[Released] Tropical Forest Pack

Yeah I had a bit of fun designing that level . Have been planning a much larger scale but similar level using Vegetation Studio.

Yes please! Love seeing what people are doing with the pack! Looks really awesome! Do you have a thread or site for your project? Also did you get the dither fade to work like you needed?

 

Cool
I have Unity thread here: https://forum.unity.com/threads/dig-it-archaeology-exploring-game-wip-and-steam.462236/
The game will be released on Steam eventually, there are some beta testers who have seen it already.
I have left the dithering part for now, have numerous items on to do list to go through

 

Hi, by design currently, far objects are blurred but not much I might consider toning down the blur effect for close objects, thanks for the feedback!

 

Actually I had that exact same look one time as I really like the DOF look... and I changed it after user feedback... they can't see anything clearly up close and it was annoying them

 

No probs, so far beta testers have not mentioned anything regarding this, may give option to turn on/off.

 

Hey guys, Tropical Forest Pack 1.2.1 is up! Includes a VS profile for the foliage for quick setup. With the profile I recommend lowering the density of the Grass, Plants, & Trees to .5 to .8.

Also updated the broken shaders for 2018.1 so they should work for 2018.1 minus some sorting with the mist particle and water.

Let me know if there are any issues.

Cheers!

 

Hi Baldinoboy. Are you planning to release any other tropical sets? I think that the first set is great, but lacks a few plants that would make it a complete "jungle solution". I would add a few bamboo trees and some with leaves and lianas around trunks.

 

Hi @Zaki_X, I do plan on making a few additional updates to the current pack with things like bamboo, bushes, additional vegetation. You can see on the foliage texture sheet most of the textures are already there but just need to model. Just a matter of getting the time to do it.

Not a fan of making a paid update but to work on additional assets takes a lot of time and if I do might make it a small paid update. Not much of course. Also not for things I already promised like banana trees with bananas. Will get that in a small update before the larger additional assets.

 

Please do. Love your work and will be happy to support any further development, if/when you are able, as life allows. I just want you to know that, @Baldinoboy, and to say thank you for this recent update.

 

Thank you @Akshara

 

I have nothing against paid update as long as I get assets of that quality. I've just loaded one of your demos and only thing that I would change is this big tree's trunk (KapokTree). For such a big tree a trunk could have more polys and it's main branches could grow smoothly from it. What is the purpose of mesh colliders set for this tree? From what I know mesh colliders are pretty heavy for the engine.

 

Yeah the Kapok is probably due for a high poly trunk and branches. It was originally smoother but the tri count was far too high for the time, before SpeedTree in Unity and 10k+ tri trees became okay.

The collider is because the tree would have horrible collision without. The shape of the trunk does not work great with capsule colliders. Nearly all the trees, rocks that use mesh colliders have custom optimized models for the collision. Not anything high res or with the leaves included.

 

Happy to support good assets and when delivering new additions an extra fee makes sense. Hope you get the time to because the asset is great.

 

Happy to support more content being added as well. Pack is a bargain as it is so I wouldn't mind paying an upgrade fee for more content!

 

Thanks guys,

Yeah I will not start charging for any updates but just for something larger like a revamp with a lot of additional content.

If anyone has request for reworking or new models mention them here. Between user and my own request have:

Ironwood
Bamboo
More Palm Species
Bushes
More misc tropical plants
More rocks
Roots
Ambient Particle Effects and Sounds like flies, evaporation clouds

Re-work:

Grass (texture)
Older coconut palms
Jatoba
Kapok

 

Bananas!

 

Hi, I would very much welcome any bushes you can add to your asset, I could really use some for my next scene

 

I would love for more "Edible/Farmable" types of plants and trees.
Fallen fruits, Half eaten by animals, Half Rotten, Fully rotten fruits.
Hopefully fruits with additional separate meshes so we can interact with them (collect, harvest, cut up, cook, etc etc)

Might be a bit specific but also would love different stages of growth of trees/plants/fruits so I can do growth/harvest cycles in my game.

Fruit examples:
https://www.authenticfoodquest.com/10-strange-amazonian-fruits/
http://extreme-survival.com/view_pub.php?id=83&lang=en
https://www.rainforestmaker.org/facts.html

 

Mangroves!!!

 

this!

 

Bushes,
Edible Fruits
Mangroves+

Cool thanks for the input guys. Yeah forgot the many Mangrove request. Problem I see with Mangroves is the very high tri counts but they would be cool to have.

 

Hey guys, Just wanted to mention that my pack does not work with the Render Pipelines. Only tested HDRP and it will not because it does not support surface shaders. I will look into getting the assets working in it in the future but most likely when it is more official since right now things can change pretty drastically in the next version.

