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[Released] Vertex Tools Pro – Heightbased PBR Material Blending, Flowmapping and Mesh Deform

Discussion in 'Assets and Asset Store' started by PitHeimes, Feb 12, 2016.

  1. PitHeimes

    PitHeimes

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    It's like you said: The 2 mat. blend shader has the same features, but limited to 2 materials. The only exception is the new wetness, but this will be implemented in a following update very soon.
     
  2. Darioszka

    Darioszka

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    Jan 22, 2015
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    Hi,
    It looks great! How it work on mobile? Is the performance good for mobile when I use it?
     
  3. PitHeimes

    PitHeimes

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    Hey thanks! I already answered a similar question in a previous post.
    The performance depends on what settings you use in the shader and the features you use (for example parallax would be a heavy effect on mobile, but heightblending itself should work just fine), so there is no general answer to that question.
    Also be aware that at the moment mobile is limited to the 2 material blend shader.
     
  4. mkgame

    mkgame

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    Looks awesome!

    What happens with the original textures when I paint with your tool? Do you give us the option to duplicate the meterial and its textures, or to changing the original one?

    I have more copies of houses and I want to change some of them. All have the same material.
     
  5. PitHeimes

    PitHeimes

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    The textures itself are not changed. That's the trick.
    The blending information get stored directly in the vertex data of the meshes.

    So you can share one material across houses and still paint every one of the houses totally different. Thus, since only that one material and its unmodified textures are used, decrease draw calls and save performance :)
     
    blackbird likes this.
  6. blackbird

    blackbird

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    one last question is the demo included or its more simpler one `?
     
  7. PitHeimes

    PitHeimes

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    We decided to remove the demoscene from the package due to the indredible huge download size and issues when download from China. Nevertheless there are simpler demo scenes included, and basic textures to start with.

    Additionally we have the demoscene available as a standalone demo for Win and Mac.
     
    Last edited: Jun 29, 2016
  8. knotFF

    knotFF

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    Thank you very much. Got a new costomer.
     
    PitHeimes likes this.
  9. eskovas

    eskovas

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    Have been wanting to purchase this since it wasn't even released and now, i couldn't pass the opportunity of the discount :p
    Can't wait to give this a try, it looks like a fantastic tool! You got a new customer here :D
     
    PitHeimes likes this.
  10. sjm-tech

    sjm-tech

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    me too!;)
     
    eskovas likes this.
  11. PitHeimes

    PitHeimes

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    We are looking forward to seeing this on your georgous FPS :)
     
    eskovas likes this.
  12. eskovas

    eskovas

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    I'll try to show the tool in action sometime :)
     
    PitHeimes likes this.
  13. DigitalAdam

    DigitalAdam

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    Looks fantastic! I'm assuming this works with ProBuilder without any issues, correct?
     
  14. PitHeimes

    PitHeimes

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    Unfortunately there are some known bugs, when using VTP and Probuilder at the same time. So currently we wouldn't recommend it.
     
  15. DigitalAdam

    DigitalAdam

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    Is that something you're looking into and hopefully will have a fix?
     
  16. PitHeimes

    PitHeimes

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    Probably not in the next couple of Weeks :( sorry about that
     
  17. Braddas

    Braddas

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    Sorry if this has already been answered, but I've had a look through the documentation and I can't find much information on how painting at run-time works. I've been looking for a way of procedurally drawing damage onto objects and wondering if this could do that? Specifically, I want to be able do paint a 'damage' texture on the spot where a projectile has hit an object.
     
  18. PitHeimes

    PitHeimes

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    Hey Braddas,

    our API enables you to call draw methods from script at runtime. So a simple drawWithColorAtPoint(Color,Point) will draw the affected vertices with the selected color.

    Since this is all about vertex painting, it is not possible to draw some kind of decals on the exact spot where a projectile hit the mesh. The damage will always be drawn at the nearest vertex and also softly fade out.
     
  19. IonRift

    IonRift

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    Hello, trying to use the API to paint my own mesh but any use of
    Code (CSharp):
    1. currentVertices[  currentTriangles[triangle*3 + i]
    results in an IndexOutOfRangeException?
     
