[RELEASED] World Streamer ! Forget about your game memory usage and create big world!

@NatureManufacture thanks for the info. So maybe when using World Creator I could make a prefab for trees without colliders that are on rough non-walkable surfaces to keep the data low. About removing your script, I did that only to get another error:
Assets/WorldStreamer/Scritps/Editor/CrossPlatformInputInitialize.cs(8,18): error CS0101: The namespace `UnityStandardAssets.CrossPlatformInput.Inspector' already contains a definition for `CrossPlatformInitialize'

Maybe you could share what scripts are absolutely required so I can remove the ones that aren't.

 

Remove "Standard Assets World streamer" and this "CrossPlatformInputInitialize" and everything will be fine... Ah that was my mistake. Normaly this will not happend but when you unpack from zip not unity asset it could not replace the same objects but duplicate it sometimes. This catalog and this script is only for demo scenes (ethan controller). I uploadednew version today and I've finished video tutorial.

 

Awesome that helped! Great job on the tutorial above! Will there be a tutorial on collider streaming as well? I'm using the fracture and destruction kit.. when I pre-process/slice an object designated to explode it creates all the fragments with a script connected to colliders *inside* the mesh. The fragments all have *render mesh* set to off until it gets activated by their exploder script. All the pieces inside do have "is trigger" on the collider but the top parent is a prefab -will world streamer still find the colliders inside?

I've been trying to follow the documentation but the description on how my models should be prepared doesn't seem the same as the prefab generated by the fragment and destruction kit.

About terrain splitting tool in the tutorial, World Creator comes with its own terrain splitting tool, is this not compatible?

 

Yes I will make collider streaming tutorial too.
Basically you have object with trigger and script which could spawn something. What you have inside is your choice Im not 100% sure what are you asking for. Could you cliarfy this a bit more?

World Creator could create terrains in tiles, yes. So you could generate terrain with many small tiles by world creator. I talked with my friend stefan and asked him to change a bit tiles architecture. Now you have to add tile one by one to existing matrix. I rather prefer create big map and then split it. OFC you lose some performance in my way because you have loaded at cpu /gpu some unsued assets which you have to remove manualy. I will talk today about terrain spliting system. One of big assestore seller want to create such system with me. That is very good message because I have no hand source to do it now myself. At the moment we work on mystical product which will increase fps dramatically in many games and HQ enviro asset.

BTW at video tutorial we cut 14000 batches into 200-800

 

Ok attempting to clarify.. have you have tried fragment and destruction?does it work with World streamer because otherwise I'm flying blind here.. fragment and destruction allows us to make prefabs after splitting but when turning it into a prefab its required to save the data as something like "my_fragmented_file.asset". The prefab parent level is the original non-fragmented mesh (without a collider) and contains the script to hold all the fragmented pieces inside -however the fragments inside it do contain colliders set with "is trigger" but they are set to "mesh render" off* by default until an separate object with an exploder script is close to it and is toggled on.

The structure of preparing this for collider streaming is different because it seems you require the parent root level to have a collider with "is trigger" .... so in my case does it still require the parent root level to contain a collider set to "is trigger" even though the fragments inside are already set to "is trigger" ?

Another way of asking is:
Would World Streamer simply just detect that the prefab has colliders inside and still allow me to use the prefab and the exploding script that is required to make it fragment/explode or would I still have to add another collider to the parent root in order for it to work with World Streamer?

Lastly -it may have been recently added to the latest World Creator update.. it has a splitter (separate tab) to split a big terrain into smaller ones but also the ability to add tiles one by one.
so it was this splitter feature I was wondering if it was compatible but also the manually adding of terrains as they seem to have their own proprietary terrain neighbor system.
Thanks again.

 

Yeah its compatibile with world creator dont worry. As you see there are many ways to get terrains in parts. I give only free solution as an example

Ok basically you have object that cointain script + collider as triger. What is inside is doen't matter. Simply this tigger with script will release streaming. You have collider inside is trigger but world streamer only recognize trigger with our script.

 

New video.

