[Released] Distingo - Terrain in Detail

Nope.

 

This is a strange one, my mobile test shader seems to work with iOS, but at the moment not WP8, odd...

 

Gaia + Distingo .. take #002

 

Nice! Wow, they are great shots again!!

 

Someone had mentioned that Distingo was not working for them on Mac.
I'm running OSX Yosemite and its just fine for me on OpenGL.
I have not used it on El Capitan/Metal but the Shader Model for OpenGL works great

 

Ah, sweet, thanks for that, that is great news

 

This looks good. Are there any ms comparisons ie vs Unity standard and http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/ats-color-map-ultra-shader-released.155185/ ?

Speed's a big deal :/

 

I have not noticed ant fps diff between Distingo and the base Unity render, I don't have ATS, but I am sure someone here could do a comparison.

 

Standard Specular PBR and a cut down shader for Mobile has just gone into Beta.

The cut down shader required SM3, but you lose a bit of functionality, tried to keep as much as I could, had to drop fog calculations from it too. Hoping some of my Beta group can test the mobile stuff on a few platforms.

 

So, I ran one of my demo scene's and did some screen grabs of the profiler and the stats on the game window. I am not to clear on the profiler, I know it gives us a lot of stats, but I am no expert on interpreting them, but they look pretty similar to me.

First image is the profiler running with Distingo (keep in mind this is all in the same session and I am not moving the camera between shots)

This image is the same session, same camera angle, but with the built in shaders that come with Unity

This, again, same session, same view is the game view with stats, running Distingo

and again, same session, same view, with the built in shaders

Now, this is just with my demo scene, so not loads of terrain, and I am not hot on the Unity stats, but they look pretty much the same to me.

 

What WP8 phone are you using?

 

Its a Nokia 950, but its not the device, I think its WP8 builds in unity. Might be better for UWP, but not putting the beta on my phone lol

 

Seems that device is OpenGL ES 2.0 (SM2), so it will need a downgraded version, the other guy who tested it had an OpenGL ES 3.0 device which worked.

 

Well at the moment, for mobile I have managed to get it down to SM3, don't think I will be able to get it into SM2 unless it's just the same as the Unity Shader lol

 

So, the next update is progressing well, I have spent a bit of time cleaning the code up and I think I have also improved and cleaned up the UI too. I personally was thinking it was getting a bit cluttered. I hope you think I have improved it


So, rather than all the toggles to switch on/off you just now select the shader type you want and it just does the job you want

This also means that rather than me keep updating Distingo it's self, I may be able to modularise it. So, what does that mean?

It means that I could start creating add on packages that you can buy for Distingo, so you can then pick and choose the Distingo mods you want. The shaders you see above will be the base shaders that ship with Distingo it's self.

 

Is it possible to not use pb rendering but just using removing the tile seams effect feature on mobile? Because unity's standard pbr shader is still awful on mobile devices. I actually just bought distingo to get rid of that tile seams effect on mobile, then realized it was more than that.

I hope this is possible and not heavy work for you. Thanks

 

So, you would want a none PBR terrain shader, so legacy, but with the Distingo controls?

 

No I have not tried it on Android, there was someone earlier saying they were about to try it on a mobile device, not sure how they got on though.[/QUOTE]

np thanks for the reply.

 

I use this, and it works great, mobile as well !! Which is a huge plus!!

 

I do not use Distingo, yet, waiting to see if it works with mobile, but that asset I would agree with Teila here, can't see it not working .

 

Keep an eye on this space

Talking to the developers of Vertex Tools Pro
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/55649

Could be interesting things in the pipeline

 

Thanks for the info..Also if you happen to get Distingo working with Android, let me know, I would be happy to buy it then. Thanks! SADLY that tool wouldn't work for myself, since I only use Unity for mobile, I use other engines for non mobile. But thanks, looks like a great tool!

 

I don't have an android device, but the mobile shader I have done renders in the editor when I switch to the Android, iOS and Blackberry build. Hoping one of the beta testers can confirm it works

 

np Nemo! I will watch and wait for someone to confirm.. If I actually used Unity for PC, and consoles I would be all over it, but I don't use Unity for other platforms. Our company only uses it for mobile.

 

Trying to decide Between RTP Or this. Anyone help me out?

 

Let your wallet decide. I have both, and I'm trying out distingo purely because I think the author has a care about performance.

Btw @NemoKrad
Slight problem with the profiler shots. The vsync is playing havok with the profiler results, so it's probably best to turn that off first (you can see the spikes from it waiting). But I'm trusting you to care about keeping it fast anyway so getting it shortly

edit: Have it now, it's fun. Looking forward to more options!

 

The issue doesn't appear to be the shader, that scene has a LOT of batches.

Try doing a raw terrain (draw turned off for grass/trees), batches under 150 or there abouts.

 

Personally, I found RTP looks great, but is a very heavy load. Took more in load than it gave back in beauty - so I chose not to use it. Haven't tried Distingo yet.

 

Thanks for the input

 

RTP is very bulky and over complicated compared to Distingo. Distingo is a great shader especially when you pair it with GAIA. If you want great quality and speed Distingo is the shader for your terrain.

