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[RELEASED] Procedural Planets

Discussion in 'Assets and Asset Store' started by imphenzia, Nov 9, 2017.

  1. StutterFoxStudios

    StutterFoxStudios

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    Hi @roughninjaguy,

    Happy to try and help.

    Adobe products can be expensive but they do also offer a 1 month free trial period which can be great to try them out and see if they suit you and sometimes their online support might be able to negotiate a price that you're prepared to pay. GIMP is a free alternative to Photoshop. https://www.gimp.org/

    In terms of the nebula it's a frame of a video from an ink droplet being dropped onto a piece of glass. Then its a matter of colour correction etc. The lighting storm in the mouth of the nebula is a combination of lighting and animated noise masks in after effects.

    All the best with achieving your results.

    Cheers,
    -Todd
     
    roughninjaguy likes this.
  2. roughninjaguy

    roughninjaguy

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    thank you for the tips @SelfAvenger . Wow ink droplet....who would have guessed. that's really creative of you. I never thought about that.and thanks for the wishes. :) I hope I will start somewhere if I ever have the time with after effect or photoshop. so far I have only been thinking in terms of 3d softwares and only familiar with those.

    I also have zbrush. do you think zbrush (if you familiar with it) spotlight projection of textures from imphenzia planet be it space fabricator or procedural planet will work to get that textures on to a sphere? I still dont know which to get. or to get either at all...trying to reach Imphenzia is so hard. I tried via twitter and no reply. but he seems active there but no replying to my message at all
     
  3. StutterFoxStudios

    StutterFoxStudios

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    No worries,

    I don't think projecting a single texture onto a sphere would achieve the result your'e after. I think you'd find it looks off as it wraps around the sphere. I believe the way @imphenzia maps the textures for procedural planets is triplanar mapping. That's why there's no issues at the poles of the planets.

    To my knowledge space fabricator creates a single image for you. Not a flat texture you can use to wrap around a sphere. It does allow you to include an alpha channel though so you'd be able to composite the image in another program like photoshop or GIMP.

    If you're trying to create just still images of high detailed planets then using a mix between space fabricator and GIMP (which is free) sounds like the way to go if you're willing to spend the money. You could then get real photos of nebula and then put them in as the background in GIMP if that's what you're trying to achieve.

    Cheers,
    -Todd
     
    roughninjaguy likes this.
  4. StutterFoxStudios

    StutterFoxStudios

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    Hi All,

    I recently released a trailer for my game that features the procedural planets asset rather heavily. You can check it out here.


    You can get some really great results with the planets. Once you have a template of what you're happy with it's pretty easy to make a large number of cool looking worlds. All planets have baked textures at a resolution of 2048.

    Cheers,
    -Todd
     
    Inspeinre and hopeful like this.
  5. ReniTheGhost

    ReniTheGhost

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    Hello,

    Is it working with hdrp pipeline if i only need static planets? or i need to write a new shader ?
     
  6. StutterFoxStudios

    StutterFoxStudios

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    Hi @ReniTheGhost,

    It currently doesn't support HDRP.

    Cheers,

    -Todd
     
  7. ToyWalrus

    ToyWalrus

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    Hi there,

    I'll start out by saying, wow! This asset is incredible! I can tell a lot of effort went into creating it and am amazed by the sheer variety of options I have at my fingertips with all of the options that are included!

    This is my first time using a complex asset from the Asset Store (before it was things like sprites and whatnot) and so I don't know if I've done everything I need to in order for it to work properly, but there are a few problems I'm experiencing that I hope someone may be able to help me out with. (I'm currently using Unity 2019.3.0f6)

    Firstly, when I view the tutorial videos that have been posted on YouTube and when I run the DemoScene, everything looks and operates how I'd expect it to. However, when I create my own scene and spawn a random planet, it renders nicely in the editor, but thereafter when I run the scene sometimes the textures will just disappear after I exit play mode (it just becomes a solid colored sphere). Additionally, each time I play the scene, the initial planet is rendered, but then about 5 seconds later it gets re-rendered with the detail I saw while creating it. And this happens without fail, so I'm confused as to why it has a lagged render time for half of the textures.

