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

Hi,

Is there a way to have the 'bake colors to mesh' overwrite an FBX file instead of creating a Unity .asset?
Basically need to preserve the vertex color data I've painted, but do some edits to the mesh in Maya.

Thanks,

 

Hey pez,

sadly, currently it is not possible to expport a fbx. But we got in contact with another developer, who did a FBX Exporter. Probably it will support VTP soon. We will keep you updated about that progress.

 

This product looks amazing. Ty for creating it. Will be buying it shortly but was curious, what kind of performance costs will one see using this? If I have say a wall, and its 1 draw call with a brick texture on it then I use this and paint on some Dirt/one more texture and Sand/one more texture, would that mean after painting on 2 additional vertex colors would that make the wall have 3 draw calls 1 for each vertex color/texture painted? Sorry if this is a stupid question. Vertex painting is a totally new concept to me.

Ty for your time.

 

Hey there,

draw calls stay the same. Therefore drawcall also can be reduced drastically. You can give several object the same material but paint it totally different and since they share the same material reduce draw calls a lot

 

Hello, at first i want to say thats great tools.
Anyway i have one problem, Unity 5.5 build for WebGL throwing error 'while' : This type of loop is not allowed.. i add shader in ,, always included shaders,, but this dont help me.. I compiled shader and see there few while loop .. any advice ?

 

Hey Stephanides,

webGL is not supported in the current version. But we got some beta webGL shaders (Also used in the webGL demo).
Just contact us at vertextools.pro and we will be happy to send you the beta package.

 

Just purchased, was seeing in the FAQ that the demoscene itself can be requested on demand. Where can I get that? Would love to put my hands on it to fiddle around with.

 

Hi PitHeimes, its possible that all shaders works in WebGL 2.0 ? because i rebuild project from webgl 1.0 to webgl 2.0 and i dont see any problem with while in shader.

 

Oh yes. The shader should work out of the box for webGL 2.0. Forgot about that...

 

I just wrote on your page for beta shader for webgl 1 but nobody respont until now

 

Some update for y'all We are currently working on a complete overhaul of the shader system. This comes along with some nice improvements

Upcoming Update v1.2.0

+ Complete Shader overhaul
--- Replaced if statements with Shader Keywords whereever it was possible (Performance improvement)
--- Fixed a bug where mipmapping failed in some situations
--- New Feature: Implemented Secondary Detail Textures for base layer
--- All-In-One: Implemented all features in one handy shader
--- Improved wetness feature with a more subtle blending between dry and wet parts
+ Tesselation seems to be ready to step up and get out of beta

Lastly 2, already known screenshots.

Tesselation


Wetness

 

Just a quick update for current VTP users.

You can sign up for a closed beta to test the new shaders by simply sending us your invoice id via PN, or contact us at twitter @vertextoolspro

 

Hi, there is a "VertexStreamChildrenRebuilder" appearing on some parent gameobject. When i end up selecting those Gameobjects the editor hang for a bit which is kind of annoying. Can i remove those? If not can i move them to another parent of the VertexToolPro objects just not that top parent one? Will it reappear by itself on top parent if i do that?

 

It will probably reappear. You could try to just disable it. If that does not work, please get in touch at vertextools.pro and we will see to provide some custom behaviour for you.

 

where i can get the sewer models

 

Any News of the beta shaders?

 

Well, we hoped for a beta release at the at of last week, but sadly had to postpone. Hopefully we will deploy the Beta Version of the Metallic All-In-One Shader this weekend.

 

Some good news. Metallic and Specular Beta Shaders will be send to anyone who sent us their invoice ID by the end of this weekend

In the mean time, you can enjoy our blog to get some insights into the AssetStore, our freshly founded company and an upcoming project

Monoment development blog

 

Just another teaser for you of the upcoming VTP 2.0 Tesselation Feature used together with Wetness.

 

haha just tested it and yeah it works as flawlessly as the rest
metallic - tesselation with wetness

is a bit more performance hungry but the results are worth it

 

Another update for you guys

After the the complete shader overhaul is finished we also decided to give v2.0 optimized mobile shader to fully support Shader Model 2.0. Hence webgl 1.0 compatibility will also improve.

 

any news about your planar reflection asset?

