[Released] Tropical Forest Pack

Tropical Forest Pack



1.3.2 update with HDRP10, URP10 & 11 working packages is up!

(note- No paid effects or extensions were used in the video, screenshots, and demos. An additional free to download unity package is linked at the bottom of this post to use the same effects and settings)

Important- The new shaders require Custom Deferred Shaders input in the Graphics Settings when using them in Deferred Rendering mode. On import into a Deferred project or when switching to Deferred the Leaves will look broken. They need the Custom Deferred Shaders. To fix this please follow my TFP1.1 Import Notes video down below. The Custom Deferred shading should also be compatible with AFS, UBER, and ALLOY. So if they are already inputted everything should work fine.

If using a version of Unity older than 5.6.3 Tropical Forest Pack 1.0 will download show in the import. You need to update to Unity 5.6.3 to download and import the latest version shown in this thread. You do not have to update your project to use this pack but can either install the latest version of Unity to download and then manually move it to your project or PM/Email me with the invoice # and I can send a package of 1.1.

Also for importing Tropical Forest Pack 1.1 without any broken shaders you have to delete the original Tropical Forest Pack folder before importing the update. If anyone wants the original Tropical Forest Pack 1.0 for any reason please PM me.


Asset Store Page


Acknowledgements
​

Many Thanks to @larsbertram1 for the Custom Tree Importer, shaders, and help to get everything working great!

To AegonGames for Landscaper which has saved me many hours and is the one of the best Assets I have used!

To a few great members of the Unity Community for testing and advice

Packs Content
​

The trees and plants were modeled in Blender and imported into Unity using the Custom Tree Importer v3. This enables very advanced bending and beautiful Single Sided PBR shading! Also smooth LOD support with Billboards!

Update has some of the original trees updated and also many new prerfabs. Full list of prefabs:

12 Ground Cover Prefabs

2 Falling Leaf Particles

11 Props Including Wooden Boards, Rope Bridges, a Photoscanned Dead Trunk, a Photoscanned Coconut, and 3 Papaya Fruit Prefabs

2 Photoscanned Rocks

13 Trees with new Banana and Coconut trees. All the other trees were updated for the new shading and bending

6 2048 Ground Textures. Replaced a couple older materials with Photoscanned Grounds that include real height and normal maps. Also the diffuse and normal for these two are 4096 but are compressed to 2048

Triangle Counts​

The new Single-Sided shaded Leaf Shader helps on triangle counts and adding a little detail without going crazy. Tri Counts for the LOD0 models range from 32 for the simplest dead leaf cover mesh to 9873 for the complex rock mesh. Most of the trees and plants range from 500-3000 triangles. All non-particle Prefabs have LODs setup that bring the tri counts down and most of the trees and plants have billboards to help even more.

Collision​

Also all the trees have colliders setup. Most primarily using capsule colliders and some have optional optimized mesh colliders for better collision on non-terrain trees. The capsule collider for the Kapok Tree is disabled by default because it is not great for the complex model it is. If you want to use it with the terrain then just disable the Mesh Collider and Enable the Capsule Collider for the prefab in the Project View.

Also a new Demo Scene- Forgotten Ravine! Sorry for the name but it is a pretty cool scene with most things setup to just drop some bots and your player in and go.

Tutorials to Setup

SRP Setup

Trees not bending in any scene but the demo scenes-
The Custom Shaders require the Wind For LOD Groups On Terrain script attached to the Wind Zone gameobject in a scene for the wind effects to work. You can also use the WindZone prefab in the 1)Extra folder that has the script already attached.

​

There are no image effects included with the pack but I do include a package of everything I used in the video and screenshots including the Post Process Stack from Unity and also the awesome Volumetric Lighting solution from @Michal_ . They are all free to use. Here is the package to import into your scene and use like in the TFP 1.1 Exrta Import video above-

Tropical Forest Pack 1.1_Extra (87 MB)

Tropical Forest Pack 1.2_Extra (87 MB)
(Updated the Extra Pack to match the new video and new Asset Store Page screenshots. Could not update the fog settings in the scenes as that would require uploading the whole pack again. So for getting the values similar I lowed the fog strength to .00025-.0004 and changed the fog color to a bright desaturated green)

Tropical Forest Pack 1.2.1_Extra (87 MB)

Tropical Forest Pack 1.3.0_Extra (87 MB)
(Edited the base image profile to be softer for a cleaner style. Still using the Post Process Stack 1 though)

Demos​

Here are the Demo Scenes for you to walk through yourselves. Each include a Windows and Mac build. I have not tested the Mac builds so not sure how they run.

