[Released] Winter Suite

@jaelove, Yes of course, it is currently in pending review. It should be available next week.

 

The Winter Suite is back on the Asset Store !

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Great

 

Yeah !!!!

 

Thank you for you support !

 

Here is a small news to inform you that the shaders are also working on WebGL.
WebGL Demo 1​

 

Here is a small test with Unity 5 and the Winter Suite.

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Hi, does this work on terrain in Unity 5? Thanks

 

Hi @derkoi,
No, the shaders are not working on Unity terrain but you can easily create your own mesh in your 3D software and use it as a terrain in your Unity scene and then use the Winter Suite.
If you have any other question, feel free to ask.

 

Hey everyone !​

Discover the Winter Suite in this new video illustrating some of the features available in this package.
Enjoy this peaceful and relaxing environment made with Unity 5.

Don't forget to rate the package, feel free to follow Blackfire Studio on Twitter or Facebook and if you have ideas, suggestions or comments, don't hesitate to write me a line at : contact@blackfire-studio.com

 

Hello, we are targeting mobile (512mb android and WP devices), and we will probably use this asset only on vehicles. We didn't test yet, but feels like it's not cheap on performance.

Can you please make a list of your snow shaders ordered by performance?

We wish to have this effect on cars;
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0fvby7qw4ob9tjr/screenshot_25-12-2015_17-04-17_0_0.jpg?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/sombq13p7eznepe/screenshot_25-12-2015_17-04-35_0_0.jpg?dl=0

Which way do you think would be most optimized to achieve this effect? Would using this asset be logical? Or are there better ways?

I tested the material on a car that has 4 material ID's. I added a new material to materials array as done in demo scene(is it the correct method?) And it only added snow to last material ID's part of the model. It only added snow to windows. Is there a better way to add this shader on a multi material model?

Thanks.

 

Hi @Meceka,
Concerning the shader, it is targeting SM 3.0 platforms but you can easily remove some features to optimize it. But in a general way the shaders are not as expensive as you might think.

If you don't need dynamic snow but only static coverage blending, the cheapest one is the Snow Texture Blend shader because you avoid dynamic coverage, glittering and reflections.
The most optimized one is the Snow Full then you'll have the blending shaders (Advanced, Height and Texture) and the glitter and reflective one for each category.

A multi material setup is the only case for which it might be a bit complicated. In this case and as you might have noticed, the snow material is only applied to the object which it's ID is before the snow material.
If this is possible in your case, I suggest you to create some kind of proxy object on which you only apply the snow material.

To conclude, after looking at the screenshots you sent me and your target platform, there might be some cheapest way to do that. One of them would be to include the snow effect in your Albedo/Diffuse texture and use the cheapest material available on Unity but you won't be able to use blending. And of course you can simply create your own shader with a simple blending effect and then avoid the lighting calculations used in the package.

The snow materials available in the package were mostly designed to be close to the Journey game rendering for example but you can easily tweak them and use it in your game or simulation.

I hope this helps but if you have any other question, feel free to ask.

 

Merry Christmas to everyone !

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As little gift before the end of year 2015, the Winter Suite is available on the Asset Store 40% off for the 24 Hour Deal !
Feel free to also take a look at the showcase video and screenshots.

 

Looking forward to the next updates on this. Will buy it soon.. looking for a complete snow solution.

 

Happy new year 2016

Thank you for your confidence and for your support !​

 

I have an issue where having more than one mesh with the same materials causes the snow to flicker (Sometimes only the duplicate).

http://i.imgur.com/WE1HgVw.png

 

Hi @Avonaeon
Could you tell me which platform and which version of Unity you are using ?
Depending on the shader you are using, try changing the Offset value in the shader file.

Code (CSharp):

1.  
2. // Here is an example
3. Blend SrcAlpha OneMinusSrcAlpha
4. Tags { "Queue" = "AlphaTest" "RenderType" = "TransparentCutout" "IgnoreProjector"="True" }
5. Offset 0, -1
6. // Or Offset -1, -1
7. ZWrite Off
8. LOD 400
9.  
10. CGPROGRAM
11. #pragma target 3.0
12. #pragma surface SnowSurface Snow alpha
13.  