 

The work on Planar Reflections Pro will likely continue once the VTP update is published.
PRP is also used in our larger project, so once we are back at it, PRP will automatically be polished and hopefully also published soon. Full VTP integration is a sure thing of course

 

Hi thanks for this very nice tools, I used it for two project with no issue a example

but for my upcoming project, I have got some weird issue with the texture packer

I have got this from the packer

original texture (with a black texture for metal)


thanks for viewing

 

Hey @low_seb

that is strange. Never had any issues. Can you please state the Unity version and your operating system.

And nice blending in the other Project. Love that

 

unity 5.5.0f3, windows 7, I have got the issue in a complex project so I made a simple test project with only vertex tools pro but I have got the same issue ( same result with the combined texture by the way)




(edit) I have lot of error in the inspector here

 

Could you try setting the Texture Format of all your input Textures to RGBA32 or ARGB32 @low_seb

 

yes thanks a lot , its work now with RGBA 32 input

 

This makes me very happy..... glad someone devs still care about mobile shaders for 2.0..

 

This issue will also be fixed in VTP 2.0

 

Hey everyone,

we just submitted v2.0.0 for review We hope that everything goes smoothly and the update will be available soon! Following a little Sneak Peek of what's to come. We always love to hear your feedback and are stoked to see what you will come up with once this update goes live.


3 Material Tessellation Blend (Rubble, Rocks & Water + Detail Normal)


3 Material Tessellation Blend (Cobblestones, Dirt & Moss + Detail Normal)


2 Material Transparent Parallax Blend (Snow & Ice)

Full v2.0.0 Changelog
+ Full Tessellation Support for Windows and Mac (>Unity 5.2)
+ Custom Tessellation Rendering with accurate falloff
+ Flow with "height drift" supported by Tessellation Shader
+ Full Shader Model 2.0 (Mobile) support
+ Support for Detail Maps on the base layer
+ added an "output name" field in the texture packer
+ added two demoscenes to demonstrate tessellation

- Complete shader system overhaul (old shaders are still available)
- Fixed a bug regarding Mip Mapping
- Replaced runtime if's with compiler #if's (Performance improvements)
- Fixed some integer calculations (Performance improvements)
- Unity version dependent optimizations

 

v2.0.0 is live on the assetstore

​

 

Hey guys,

First of all, thanks for the great tool! I'm running into an issue when using the glass shader. I have a poly plane where I'm blending a semi-transparent texture in the center of the mesh with a completely transparent texture at the edges to prevent a harsh border edge from showing (I'm using UV scrolling which is why I'm going this route). It works as expected when viewing one plane by itself, but when I duplicate that plane and put it behind the original, part of the duplicated mesh is not visible ( please see screenshot). I suppose this is a sorting issue and I'm not sure if this is a bug that can be fixed in the shader or if there might be a better way for me to set this up without the glass shader? Any help is much appreciated! Thanks

 

Hey Jason,

this is because of the refraction system we use. Due to the fact that it is not transparent in the true meaning of transparent but instead uses a grabPass to fetch all the stuff behind the object and displays it as an emission. This is common technique when it comes to refracting while using "transparent objects" If you do not need the refraction you could change the normal Metallic blend shader to support transparency (without refraction then).

We will contact you via pm to see if we can get some custom shader done to solve the problem for you

 

So does VTP now have support for Distingo? I can't seem to bring up your shader in Distingo. Am I missing something?

 

Hi,

My team was hoping to use this tool and I was just wondering what you guys mean exactly by "This extension requires one license per seat"?

 

Hey there,

this is something that Unity automatically does for any editor extension. Basically what it says is:
You need a license for everyone using it. Don't know if Unity can check this or not. It is nothing we as a developer ever had contact or problems with so far

 

Hey there,

just another Sneak Peak for you. We are currently experimenting with VTP for SpeedTree.
Things are looking good so far. All built-in SpeedTree features are working, Fully PBR, Custom Translucency, Branch Tessellation and of course paintable leaves and branches. Currently working on the integration with the built-in Unity Terrain Engine. Everything's working so far, enhancing Usability at the moment.