 

Could those trees have billboards, as the the last stage of lod?...how to stop all visual popping in and out, of rendered mesh....I am thinking of buying infigrass today, would this work? (Trees also batched)...I purchased this, and the real forest pack, Terrain Composer, Terrain to Mesh, etc...just curious. P

 

Yeah they are normal speedtree assets. Its just a setting of last LOD, you could increase cull distance in LOD. Yeah infiniti grass should work (I will ask today somone who use it with world streamer). Yes trees are batched thats why we get only 1000 batches. At video it looks like they poped up but they show up at 2000 units. From player position it's huge distance, from camera view at big height not really.

 

Ok, thanks. I just really do not want to use unity terrain system..its overhead is way to costly for the visual payoff.
The projects I am working on now require large landscapes, flight simulator camera type, landing/taking off (close distance) flying at altitude (far distance)..All have large background low poly mesh vistas, with multi-tile LOD mesh terrains, with all foliage, trees, grass billboards - meshes (LODs as well)...

I am really trying to get the highest visual quality with the absolute lowest performance hit..(aren't we all!)

So I purchased the Real Forest pack, just for the meshes, I replaced hi-res photo scanned PBR images, with my custom shader...Question - Do all assets need a collider to stream?

Spoiler: Spent a day converting textures to Megascans

Low Poly - Hi Draw calls.

Example of the quality LOD mesh terrains (TerrainComposer) I will be streaming - Can I get Zero Popping?

I will setting up later today, any tips for a pure mesh based stream?

Thanks, looking forward to some smooth streams....
p-

 

Nope assets are streamed by system, they don't need any colliders. We check objects pivot and put them in correct grid element. We stream assets in grids and layers if player is close enought. If you want to stream something by colliders (mostly for interiors) you simply create object with collider trigger and our script then fill it with assets and done. Create few layers like in tutorial. Stream big objects in far distance and small only at close distance etc.. Check all our tutorials first.

 

How to replace HQ unity terrains by low poly mesh in far distance?

 

Everything is in manual. "5.4 Ring streaming and how to replace detailed terrain object by low poly mesh at far distance"
.
1. Ctreate terrain in tiles.
2. Genereate low poly mesh from each tile by terrain to mesh assetstore tool or any other.
3. Create streaming layers for unity terrain and low poly mesh.
4.At streamer with unity terrains check ring streaming. Advanced demo scene have such construction.

Next tutorial will be about changing HQ terrain into low poly mesh. It will be a continuation of the previous. In meantime watch all that are available

 

I just get crazy idea to render trees from movie up to 6500 units and get better performance than last time

 

@NatureManufacture does it make sense to create multiple layers of large, small, medium with the same scene label for the sake of identifying large buildings or constructions with many parts? I would like a way to manage these constructions as one object to turn on or off..

I realize I could just marque select the area in the editor but that can be touchy, or use search.. When looking at your tutorials it just stated to make 3 layers and rename meshes of 3 sizes, large, medium and small for each layer.

 

If you mark objects as big medium and small. You could stream small objects in close distance medium in bigger etc. What this give? You will remove lod refreshing, culling refreshing, particle refreshng and much more from your cpu. Ofc you could remove them by LOD from screen but they still at cpu. So best way is to remove them from cpu. Btw I just fighting with milions of trees to remove them from cpu (movie upgrade).

If you manage building as one object simply rename only top object (parent).

 

There is a way to use GeoVox maps with World Streamer ?
http://store.steampowered.com/app/368470/

 

InfiniGrass works with World Streamer. I use them both. I use Terrain Composer 2, InfiniGrass . I have not fully tested with TC2, I have used TC1 with world Streamer.... But shouldn't be an issue, we are adding World Streamer and Terrain Composer 2 in the coming weeks. We where waiting for some bugs to be fixed before we used TC2 again. Bug seem to be ironed out so we will be adding very soon, I can report back .