 

In the 1.2 update, as well as the Standard Specular PBR and Mobile shader and cleaner UI, I think we have finally got to the root of why some of you have experienced the UI expansion issue, as well as an over haul of some of the shader calcs that now allows the use of Lightmap static on none blend map render types

 

I haven't looked yet but - are the shaders easy to modify? I fancy tweaking. Some shaders I've bought spread across multiple files in some sort of spaghetti nightmare.

 

They are better now (next update), but they should be simple if you know what you are doing I guess

I have grouped them into their own folders, so you know what files are dependent on others, There are some cross overs where the shaders use the same cginc files, but that saves me duplicating code and should not be difficult to figure out, but again, they are in their related logical areas in the folder structure (I think, anyway)

 

Oh awesome! So long as its in one place I stand a chance

 

Distingo->Shaders and they are all in sub folders there

 

For those interested, here's my timing results on Unity/Distingo terrain.







So it seems that on a terrain heavy scene, Distingo is (on my machine) 0.8ms per frame heavier.

 

Can you confirm vsync is off in quality settings for the particular highlighted editor settings?

 

Yes, vsync is off. Both screenshots show the same scene, at the point where I checked the Distingo box "Use Unity Terrain Shader", which you can see in the profiler display

 

Basically... RTP for AAA games, Distingo for everything else (especially mobile).

 

Well, I don't know about that, I am not sure it runs on mobile that well does it? Lol

 

The other guy who had problems had a scene with 1500 batches, that's a big no-no regardless of whether terrain is used.

I'll have to do a test myself later using my Galaxy S6.

 

What are these batches and how can I measure a batch?

Also NemoKrad, luckily for you the non AAA game design market is growing then

 

I think some of the screen shots sown here using Distingo have been pretty awesome and some even looked like AAA quality to me, but then, I would be bias lol

 

Here is a little demo of another benefit of Distingo. Although I had managed to reduce (but not eliminate) tiling before using Distingo by applying textures via perlin noise (in Gaia) the terrain at further distances looked far too smooth and without detail (similar to sand dunes, which isn't what I wanted). By applying Distingo it adds a roughness to distant terrain by amplifying the UV. Here you can see how the terrain looks as you approach it, by smoothly blending into a smaller UV. The effect is so subtle I hadn't even noticed it, and even asked NemoKrad if the UV cut off in the global settings could be extended beyond 2, which really isn't needed. One thing I did notice however, and is visible in the demo is that Distingo doesn't appear to take any consideration of the Camera's FOV, when I zoomed (FOV at 9) the textures still appear using the Far UV setting. Not sure if in a future update it could be set to take FOV into consideration as well. Bear in mind the texture resolution is low because they have been taken from Textures.com, and haven't decided which ones to buy at higher resolution.

 

Also known as draw calls, basically the more you have, the less well your scene will perform, you could probably get away with up to 500 on the latest (Galaxy S7/LG G5) mobiles.

Click the stats button while in a scene and it will display the current number of batches for that camera view.

 

After reading this i upgraded my OSX to El Capitan - still was not working.
Then i upgraded from Unity 5.1 to latest Unity 5.3 - and its working now.
So atleast in my specific case it was a matter of switching to the latest Unity build (and maybe to the latest OSX).
Its working now for me too, thanks for the info.
Now i am crossing my fingers that i can upgrade my current game-project without any hassle to 5.3.

Edit: the only issue that is still persistant is the Editor bug where the inspector for Distingo gets really wide.

 

Yes, that UI bug has been annoying as I have not been able to re create it myself and it only seemed to affect a few users. Thankfully a friend of mine that had the issue helped me get to the bottom of it.

We found that it is down to how the UI is rendered in Pro compared to the free version. I am guessing as you have the issue that you are not using Unity Pro, if you are, then this issue is still not resolved, so would be good to know if you are running Pro or not.

For those not running Pro I think the issue is fixed, as the change I made in the latest Beta has resolved it for my friend

 

I am indeed using the Personal Edition, looking forward to the fix. Thanks for the info!

 

That's great news, not that you are having the issue, but that it sounds like the one I have fixed

 

For those of you that are seeing the UI expansion issue, if you do not want to wait for the next update for the fix, then open up the DistingoTerrainShaderEditor.cs file, go to the very bottom where you will find a chunk of code that starts with

Code (CSharp):

1. #if !GAIA_PRESENT

And replace that whole block of code with this:-

Code (CSharp):

1. #if !GAIA_PRESENT
2.             string gaiaLogo = "gaia_logo_dark BG";
3.             if (!Application.HasProLicense())
4.                 gaiaLogo = "gaia_logo_light BG";
5.  
6.             EditorGUILayout.BeginHorizontal();
7.             EditorGUILayout.Space();
8.  
9.             if (GUILayout.Button(new GUIContent(Resources.Load<Texture2D>(gaiaLogo), "Click to buy a copy of Gaia now!"), GUILayout.Height(64), GUILayout.MaxWidth(250)))
10.                 Application.OpenURL("https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/42618");
11.  
12.             EditorGUILayout.Space();
13.             EditorGUILayout.EndHorizontal();
14. #endif
15.  
16.             EditorGUILayout.Space();
17.             EditorGUILayout.Space();

The issue was related to the differing Gaia Compliant images in my Resource folder, this code should remedy that issue.