VTP for SpeedTree as a gif

 

Hey, I'm very interested in this product, however I need to know if it works with multi-object editing now. I see a year ago you said it wasn't supported... is it now? If I have 4 planes butted up together, can I manipulate the vertices of them all at once and maintain edge-to-edge seams?

 

Hey,
multi-editing is not available in the current version. But it is one of the things we are experimenting with and probably will be in the SpeedTree release too We will likely have a full change log of the upcoming updates by the end of this week.

 

@ProtoTerminator Great question I was just about to ask.

The speedtree update should be very interesteing

 

A little delayed, the changelog for the upcoming update.

We decided to have another small update before the SpeedTree Integration to support Multi-Object Editing. Version 2.0.1 is probably going to be submitted this week followed by the 2.1.0 with SpeedTree integration the week after.

Full v2.0.1 Changelog
+ Multi-Editing of Objects is possible now (Early Access)

- Fixed a bug where the texture assistant freezed in some rare occassions
- Fixed a bug where the layer of a gameobject was not reverted to the inital state if the mesh has a convex mesh collider
- Fixed a bug with non paintable Objects in Unity 5.6 beta if the mesh has a convex mesh collider

 

HI, Im looking to buy this assets but I heavily rely on shaders that using World position UV, and what I understand you shader is only a object UV shader, correct?

 

Yes, it is limited to object UVs at the moment. We are though experimenting with a triplanar shader quite some time now. Just not that happy with the performance at the moment. Blending + Tri Planar Mixing are quite a lot of calculations to do.

 

Thats sad to hear, might pick it up anyway and have a look at it. Thanks for the answer
Also how was the support for PS4, did anyone test this?

 

Just a quick Update. The Update v2.0.1 has been submitted and should be available soon

 

@PitHeimes Can you tell me deforming mesh is support Unity player runtime? thanks very much!

 

We provide an API that handles painting and deforming at runtime. All you have to do is pass in a raycast hit and some deform/paint parameters.

 

Still waiting for the approval of the update. In the meantime a quick video to demonstrate the seamless painting accross multiple objects.

 

Hey everyone,

with v2.0.1 still waiting for approval we wanted to share some more details about Vertex Tools Pro for SpeedTree. So here we go (A bit more technical this time).

Draw Mode

To make it as easy as possible to paint a rather complex geometry we provide several different drawing options. First of, we will let you choose if you intend to paint the leaves, the branches or both at the same time. This allows full control when it comes to precise blending. Furthermore we decided to explicitly let you choose if you want to blend textures (First Layer, Second Layer, Third Layer) or if you want to refine the occlusion of the leaves or the branches.

Caring about LODs and your time

SpeedTrees of course have LODs and we did not want you to paint all the different LODs seperatly hoping that you will match the other LODs painting pattern. Hence, the different LODs of the tree are automatically detected and the colors from LOD0 can be transfered to LOD1 and LOD2. To ensure a smooth transition between LODs we made sure to smooth the colors once they are transfered.

Prefabs, Terrains & workflow

Changing things once trees are placed on a terrain can be a pain in the ass. We really tried to make that process as simple as possible for you. You can just drag a prefab you placed on the terrain in the scene again, change the colors and hit "Stream data to Prefab & Terrain" and your prefab and all placed trees will be updated according to your updated tree.

Branch Shader

As we already told you, Vertex Tools Pro for SpeedTree is not only about painting different shadings for a more natural look but also about enhancing overall visual quality. Therefore besides a full PBR workflow the Branch Shader will also offer Tessellation Settings for you to get a crisp and natural look when viewing a branch close-up but also save performance in a forest full of trees. Of course, the shader will also offer Vertex Tools Pro Texture Blending. We currently evaluate the heightbased blending for the banches. First: Is it really needed on branches and second: Is the performance cost worth it. We will keep you updated about it.

Leaf Shader

Last but not least, the Leaf Shader. Besides fully PBR workflow and the common 3 Texture blending the Leaf shader will have full Translucency support enhanced by an optional usage of a depth map. This allows you to create a natural look, especially when working on dense forests since light scatters through the single leaves respecting its lighting or shadowing. For the lower LOD we also have a lightweight "translucency" version to ensure a smooth transition while also saving performance.


That's it so far. As always, feel free to comment or suggest possible enhancements. And we promise another ingame shot of some trees with the next update.