  20. Braddas

    Braddas

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    Okay thanks, that makes sense. Is a 'point' in this context the target vertice? I'm assuming I also have control of the brush size and falloff etc, are there any editor controls that aren't available at run-time?
     
  21. PitHeimes

    PitHeimes

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    I wrote you a direct message :)

    Falloff isn't available, the other ones are
     
  22. Macklehatton

    Macklehatton

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    Is there a way to get deformation to work across UV seams?



    Also, any plans for Substance Material support?
     
  23. larsbertram1

    larsbertram1

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    hi there,
    i bought the asset while it was on sale to give it a try.
    unfortunately i have to say that the provided shaders are far from being polished:
    - performance is worse than it could be as it is killed by a lot of "if"s.
    - height based blending does not work properly as tiling factors are not taken into account (leading to floating texture issues), neither is the heightmap itself: heights simply sum up? that leads to some very strange rendering artifacts.

    as you can see on the left: cobble stones totally get corrupted by the sand when using different tiling factors and different extrusion values whereas sand should not influence cobble stones at all.

    height.jpg
     
    Last edited: Jul 1, 2016
    one_one likes this.
  24. PitHeimes

    PitHeimes

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    Indeed, we had a solution but decided to ditch it, since it killed editor performance when working on higher poly meshes. But we may just bring that back as a checkbox.


    Not yet. But we will discuss that soon.


    Well, that is something that is going to be adressed with the next 2 updates. But we definitly can not confirm the "bad" and "killed". Take a look at our standalone demo scene running smoothly at Full HD with Full PostFX. Nevertheless, of course a little bit of performance can still be saved.

    Tiling factors are taken into account. But you have to be careful: Tiling is just defined by the Main Textures tiling to increase performance. You can also take a look at the documentation. If you need separate tiling on all the different textures, just get in touch, we can pass you a custom separate tiling shader. :)

    I do not quite understand what you mean with add up? :(

    This is properly due to the Parallax at steep angles. Blended Parallax at steep angles like your camera always lead to some artifacts :( We are still working on getting the issue less visible with some parallax angle modifier. But it still in early alpha stages. If you want to have perfect heightbased blending at every angle, tesselation is you way to go. (See screenshot attached). Beta is available. Release in the next couple of weeks.



     
    Arganth likes this.
  25. magique

    magique

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    It's good to hear that performance optimizations are being addressed. Lars is someone I would trust with his assessment of a product like this. I hope we can expect to see improvements.
     
    one_one likes this.
  26. abhuva

    abhuva

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    Hey, i have some issues with the shaders, not sure if its my mistake by not supplying the correct maps or if its something else.
    I am working on a MacOSX (El Capitan).
    The issue is, as soon as i use normal maps the textures gets black under most light-angles. Once i disable the normal-maps the issue is gone (but well, no normal maps then...).
    I generate all textures with MapLab, so i assume the base textures (Height, Occlusion, Smoothness, Emission) are correct. I combine them with the texture packer. Everything works, height-based blending etc... but as soon as i put in the normal maps the problem with the black textures appear.
    In the preview window of the Material, everything looks fine, its just in the scene-view that everything is messed up.

    Any ideas what i do wrong?

    EDIT:
    Already solved... it was really a stupid mistake. I just forgot to check that the normal-textures are indeed set to "Normal Maps" under the image-importer settings...
    Well, lesson learned =)
     

    Attached Files:

    Last edited: Jul 1, 2016
  27. eskovas

    eskovas

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    I have some feedback for the tool.

    When i enable the paint mode, it will change the layer of the object to an empty layer.
    If i paint and save it without doing anything else, it reverts the layer back to normal ok, but if i happen to select another object or maximize the window, it will break the paint mode and the layer won't revert back. I also need to re-enable and disable the paint mode to get the scene view back to normal.

    The tool should work when maximizing the scene view while in paint mode (or at least disable the paint mode when that happens). It should also check if a new object is selected while in paint mode, and if so, also disable the paint mode and revert the layer back.
     
