[RELEASED] Vegetation Studio

Hi.

I have the TerrainMesh component working. Last step is to connect it to the VegetationSystem component without any breaking changes for existing project. With this you can add serveral meshes to be combined to a virtual terrain and spawn vegetation on this.

I will write a bigger post with examples when I get back from my trip.

Lennart

 

Hi Lennart,

for various reasons I have a situation where I move the terrain under the player instead of the other way around. However I noticed this makes the grass flicker and the tree branches pop which looks like the wind movement somehow relating to the terrains world position. Is there a way to fix this so that the terrains world position does not affect the vegetation wind movement?

Thanks,
Matthias

 

The grass wind is calculating the wind based on the world position. We could mauve try to use terrainspace coordinates for this. Calculate from a position relative to the terrain.

What trees do you use?

 

Hi,

Is there a way to modify the max wind amplitude on your shader ?
If not, is this something that you could add ?

For a top-down game, the camera is pretty far away and I would like to amplify the wind displacement on the bushes and branches of the trees, to make it more noticeable. I use custom trees and if I can do that, I will probably use your shader for the trees.

 

I am traveling until Sunday. Send me a pm and we can look at this when I am back home.

Lennart

 

Yes, if there is a way to force local space, that would be great.
I am currently using Unity trees from Nature Pack.

 

There is not now, but possible to add. We would have to pass the terrain position to the shader and use with the wind calculation.

 

Sounds good, if it’s not too big of a deal or adversely affects performance, that would be appreciated. Otherwise I will have to rethink what I’m doing on my side.

 

may I ask why you do something that 80-90’s?

 

One reason could be floating point errors prevention

 

Maybe because I grew up in the 80s, haha.
Actually, I'm working on an RPG where you enter a town that has a larger scale than the outdoor world. While in town I like the outdoor world to be visible as a background/horizon, so I am moving the town under the player and keep my outdoor world static until the player leaves the town again.
As mentioned by Lars, the floating point error prevention is another reason. When moving in my outdoor world, the terrain is moved to a new world location when the player moves onto a new terrain tile.

 

aAh I see, make sense! And I grow up in the 90’s

 

Hello.

I am trying to spawn speed tree grass on my terrain however not a single instance is spawned

Here is my heatmap:



And here are my settings:



Can anyone help me with what ive done wrong?

 

I dont understand. Tick off exclude rules

 

It still doesn't spawn anything

 

Hi.

First. The sample distance is set high. With 80 meters on sample distance. Density to 0.8 for the vegetation item you should in average get one per 100 meters. With the perlin noise cutoff of 0.465 that would reduce even more.
You are probably looking at one item per 150 meter.

Can you try to reduce the sample distance.

Send me a PM and I can help you configure a bit.

The heatmap shows the potential spawn area based on height and steepness rules.

Lennart

 

VS is on sale today for anyone who has planned on buying but couldn't afford it...I suggest to buy it, its well worth the price with out the sale..and then some...but if you couldn't afford it, I suggest to buy it right now..! Its a steal right now...... and the developer Lennart, works his ass off, and made an amazing tool for Unity.. We are using it for our current game for Steam, and I love it... I been using other tools, and they do not compare when it comes to PC... a bonus it works well with other well known assets, such as Barts foilage and tree assets and ATG assets as well as Turbo's assets..and many more I'm sure..

 

Hello.
I have successfully tested an enhancement related to the integration between Cascade and Vegetation Studio.
Below a first preview of the new UI where you will get a great automatism and flexibility to generate and update masks along the river. Synchronization is full, real-time and automatic, including the triggering of vegetation respawn after you carve the river bed digging the terrain.

 

HI
your plug is very good, but how can i use it on ios .
you said:"compute shaders are only available on Metal "
But when i build on Iphone .i Ican't see your demo grass, please help me thank you

 

Hi. For iOS try to set the render mode on the Vegetation Items(grass) to Instanced.
I answered your email now also.

Lennart

EDIT: That fixed the problem

 

hi,
i have an old gtx 660ti can i enjoy VS?? I would like to by with the special sale...
Cheers

 

Hi. the 660Ti supports shader model 5.0 and should work with all features, but the amount of vegetation you can render at a high frame-rate is limited by the speed of the graphics card.

Lennart

 

Many thanks!! i took the risk and bought it!! Anyway it should be far from unity default system!! lol
thx

 

I have a Radeon HD7700 card and it works fine

 

I use GTX 750 Ti and the speed up is great !

 

I use a 660 ti and get 30-60 fps with pretty dense jungle. Obviously you have to tweak distances etc.. but using instanced indirect helps on everything. I even use a volumetric light solution and a tonne of post process camera effects and its fine.