Tell me if this solves your issue.

 

Platform is PC (DX11), using Unity 5.1.4 right now. I tried changing the offset value, and it seemed to work. Thanks!

 

Another issue I seem to be having though is that I'm unable to scale/tile the Depth texture. I'm using an atlas for a bunch of rocks and the transition is very plain, but tiling the depth/spread texture seems to do nothing. Is this a bug?

 

The Depth texture properties are linked with the Subnormal Tiling and Offset properties. As a matter of interpolator limits, every texture doesn't have it's proper Tiling and Offset properties, the main ones control the secondary textures.

If you need to scale some properties independently and if you know a bit about shader coding this can be easily done in the shader files.
If you don't know much about this topic, feel free to drop me a line, I'll be glad to help.

contact@blackfire-studio.com

 

Hey again. Thanks for your post, I managed to work out what to change in order to get the tiling to work. Unfortunately, I ran into another issue, where the extra snow material seems to be removed from the prefabs when I enter play mode.
I get this for each prefab that uses the extra material.

EDIT: Just want to mention it looks fine in the scene view.

 

Getting this error when loading a scene in the editor that has the Advanced Blend Glitter shader on a bunch of models.

 

Hi @Avonaeon,
Concerning your first issue, are those prefabs marked as static ? And are the materials removed when entering play mode ?
Take a look a this post and tell me if this is the same behaviour. Actually this is the only tricky thing when playing with multiple materials but there are several workarounds.

Concerning the second issue, did you changed the directory of the SnowCore.cginc file ? If not, just try to reimport it into your project.

Thanks you.

 

Hey again,

To the first issue, yes that appears to be the same issue. I guess we can't use batching static flags for objects that use this extra shade, then?

As for the second, yes, we did move the package inside a _Plugins folder. I can move it back out into the root assets folder, but it would be nice to be able to have it elsewhere, as we're already using a lot of plugins.

 

No you can't, this is the strength and the weakness of this. It gives you the ability to combine any type of material with the snow but on the other hand, batching can't be used.
But there might be some workaround like creating some kind of proxy geometry that only handles snow.
What you can do and what I am planning to do is add the snow shaders passes inside the Unity standards one, then you might be able to use batching.

Of course you can change the directory of the files but depending of what you want to do, you need to change the directories in the shader files or keep the same directories tree (BlackfireStudio/Winter/Shaders/Snow etc.).

If you didn't changed the directories tree you might need to reimport the shader files (shader and cginc) with right click then import. I've experienced this kind of issues with some other packages.

I hope it helps. Drop me a line if you have any other question.

 

This would definitely be useful. A lot of our assets were made with batching in mind, and there are a lot of them in any given scene, so being able to batch would really help with performance as well.
Do you have any timeframe in mind for this, just out of curiosity?

Also, thanks for answering all my questions and pointing me in the right directions for fixing the issues, I appreciate it!

 

Unfortunately, I don't have any timeframe to provide.
But feel free to drop me a mail in some months and I'll see if I can do something.

Thank you, I hope it helped and I hope that you are satisfied by the package.

 

Hi everyone !

Here is a small message to Thank you for your support and I am also really glad to see that the Winter Suite has been used for the Rabbids VR Ride by Ubisoft.

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Hi, I'm thinking of purchasing this asset but I have a few gripes before I purchase it. Does the asset handle the snowing? Can the snow on the floor be fluffed up like when someone ran past? I would like some input and information before I decide. Thank you sooo much.

 

@Ibukii Thank you for the message, I've answered you question by email

 

How is the Snow accumulation system coming along?

 

Hi,

"Snow accumulation system" is still not implanted since 2015 ?

Thanks

 

Looks like this asset is dead

 

Truly dead?

 

Hello,
Will this awesome plugin to be updated?

 

I would love to see URP support for this shader. It's one of my favorites.

 

Hello is this asset supports URP ?

 

Hopefully the developer will return and update it for the new SRP pipeline!