[RELEASED] Vegetation Studio

It says in the manual that I can set conditions such as "Do not grow grass on path texture." What type of mask do I use to accomplish this? It does not say in the 199 page manual... For every mask that I have tried, the exclude rules either do nothing or eliminate all spawns of selected vegetation type for the entire terrain -- nothing in between. Can I not just select a texture and say "no vegetation there?"

 

Not masks, terrain texture rules. Just set the strength at which to exlude the vegetation item.



This is per vegetation item. If you just want to set it globally then you would use a mask, but dont put the terrain texture in there but a texture that masks out the shape of the path.

 

A question to @LennartJohansen i had your asset on my wishlist and i'M getting closer and closer to having to buy it. That said, I own advance foliage shader 5 already, but apparently ADS and VS doesn't work great together as VS use a different billboard solution and AFS rely on the Unity original terrain. So how would you describe the compatibility of both of them together, how do you feel one have solution that your package doesn't offer. The more I look into it, the less and less reason I see to keep AFS but it still seem to offer nice visual, nice billboarding, touch bending is a cool feature... So can you compare both according to your eye and have your own suggestion about my situation.

One thing I like about VS is all the other asset around it like RAM, the rock asset, the vegetation pack seems to be of very high quality while relying on AFS and loosing all that seems a too big trade off for me. I'm also concerned that I have imported AFS into my project which replace some internal shader of unity and i'm not sure how to revert that

 

Thanks!

 

Making some progress

 

I tried your suggestion, but it doesn't seem to work. Or do I need to create new vegetation systems or something else?
All my terrains have their transform Y position in 0, so it's probably something else :/

Regards,
Jinppa

 

Sending you a PM

 

Fix for missing leaves in builds.

Hi. There has been an issue with missing leaves in the standalone builds on some trees using the Tree Creator shader.
I have a small patch ready. Install this package and build again. This should fix the missing leaves.

Lennart

 

how do you get this soft fog/light scatter and how can you achieve such detail in dark area. Nothing is black or have too much contrast. Is it because of Vegetation studio !?

 

Shadow mask

Hi. I made a guide on how to set up the shadow mask with MicroSplat. You can find it here.
All guides and documentation is available online at www.awesometech.no

Lennart

 

Hi. Lars updated Advanced Foliage Shader a few weeks ago for better support of VegetationStudio.

In the AFS shader folder you will find a shader called VS_AfsFoliageShader.shader.
this includes support for Vegetation Studios instanced indirect rendering.

VS has its own billboard system but this will work with trees using AFS.
It should be no problem combining AFS, Vegetation Studo and other assets.

Lennart

 

thanks ! i'll be testing all that pretty soon

 

Great, let me know if you have any configuration issues with AFS. We can try to make a small config guide if you have any problems.

Lennart

 

Hi Lennart,

I hope you are well. Is there a plan to add the prefab spawning without the "clone" I am currently scripting it out with trim. but wonder if there was a plan to build it into VS.

 

Are you talking about the name of the spawned scene object?

Update: I did the change now. Spawned prefab will keep the original name of the prefab. No added "Clone".

Lennart

 

Some screenshots from a long beta tester. Didn't have much time to create awesome terrain scenes with VS but here we go. Still playing with colors and grass models. Still no advanced foliage pack and trees of Bart in there which will give the scene more life.
Also my VS workflow is not perfect but thanks to the top notch support of Lennart I hopefully will come to a good result pretty soon.







Cheers
Ronny

 

I used Enviro for lighting and enhanced volumetric lighting with DeepSkyHaze. Then I did some color correction with Unity Post Processing stack.

 

it sound so simple lol, really nice work, you got an eye for those things

 

I just added a short video on Vegetation Studio to my terrain related playlist showing how to apply VS to a (in this case Gaia created) terrain. Anyone still in doubt: VS is so much fun to use and I barely scratched the surface.

 

Development update

Tuesday I will be submitting a new update to Vegetation Studio.

It includes a list of improvements and fixes.
I am still working on mesh terrain support. I think that will be in the next update after this.

The changes listed below and a few i am adding tomorrow more will be included in the update.
This update should be running good on the 2018.1 beta. Had to do a couple of minor fixes.

Lennart

Improvements

• Setting for enabling manual vegetation refresh on the vegetation tab.
• Added a run-time serializer for the PersistentVegetationStoragePackage
• Added BroadCircleMaskArea class. (for internal mask API)
• Runtime prefab spawner can spawn on grass and plants, also when instanced indirect.
• Added disable option on PersistentVegetationStorage
• Vegetation Items in the persistent storage can not be affected by VegetationMasks. Setting on each item.
• Internal changes for MeshTerrain Support (still work in progress)

Changes

• Added VegetationSourceID for Origami and Landscape Builder
• Removed "clone" from the name of objects spawned with the RuntimePrefabSpawner.
• Added OverrideRenderQueue/renderque settings on BillboardSystem
• Added override layer for billboards
• Windsamplers are now activated for terrains out of range.
• Added custom WindSampler material for Speedtree wind. Will allow dynamic bathing on this.