2018 base 3D the pack work fine though. Just wanted to mention since have had some emails about it not working in the HDRP.

Cheers!

 

Appreciate the heads up. I have a project that has a few other packs in the same situation.

I am having an issue on 2017.3.1f1, though, when using it with World Streamer. When I am running in the editor (I am not sure about in build yet), I see these warnings from many of the TFP prefabs: "TerrainCollider: MeshCollider is not supported on terrain at the moment."

Do you know if this means the colliders are not being created? I am also not sure what "moment" refers to, but I think it might be happening when the scene is being loaded asynchronously?

Right now I have all the vegetation placed on the terrain tiles with TerrainComposer2 and also baked into the LOD1 terrain meshes for the ring streaming.

I experimented with Vegetation Studio a while back, but ran into some performance issues that I didn't have the time to dig into. I will probably give it another try when I have a longer stretch of time available. Any other tips you have to share for streaming scenarios are welcome!

Best regards,
Tony

 

Hi @sharkapps,

The MeshCollider error just refers to the mesh collider on some of the trees like Kapok not being supported on the terrain. They said at the moment because I think they planned on updating the terrain to support mesh colliders. That never happened though.

So the terrain supports the capsule colliders, which all but one of the trees are setup with. Kapok is the only one without a capsule collider. I deleted it from the Kapok because of the strange trunk, and only a mesh collider working on it properly. If you need to use the Kapok as a terrain tree for streaming than you will have to add a simple capsule collider to the trunk. Let me know if you need assistance with this. Do not think leaving the mesh collider on any of the trees will cause any issues. Just that error message.

Sorry but do not have any advice when it comes to streaming large worlds. Know it is a challenge in Unity but some talented devs pulled it off.

Please let me know if you have any other questions or issues.

Best Regards,
Baldinoboy

 

Thanks @Baldinoboy for clearing that up. I am actually seeing it on the CocountPalmTree01, CocountPalmTree02, and Jatoba trees as well. I am really enjoying working with the pack and I also enjoyed your interview with @TheMessyCoder!

Best regards,
Tony

 

Yeah most of the tree models are using Mesh Colliders but the disabled Capsule collider kicks in when used on the terrain and the mesh collider does nothing.

If anyone knows if this error or the disabled mesh colliders on the terrain slow anything down let me know and I can create separate prefabs for terrain and gameobject use.

Thanks man! Was fun doing the interview. Looking forward to another later on when another pack is on the way.

Cheers!

 

@Baldinoboy I just updated to the latest Unity 2018.2.0f2 and the leaves on all items do not render properly. Most of the time they are not visible but if I fly in and out with the camera in the scene view I can see the leave become visible and then fade to nothing. I am using VS but the problem is seen in the demo scenes also.
I have tried deleting TFP and importing again but that did not help.
I have made sure that the shaders are set up in the graphics.
There are no errors shown in the console.

 

Unity did some changes with how Unity_LODFade and Dither+Percent crossfade is used for 2018.2 Some shaders needs to be updated.

 

Thanks @LennartJohansen , I will keep an eye out for an update to the package with updated shaders.

 

Hi Baraff, Yes sorry for this issue. Messaged Lars and he is looking into fixing the leaf shader. Might disable smooth blending but hopefully he will find a workaround for that.

 

Hey all, Lars got a fix to me and was able to test it yesterday. Fixes the leaf issue and also keeps the fade to billboard so very glad for that. Sent in the fix as 1.2.2 to the store but until then here is a package you can load into your 2018.2 TFP project to fix quickly- https://www.dropbox.com/s/mn7a29swc1gt6c7/2018.2_leafShaderFix.unitypackage?dl=0

Let me know if there are any issues with this quick fix. 1.2.2 should be up this week though so any new downloads after updating will work fine in 2018.2.

Cheers!

 

Works well here. Thanks for the quick turn around on this.

 

@Baldinoboy When I assign the Vegetation Studio package to VS it works great for the most part. I get all the trees, plants, grass, and rocks and they have proper collision, etc. However, it doesn't seem to work with the navigation system. When I have AI running around, they just run right through trees, rocks, etc. Is there something extra I need to do to get vegetation to be navigation obstacles?

 

Normally inside VS Settings/Navmesh/Bake all colliders to scene. This will give you all Collision capsules for navigation. Then bake the Navmesh. Then delete the nav objects. That's the normal process I use but I have not tried it with the sample Vegetation Studio Package that comes with Tropical Forest pack. Should be the same though.

 

Ah, I see. Thanks. I'll give that a try.

 

Thanks @Baraff

@magique, I have not tried navmesh baking using VS yet. The capsule and mesh colliders are setup with the package but it takes more than just setting up the colliders and then baking.