    Secondly, sometimes it renders the base 64 string I give it correctly, and sometimes it gives me something completely different (the different planet is always the same, too -- a gas giant that looks like Jupiter). This is without me changing any settings or code between the two different runs, I just press play then exit, then play and exit, and the planet will render differently both times. I should say that I'm spawning the planets through the PlanetManager.CreatePlanet() function with coordinates and a base 64 string that I copied from a planet I got from tweaking a randomly generated one. (See attached screenshots for example here)

    Lastly, whenever I enter my IDE to edit scripts (usually VS Code, though sometimes I use Visual Studio) the OmniSharp server can't resolve any of the references ProceduralPlanets or Substance (from Allegorithmic) are using. From past experience this error usually comes from something not being built properly, or referenced in the correct location. I tried building the ProceduralPlanets and Substance solutions twice but got errors once and it worked once. Though even when it succeeded in building the .dll's the editor still had trouble resolving the .csproj references.

    Anyway, I don't know if these are common bugs or not, but if anyone might be able to help me get these sorted out I'd be incredibly grateful! Thanks!! ErrScreenshotCode.png ErrScreenshotGame.png
    (these three planets you see generated are all coming from the same JSON string... which is incredibly confusing and not at all what should be happening -- the middle planet is the expected result)
     
  8. StutterFoxStudios

    StutterFoxStudios

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    Hi @ToyWalrus,

    Sure sounds like you're getting some weird results there. I suggest trying to contact the developer @imphenzia directly regarding your issues. The asset was only recently updated to a beta for 2018 & 2019. The most recent stable version where it should all work as expected is 2017. It's a long story but Unity depreciated substances which this asset relied on. The algorithmic plugin was in beta and really didn't work so @imphenzia had to make some substantial changes to the asset to get it to work. It's still very much in beta so any issues you report will help @imphenzia work out the kinks.

    I personally primarily use baked planets and build them in 2017.1 and import them in Unity 2018 with a lite version of the asset so it only really has the shaders for baked planets. You can get some amazing results with the asset.



    Sorry I can't help you directly.

    Cheers,
    -Todd
     
  9. ToyWalrus

    ToyWalrus

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    Thanks a bunch for your reply @SelfAvenger! I'll try that.

    Quick question: will the asset import the same in 2017.1 as it does in any other Unity version? I guess what I'm asking is, is it backwards compatible? Or is there something else I should do when importing the files? I ask because when I tried it in 2017.1 I got messages saying,
    "Failed to retrieve a single SBSASM file in the archive... Did you use the Substance cooker to generated the archive ?" ​
     
    Last edited: Mar 8, 2020
  10. StutterFoxStudios

    StutterFoxStudios

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    Hi @ToyWalrus,

    No worries. Happy to try and help. Regarding your 2017 query. It should import the same although I will say that the developer has updated the asset to get the procedural component to work with 2018/2019 so that might have caused issues with earlier releases of Unity or it might be something completely different that's causing you issues. I never updated my earlier version of the asset for 2017 so I can't speak to the issues you've experienced.

    Sorry that's not much help. I suggest trying to contact @imphenzia directly if you haven't already.

    Cheers,
    Todd
     
  11. Exis

    Exis

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    You say the package is ~3MB, but when I build the demo scene in android, with nothing else in the project (at all) except for the procedural planets plugin, the build is over 700 MB.

    Additionally, it immediately crashes the game upon load, unity 2019.2.21

    Can you explain what this black shadow swatch is (attached image)? it appears on many planets and generally makes them look terrible. Seems completely incongruous with the sun object.
    Shadow_issue.jpg
    Shadow_issue2.jpg

    Anything to be done about all of this?
     
    Last edited: Mar 30, 2020
  12. StutterFoxStudios

    StutterFoxStudios

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    Hi @Exis

    Can't comment about the build size I'm sorry but I can say that the weird black shadows look like issues with the normal map generation. Procedural planets for 2018.x and 2019.x is currently in beta mode. Which Unity version were you using when you created those planets?

    Cheers,
    -Todd
     
  13. Exis

    Exis

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    @SelfAvenger Same as the build version: 2019.2.21

    Doesn't matter though, it crashes every single time, so we can't use this software. I emailed the developer for a refund, but no response yet. So we'll see if they do the right thing.

    Be much nicer if I could fix the visual issue above and keep it from crashing the build on start. We need to use runtime generation, so we can't build the planets in another version then prefab them out. Anyway, the crash on start is the biggest problem; happens in a clean project with nothing else in it but procPlanets.
     