  28. PitHeimes

    PitHeimes

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    Oh totally missed that maximizing thing. Will be fixed in the next update! Thanks for the Feedback. :)
     
    eskovas likes this.
  29. adamlukegoodwin

    adamlukegoodwin

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    May 10, 2015
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    Hi,

    Bought this to play with over the weekend, and loving what I am seeing so far. Very handy tool.

    Just hit a road block though. It doesn't seem to want to generate anything bigger than 1024 on both albedo and combined texture packers. It gets stuck in the same place every time as seen in the image below.

    Running on a fairly high spec work station and gave it a good 20 mins, but it was totally stuck.

    Any idea what might be causing this?

    Many thanks :)


    upload_2016-7-17_18-29-10.png
     
  30. PitHeimes

    PitHeimes

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    Hey there,

    this is a bug we could not reproduce constantly yet.

    But just hitting generate again (while the loader is still there) solves the issue for now. Hope to get this fixed withing the next updates.

    Addition: Generating shall also only take a few seconds :)
     
  31. adamlukegoodwin

    adamlukegoodwin

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    Thanks for the speedy reply.

    Brilliant! Just tested it and it is fine. I don't mind clicking twice :D

    This is the beauty of paying for an asset rather than getting an alternative freeware one ~ SUPPORT! Well worth the coinage. I know this is a fairly new asset, so it is bound to have a bug here and there.

    Ta very much pal.
     
  32. magique

    magique

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    You may not be aware, but your asset store page is still pointing the Forums link to the recent new forum fiasco. You might want to link back to these forums at some point.
     
  33. PitHeimes

    PitHeimes

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    Oh thanks a lot for the hint :)
    Totally forget about that! Lovely comment :)
     
  34. my-two-fish

    my-two-fish

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    Aug 17, 2016
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    Hello, I'm liking the software, but have a issue that i can't seem to solve.
    When my object is parented under another gameobject, the brush won't appear when trying to paint the vertex colours. I can still use the 'Flood Fill with Colour', there just isn't a brush. If I then drag the object out of the hierarchy, the brush starts working. My parent object has its own mesh collider and rigidbody, could it be interfering in any way? Is this anything to do with the VertexStreamChildrenRebuilder script, I'm not really sure how to use it.
    Thanks!
     
    Last edited: Aug 17, 2016
  35. ill_tonkso

    ill_tonkso

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    Hi, could I get some info on that as well? I'm not entirely sure how to set it up. I have it nested in a Raycast at the moment.

    Does the object on the receiving end of the raycast (the object to be painted) require anything special beyond the correct shader?
     
  36. ill_tonkso

    ill_tonkso

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    I've worked that out now. Can I just confirm however that to get the painting working at runtime, it needs to be a mesh collider formed of the rendered mesh? I.E. not a lower poly collider?
     
  37. marcos

    marcos

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    Hi @PitHeimes

    I'm having trouble getting consistency between Substance Painter and the VTP shader. See below, left rock is the intended look, using the Unity Standard Metallic Shader, right rock is using VTP metallic:


    The smoothness map is basically having no effect on the surface, despite the slider being set to 1. I'm really keen to dig into VTP and see what it can do, but this issue is holding me back, and making things look bad.

    The combined map was made with Substance Painter using the following settings:



    I've also tried spitting out the maps individually, and using the texture assistant to combine them, but it's giving me the same result.

    Any help would be much appreciated.

    Cheers,
    Mark
     
  38. Amadeu

    Amadeu

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    Dec 11, 2014
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    Hi guys, I bought your asset and it's amazing and already rated with 5 stars =)

    I have a question for you... I'm working in an stylized game and I really wan to use VTP in it. The point is that I can't apply different tiling and offset values to my textures because this values seem to be linked with the albedo map ones, in other words at least in my project the only tiling and offset that works are the albedo ones, and I can see any change by touching the other ones.

    My idea so far is to use the normal & combined map in 1-1 both tiling and offset to have the "macro" shape but then play with the albedo with higher values in order to have something like a detail texture. There's actually a way to do that?

    Thanks in advance!!
     