Fixes

• Fixed autodetection bug for sunlight.
• Fixed compile issue for windows store on CTI billboard shaders.
• Corrected text for sun setting on render tab
• Removed "enable runtime spawn" button that would show up on an empty vegetation package
• Fixed missing TreeCreatorLeaves shader in standalone builds
• Fixed colorMask sRGB setting in linear mode.
• Fixed compute shader errors on Unity 2018.1 Beta.
• Now removing NavMeshObtacles from the WindSampler object if on the original prefab.
• Fix for edges of terrain not spawned if terrain height is other than 0
• Fix for some tree creator trees missing leaves in the standalone builds.
• Fix for billboard atlas generated that was effected by scene fog.
• Fix for not clearing windsamplers at disable

 

I took another look at this just now and the guide in case there was something different to what I had (there was not), unfortunately it still did not work here.

Edit:
I even did it again with just the demo scene and it did not work there either.

 

Hmm. Maybe an issue with a unity version. I can make a project and send you tomorrow to test if you want?

 

Sounds good. FYI... I have tried this on both 2017.1 and 2017.3. Today was 2017.3

 

That would look super cool with proper lighting, postproc and with translucent shaders maybe...

 

Does this plugin replace Unity's terrain system with a mesh-based one? I require a more modern terrain system and I think I remember that this asset was joining with another asset that replaced the terrain system, though I cannot find the thread anymore.

 

Hi.

Vegetation Studio replaces the tree and detail distribution and rendering, it works with Unity terrains but mesh terrain support is on the roadmap.

Terrafirma is a dynamic terrain mesh and still under development. I will post here and on the Terrafirma thread when we are ready for a beta. Vegetation Studio will work with Terrafirma.

If you register for the newsletter on www.awesometech.no you will also get info when we enter beta.

Lennart

 

Can you talk about any kind of beta release window for Terrafirma? I'd like to know if it is something I should wait for or roll my own.

Cheers.

 

I do not want to promise any release date. We still have a few issues to fix and now there is some Job system testing also. The new job system brings some new possibilities to the table...

Lennart

 

Hi! We made an update in our Mountain Trees - link. Now they support dynamic snow with vegetation studio... In tricky way but... they support. They use crosses instead of billboard as last LOD. This cost one lod stage, We also updated how snow behave on branches. If you use this trees please take an update (we fix vert normals for snow and few other things). To dynamicaly change snow amount you have to create access to coppy of materials made by VS (in memory) and simply change snow amount values in bark, cross and leaves materials. We will try to do this next update too.

Update will be live in 1h.

 

Dynamic snow is possible? I had no idea. Just to be sure: So I can go from sunny shine to rainy storm to icy snow during runtime with bosth VS and your trees? If so, can someone please give details?

 

How does this work? I mean you should have a weather system which sets the weather types / VS Weather Packages using different models.
Would like to see Enviro Support for VS. So Enviro switches VS Packages on different seasons / weather conditions.

Btw. the screenshot looks amazing!

 

Yeeees but at runtime you have to create a script to manage snow amount. If you will improve smootness value they could become wet too. Anyway it not work out of the box right now.

When I will have some time I will improve this and I will make presentation. Anyway I must release another product this month, then I will release next tree pack and update this again.

We made this update to have clean heart - first snow cover was ugly.

 

what

what other product ? really nice for the snow ! can't wait to grab those asset.

 

We have release plan for about 1 year sorry cant tell before release but it would be something that asset store havent seen before we work on it about 6 months now.

 

Just to be clear: and I really don't know much about anything.

The way I see it there are two ways to go about it:

1. You can change the values for "Snow Amount" on the Tree if that tree has that capability or Rock etc.

2. You can have "Winter Trees" which are separate objects like these speedtree ones




I believe that @NatureManufacture northern trees are coniferous trees which don't loose their leaves in winter
and they have a value for snow amount built into them.

Microsplat has the ability to gradually change the amount of snow through code too in fact I think with microsplat the snow melts faster on rocks and near streams and also takes longer to build up in those places.
All this is very cool, but...

With Vegetation Studio you can swap your entire "Vegetation Package" from your Summer package to your Winter Package in the blink of an eye.
its no big deal for VS it draws it 60 times a second anyways.
The Vegetation Package can have winter versions of Grass, Plants, Trees, Objects, and Terrain Textures

It might not be gradual but you could do it overnight and wake up to a complete winter wonderland
Or do an explosion and BANG!! you have a Burnt out destroyed post apocalyptic Alien invasion version of your landscape
where the trees are burning the ground is scorched and the river is made of Lava.
This is the feature of VS that I find interesting.
I think I'm right in saying that.

Roy

 

It's my understanding that sooner or latter CTS with it's weather system, will make this
all very easy, and seamless. RAM can use any material, you could as easily use RAM for Lava, as well, or any other material for that matter. Also soon CTS will get mesh blending, for free, I might add, and RAM output mesh will be able to get mesh blending from CTS.

VS is in-part about the ability to have so much grass, if you want you can't even see the ground, the optimization VS brings to Unity terrains is incredible!

I have seen so many posts from various people about microsplat, in this forum for VS, It feels like people have to
advertise that on purpose in any forum other then the forums they are made for.