    Last edited: Apr 2, 2020
  14. wheee09

    wheee09

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    Hi, I've been trying to get this asset to work with URP. I've updated the materials and tried to hack up the default planet linear shader so that it's recognized as a URP shader but no go.

    Thanks!
     
  15. StutterFoxStudios

    StutterFoxStudios

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    Hi @wheee09

    I know the asset doesn't currently support HDRP so I don't believe it would support URP either. I could be wrong about the latter though.

    I suggest contacting @imphenzia directly.

    Cheers,
    Todd
     
  16. TheMessyCoder

    TheMessyCoder

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  17. Stephen_O

    Stephen_O

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    This was my last question to him on this thread, he never answered, I guess he's too busy to make sure his asset works.. almost a year ago now since I've asked, a year patiently waiting for fixes before asking. I've not been able to use the asset since purchase, very poor support :(

     
  18. StutterFoxStudios

    StutterFoxStudios

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  19. wheee09

    wheee09

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    Hey all,

    Spent the week and got the asset working in URP. Learned a whole lot about Substance... and how to do patch (using Harmony) on C# code to fix an annoying bug in the Substance code.

    I'm not sure what the legalities are with sharing modified code for a purchased asset - I suspect I'm not really allowed to... so if anyone's interested I could try and write down all the steps I took. It was pretty tedious... but I guess I learned. fair bit doing it.
     
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  20. Glowing_Slab

    Glowing_Slab

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    Hi,

    Has anyone else experienced the same issue I'm having - I've tried started a new project in both Unity 2018.4.23f1 and Unity 2018.4.26f1, with Substance Plugin 2.5.2. Set the project to linear color space and create a new planet. All fine, looks great. However every time I leave Play mode Unity hangs. I've tested this on OSX. Hoping for some workaround otherwise I can't use this, of course.
     
  21. Glowing_Slab

    Glowing_Slab

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    Hi again,

    Further testing and I'm experiencing similar issues that others have mentioned here on this forum.

    In Unity 2018.4:
    - Large dark areas (as Exis mentioned in a few posts above).
    - Some sliders are not making any changes at all, particularly noticeable in the gas giant material, can't change colour for example.
    - Dark irregular patches (like continent boundary shapes) appearing, possible also related to normal mapping.
    - Planets go black in Edit mode.
    - Unity hangs when exiting Play mode.

    I've installed the asset on Unity 2017.1 on a PC (I can't install Unity 2017.1 on OSX Catalina), and tried exporting baked planets from there to Unity 2018.4. While this works around some issues, normal mapping on the solid planets doesn't seem to carry over, and the irregular patches still appear. Has anyone been able to get the bake-and-import workaround to work completely?

    Again, I won't be able to use this asset in this condition without a solution that at least lets me import all the planets as baked models, a great pity. I'm not sure I'd describe this version as a 'beta' either tbh.
     
  22. Glowing_Slab

    Glowing_Slab

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    Hi @StutterFoxStudios,

    Did you get the normal maps working for the baked imported solid planets? I attempted the steps you described earlier (removal of certain scripts) but I can't see how to comment out so many lines in the remaining scripts - there are a lot of namespace references that get thrown up. If you did get the baked planets to display correctly, would you be able to share your edited scripts?
     
  23. Glowing_Slab

    Glowing_Slab

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    Hi @imphenzia,

    Have you had a chance to look at the issue of the normal maps not appearing in the baked models? I'm trying to have a workaround by baking in 2017.1 and then importing in 2018.4. This gets around many of the problems with generating the procedural materials directly in 2018.4 but there is still a remaining problem with the normal maps not showing, both for the gas giants and the solid planets. The normal mapping is not appearing at all on the models (there is no visible effect, compared to how the baked models appear in 2017.1) although the normal map itself appears fine.
     
  24. amonius

    amonius

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    Hi,

    so, I'd like to take a side for @imphenzia. I also bought the asset some time ago and didn't use it until two weeks ago. I'm also disappointed that I didn't make the asset to work and also that @imphenzia doesn't answer.