That is the same method mentioned in the Vegetation Studio page-

https://www.awesometech.no/index.php/home/vegetation-studio/components/collider-system/

NAVMESH
It is possible to bake out all colliders configures on the individual VegetationItems. This allows you to use those to generate an Unity NavMesh. When navmesh is baked you can remove the colliders from the scene.

There is 2 options for exporting the colliders to scene. Bake as colliders and bake as scene mesh.
The mesh export will convert all colliders to meshes. This is what the Unity Navmesh uses to bake.

 

Hey.

Came here since i saw a notification that your asset was updated. Wanted to give a feedback about the icon. It is not really looking good and does not give any indication about the quality of this asset. In my opinion you have the best looking environment in assetstore (not counting Book Of The Dead for obvious reasons) but the icon something that would attract someone to click it. You may miss sales on that. I am talking about the the smallest icon is visible on the old version assetstore and is also turning up in search on the new assetstore. The thumbnail image looks fantastic but the icon looks like some trees on white background.

 

Thank you for the input! Yeah I went through probably a dozen shots to try for the icon but non looks right so I just decided to make an artistic style. Issue is a scene shot just does not have enough pixels to identify anything and a closeup looks boring. Will play with it again to see if I can make a better version.

 

CTI/LOD Leaves shader is not working instanced indirect anymore with Unity 2018.2.0f2 and TFP 1.2.2. It worked well with previous version and Unity 2018.1.6f1!

 

Thank you Lars, that fixed it

Frank

 

Thank you @larsbertram1

 

Hey I tried your pack with Vegetation Studio and AFS. The bigger trees are missing the combined _AFS textures for the leaves. With the CTI shader I see nothing. Are you going to make those Textures or could you explain how to make them?


Also what I think is really missing in the pack are young trees, sticks with a couple of leaves on them.

 

Hi @Grendelbiter,

Sorry about that. Here is a unitypackage with the new AFS and the rest-
https://www.dropbox.com/s/er1d8uuu2xyxsfj/AFS_Textures.unitypackage?dl=0

Adjusted the groundcover AFS texture because the grass was not updated with the latest change.

We can definitely fix the CTI shader not working though. CTI trees work fine with VS. Could you share a screenshot and also what version of Unity and Tropical Forest Pack you are using?

 

Thanks, that works flawlessly. Well except the wind and touch bending. I guess I need to use the AFS CTI importer for that. I'm using Unity 2018.2.1 and the latest TFP from the asset store.

Edit: the AFS texture for the TFPTrunks is still missing.

 

Good. What is wrong with the wind?

Also when it comes to touchbending I did setup all the plants with AFS and ATG versions. The AFS models even have the sphere colliders setup. The trees would not really work great with touchbending so I did not set them up with it except for smaller ones like the dwarf palmettos.

If using Vegetation Studio though you are not going to get AFS touch bending to work. Only works when used as gameobjects. If you want touchbending with VS only option I know of is using ATG(Advanced Terrain Grass) Grass VS and I think it is the Plant VS shader, then enabling touch bending. It is not like AFS bending but the grass and other small vegetation will react.

Edit- @Grendelbiter, Just realized you meant the wind for the trees with the AFS shader applied. I highly recommend using the CTI shader for the trees for quite a few reasons. It does work with VS so if it is not working for you we can get it to. Plants and other stuff AFS or ATG would be better for performance and bending with ATG but bending will not be as nice as the base CTI versions.

If you could share screenshots here or in a PM of the issue with CTI not showing up using VS that would be good. Need to know if it is just the leaves not showing or the trees entirely. If trees entirely might be an issue with the VS setup in the scene for the CTI trees.

 

Just looking for advice if you have to offer, which method would you recommend to integrate touch bending of foliage into your assets, are there any free options to allow this?

 

Hi @khos,

Highly recommend Advanced Foliage Shader if using plants you want bent placed as gameobjects and Advanced Terrain Grass if using Vegetation Studio. Have not seen any other public usable touch bending solution. The plants in Tropical Forest Pack are already setup to work with both.

 

I already changed all the tree shaders to use AFS so i have no screenshots. But since touch bending doesn't work anyway I'll change it back to CTI. It was just the leaves that were invisible, the trunk was visible. I have Aquas water in my scene and I could see the leaves as transparent shadows on the water when looking at water. So touch bending works with VS and CTI trees out of the box?

 

Oh okay. Yeah when switching them back to CTI and if you are still having that issue we can take a look and see if we can fix it. We're the leaves only invisible, with the shadowing effect, when looking at the water or everywhere on the terrain?

No CTI shaders do not support touchbending on their own or with VS. Only method for touchbending with VS I have used is the VS grass shader and the ATG VS shaders.