  39. PitHeimes

    PitHeimes

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    This could possibly be due to the collider of the parent object - Though normally that should not happen.
    Could you try to disable the collider of the parent and confirm that it works afterwards? :) Thanks!

    ---------
    Yeah, that is correct. We missed to document that and will fix that in the next update :) Thanks for figuring that out!

    ---------
    I just checked my own Substance Painter export preset and saw that I always export the glossiness map under converted maps, not the input glossiness map (see attached screenshot). Could you try this?


    --------
    Please get in touch with us via mail (support@vertextools.pro)
    We can provide you with a shader variant that allows separate tiling on the different maps
     
  40. marcos

    marcos

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    Tried this, no noticeable difference.

    Also tried reimporting VTP from the asset store, didn't change anything.

    I'm kind of hoping that I've just left something on the wrong setting, but I'm running out of ideas. I feel like I've tried everything.

    Edit: Bit of extra information, when I play with the smoothness strength slider on the shader, I can see it having a slight effect, but the max setting for it gives it only a fraction of the effect that the map should be having on the look of the object. It's like setting the slider to 1 is the equivalent of 10% strength or something.
     
    Last edited: Aug 23, 2016
  41. PitHeimes

    PitHeimes

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    Could you give us the Unity version you are working with?
     
  42. marcos

    marcos

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    Sorry for the delay, I'm using 5.4.0f3 Personal.
     
  43. PitHeimes

    PitHeimes

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    For any users who may have the same, strange issue:
    Checking "Bypass sRGB Sampling" in the import settings of your combined map does the trick :)
     
    marcos likes this.
  44. marcos

    marcos

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    Thanks for your help @PitHeimes !

    Excellent customer service! :)
     
  45. StaffanEk

    StaffanEk

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    @PitHeimes

    I can't get the shader to work in a WebGL 1 build. The model that uses VTP is completely transparent.

    I see that you were able to make a WebGL 1 build. Could you elaborate what steps I need to take to make this work? You wrote that you used "Simple HeightBased Blending". What exactly does that entail? I'm not using parallax, and I'm only using the "2 Texture Blend" shader for testing purposes.

    I of course use an external program to paint the vertex paint for obvious reasons, I hope that doesn't effect component stripping upon building somehow.

    EDIT: I'm using Unity 5.3.6f1
     
    Last edited: Aug 26, 2016
  46. PitHeimes

    PitHeimes

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    Hey Staffan,

    the webGL Shader is a variant of our shaders we deliver with Vertex Tools Pro.
    Please contact us at support@vertextools.pro and we can send you the webGL Shaders (Currently beta, though no problems occured so far). We will also add them to the AssetStore Package within the next 2 releases :)
     
  47. StaffanEk

    StaffanEk

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    @PitHeimes

    I have sent the mail. Thank you very much. I will be sure to report any issues I have with the shaders.
     
  48. yoonack

    yoonack

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    Apr 29, 2016
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    @PitHeimes

    I can't get it work to my unity version 5.3.5f1 with iOS build setting that using OpenGL4.1. All the shaders are transparent. It was weird that when I switched to 2 texture metallic, it worked for a while. However, when I close the project and reopen it, all shaders do not work. I am using Mac OSX EI Capitan. Do you have any idea what is going on?
     
  49. Fishypants

    Fishypants

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    Hey! I just bought your asset. It's pretty cool. I have a question though, I would like to have the option to only paint certain channels of the vertex color, like paint only red channel, or only green channel at a time. The problem is there is no way to isolate a single color channel and paint it without the other channels going black.

    Lets say for example there is a vertex color like so: (0, 0.5, 0.75)

    If I paint with a red color (1, 0, 0), instead of becoming (1, 0.5, 0.75) the value is now (1, 0, 0).

    The green and blue color values are being wiped out. Is there a way to modify the painter so it can isolate to specific color channels?
     
  50. PitHeimes

    PitHeimes

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    All of the 2 Tex-Blend shaders shouldwork without any problem on mobile. Could you export a demoscene and email it to: support@vertextools.pro? Any console logs? Thanks!


    Just contact us at support@vertextools.pro to get the latest beta this week with the requested feature :)