[RELEASED] Vegetation Studio

Hi. I will explain when I am back in the office tomorrow.

Lennart

 

Quick question - where are the texture references for splatmaps stored? For a little more background, I was messing around trying to get different results on my terrain and having VS automatically generate the splat map. Then I changed to a different Vegetation Package that had different textures in it to try those out and it didn't change anything. Then just to test, I created a new Vegetation Package with no textures and had VS generate a new splatmap/clear all and instead of getting "naked" terrain as I expected, it had the same textures as before. I'm really confused.

*EDIT* Also, I may have found a bug. The texture weight slider appears to change the value for all textures. Unless there is some sort of save button that I'm missing. I will change the weight on a texture from 1 to say 1.5, then click on a different texture and it will be set to 1.5.

 

Hi, I have sent you a PM.

 

I noticed similar behavior. It seems to me the textures are holding the weight values from previous textures settings when switching sometimes. I am not sure what triggers it, but I can see it happening pretty consistently when allowing or excluding textures based on density weights.

---

I have another series of questions as well. I am looking for a 'best practices' approach to handling vegetation that has already been placed and needs to be used by the player character. I assume persistent storage is the key to handling vegetation that has already been placed.

In my scenario I would like to be able to harvest much of the vegetation at run time, e.g. cutting trees down, plants, etc. I'm also hoping to get some kind of growth spawning logic in place allowing for vegetation to grow and spread from existing plants. My questions revolve around how best to go about setting this up. Right now I have visions of getting all of the vegetation placed using a combination of tools and the import scripts. Can I do this at runtime as well? I am not expecting you to know the limits of the tools I am using to place stuff of course (I am using asset store assets for a lot of the initial placements, like Gena, MapMagic, etc.). What I am hoping for is a better idea of where in my VS work flow I should expect to handle different things like respawning plants to make sure they still benefit from GPU instancing, etc. It is easy to add and remove plants from persistent storage at runtime? What are some of the SNAFUs I need to watch out for when manipulating vegetation at runtime using VS?

Lastly, any pointers or suggestions?

{EDIT} I just saw the page on the Runtime Prefab Spawner. That's obviously what I need to focus on. I am still open to advice you might have of course, so I'll leave this post here.

Thanks in advance,
Boysenberry

 

check you inbox.

 

2017.3 Speedtree shader.

Hi.

I just added a branch on github with a speedtree shader based on the 2017.3 Unity. It now supports instanced indirect for the grass. The old version there was based on 5.6 and gave some compile errors in 2017.3

You can find it here.

Lennart

 

Hi.

I will look at the bug.

If you create a Vegetation Package with textures it will hold references to textures. These are then by default applied to the terrain at start. This allows you to swap textures as you change vegetation packages. Summer to winter etc.
The splat map itself is not changes only the textures using it. the index of a road texture should be the same in both summer and winter package.

you can turn off the update of textures on the terrain texture tab on the vegetation system component or direct in the inspector of the VegetationPackage.

Lennart

 

1. Still on the todo list. What you can do until it is done is use the RuntimePrefabSpawner. Make a copy of the tree prefab and remove the meshrenderer, but keep all colliders they way you want them. Then assign the "collider prefab" to the VegetationItem in the runtimeprefab spawner. This will give the same effect.

2. I have a plan to prototype it, but will be after mesh terrain and some other features. Idea is to define areas with a mask or a BiomeMaskArea polygon and assign a vegetation package to each biome area.

3. there is a density setting on each item. This combined with the sample distance would give an idea of %. Another option could be to produce a tileable color texture mask for distribution and assign it to as a include mask.

4. There is an API for that now. look in the VegetationStudioManager_StorageAPI.cs file.
You can add prefabs using the API. you get an ID back you use to add multiple instances of the same tree.

Just send me a pm if you need more info.

Lennart

 

This sounds like a bigger post on API and run-time vegetation masks. I will try to do one tomorrow.

Lennart

 

The problem is that they aren't swapping. So let's say I have two vegetation packages, both with different texture sets. If I start off with one, when I switch to the other, it remains the same. So I tried regenerating the splat maps via the Terrain System script, and the terrain system script does not show the correct textures.

Example - this vegetation package has 16 textures. The terrain script is only showing 12.

 

I don't know if this has been asked,

But

Is there a way to turn off any of the object groups (trees, plants, grass, objs) or even individuals to help in editing. The problem I have is when VS is running and I try to zoom into an area, I get Unity lag and end miles away (figuratively) from where I was trying to inspect.

As is, as far as I know, I have switch to heat map, or disable VS, zoom to the new location, and start VS again.