Base Showcase Scene with no effects and exactly how it will look on importing into a new project-

Tropical Forest Pack Assets Showcase (514MB)

These two scenes are densely populated terrains:
Note- Do not recommend using Extreme Quality at 1080p on lower to mid range machines

TFP Demo Scene (792 MB)

Forgotten Ravine (788 MB)

Forgotten Ravine Rain (794 MB)



Email- baldinoboy@gmail.com

 

reserved

 

Finally! Great work man and honestly you should sell this as a different pack and let the 1.0 folks simply upgrade into this for a discount may be. It was a lot of effort on your part with everything else in life and I've seen this through the betas. Great show and congratulations on completing the pack.

 

Thanks man! I promised a free update for current customers so wanted to follow through with that without any time limit for a free upgrade. Also this is the pack I wanted to release initially. So feels right to have it just as an update. Will say it was beyond relief to finish writing the description and submit it. Waiting to party until it gets through submission

 

Another beta tester here. It is an immense pack and worthy of higher price. Whatever you have pitched it at good luck and it really does deserve to be picked up in huge numbers.

The textures are awesome and a couple have gone straight into my game. The tree's are beautiful and a great shader too. If you don't have this pack add it, a no brainer at the current price.

 

The update is up!

https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/49391

Now I am having a party

The new price is $35. Free upgrade to all who already purchased it. I updated the main post with the tutorial videos for setting up and also the TFP1.1_Extra package for getting the same effects I used in my screenshots and videos.

Hope you guys like it and message me for any issues or questions you have!

Cheers

 

Hi Baldinoboy,
I just updated to 1.1, but all materials are pink. I try a reimport, but that doesn't helped. And the particles in the waterfall are kind of dithered.

 

Hi franky_li, Sorry for this. What version of Unity are you using? Also any errors showing up?

You might try re-importing just the CTI Runtime Components folder in the 1)Extra folder. Unlikely a fix but worth trying.

Will get this working.

Also for the waterfall it is a dithered deferred shader. An attempt at making a decent water shader work in a scene with deferred shaders failed as it had to be forward and it broke the scene horribly by not receiving fog and shadows. Used Shader Forge for the custom water and particle shaders. I am not happy with the waterfall shader but if you have a good premium particle or water shader you can replace it. This is why I did not mention includes a waterfall because I did want to not market the pack with that. The water also is unimpressive but can easily be replaced with any premium water solution you might have.

 

Hey franky_li,

Did some test and found that when importing 1.1 in a project that has 1.0 the new shader break. Not sure why because the shaders are completely different and the whole pack is under a new folder name. Non the less 1.0 has to be deleted before importing 1.1. Tested it and you can just delete the Tropical Forest Pack folder and re import 1.1 and it will fix any broken shaders so you do not have to reimport all of it again. Will update the main post. Thanks for bringing this error to my attention.

 

Thanks, that fixed the problem

 

Great! Sorry again for that and thank you for finding the issue.

Cheers

 

Thanks for the nice asset

I have an other problem now, all the trees and plants are not reacting on the wind anymore when I load my project and my scene. But, strangely enough, when I then just load your demo scene once and then my scene again without doing anything in your scene it works. No glue what's going on here.

 

Oh sorry I forgot to add the setup for the wind in the video or readme. For the custom shaders to receive wind you need to add the Wind For LOD Groups on Terrain script to the windzone gameobject. Not sure how I forgot to mention this but it is needed to work in scenes. You can also drag out the WindZone prefab in the 1)Extra folder into the scene and all the wind effects will work like in the demo scene.

One thing though I have not tested weather extensions and am not sure how or if you can customize the wind gameobject that it creates.

