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

@PitHeimes can you tell me how to soft selection colors and effect on the surrounding area in mesh(runtime）,like max：

I have already purchased your plugin. I have looked at the provided method, but I do not know how to do it.thanks very much.

 

Hey @LostPanda ,

while the editor allows a deform just like the image, the api currently has no method for such a smooth falloff.
This is due to the fact, that this approach is quite expensive in terms of performance. Nonetheless, we will provide you with some custom method which does what kinf of deforming at runtime. Just let us know your email via pm and we will get back to you asap.

 

thanks good man! My email is :fingerx@foxmail.com

 

Pit still rockin it. Keep up the great work man. =)

 

Thanks a lot @wolfen231

Just some quick update. We will come up with another small update prior to the SpeedTree Implementation.

The update will include several small, performance relevant patches and a new feature for all the low-poly lovers out there. Since it is quite hard to get precise blending on low poly assets, we decided (with a little suggestion from one of our customers) to implement a basic mesh refinement system.



What this does is, that it allows you to refine parts of the mesh by subdividing one face into 3 smaller faces. This allows you to add vertices in excactly those areas where you need them for precise painting while sticking to low-poly. We hope that this will further help you get the look you want to achieve.



That's it so far. We hope the update will make its way to the Asset Store in the upcoming week. As always, any critics, comments or suggestions are welcome

 

Hey,

Sorry got another problem/question for you!

We're doing some skybox switching at runtime & we think that objects with the vertex shader material on them don't update the skybox reflection source when we swap that out?!

I might be off on the reason, but here's a capture for example:
https://streamable.com/s09lp (using bright colours just to show the difference)

So it's starts with the pink setup and then I switch to green, but you can see pink leaking through on the ground & it's still pretty yellow etc.
Then I show how green it should look if it updated the same as all the other materials, just not in runtime.

It's pretty strange, but also notice that when we bake the lighting data for reflection probes etc. the vertex shader materials all get slightly brighter - like they're only now responding to the skybox as a reflection source?.. whereas standard materials just have that already. Would be nice if that was the same with or without a lighting data bake, because we're not sure if we'll be using that or not yet, & it effects how I'd set up the lighting if the terrain is going to end up darker or lighter depending on if we do.

You can see an example of that more clearly here: https://streamable.com/vrnkt

Thanks for any help you have on this for us - & all the other help you've already provided for our other problems!

Cheers,
Pat

 

Hey Pat,

I guess it is something with the custom Shader. Just curious: could you try switching to the new v2. If that would fix that Problem, we will be happy to do some custom shader for you again. Don't forget to backup

Btw: following your progress on twitter on a daily basis and excited to see that you sticked with VTP.

 

Update v2.0.2 was just submitted to the Asset Store and should be available within the next days. Full changelog below.

Changelog v2.0.2
+ (Early Access) Introduced Mesh Refining option, that lets you refine parts of your assets. Vertices will be added to achieve a more precise blending on low-poly assets.
+ (API) Added API call to deform meshes at runtime with a falloff option

- Fixed a bug when editing multiple objects and switching painting modes
- Fixed a bug which led to unneccessary memory allocations in-editor

 

Hey there!
Finally got around to using this asset, looks promising~

Is there an update to substance support? I tried to use the textures in the packer, but that apparently doesn't work, and looking through the thread it looks like it is not supported yet. Or maybe I missed something?
I realise that I can make custom outputs in Substance Designer, but I got a lot of substances from Substance Source and gametextures.com, and I really don't want to work through all of them.
(I'm also aware that I can export the generated textures and pack them, but that's kind of a hassle.)

Best Regards,
Kristina Waldt

 

Hey @KWaldt,

greetings from Aachen to Hannover. Native substance support is of course on our todo list and we hope to update it any time soon. In the mean time we can of course provide you the custom output node that generates the packed map for you, but as you say, you do not want to work through all of your substances.

We will shift priorities and will take a look into native substance support this week. We will get back to you as soon as possible.

 

That went way better than expected. The Texture Assistant now supports generating the needed maps from a substance. This is simply done by dragging the .sbsar in the Texture Assistant and hit generate. VTP will automatically select the correct maps for you and packs everything.

