyhow, I appreciate you posting your work here. I totally LOVE seeing people's projects that use CVC#1. And this one was a real trip. Good work and very creative!

PS: I think I have most of those animals around here in real life

 

Thank you! I wanted to build suspense then unleash the silliness.
Glad it brought a smile, that was the intent.

Our favorite vacation area is the Southwest. Visiting southern Utah's Monument Valley literally made us speechless.
We love the desert and the views where you can see for 100 miles in all directions. It really helps you feel small.
I try to create that feeling of the vastness of space in the desert.

Yes, on the fog issue. I'm actually using 3 types of fog for the effects. Aura 2, Fog Volume 3, and Enviro. The one that gives me trouble is Fog Volume 3, when it works as I want it is fantastic, but it is hard to work with at times. On this one, I basically stopped tweaking and just accepted what I got. I will go on forever trying to get it just right and my wife is teaching me a new thing, called "good enough" so I can just move on to the next one. But I could not get the right effect on the fog, but overall I think it turned out pretty good.

It is the standard pipeline, I haven't done much with HDRP and still like to keep everything in the scene, so I'm still on standard. But I am dreaming of HDRP for future works to bring out that detail.

This is my first project with CVC#1 and I really love it! I've been waiting for some good desert models since moving over to Unity in 2017, and you are helping fill a massive void. I'm looking forward to what you bring next in CVC #2. CVC will definitely work its way into my future projects without a doubt. You did a wonderful job with it and I appreciate the amount of work and detail that went into creating it.

Thanks for the kind words and I'll be watching for your next asset release.

Have a GREAT Day!!

David

 

Toyed around with Castle Valley, Lux Water & Malbers Elephant today in Standard Pipeline

 

I sure wish Unity had a built in water as nice as that. I'd have used it for the demo map. And that elephant is a really great model. Malbers is a real force of talent in the Unity community. Thanks for posting! I LOVE seeing this kind of thing!

 

I'm super impressed with how well the prefabs blend together. It was so much fun to toy around, I added special handling to my prefab painter. Here's a very quick scenery showcase:

 

I thought I'd show how to quickly create an Elephant in Castle Valley with Water scene from scratch:

Castle Valley is AAA quality, it's a blast to work with it

 

Having fun with the upcoming Crocodile from Malbers with my favorite Assets. Here's the Castle Valley edition

 

This is a Teaser for an upcoming project continuing the Apollo's Dream series.

The video was made with Unity 2019 using this asset.

 

I'm about to release a patch for both pipelines. You're going to love it. Better LODs on the most important prefabs-- Almost pop-free. Better detail textures. And most importantly, tons of 'variation' meshes based on the original ones. So, imagine the cliffs with some slope to them, or taking a spire and curving it to work as an arch. Its easier said than done because of the LODs and the collider issues when you change things like that. But it'll be ready in a few days

 

Any approximate ETA on that? I'm currently toying around with assets I purchased during the lightning sale. Might as well wait until the release in case it's soon-ish. I didn't expect to create this. Like ever, but it happened

 

I have a few rock variants to finish, and sadly they're the hardest ones. Plus, I think I'll include URP shaders in a zip, and to be honest I know nothing about URP and I'm going to have to do a little research. If you need it asap I can post a version of what I've got so far on my google drive. Otherwise, probably a week or so. And yes, I know I'm late on this. I wanted it done before the fall sale season.

 

No worries, I'll just wait. I'm only toying around and I do like to toy around with your scenes. Your asset looks sooo awesome. It makes everything else look good.

 

@Goatogrammetry I just noticed that in the Standard pipeline version in post processing color grading mode ACES is selected, but it isn't active. Just fyi in case you want to change it with the update

 

All of your videos look so crisp! Which pipeline are most of your videos made in?

 

Standard and HDRP. I choose depending on what I'm in the mood. This here e. g. is Standard because I intend to add lots of particles and enemies just because it seems like so much fun

 

Here's a first video

Castle Valley is truly among the best assets on the Unity Asset Store. Well deserved, the quality is most awesome!