 

Yeah I echo that, Baldinoboy has done an outstanding job on what was already an excellent asset. My favourite environment pack by far with outstanding support. No biome captures the imagination of the player more than a tropical rainforest, and thanks largely to its countless particle effects such as the leaves rolling down the river banks and the beautiful waterfall fall that flows into it, not to mention the trees waving in the breeze and the realistic sound effects, make this environment feel 'alive' rather than just a static collection of trees and rocks. No place on earth is so teeming with life as a tropical rainforest and this asset wonderfully recreates this experience. The attention to detail is clearly visible and definitely well worth the asking price. Really looking forward to adding some AI animals and fish to complete the experience.

 

im curious were u have found all the textures, or do u live nearby a tropical forest and photographed them yourself?
i find it really hard to find usable leaf textures

 

Thank you @jonfinlay & @AndyNeoman! Really appreciate your guys testing and support!

Hey @Mister-D,

Yeah have found this to be the hardest part of environment creation. Right next to reference and inspiration. The first versions was a combination of baked models for leaves, branches and textures from CGTextures(now Textures.com).

For the update though I took a lot of pictures of foliage and photoscanned a lot of trunks and a coconut while visiting family in Florida US. There was no great tropical giants to scan there of course but there was enough palms and tropical foliage to piece together. The banana leaves and palm fronds were quite tricky to capture as some of them were huge. Think the dead banana leaf was more than 3 meters long. Was worth it though as I do not think there was one acceptable source for them on the web at the time.

 

thought so, tnx for sharing.
the pack looks great, congrats
been thinking of making a ancient forest pack myself(offcourse also with lars' plugin) but i will need to find a good pipeline of baking leaf textures...

 

Thanks man! Yeah it can be a bit tricky but is always possible. Have seen your trees and they are really good! Love to see artist using CTI. Texture baking is definitely the best way to make the branches. There has been a lot of improvement on texture sites so you can grab smaller leaf, branch textures from sites like Poliigon and Megascans. Then model out your branch using a sample image in the background for reference in Blender or whatever 3d app you use and bake the diffuse and normal from that modeled branch. Gives great results. Just make sure you have good reference and base leaf, bark for the branch, textures to use.

 

Hey guys,

Please let me know here, a PM, or through my email ( baldinoboy@gmail.com ) what you think of the update and if you are having any issues. It was a big thing to setup and I want to make sure it is working for everyone and that you guys are happy with it.

One thing I found is that there are some simple but important optimizes that can be done with a few ground cover models and LOD setups and when I have time I will do that for a minor update. Also will probably add a few ground cover models like bushes. You can see with the GroundCover texture there is a lot of unused foliage types just from that one texture.

Anything else that anyone feels they need done with this pack for it to work better? An issues?

 

One thing I am stuggling to get right is the deadleafground cover. Not sure if the scale is bit small or something with the mesh. Gena doesn't seem to like populating with it although i am a newbie using Gena so it could be me.

I am close to getting some vids/pics but I have also been integrated automated weather effects across the environment and want to get it included first. I was toying with the shader to try and get the wet effect but I've been alternating with AFS too, both look amazing. Oh and don't forget the banana when you get chance .

 

Hey @AndyNeoman,

What problems are you having with the dead leaf groundcover? GeNa does not place it? I have GeNa but have not got into it yet.

Yes weather effects would definitely be cool. I do plan on making AFS versions for the prefabs with AFS maps for each. Not sure how it will work with the trees that have two submeshes but will test it out. The shading should be similar to AFS minus the wetness effects.

Bananas yes! I need to make some. Have the banana plants but did not get to making actual bananas. Will make sure to make those.

 

I think the problem with Gena is just my inexperience with it but the leaves looked really small, even the big one only covered a small area, seemed about 1m and I was expecting more.

I will take another look at your test scenes to make sure it's not me. Weather control is in now. Hopefully I will get enough foliage placed and lit for a video tomorrow.

 

Oh alright. Yeah the leaves should be pretty small as they are mostly dead jatoba leaves and are not too big. I can scale it up some though when I make small update. Also I think @jonfinlay requested it a while back but I will add some sticks and dead banana, palm leaf props also. Already have the models but just did not have the time for exporting and LODs setup. Will be with the banana

That is awesome! Can not wait to see it!