 

Not 100% sure but I would doubt it, since Geo is a runtime Voxel solution.. I have used Geo and he has major issues with Unity. , not sure if you like it or not.. But if you have not bought yet, Check out Terrain Engine, which is a voxel solution made for Unity.... with Unity.. http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/te...hexagonal-infinite-procedural-terrain.174595/

 

Hi!
Small info about upcomming update.

Upcoming changes "1.7.4" 3.10.2016
- Debug fix at terrain culling system
- Object culling system
- World Streamer Tutorial 5
- Fix for real player position value with looping system. (this will help in client server comunication)

If system could export world in tiles you could stream it in that parts. Thats all. Recon have some experience in this so take a look on his advices

 

Hello, I have 610 tiles of terrains and they are for one big city. I was wondering if this asset can handle the lightmapping and memory in the editor? And I have another question, Is it even possible to work with those 610 terrains and objects (like buildings, trees, cars,...) all in one scene or it requires each of the terrain tiles be in individual scenes?. Thanks in advance.

 

Yes, you have to use local area updater to work on this area. This will allow you to load only area on which you currently want to work.
Yes each terrain is individual scene ofc you could connect some objects with terrains. For example streaming layer will contain terrain + all objects at this terrain. This could be slower but possible. Take a look at tutorial videos.

 

Thanks for the videos, actually answered most of my questions. But Still didn't get how I can apply light map, I mean I think you apply the lightmaps (by pressing the "build" button in the lighting window of Unity 5) when you load a part of scene data by the Local Updater tool, is this true?

Thanks in advance.

 

There are some bridge between Geovox and World Streamer ? If no; it will be good to have one if it's not that much complicated. An 1 button export to Unity and grided in World Streamer. Maybe it's too good to be true

Geovox need World Streamer to be usefull. Their map tax all ressource into unity.
Maybe it worth to seek for an partnership with them. This is an plus value ? An window on steam ?

1- My splited terrain doesn't fit on border; i need to use Terrain Stitcher to fix this ? When i use it ?

2- I tried world streamer with the default jet plane from unity and i followed all steps from tutorials.

But if we move fast; i saw the streaming loading the new zone in a ugly way. How i can solve this ? How i can blend the newly loaded zone more smoothly. Like GTA5 does.

3- World Creator is the best map generator or i must use Zbrush 4r7 ?

 

Yes this is true. I must check that today but yes.

If simly their system will export world in tiles everything will work.
1) Borders - you mean lod differences or simply tiles are not connected properly?
* If you use unity terrain simply attach terrain neighbour script to streamer with terrains and connect it with this streamer. This will remove LOD's differences.
* If this is static mesh, we cannot change it.
* Terrain stitcher and multiple terrain brush are usefull to blend borders, if problem is not because of LODs but because of different vertex position at both unity terrain borders.
2) There are few ways:
a) Stream a bit bigger area then far view. If you use only unity terrains it could be slow, it depends form terrain content and number of terrain tiles that you want to stream/see.
b) Stream terrain in bigger tiles, this basiclly mean point a) also.
c) Reduce time (empty frames) between streamed terrain tiles (streamer values). Just check streamer options.
d) You could replace HQ mesh by low poly mesh in far distance, this mean you could load bigger view without performance drop. Like in this video 1:16

This also will give you ability to stream more tiles at the same time. Why? If you stream HQ terrain which is heavy only at close distance you save a lot of cpu sources and time. Unity terrain streams pretty hmm slow but it depends from their content. LQ terrain mesh is very cheap you could stream if extremelly fast and you could stream many of them at the same time. So you have to load only 3-5 tiles of HQ during moving which is quite ok/fast and for example you could load many LQ terrain mesh in far distance to fill your horizon. Take a look at this video.

If you have any question feel free to ask. Everything is about connection between amount of content that you want to hold and cpu sources. If object is heavy or specific it take some time to load it into memory. Thats why we create ring streaming. It load heavy object only at close distance and cheap in far distance. For example if you have range 1 that mean you have 9 terrain tiles - 3x3 and you load 3-5 tiles max per loading action. If you have range 3 you have 7 x7 so 49 tiles. So you load 7-10 tiles at once. This could take some time so you could load this behind camera view or load only 3x3 unity terrain tiles and rest as low poly mesh which you could stream in unlimited way. LQ mesh take only 1 batch instead of unity terrain which could take hundreds.