Is there an option that I missed?

 

+1

 

There is a render vegetation checkbox on top of the render tab. This will disable/enable all rendering.

Lennart

 

Thank you Lennart!

Is there a way, or can it be added in the future, to not render an item or multiple items so I can concentrate on a particular vegetation?

Wish list: To have a check box on each item or group, to turn on/off rendering to aid in editing individual items.

For example, it is hard to edit a new grass to get it right when there are already several others in the scene blocking the view of the new grass.

Funtional example: To see placements of Rocks on terrain, add check boxes to be able to remove the trees so I can see the rock placements with the grass or by themselves. This would also help the tweaking to get the correct layout as well as make editing easier until things are baked.

Similar to how Unity allows grass or trees to be unchecked, it is a big help for us artists to build our worlds. So we can see the individual parts or groups and add the rest in to see how they blend together, instead of all on or all off. Like using layers in Photoshop or CAD programs.

Thanks!

David

 

Runtime Serialization

Hi.

I added a run-time serialization for the PersistentVegetationStoragePackage. It can now save and load the data to file and streams using a custom BinaryFormatter.

Code (csharp):

1.  
2.  public void ExportToFile(string filename)
3.  public void ImportFromFile(string filename)
4.  
5.  public void ExportToStream(Stream outputStream)
6.  public void ImportFromStream(Stream inputStream)
7.  

 

I will try to get some functionality like this. Job is to get a good user interface for it.

Lennart

 

Thanks!
I missed it. I thought there would be something like that in there.

 

I'll give another look at it and let you know if I see something helpful from an artist point of view.

I am loving the way it works. Still Learning it though, but it's a dream come true.

 

Quick question
Does this enable or disable in editor as well or just during runtime?

I'm not at my computer right now so I can't check it for myself until later tonight.

 

Editor also.

Lennart

 

@LennartJohansen - I don't know if it's relevant, but in regards to my issue, I'm using VS to generate the splat maps. So when you say that the splat maps do not change when you change packages, I understand that, but it doesn't seem to respect the texture changes when you use a different package even with the same splat map. That was why I would try to regenerate the splat maps hoping that would do it.

 

Perfect!!

Thanks for making this!
It has made Unity an Art program

I've been doing environmental art using Vue for over 10 years and switched to Unity last year to change up, with the hope of creating art that one can walk through and explore. I hadn't been able to come close to Vue yet, but with VS the gap has shortened tremendously. It is exciting to get into VS and see what I can create now. It's like a brand new Unity.

 

Select the vegetation package and see if you have "Update terrain textures on init" checked. With this enabled it should swap out textures when you switch packages.

This will not work if you have a terrain shader like CTS or Microsplat that manages all the textures in an external texturearray. In these cases you need multiple shader profiles/materials and swap out these also.

Lennart

 

I'm not at home right now, but I left all the defaults intact, so if that is checked by default, then I also have it checked.

Not using Microsplat or Megasplat. The only thing I had loaded up was Gaia.

 

Getting some issues with the TerrainHeatMap shader not compiling when building for Linux. Since this shader is an editor debug tool, is there a way to not have it included in builds?

OpenGL:
0(57) : error C0000: syntax error, unexpected '.', expecting "::" at token "."

Note: Creation of internal variant of shader 'AwesomeTechnologies/Terrain/TerrainHeatMap' failed.
0(63) : error C0000: syntax error, unexpected '.', expecting "::" at token "."

Note: Creation of internal variant of shader 'AwesomeTechnologies/Terrain/TerrainHeatMap' failed.
0(58) : error C0000: syntax error, unexpected '.', expecting "::" at token "."

Note: Creation of internal variant of shader 'AwesomeTechnologies/Terrain/TerrainHeatMap' failed.
The referenced script on this Behaviour (Game Object 'GravelRoad 001') is missing!

Vulkan:
WARNING: Shader Unsupported: 'AwesomeTechnologies/Terrain/TerrainHeatMap' - Pass 'FORWARD' has no vertex shader
WARNING: Shader Unsupported: 'AwesomeTechnologies/Terrain/TerrainHeatMap' - Pass 'FORWARD' has no vertex shader
WARNING: Shader Unsupported: 'AwesomeTechnologies/Terrain/TerrainHeatMap' - Pass 'META' has no vertex shader
WARNING: Shader Unsupported: 'AwesomeTechnologies/Terrain/TerrainHeatMap' - All passes removed

 

Does Vegetation Studio integrate with NatureManufacture's WorldStreamer, or vice versa?

I did see a couple 'I think it may work' posts in this forum from several months back, but nothing more recently.