I am apologizing in advance to LennartJohansen for this post " information " and I will delete it if he wants me too. It gets depressing when some of these posts look like they are devised to advertise microslat, that should be in a review and not in forums like this.

But really how many times do people need to remind " most likely " people that are not new to Unity in this forum about
possibilities for terrain shaders here. Trying to muddy the waters about what best shader, why not leave the comments
like that to the forums they have, rather then here.

With the present cooperation between NatureManufacture and AdamGoodrich for my money and time I will stick with CTS system because eventually the assets from NatureManufacture and AdamGoodrich will become an even better combination, with the original ideas from these two dev's have done so much for Unity in the last few years.

From where i am sitting, this coming year will be even better! ( Such as CTS weather Manager, " growing snow on the trees, as an example, and when it gets here, yes it will " just work " )

And yes, I do not want this to turn into a war zone about competing shaders, but fair time, and my /rant /full stop

 

Hi.

As you said. Let us try to keep the thread to Vegetation Studio related posts and not comparing other shaders and assets. Discusson on integration between Vegetation Studio and other assets is of course welcome. Also info on new assets with support.

Lennart

 

Development update

I just submitted a new update for Vegetation Studio to the Asset Store.
You can find the changelog here.

It should be working good on the 2018.1 beta now.

Lennart

 

@NatureManufacture so no billboard?

@LennartJohansen is this recommended way to deal with snow or do you have other plan?

congrats! Keep focus on the mesh support

 

I read the Unity blogpost about stereoscopic 360 degree video capture and had to try it. Works great with Vegetation Studio

Here's a screenshot from my very first test, there's lots of stuff I still have to figure out like lighting, postprocessing (apparently it should work), etc



I also made a video, unfortunately it's very blocky, even embedded as small window in a forum. I don't know if google is still postprocessing it or not. But it's a start. Nontheless, if anyone likes to see how it looks like:

Just click into the video and drag around.

 

Nope. Cross is last lod. So there are 3 lods instead of 4. Lod0/Lod1/cross. With billboards which are turned off for my solution you got lod0/lod1/lod2/billboard. Im not totaly proud from this solution yet. On rest Lennart will answer. We still talking about this and solutions. Tommorow I have meeting with him and we will discus this in pub.

 

Is there a way of telling Veg Studio to target a particular camera at runtime? This is for when the camera isn't tagged MainCamera and is set after the scene has started.

 

Disable the automatic camera selection and use the SetCamera function on the VegetationSystem component

Lennart

 

Thanks. Is there a way to add multiple cameras to a list, like in a multi-player game?

 

To use multiple cameras you need a VegetationSystem for each camera. Also on the render tab you should enable the "render direct to camera" setting. This will make sure each camera only sees its own selection.

Lennart

 

I know your question wasn't directed at me but I read that in the Getting Started manual

Link: https://www.awesometech.no/index.php/home/vegetation-studio/getting-started/

My personal opinion: I don't see much benefit building up snow over time on some surfaces and not others.
I want winter trees winter grass winter textures not spring ones with white shading on them

Vegetation Packages are really awesome (excuse the pun) when you think about it.

Cheers

Roy

 

Hello, @LennartJohansen,

Thanks for this concise guide, which is exactly what I was hoping for.

I have no trouble instantiating a 'VegetationSystem' GameObject from a previously-saved prefab, and pointing it to the relevant terrain when WorldStreamer loads a given terrain tile. I see why you suggest this as an alternative for having many duplicated 'VegetationSystem' GameObjects as children of the tiled terrains prior to splitting in WorldStreamer, too.

Unless I'm missing something, if I want individual control of Position/Scale/Height controls for each terrain tile, I still need to have the same number of 'VegetationSystem' instances as I do terrains, though not all active at once. Alternatively I could load dynamic values for Position/Scale/Height/etc. each time a new terrain is loaded, but that would be more complicated.

Also, instantiating a changing number of 'VegetationSystem' GameObjects as we traverse the landscape's many terrain tiles is a bit trickier -- it would be wonderful if in the future (perhaps far future) the VS system could do this housekeeping for the user. But writing the code to queue and dequeue objects is fairly straightforward.

Is there an upper limit to the number of 'VegetationSystem' GameObjects you recommend tied to the master 'VegetationStudio' object?

Thanks again.

 

I seem to be having a issue with shadows when using instanced indirect. Not sure if it is my shader or a bug within VS. I have plants using Instanced indirect rendering. All looks fine but if I enable shadows then there is a constant shadow of plants hovering above my player/camera. it is not an actual plant above my head just the shadow. This also happens if i set a tree to indirect and have shadows enabled and even mesh grass.


EDIT:- USER ERROR alert! It was indeed an error on my shader not adding instanced ID. All fixed.

 

Good

 

Hi. There is no "upper limit" to the amount of VegetationSystems. When a system is out of range and not showing any vegetation it does close to nothing in the Update/render loop. It does however still use memory for holding the cell structure and height-map. This is why using a pool and recycling vegetation systems could be useful in some setups.

I will get around to making a sample pooling system but there is a few features I want to complete before this.

Lennart