BTW your video is private I cant check.

 

The video is ok now. The tile doesn't fit with static mesh i think because they doesn't fit at close range.

1- So i can use Terrain stitcher after i split the map with worldstreamer or before ?
2- How i can fix the lighmap issue ?
3- I want to use the ring and LQ terrain but i still waiting for the 5th tuto
4- Reduce time (empty frames) between streamed terrain tiles (streamer values). Just check streamer options. My value is to 1. I can reduce it to 0.1 ?

 

1. Just stitch your terrains by our terrain stticher (only 1 vertex on borders) its value 0 or 1 i don't remember. Test it before you do this. This will only blend last vertex on the borders.
2. Are you sure this is lightmap? not terrain splatmap rendering distance? (setup in terrain) and something with your shadow distance?
3. Oh.. ask me at skype I will show you in 2 min how to do this. This is so simple You will have your world ready in 20 min.
4. If you have light terrains without foliage porbably too but also try to inrease loading range to 4-5. You have light terrain it will work fine. Also add our terrain culling system, this will increase fps. If you will add foliage terrain culling system will give you ability to hold more HQ terrains then usually.

 

We just found an issue that looping do not affect "real player position" which is helpfull in client server communication. Thanks for good feedback from our users we will add this as fix today. If somone need it earlier then before version upload call as by mail.

 

Using World Streamer 1.7.3 with Unity 5.4.1f1, I'm getting a number of warnings about obsolete methods. I normally fix this kind of thing myself with assets I've purchased, but World Streamer is kind of a magical black box to me and the code throwing these warnings is directly related to how it does that magic.

Is there any way Nature Manufacture might be able to sort these warnings out in an upcoming release?

(obligatory screenshot)

 

When will the new version be released? And will be a discount for the new release soon?. This asset looks awesome.

 

Hi.
Yes we use many different functions because we support unity versions from 5.1.4 to 5.4+. This warnings are safe so they will not affect the system or game. Probably there will be a day when we will change them to new functions. Unfortunly many users use very stable and old unity 5.1.4 version. System is huge and unity often change functions. If we would like to fix all this functions for every engine version this will be nightmare

New world streamer version will be available in few days. We upload it yesterday. Tutorial I will make tommorow or just in this week. We don't have discount in plants at the moment. Unity also don't have plan to put us on sale in next 1-2 months.

 

looks like a nice tool.
Iam looking for a tool that creates a random world with vilages and cities on the first game startup and streams it efficient, but i think world streamer is not a world generator, right?

 

Hi.
This is not generator but streamer. We stream existing objects when they are close enough to the player

 

Thanks for your answer! Got another one
So, my current world is created out of different chunks. No terrain, just meshes and a flat surface.
On the first game start a grid of 20x20 squares gets generated and filled by some premade chunks. Like a chess board.
Is it possible with world streamer to blend out the not needed chunks? So where the player is not at. Even if everything gets generated on runtime

 

Yes. We include in our manual idea of something like this.It was with terrains but this could be anything. You have empty unlimited slots which you will fill by your data (your code). Slots are unlimited because of floating point fix and looping system. Ofc you could limit them, it will be easier. Anyway you must have system to fill this slots and restore if player will back to the same place. Ofc only if you want to restore them. Our streaming elements are numbered by row columns etc so you are able to recognize position and fill object by your data. For our side you will get streamed grids, if you will fill it by yourself there is no problem.

 

Having some problems with 2D looping on the Y-Axis.
Infinitive looping works great on the X axis, but traveling in Y the offset to spawned worlds gets messed up.
The scenes are loaded but at wrong coordinates.

Everything else like streaming levels, splitting scenes and loading works like a charm.

Here is the bug in action as well as player, camer, mover and streamer information:


How can I resolve the offsets problem?