I have a configured streaming terrains in WorldStreamer, and would love to know what steps I would need to take to integrate VS with this project file, specifically:

• Can I add vegetation to the end product scene from WS, or do I need to populate trees on Unity terrains before dicing the scene via WorldStreamer's virtual grids? That is, is VS the first step or the last in a WS flowflow?
• Is it best to keep vegetation connected to terrains (as a WS 'major streamer') or instead create a new minor streamer with just the instanced vegetation from VS?

Thanks for any notes and confirmation that VS and WS play nicely together.

 

Hi. I think we can do this but will require some small changes. I will send you a pm with a link to a version to try later today.

Lennart

 

Hi.

Vegetation Studio should work good with WorldStreamer.
You can set this up several ways.

1. Add a VegetationSystem object as a child to each of the terrains you have in the scene. This will then save to the individual scenes and load with the terrains as you move the camera around the scene.

2. You make a prefab of a pre configures VegetationSystem GameObject. Then you connect to the SceneManager.SceneLoaded event and search the new scene for terrains. Instantiate a VegetationSystem object and set the terrain as parent. Then assign the terrain to the VegetationSystem component.

Just send me a message if you have any issues while configuring.

Lennart

 

Lennart,

One suggestion that would help in design immensely. If it can be done.

The "enable run-time spawn" works great. But the difficult part is either turning all of them off or on to work on just a few items.

If you could add a check box to check or uncheck all run-time spawning for all the objects/plant/grass/trees to set or reset with one click. "run-time spawn all"

This would allow the following:

1. uncheck 'run-time spawn all'
2. check the one or two grasses to edit
3. uncheck 'run-time spawn all'
4. edit rock placements
5. etc, repeat for each plant or grouping
6. once all individual editing is done, check 'run-time spawn all' so every item gets added back to scene

This would speed up the process and allow our creativity to continue to flow.

Having to select a plant, hit check or uncheck run-time spawn, wait to populate, then go to the next one, is very tedious when you have about 20 or more different types of plants. One check box to reset all to on or off would make it a breeze and a pleasure to work with.Currently I have to change the setting to minimums to speed up the process, a one click option would solve having to change anything in the settings.

If that's possible, you would make VS 10 times easier to work for doing design of our landscapes and increase the speed of completion.

This is one artist's point of view. Thanks for your consideration,

David

 

Thanks.

Lennart

 

@LennartJohansen

Okay, I double checked and the update on init checkbox is checked in the package. I also cannot uncheck it. Clicking it does nothing. I created a test package with 4 textures and I have another one with 16. The 16 one was applied first, then I removed that package and swapped it out for the 4 texture. My terrain did not change at all and neither did the amount of textures in the Terrain Script. I know I must be doing something wrong, but I don't know what. Here are some screenshots attached.

 

What is Persistent Vegetation Storage?

Just for the thickie on the forum AKA me..
What is Persistent Vegetation Storage?
I’ve read the manual which tells me how, but I don't know why, What’s if for? Why would I use it?

is it if I particularly want some plants in a specific place? like a small field on Corn in a field?

Cheers

Roy

 

Instancing Indirect Am I using it?

Not sure what it is exactly but from what I read it’s fewer draw calls and no overhead for culling which sounds good to me.
I’ve got Use Instanced Rendering ticked on the Render tab of Vegetation System (Script)
that it? am I doing it? is there a way to check?

Cheers

Roy

 

If I understand it correctly it's for anything that's not procedurally generated but still handled by VS (Vegetation Studio), i.e. any of the objects VS uses to render to the terrain. So, for example, if you wanted to import vegetation already existing on the terrain, you would import them into persistent storage. Then at runtime (or when awake in editor) VS will recreate the items saved in the persistent storage on the terrain. Also, if you want to change any vegetation (rocks, etc) handled by VS from it's generated defaults it will need to be saved in persistent storage. Both get created dynamically at runtime (or when awake), but one is generated procedurally the other from saved data.

I hope that helps (and that I got it right).

 

Hi.

By default Vegetation Studio does run-time spawning of vegetation. It is calculates as you move the camera and see new areas. All this controlled by the rules, and vegetation masks.

Sometimes you want to manually add vegetation. This is where the persistent storage comes in. When adding one you can store instances of grass/plants/trees/rocks for the terrain. This can be combined with the run-time rules.

it has an built in painting and editing tool but also an API for 3rd party tools to feed instances to the storage.

In addition to this there is an importer that can read tree instances from unity terrains and a bake system.
The bake system allows you to bake one or more vegetation items to the storage from the configured rules.