@KWaldt It would be nice if you can contact us via email or pm us your email, so you can beta test the update this week. If everything works smoothly, we will submit another (but this time hopefully last) update before the big SpeedTree update.

 

Hey everyone,

just a quick update for you. The beta worked out quite good. We are targeting a release within the next 10 days.

 

Hi @PitHeimes,

Great asset! this tool made a big help on our project. I do have some little questions, Do Metallic/Specular Texture Blending shaders supports some sort of alpha fading or stippling?

 

Hey @ariessanchezsulit,

we got some transparency shader for that. Did you already check those out and see if they fit for your use case?

 

Great Tool!

I just watched through your Tutorials. Is the one with "Setting the Textures up" missing ? Couldn't find anything.

 

Just a Reminder. Vertex Tools Pro is still 20% off for the last 2 days of the Asset Stores big sale.

 

Hey everyone,

we are happy to announce that the closed beta for VTP for SpeedTree is now available.
If you want to participiate just get in touch with your invoice id via pm or at our website.

 

Some trees created in SpeedTree and painted with Vertex Tools Pro latest beta.

 

Can you show some before and after images for the SpeedTree painting? I'm having a hard time understanding just what benefit this provides. I think the video looks great, but is this look not achievable with just a standard SpeedTree with colorful texturing?

 

We will do some comparisons later this week

Well the light scatters through the leaves, that's once big advantage.
Furthermore the branches can be tessellated and painted with grass or anything you like.
Lastly and most noticeable, you can paint any tree inside of unity different. Give them different colors and enhance diversity without any costs on performance.

 

Thank you for the explanation. It sounds intriguing. I already own Vertex Tools Pro, but admittedly I haven't really used it yet. I am planning to get into it a little later in my development cycle though and I will have SpeedTrees in my project so I'm definitely curious about this.

 

As promised, a comparison shot of VTP for SpeedTree and the normal SpeedTree Shader.

 

Very nice. Does using a VTP painted SpeedTree have a performance cost?

 

If you use translucency or tessellation there is an impact on Performance. Not that much though since we use distance based falloffs. Regarding painting, there is no measurable impact on Performance

 

Some short clip of the actual process of painting a tree, getting the lods right and bringing all that to trees placed on a terrain.

 

Hello, i have a painted terrain in my app.. on standalone build is everything ok but android build lag so much.. i made few tests and result is that my terrain works great with standart shader but with VTP shaders lag too much.. is there any optimalization for android devices ? t

 

Hey Stephanides,

I guess you are talking about a mesh terrain, since VTP is used for meshes and not terrain. Well the performance issue on mobile suprises us a little bit. Can you specify the shader settings you are using?
Are you using Heightbased-Blending? Are you using Tessellation? Do you use Parallax? Are you using 2 oder 3 Texture Blend? What resolution of textures are you using? All these settings can influence the performance. If you can give us some more insights we will be happy to assist tweaking or find the problem, since we do not know of any performance issues.

 

Hi.. sorry, it was bad explained.. i call it terrain but its only mesh not unity terrain.. we can call it plane ok ? On my plane is 3 different material.. all have specular 2 texture blend.. Heightbased blending is off, flowmap support is off, use paralax is on , use depth bias is off. All materials have second texture and use base heightmap is true.. Do you have some idea what can take so much perfomance ? i will test it, but for now i dont have any idea what to do
Thanks a lot!
Stephanides

 

hi!

looking forward for the speed tree update now, do u have any idea why texture packer hangs while combining albedo map from substance? unity 560f3 and vtp 203b1

looks like 2k has problems again, 1k map Works

edit2: seems to work randomly

 

How can I use this to blend between 2 meshes, for example I have some rocks meshes and underlying sandy ground, how can I best hide/blend the borders with this?

I know I can add the ground tillable texture as a blend texture for my objects, and just paint the blend where the two touch, but is there a way I can also paint to adjust the normals of one object to the normals of the ground like in this example

https://forums.unrealengine.com/sho...lending-Tool-(based-on-Star-Wars-Battlefront)

 

I've had this asset on my list for some time, but never had time to sit down with it. Is it still limited to 3 PBR material blending, and if so, is there anything on the roadmap to increase this? I presume it generates a splatmap for each model painted, but it could generate 2 and have 6 materials to blend (if we're not using the alpha channel).