 

A) This object are static batched? They shouldn't.
B) If they are not static this could be interesting and looks like bug. If it's bug we will fix that in few min. I will reproduce it tommorow morning, I try. If you are able to send us a sample it will be much easier

 

Here is a sample project.
Open the scene "mainscene"
press play and fly uppwards.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/y2yiw6y9w8rm7xp/worldbug.zip?dl=1

 

Ok let me check that

 

Ok we found this and another bug. We will fix that ASAP.

Upcoming changes "1.7.5" 7-8.10.2016
- Fix in "z" axis looped streaming
- Fix for unsplit button in local area updater.

Contact with us by mail to get fresh fixed scripts.

 

Is WebGL supported? I've searched the docs and many of these pages and cant find and mention of it not being supported. Please advise, thanks.

 

Yeah it works with WebGL. Just like normal.

Umm we still waiting for unity assetstore accept, for version 1.7.4 It should be tommorow. Then we will upload 1.7.5 which is also ready for upload. We will also create new tutorial during this week

 

Hi!
Our 1.7.5 version is online, so now we will give you some info about upcomming changes/fixes and updates. We just push Landscape Ground Pack 2 (It should be available in few days) so we could put whole power into World Streamer again. That mean we will create more and more tutorials and fixes/improvments in many cases suggested by our users. We will also send ticket to Unity developers with bug. If they fix it we will show you few tricks which will improve your FPS and give you ability to render trees for huge distance without performance drop.

Upcomming Update "1.8" Probably Upload 28.10.2016
- Delayed ;p World Streamer Tutorial 5
- Fix for player position gizmo if you are not using world mover.
- Save/load setup for Local Area Updater

In mean time our 3d artist works at photoscanned assets like this:

 

That sounds amazing. What version of Unity do you need to utilize this trick?

 

Hard to say what they will do with this ticket and error.

 

@NatureManufacture I sent you a pm about this but I'll refine here.
Would it be too much trouble to make a script that I can attach to a moving object (a bomb or character) and where ever it is placed in the game replaces/overrides streamed objects with another within a set range/distance? My maze is made of over 200 cloned meshes I'd like it that if a bomb is close enough to the cloned meshes that only those within range of the bomb are replaced with my destructible ones -so I believe it would have to override the normal world streamed meshes. Can't do it by normal World streamer LOD because the character should be a distance away from the bomb which without replacing the meshes would only keep the distant/low res non-destructable meshes loaded. Maybe a separate streaming layer could be created for Overrides or what ever needs to happen.

 

Hi I know I read it, but I was away from pc during weekend so I will answer you today anyway
No this will not a problem. You simply could use ring streaming for that. Yeah you could have another streamed layer for that but... but... You will have 3 layers there.
1st - basic low poly mesh
2nd - HQ destructable
3rd HQ destructable for a bomb.
Low quality meshesh will not dissapear/will not gonna be replaced in far distance because they will be holded by 1st layer. HQ will just show buuuuut..... buuut... You could create a script which will turn off LQ if bomb is near so only HQ will left then. So you could have few streamers 1,2 - for player 3,4,5,6...[n] for bombs. You will activate them only when bomb will apear and you will give them task to follow bomb position

 

@NatureManufacture I have a very small map so I don't need it split, I just want to stream the trees, grass and rocks. How do I do that? So far, in the manual I haven't seen how to just stream objects without splitting the terrain

 

You have example with buildings in video tutorial and manual.

If grass and trees are part of terrain you only could stream them with terrain data. Ofc you could extract trees and grass from terrain and then stream as models. If your trees and grass are not terrain parts you could stream them as models without problems.

 

I would only need 1 layer for the maze non-destructible meshes because they are low poly set with a tessellation shader that changes detail with distance anyway. Ring Streamer looks like a match but I would need a script to attach a Ring Streamer script to a moving game object.

Just letting you know I'm not a programmer so writing my own scripts at this time wont work

If you add the function to Ring Streamer you might like to name the script something like "Ring Streamer For Moving Objects".
but yes I would need a character to be able to walk away from that object with the ring streamer attached to it and not have the player distance effect the ring streamer.