 

The rocks in this pack along with the trees are really nice, do you plan on making more rocks in the future? Keep up the good work man!

 

Thanks @kingbean23! Yeah only half of the texture space for the rock's texture is used so I do plan on filling that. Plan on scanning one rock to used as a larger stone, cliff and 4 not so unique rocks that can be used for smaller rubble. Know smaller rock cover is one thing the pack is missing at the moment.

 

id recommend keeping your larger rocks as "blocky" as possible.
they will mostly be used as a natural wall. check my free pack , they are basicly cubes, but combined u can get alot of variations.

 

That is definitely a good point! Rock01 already in the pack is pretty blocky but 02 is a but more unique and does not blend as a cliff as well. I have about 16 scans of rocks I did a while back to choose from and there are a couple that will work better for cliff creation. Thanks for the advice man!

 

Looking to merge this in with other projects, and that includes 3 other systems that use custom deferred shading - just a heads up that doing so is possible, but a bit finicky.

The problem I had was that this uses gbuffer2.a as vegetation transparency. This gives a good lighting effect on the vegetation, which is nice, but seems to be the default slot that everything else uses. Sorta like how applications fight needlessly for the first cpu core on your PC (core0 ends up doing 90% of the stuff) everyone slots their things into that channel. One example is NeoFur, which uses it as a material-ID slot for rendering fur in deferred, through some black magic and other assorted witchcraft.

One future problem I see is that with the custom deferred shader, while Unity may be updated in the future to 2018.5 or something, its built in one may contain new features while this one from the package won't, meaning it's more sensitive to the version of Unity you're using it with. Luckily it's not too hard to compare the custom one here with others, but I can kinda see it becoming a weird untraceable bug at some point. For example, I already had something that used its own custom deferred script, and all my grass turned either bright pink or nuclear green and the trees went from pink to gray to black, before I merged.

Unity looks like they're going down the customizable scripted render loop, which is glorious, but maybe we need a public registry of who uses what and where. Kinda like how radio and TV have their own dedicated frequencies and there's a big list of who is using what allocations, and other useful info.

For this, it might be something along the lines of:
GBUFFER2
gbuffer2.r
...
gbuffer2.g
...
gbuffer2.b
...
gbuffer2.a
-Tropical Forest Pack
-Used for Transparency rendering for plants
--See shaders A, B, C lines 1, 2, 3 for references to this slot.
--Add this [code snippet] in this [place] to your deferred scripts to use this slot.

I know back when I was into modding racing games, there was a Car ID system, where each type of vehicle had its own ID from 1-512 or something, and on all the main forums there was a big list for modders that had each number on the left and what car used it on the right. Maybe I should pass this on to the Unity team?


Sorry to go all technical here, but to make up for it and be more relevant to the graphicals, I've been using this pack for ages now and it's by far the best nature pack I've got, at a fantastic price and the textures, especially the ground and grass, have been used more widely in my projects that most others combined. Amazing value dude.

 

Hey @Jesus,

Thank you for the input! I wish I truly understood the technical side of this but only some of it does not fly over me. Fortunately Lars worked on these shaders so I can message him this info. I know some Custom Deferred solutions like Uber, AFS, Lux Plus work when replacing the CTI deferred shaders but know they are not the only ones and some devs will make their own. So could definitely use any ideas at improving compatibility and less likelihood of everything going pink in a new version of Unity. It does sound awesome and would be a cool feature to be implemented. You should definitely pass it by the Unity Team.

Thank you very much man! Very happy to hear you are enjoying the pack!

 

Hi

I downloaded the demos, they’re amazing to look at and perform really well for me.
I have a GTX970 running a 2k monitor 2560x1440 so not the fastest setup. I get about 30 to 50fps on full screen Extreme quality I’m pretty sure it didn’t drop below 30fps.

One interesting thing though in full screen 2560 x 1440 the depth of field makes a lot more stuff fuzzy and I found myself sort of squinting partly because the lighting is so realistic you think the sun is going to burn your eyes out any minute but also because of the fuzziness.