 

Did you use an asset for the climbing/character controller or just scripted it yourself?

edit* Nevermind, I didn't realize Malbers added climbing now!

 

Malbers Animal Controller. I put all assets I used into the description of the video.

 

I really dig that Castle Valley demo scene, so many possibilities. I thought I'd add a little help for the poor guy on the desert planet

 

I'm just wrapping up the URP fixes and general improvements for the standard pipeline pack. If all goes according to plan I'll post it today.

BTW, that video was amazing. What would be cool is some rock collapse going on. In CVC2 I'm going to include a bunch of recordings of rocks crashing, breaking, clunking and whatnot. Footstep sounds too. I have a microphone I bought just for doing sounds like that. Even without a mesh-shattering thing like Rayfire, with some particles and dust and sounds, some pretty awesome rockslides could be made. You should try taking some of the closed meshes like the plates, copying the prefab and removing the static tag and add the rigid-body to see what I mean.

 

This video was made using this asset.Castle Valley is an AWESOME asset full of beautiful pieces of nature!

Third in the Apollo’s Dream series, we make these for all people to find some peace and beauty in this world of chaos. We hope you enjoy it.

 

How precise are physics collider ?
Asking since on Rowlan videos it does not look very precise. (character climbing the rock)

 

The colliders arent really made to be accurate enough for a game about rock climbing etc. The colliders are convex, meaning it takes quite a few to capture the rough shape of the rocks. If you wanted to do a very accurate collider, you may just want to edit the prefab and delete the convex mesh colliders, then drop in LOD3 (and not check the convex flag). (But Unity's colliders are touchy about the axis and so you may have to add the colliders to an empty game object and rotate it 90 degrees if you do the LOD thing.)

The colliders provided are meant for speed, and convex colliders are very fast compared to regular meshes. I didn't make them hyper accurate because generally people using vehicles or FPS type games dont want to snag on every little crag on the rocks, or bounce and vibrate too much as they move over the surface. Here's a picture of what you get in the set.

 

I only had the weekend for the project and wanted to focus on the scenery and ambience and thought I'd give focus on climbing details in a follow-up video

 

Can you demystify, but to my understanding for static objects it does not matter.

I tried to search for this info but could not find any knowledge.
The only thing I have found is that concave colliders don't work for dynamic objects.

 

Convex objects are fast to calculate because if you look at any single face, if the thing colliding with it appears on one side of the face, it may or may not be able to intersect, but if it appears on the other side of the face, it for sure wont intersect. So low-poly convex colliders are blindingly fast regardless of how you use them. If the shape has concave surfaces, you may have to compare every triangle in one mesh with every triangle in the other mesh. So its mesh 1 polycount * mesh 2 polycount, where every extra triangle in the collider means going through the other mesh all over again. I'm not a coder and not an expert at this, and I'm sure there are speed-ups built in to the system, but you can see how bad it could be to just throw a mesh into a mesh collider without simplifying it. There's a reason that physics in games is something that was less common in the past-- There's no perfect and simple and fast solution for real-time applications.

For Castle Valley I made what I considered a good compromise for most people's uses. To be clear, sometimes it would take me half a day to do the colliders for a rock formation-- Making 15 convex shapes to handle collisions is not the easiest work, and I could have just thrown LOD3 into the mesh collider and called it good. You can do that if it suits your particular project, but the colliders provided would work great in most cases and they actually are the fastest and the hardest to make.

 

@Goatogrammetry Malbers allowed me to check out his upcoming asset. I have no idea what you did with Castle Valley, but everything works with it. It's really awesome, one of the best assets on the store imo.

 

Holy cow, thats badass! Malbers is my favorite Unity Store graphical content provider for sure.

Yeah it looks like you've got the recent updates to castle valley. I added a bunch of new variants of the rock formations to make level design even easier. I love the bounced light on the monster's underside.

 

Just toying around. I like the combination of blue and orange, ie Crest & Castle Valley:

 

I made a quick video:

 

Holy cow thats wonderful! Gotta love the terrain improvements too. And that water shader and those monsters. Saweeeeeeet!