 

any idea if this will work with Speed Tree?? Being an FBX file, I assume so?? Unless there is still NOT FBX exporter. Let me know if there is . This is something very important for our up and coming Steam game. Thanks. We are going to be using it for Tree chopping. I have done this with another approach, but would be nice to do with VTP.


Edit: Was looking for runtime.. Speed Tree info . For VTP. Runtime and Speed Tree.. Not deforming.. We are using a different method.. But we are changing textures, between the trees as its chopped, just to be more clear, what we are looking for.

 

https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/r...ng-and-mesh-deform.385577/page-9#post-3055792

 

. I seen that post above..and also looking for Runtime info for Speed Tree and VTP . Mainly.

 

How about performance in general ? Are blending shaders fast enought ? How do they impact an existing project ?

 

Baked emission on static object does not emit any light, is this ok, or I'm doing something wrong?

 

For SpeedTree painting, can wetness be painted on the bark and leaves? If so, can it be controlled at runtime so that it can be gradually revealed?

 

Forgive me if I sound dumb here but I have to make sure before I splash out the cash for Vertex tools pro this week.

If I create a house and placed materials and textures on it, then ported it into Unity, and then used Vertex tools pro to weather it; would all of the following hold true:

1. Vertex painting does not affect any orriginal underlying textures of the model ?
2. If I vertex painted one house prefab, none of the other prefabs of the same house would be affected ?
3. I could "rub out, or unpaint" the vertex textureing whilst I worked and the orriginal textures remain unafected?
4. using vertex tools pro does not affect the underlying UVs of the model?

Is all of the above correct, with regards to vertex tools pro ?

 

Hey, I worked at home on scene. I've packed everything into unity package and gave this to my coder at office. When he opened level he got this:

At the begining he see colors on meshes. He tried to 'reimport' folder with VTP but this provide this red error in shader. What are we doing wrong here?

edit: nvm - need to import package again.

 

Hey there,

sorry for the delay. We had some troubles but are now good to get back to work

Sadly, currently not. We are experementing with some techniques at the moment. But we cannot say if and when it will be in beta.

SpeedTree Painting is currently in the beta and therefore it is not available in runtime painting at the moment. We will keep you updated about the progress.

The shader got a complete overhaul in v2.0.0 and performance was furhter optimized. We never heard of any performance issues so far.

Everything is correct. But I have to take a note on 4. If you use Flow Mapping it uses the uv3 channel to store that information. But all the uvs that are used by unity are not affected.

 

@PitHeimes I think you may have missed my earlier question.

For SpeedTree painting, can wetness be painted on the bark and leaves? If so, can it be controlled at runtime so that it can be gradually revealed?

 

Oh sorry, missed that.
Yes, wetness can be painted on the bark and leaves. And it can be controlled at runtime if you change the material settings, like wetness height. But as stated, this is currently only available in the beta.

 

Fantastic. How can I get into beta?

 

When creation Combined maps with Early Access Substance Converted, Smoothness Channel is bugged and appears pure white for some reason.

 

Hi PitHeimes,

I have an unusual question. Is there a way I can remove certain parts of a mesh with your asset? such as, placing stairs leading up to the 2nd floor that would remove the triangles to be able to get upstairs at run-time.

Sincerely,
Sentar

 

dear sir

On wednesday July 12th I sent an email to 'support@vertextools.pro' entitled "please can you help me", and was wondering if you had seen it, and if so, I was hoping you would reply.

With thanks

 

We will probably release the update in the upcoming weeks

Sadly no. VTP is mainly used for painting and deforming. Manipulating in terms of deleting faces and vertices is not possible.

 

The "rotate" demo class conflicts with the MadGoat SSAA asset example.

 

Oh damn, forgot to use a namespace. We will fix that. But since it is just a demo script, it can be deleted safely without any reference to the actual Editor tool

Thanks for the hint

 

Is this known issue? I mean - object with VTP dont receive shadows.