The baked vegetation is then editable and you can manually move trees, remove grass etc. It also loads faster as Vegetation Studio does not need to calculate run-time. This at the cost of storing all the instances in the scriptable object(persistent vegetation storage package)

Lennart

 

Hi.

Instanced indirect is a part of the unity Graphics API that allows you to hold the instances you render in a buffer on the GPU. This allows for more than 1023 instanced per drawcall. That is the max of normal instancing and also allows for offloading the CPU for calculating correct LOD used and frustum culling for partial visible "cells"

It is currently working for single submesh meshes and used for grass.

for shaders supporting this you set the render mode on the VegetationItem to Instanced indirect. The included grass shader in VegetationStudio sets this as default.

Lennart

 

Hi! I am again interrupting you with multi terrain workflow.
It would be nice to have some interface that will control render features, distances, culling settings and all that stuff from vegetation system tabs, but globally across all of vegetation systems.
I wasn't able to find such thing in vs manager api, so i'm iterating through all vssystems from an editor script. So that not really a big deal, but one nice thing that cool to have out of the box.

 

Hi.
All the static functions below on the VegetationStudioManager controls all VegetaionSystems in multi terrain setups.
I will get around to adding more settings like this and probably add a manager UI on a tab in the VegetationStudio manager, but now my focus is to complete the mesh terrain support.

Lennart

Code (csharp):

1.  
2.  
3. public static void SetGrassDensity(float density)
4. public static void SetPlantDensity(float density)
5. public static void SetTreeDensity(float density)
6. public static void SetObjectDensity(float density)
7. public static void SetLargeObjectDensity(float density)
8.  
9. public static float[] GetGrassDensity()
10. public static float[] GetPlantDensity()
11. public static float[] GetTreeDensity()
12. public static float[] GetObjectDensity()
13. public static float[] GetLargeObjectDensity()
14.  
15. public static void SetVegetationDistance(float distance)
16. public static void SetTreeDistance(float distance)
17. public static void SetBillboardDistance(float distance)
18.  
19. public static float[] GetVegetationDistances()
20. public static float[] GetTreeDistances()
21. public static float[] GetBillboardDistances()
22.  
23. public static void SetVegetationPackage(int index, bool resetCullingGroup)
24. public static float[] GetVegetationPackageIndexes()
25.  
26. public static void SetCamera(Camera camera)
27. public static void SetTerrain(Terrain terrain)
28.  
29.  

 

so it does not work for trees?
just interested for optimization (so more grass and rocks)

 

1. There are less trees than grass patches. taking in account LODs and multiple tree models trees will "always" render in one batch anyway. less than 1023 instances. The benefit of instanced indirect is better on larger instance counts.

2. There will still be some benefit of getting the trees instanced indirect. They will enter the same compute shader based render pipeline that grass uses now offloading the CPU for frustum culling and LOD selection of the trees.
To do this 2 things needs to be done. I have to make a GPU version of the internal shadow culling for trees. This calculates if the shadow of a invisible tree is visible and also get around a unity bug with multiple submeshes and instanced indirect. I will probably do this by extracting the submeshes to separate meshes in memory and use this in the render loop. Speed will not be affected, just needs the framework to support it.

There is a guide here on how to add instaned indirect support to shaders and a git hub repo with a instanced indirect version of the speedtree shaders here.

I just added a modified version for 2017.3. Look in the branches to find the correct for your project. This works great for speedtree grass now

Lennart

 

And it will take less CPU at runtime, right?

 

Yes. When loading new areas.

Lennart

 

Has anyone adapted this for hair/fur? Would it be a hassle to do so, or would I be better off getting a dedicated hair tool. Applying VS to skinned mesh renders wouldn't be a problem?

 

Good idea hehe

 

Is there any tutorial on how to bake?

I have very bad performance.. grass, some stones and some stick and my gpu memory is full (2gb) how can I get better performance except baking?

 

Just click bake

To improve performance for me it was like this :

- Reduce vegetation density
- choose other LOD for trees
- make you sure you use instance indirect for grass
- instances for tree.
- reduce also the distance at which VS stuff are drawn.

 

nice

 

While some of the basic instancing technology could be used to hair and fur rendering I do not think any to the spawning and rendering system in VS could help you to render fur in skinned meshes.

Lennart

 

I will add a small guide, but it is an easy process. Create a PersistentVegetationStoragePackage. Assign it to the PersistentVegetationStorage component. Then go to the "Bake" tab and bake one or mutiple vegetation items to the storage. The run-time spawn is then disabled on those items and they are loaded from the storage.

Lennart