It’s okay if you have something in the foreground : http://www.mogstat.com/temp_images/Jungle1.png

But if you step back and have nothing for the DOF to focus on it just looks fuzzy all over
http://www.mogstat.com/temp_images/Jungle2.png


So then I tried it in windowed mode at 1920 x 1080 and I was surprised I got a very different result: http://www.mogstat.com/temp_images/Jungle1_1920.png

and back a bit: http://www.mogstat.com/temp_images/Jungle2_1920.png

I don’t know if it is the Windowed v Fullscreen or the resolution I can’t do 2560x1440 windowed.

Anyway it looks amazing

Roy
PS before I saw the windowed version I was thinking you could fire a ray out and DOF focus on the nearest collider.
You asset is on my wishlist as soon as I can think of the sightest excuse to buy it I will, Got to get a game working before I do pretty stuff no matter how tempting.

 

You should be able to do that. Check the post processing thread on these forums, and I think you might be able to find it on github as well, someone has made a set of scripts that work with the stack to do DoF.

DoF is one of those things that is somewhat resolution dependent, for now it seems, anyway. I can sorta see why they'd choose to do this, but hopefully it'll move to a more predictable method when V2 of the stack comes out of beta.

Also note that with all demos that use post effects and other fullscreen fx (light rays, etc), the effect cost scales with resolution and quality settings, both of those are going to be fairly high in this case.

 

Hi @nomax5,

Thank you man!

Yeah I am using Unity's Post Process Stack-https://forum.unity.com/threads/new-post-processing-stack-pre-release.435581/

It works well but has a few issues like the resolution and DOF. Tried updating to 2.0 to see if they fixed it but it does not work in any Unity version for me. Would be awesome to have a raycast distance solution to it.

 

Hi Baldinoboy,

I’ve been having fun learning from your tropical forest pack and have a few questions if you have time. I have it all working post proc, volumetric light etc.

When I inspect the terrain I see you have ground cover plants in the “Trees” section, Did you mass place them? or paint them or use a 3rd party asset like Gaia?

What about the Trees and Rocks did you place them manually and if so was there a reason other than personal preference for that?

I guess I’m asking what tools do you use to make something like your demos.

Cheers

Roy

 

Hey @nomax5,

Glad you are having fun with it!

Almost all the ground cover and the trees were massed placed using Landscaper. There are other great solutions like Gaia and GeNa and honestly the only thing keeping me away from utilizing those along with Landscaper is time.

So with Landscaper I would setup the species and set if I wanted them as terrain trees or gameobjects. Then just spawn each group. That pretty much populated the terrain. All I had to do now was clean some areas where I do not want some trees and plants. The Kapok can be a pain because of the hugeness of the trunk so I would have to manually place or just adjust the placement of the Kapok Trees.

The Rocks were all manually placed in the Forgotten Ravine demo but were placed with Landscaper in the TFP Demo. Like the Kapok I had to manually adjust the Rocks when they were procedurally placed.

the TFP Demo could have definitely used some TLC with manually placing some large cliffs like in Forgotten Ravine. In the end though it was just time since level designing a medium sized terrain like that would have taken a good chunk of a week. If I had the time would love to do it since level designing is one of my favorite things to do in development.

Best Regards,
Baldinoboy

 

Most of the tropical assets are used in this little WIP video. Apologies if you have seen it elsewhere.

 

Hey @AndyNeoman,

Looks awesome man! Saw the trailer and it looks like a really good project. Only thing with this video is the scale seems off a bit. Sure it is just the import scale for the gorilla that you can adjust later on. Also no wind effects but guessing that is because of the customized shader you are using. Looks amazing! Send more updates

 

Looking good, Lighting becomes a whole new ball game when you have day night cycles and weather.