    BUT, after digging into the asset I found out the normal-problem isn't in the shader. The normals seem to be wrong coming out of the substance-plugin. I don't know why it works for @StutterFoxStudios, but he should just be happy and don't change anything. ;-) Some of the substance-archives don't even run in Substance-Designer or Substance Player. The apps just crash without any error. I bought another moon-substance-material and tried to get it to work in my game using the substance-plugin. Yes, it worked. But then I tried to create an iOS-Archive of my game for an afternoon. Then I gave up with the substance-plugin, because, for me, it didn't allow to create an archive because some parts of the plugin doesn't provide bitcode. And so I can't create an archive and eventually I will not be able to release my game! Because of the substance-plugin!

    Meanwhile I understand @imphenzia. He created a plugin for the best planets in the internet. You can't find anything else in this quality! Not even for creating maps or anything else. This asset is by far the best solution for creating random planets! But it doesn't work, because the asset needs another asset that is just a piece of crap in my eyes. This is such a shame.

    I would be happy, if I could use the asset in any way, just because I can't find any planet textures or any planet generator that produces such a variance of planets in such a quality. But in the meantime I will try to create my own planet textures, somehow.

    But, what I will not do anymore: Wasting my time to get the substance-plugin to work. It would be great to ship my game with that little package space and create the textures in runtime, but it just doesn't work. And I'm not confident that the plugin will be stable any time soon...

    Oh, after I read your posts, @Glowing_Slab, I'm talking about the normal mapping-problem in the current substance-plugin-version. With the current version I've got the same problems you described earlier: Normal mapping, crash after exiting play mode...
     
    Last edited: Aug 31, 2020
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  25. Glowing_Slab

    Glowing_Slab

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    Hi @amonius,

    Thanks for your reply! Yes, @imphenzia's asset looks really great, and I appreciate that it was working fine before Unity discontinued support for substance materials post Unity 2017. Likewise, I'm happy to let go of waiting for the Substance plugin to fully support the planet generation in 2018+. I'm now focusing on baking the planets in Unity 2017.1 and then importing them into Unity 2018.4.

    I'm not clear on why the baked versions need to have dependence on the substance plugin, quite a few scripts are required for the the baked versions to run. For these baked versions 'Surface Roughness' seems to cause problems for the solid planet shader - the normal maps are not shown or even worse, there is a kind of black patchy effect. However, the normal mapping in the gas giant shader does seem to work... so this is why I don't think the fault lies entirely with the substance plugin. Looking at the solid planet shader code, I can't see why that needs any reference to the Substance plugin, @imphenzia would need to adjust how it handles normal maps, which I would consider to be reasonable maintenance for an expensive asset, given that this workflow is promoted as a workaround for the shortcomings of the substance plugin.

    The Substance plugin in Unity 2018.4 does correctly show substances I've created in Substance Designer, for what that is worth. I would be content with baking the planets in Unity 2017 except that there are unresolved issues when imported into 2018... rings not shown and normal maps incorrect are the ones that stand out for me.
     
    amonius likes this.
  26. amonius

    amonius

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    Hmm, thanks for your reply. Maybe I should look into the 2017.1 baking myself. Hopefully I'll manage to compose my own equirectangular or cube-textures by using this asset... Then I could use my own shaders.

    I understand everybody, except the substance-developers. I just had too much basic bugs while using substance designer and the substance plugin in such a short amount of time. For imphenzia it's the biggest dilemma. I think he put much effort into the asset and now it's unusable. :-(
     
    Last edited: Aug 31, 2020
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  27. Glowing_Slab

    Glowing_Slab

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    Good luck! Again, I think a modest amount of continued maintenance from @imphenzia would resolve some of these issues w/r/t the baking and/or the solid shader. Since the baked version looks like generated maps and a shader with some exposed parameters... I can't see how it has anything to do with substance at that stage. Perhaps something to do with how the normals are being composited?
     
  28. TuckerMartin92

    TuckerMartin92

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    I've looked around and have yet to find a definitive answer, so maybe @imphenzia would be able to clarify. What is the latest version of Unity that currently supports the 'Bake Planet To Prefab' feature? The project I'm working on is within 2019.2.9f1, yet *every time I try to execute I'm met with following console error:

    NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
    ProceduralPlanets.SolidPlanet.GetBakedTextures () (at Assets/Plugins/Procedural Planets/Scripts/Game/SolidPlanet.cs:1099)​

    If 2019.2.9f1 isn't supported at this time, I presume I'll simply need to revert to an earlier version of Unity, bake the planet in that version, then simply pull those new static assets into the project where everything else is being done? Or is there a way to fix it within 2019.2.9f1?