 

it seems i cant move my character since i downloaded VS. IT's the Third person character from standard asset...My pad only moves the camera...I don't see any change in the inputs...any idea?
thx

 

Many thanks!! first try is very promising!!!!!

 

Vegetation Studio does not control camera position or anything related to input. Send me a pm and I can try to help you debug.

EDIT: Problem was a script on the 3rd person controler that was disabled.

Lennart

 

Hello,

Quest question about the Seed values in VS.

Is it possible to have a setting where each item is given a unique Seed value? In other words, a way to make sure that no items share the same seed value?

Also, it would be most useful if there was a way to match the Runtime Prefab Spawner's seed value to the item that it is attached to.

I know that this is all doable manually but when dealing with 64 items, most of which have Prefabs attached to them, it can become quite an ordeal making sure all items are synced.

Really loving this asset, i must add.

Thanks,
Nathan

 

Hi,

Is it possible to convert to mesh using Terrain to Mesh Converter? Will everything stay intact? I would love to know, thanks.

 

Hello,

Thanks for this asset, it really seems to be very good, I just bought it

I downloaded the additional download-demo-Scene. Looks beautiful!

But the game I want to create has the camera nearly straight from top looking down (75°).
Now the gras does not look good anymore...

Can I get somewhere gras that is made for a view from above? Is there something somewhere or maybe is there some hint how to get it looking good from above also?

Is there a Chance to get both, a gras that Looks good from 1st Person and from top down view? When changing the camera, maybe for cutscenes / cinematics?
That would be perfect. But top down is more important.

Thanks a lot

 

Hi. The standard grass patches are configured to get morevisible area from the sides.
There is an included tool. The Grass Patch Generator. That allows you to make custom grass patches. Here you can adjust the bend of the grass planes to get a better cover from above. Play around with that until you get patches you like. Save as a prefab with LODs and add as a 3D grass to Vegetation Studio. The default grass patch is also made this way.

You can find more info here.

Lennart

 

Vegetation Studio needs a Unity Terrain to sample for heights and normal. Depending on your configuration it might also need the splatmap.

You can convert the terrain to a mesh if you still leave the original terrain in the scene. It can be disabled.

I will do a post soon showing the new Mesh Terrain component for Vegetation Studio. With this you can add multiple meshes to a virtual terrain and add to Vegetation Studio.

Lennart

 

What you want is a "button" to randomize the seed of all vegetation items. Making sure they all are unique?
For the run-time prefab spawner a GetSeedFromVegetationItem setting could be an option.

Lennart

 

Yes and yes! If possible this would be immensely helpful.

Nathan

 

@LennartJohansen so this is now compatible with mesh terrains?

 

Soon. I am finishing a Mesh Terrain component now. It is working but I need to restructure some code to get it in the main branch without breaking any backward compability. It will allow you to add multiple meshes together as a virtual terrain and spawn vegetation on that. It will use the same rules as for unity terrain but the terrain texture rules will be ingnored.

Lennart

 

I'm using Voxeland for my terrain, it has an option to tag, add a component or set it to a layer and then once the terrain is regenerated all chunks/terrain sections will have them added. I hope this will work.. it has it's own manager but a secondary one for Vegetation Studio will hopefully be harmless. Do you think it could work with a procedural mesh/landscape generator such as this?

 

Hello,

I have an issue with my trees that appears to have some transparency problems


Those are speedtrees. If it's important: I'm using Enviro and also Aquas

I can't figure out from where this issue comes...

 

I gotta give Lennart credit. I was toying around with new assets that I bought during the sale. And I admit, I wouldn't want to paint all that vegetation by hand. Adding these Ferns of @turboscalpeur was just a few clicks and now the dragon runs through an entire world of green This is so awesome

 

Does this change:
"Colliders now work for instanced indirect rendered vegetation items"

Fix the vegetation on vegetation issue?


If not when is a fix planed? Because having to bake the vegetation to avoid this issue does not make sense having realtime vegetation at all.

 

Would it be possible to add translucency to the grass shader?

 

hello! quixel megascan veg & rocks with VS?

 

Yes. That should work good. You just need to use a shader that support instancing.

Lennart

 

I have some grass shader work planned for a bit later. I will look at it when I do the touch react update.

Lennart

 

I will include the option to use collision detection with large objects in the next update. The same as trees have now.

Lennart

 

Not seen that before. You use the standard speedtree shader?
Effect looks almost like ambient occlusion. Do you use any post processing effects?

Lennart

 

Yes. I think it should work. as long as the output from the generator is normal meshes that render with a meshrenderer.

Lennart

 

Something weird is going on... I cant use megascans in unity.. Its not set up when I import..so I have too see whats going on.. waiting for the intergration...