I'm thinking if you can get it right though it will be amazing wet leaves and dynamic puddles and streams.
Misty mornings as the jungle noise changes from night to day
Hazy sunsets completley changing the atmosphere
I'm having a lot of fun with PBR and shaders ATM

 

Hey Baldinoboy,
Thanks for the info on Landscaper, I had a look at it and I think I’ll stick with Gaia it has a few parameters which I quite like, for instance it has a concept of “Seed Throw” the algorythm starts with a large tree and the Throws a distance spawns smaller version in a bid to make it look organic.
Gaia is not perfect by any means and TBH I’m not a huge fan but it will do for now

May I ask how you did Rock coverage? is that something that Landscaper can do or did you do it manually?

Cheers

Roy

 

Yeah, the wind needs re setting up. It does work in the shader but i think some setting is not updating from my manager script at the moment. The scale of the gorilla is 1.5 good, spot I need to change. The foliage can spawn at random scales from vegetation Studio, still playing with the settings.

 

Yeah, I love it. Lighting can take over your project time lol. Still a couple of things not quite right with my manager script for wind, wetness and GI but it is getting there......

 

translucent lighting got completely lost as well as specular reflections. paired with missing wind it does not look very convincing to me. sorry if i have to say this...

 

Yes, i'm not sure why at the moment I am using your AFS tree shader. It is early days of using SEGI and Vegetation Studio with your shader so maybe something is missed. Wind should also be working from weather but there is a conflict somewhere. I will carry on until it is right!

 

Yeah Gaia is a great extensions. Landscaper also has the children grow smaller around the parent but I did not play with it too much. Would definitely with other types of environments.

In the Forgotten Ravine it was manual placement. Took a bit of time but large rocks are just not great to leave to procedural placement. In the TFP Demo I did use Landscaper and then lowered the whole parent game object to keep rock bottoms from poking up. Landscaper does a pretty good job with placing the rocks but again would not recommend procedural for cliff like rocks. With more variations of rocks you could get a nice natural looking crumbling rock look with Gaia or Landscaper.

Yeah development, especially with shader and extension compatibility, can be a pain. Looking forward to seeing more updates!

 

Hi. Am i getting this right. These custom shaders are based on AFS? If i would want to make my own forest from scratch (using your assets as a reference) could i potentially use AFS out of the box shaders to get similar visual result?

 

Hey @KarelA,

@larsbertram1 is the developer of both these CTI shaders(TFP) and AFS. AFS 5 I believe is actually based on CTI 3 shading but has some differences like wet effects and wind. CTI 3 has much more detailed wind effects and LOD transition support. AFS performs better and has the wet effects but has simpler wind and I believe no LOD blending effects. By LOD blending effects I mean when branches and leaves shrink away at LOD points like they do in TFP.

Also at the moment putting the AFS Foliage shader on a TFP tree will not work since the stored wind info is different. You can use the AFS Foliage Tool to overwrite the bending but it is not great. I need to get a good conversion method and then can make ready to go AFS versions of all the prefabs.

 

Getting closer to my final visuals. I have tweaked the translucency since this video and added mass fern/grass to the terrain. New video soon.

Tweaked CTI lod leaves shader adding rain effects driven from the weather system.

A big thanks to @Baldinoboy for a great asset and @larsbertram1 for amazing shaders and support. .

 

Man that is looking great @AndyNeoman!

 

Thanks. This is the last one for the day. Added the mass fern placement and tweaked tree translucency. 3 minutes in to see the rain effects at night on the tweaked shader.

 

In 2017.1.1p2 out of the gate I get a very interesting result from the papaya trees.



Not sure if this is something that has been run into before. I am grabbing the 2017.1.2f1 to make sure it isn't a patch version issue but it is oddly specific to that one tree, so I am not hopeful that is the issue.

Thoughts or recommendations to try?

 

Hi @CaptainMurphy,

I have not tested 2017.2 yet but think this is more likely an import issue. When importing a box will come up to "fix" a texture that needs to be a normal. Make sure to ignore this message as clicking Fix will make certain trees normalspec or diffuse maps normals and this will make that tree look interesting. I can not completely get rid of this message for some reason. Think it is because I include the FBXs and Unity reimports them on import.

So I think re-importing Tropical Forest Pack 1.1 will just import and replace any changed textures. Then make sure to click skip and not let Unity break the texture.

Let me know whether this works or not. If it does not I will test the pack in 2017.2.