    And yes I recognize that it has been 17ish months since your initial response to ReniTheGhost, but hopefully there has been some sort of update since then that I simply overlooked somewhere.


    *Edit: I have discovered that it is not every time I attempt to bake the planet, but I have no idea what causes it to work sometimes and not others. However, it does appear that it's based on the generated planet. One terrestrial (seed 124064687 for reference) never works, yet a different terrestrial (seed 1403355175) does bake properly. I'm not sure how the Planet Settings can cause this error, but I'll continue to comb through the settings to see if I can narrow it down further.
     
    Last edited: Sep 2, 2020
  29. thiagolrosa

    thiagolrosa

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    I was almost buying this asset before reading this thread, my conclusion after reading everything is that it is not working anymore for the latest Unity versions, right?
     
  30. hopeful

    hopeful

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    My experience was that even when it did work, it wasn't that fast. Especially if you were trying to create a higher resolution graphic, it would take an unrealistically long time to generate.

    The general idea is great. But the implementation needs work. I can't believe there's no way to get this working without Substance, but here we are years later and it still depends on Substance. And Substance ... apparently still has issues.
     
  31. thiagolrosa

    thiagolrosa

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    I bought another asset called "Procedural Planets and Stars" which is a lot cheaper and it also uses Substance:
    https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/vfx/shaders/substances/procedural-planets-and-stars-106662

    The reviews and comments were the same, not working on the latest Unity versions, the problem was always Substance and no updates for months.

    I gave it a shot using Unity 2020 together with the latest Substance version and it worked flawlessly:


    I contacted the asset creator and he was astonished by the result, he will get back to it once he has time.

    I wonder if "Procedural Planets" (from Imphezia) will work now, as it seems Substance has been improved a lot since then.

    Does anyone here have a few minutes to try it out using Unity 2020 and the latest Substance version?

    Best regards!
     
  32. hopeful

    hopeful

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    Well ... I just loaded it up, along with Substance in Unity, and not only does it appear to be running ... but it is generating planets at the top resolution almost instantly. When I tried this a year ago under 2017 LTS, it was taking like 20 minutes at top resolution.

    So ... I'm going to look into this a little more, and then I guess it's time to change my review on the asset store.

    UPDATE: Hmm. I click once in the demo to create a new 2k planet, and the log pops up 2 completion messages. Also, it looks like there's a flash as one planet is created, then maybe a second? And after a moment a third image appears. So I'm not entirely sure about what's going on under the hood. The log thinks it is creating planets in 0.003 seconds or less, but the image makes its final change after about 1-5 seconds. So something is still hinky under the hood.

    If planet generation is going to be this fast, I'd be interested in getting maybe a 4k planet. The details at 2k are almost right, so if 4k can be done, that would probably be sufficient.

    Oh, and I am using 2019.4.15. I not sure where to look to improve resolution or to resolve the issues related to planet creation.

    AND ... as for 4k textures, apparently Substance has huge issues when going above 2k, even in their own software. So 2k might be the limit, still, due to deep technical issues.

    Finally, it's worth noting that it IS changing resolutions according to what you select, and when you change resolutions it gives a single update in the log. So maybe when it creates a planet it does it first in a low res, then updates to the currently selected resolution?

    My guess is that this is about as far as I can go in checking it out. It looks like it is generating like it is supposed to. I'd have to get much further into it to see how it's working for all the different terrain details and JSON and builds and so forth, and I'm probably unlikely to check into all of that any time soon.

    Bottom line: the Substance part looks like it is working, so I expect the plugin is probably fully functional.
     
    Last edited: Dec 10, 2020
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  33. thiagolrosa

    thiagolrosa

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    Very nice, thanks a lot for your analysis! =D
     
    Last edited: Dec 10, 2020
  34. Rod-Galvao

    Rod-Galvao

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  35. thiagolrosa

    thiagolrosa

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    I wouldn't expect any answer from him...
     
  36. almeynman

    almeynman

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    Here are the steps to make Gas Planet's star settings work:

    1. update UpdateProceduralTexture method in GasPlanet.cs file like so
    upload_2021-2-11_14-39-2.png

    2. change any parameter on gas substance. Go to Plugins/Procedural Planets/Materials/Gas/Gas_Storm and change any parameter

    After that click on your gas planet and all the settings should start working
     
    Last edited: Feb 11, 2021
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  37. TheCelt

    TheCelt

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