Relief Terrain Pack (RTP) v3 on AssetStore

Since the post of my co-worker is awaiting moderation since yesterday I will post in his name:

 

Generally global colormap is permanent feature. LOD manager allows to use global color map for far distance only and change blending mode (although multiply is always better over classic blending). You could try to disable it manually modifying RTP_Base.cginc (and RTP_AddBase.cginc) - there is #define for global colormap that's always set. I haven't tested shader with global colormap turned off for all scenarios - it mcould work in one RTP shaders setup (in LOD manager) but not in another. You would need to check it.

If you remove texture and remove terrain material in Unity terrain settings, RTP will rebuild material but without texture (it will be considered to be 1pixel "dummy" texture which reads in shader are more or less free for GPU load). Without global color map you need to set blending sliders to zero (to not multiply with white which would give overbright look).

Tom

 

Thx, removing the material and letting LOD manager rebuild the terrains solved the global color map issue for us.
What about the second question regarding the multi scene editing workflow.
We have seen that you recommend grouping all terrains under a transform to get uniform results across all of them. How does multi scene editing affect this? Does every scene count as its own anchor? Can we safely store the LOD manager inside a master scene and have all terrains in different sub-scenes?

 

I was just about to give up on this completely when I figured I'd give this a try. After all, the Wii U is capable of tessellation. I just assumed that it wouldn't be able to compile it properly. I was wrong. It actually works. I increased pixel error to 200 and turned on tessellation and now my test scene runs at a steady 60 fps with a mesh blended object in it. Now if it'll all just work well enough in the real scene then I'll be in business.

 

Every scene is treated as separate "group", so we can't share settings across scenes (it's stored in scene object, not an asset).

If a terrain detects there is no LOD manager in scene it will add it, but they will show the same settings. Anyway - you can't use different setup (different LOD manager configuration) on different scenes. It's globalized in project.

Tom

 

Tessellation, when it works can greately reduce CPU load. Additionaly we get rid of popping terrain when different lod levels of mesh are used - Unity renders at "lowest" resolution and tessellation increase it on GPU. So - in your case RTP features might be not bottleneck alone while CPU load might be.

Tom

 

Thanks for adding this amazing feature. It's brilliant. I have renewed hope that I can use RTP in my Wii U projects. Next I'll try in my real project and if that goes well I'll give dynamic snow another chance as well. I might be able to have my cake and eat it too.

 

Hey, I'm having a problem setting up an Occlusion mask for the transmissive effect like on the wax candle and human ear in the demo set. I've tried following the PDF and looked online. When I invert the normals or bake reverse the texture generated is this yellow/green color. When I try blending modes with Ambient Occlusion bakes I don't really get anywhere either. Is there a nice step-by-step for getting that bright blue normal map mix that you are using that I could follow? I'd like to use this aspect of the shader but I'm just getting nowhere with it. Attaching images of my normals, thickness map (generated out of substance) and ambient occlusion map.

http://imgur.com/a/cWkRN
http://imgur.com/4F5YnW5

 

Hi, this is wrong thread to ask about UBER. I'd need to see these textures in context. Your maps on first screenshot are actually the same while they probably shouldn't thickness/transmission map is ambient occlusion map generated using inverted normals on a model (and the map is then also inverted). It would work like standing out details on mesh (think - Hebe's model nose on my example scene) will get dark where they "thin". With such a map inverted we will have bright nose (it's "thin") while center of Hebe's hands are dark ("thick").

For example models in my package I used free xNormal tool (you may google for it).

Tom

 

Hi Tom,

we think that in our case everything is working and looking as intended - but we are unsure if our workflow is "correct" and if you really understood our requirements/questions since your answer felt somewhat general.
If you speak about "it's stored in scene object, not an asset" you mean that each of our 9 terrain setups is stored on a per scene base, right? Is that the reason for each scene being nearly 20 MB in size without anything but a terrain?
To better illustrate how we would like to work with your product here's a picture:



The master scene (3x3Terrain in this case) has the lighting, camera and other stuff. The terrain scenes have nothing but their terrain.
We drag and drop the terrain scenes into the master scene and apply RTP to them. RTP now creates the _RTP_LODmanager inside the master scene.

What are the pros and what are the cons of this workflow?

 

The main reason scene file with the terrain alone is so big is that you probably don't have textures used by RTP saved as pngs. After you drag&drop normalmaps and heightmaps and perlin normals texture is constructed (+global colormap might be constructed in RTP as well) they are also scene objects referenced by terrain. It's good to save all textures (look at combined texutres tab in rtp and go thru ll subtabs to save textures, look at global colormap section in RTP and see if you have texture out there - saved to disk).

1. saved textures won't loose their references to terrain when terrain is encapsulated to rpefab
2. saved combined textures can be reused with different scenes (when detail textures are the same for different scenes you'll release a lot of space). You can drag& drop combined textures to share then across scenes.
3. scene file gets small (as it dfoesn't store any real big objects, but generaly references to bigger objects liket errain and textures only).

Tom

P.S. What kind of NDA have you signed so your screenshots are that top secret ?

 

Thx for pointing out the texture saving functionality. Storing them to disk for shared usage was what we were missing.

P.S.: No NDA, just usual protection of company assets. I could show you these via mail. But forums are faster.

 

I'm definitely going to be interested in this when it hits v4. Great job so far!

 

Version 4? Is there information on version 4 somewhere?

 

Here's the quote from the last page with some teasers on v4:

 

Thanks. I hadn't seen this. With Unity 5.4 quite a ways off, though, RTP4 is even further away.

 

I don't like limitations. Is there a way to bypass the max 8 POM textures limitation or is it in future plans?

 

I agree completely. 4 is too low, 8 seems ok for moderate stuff. Perhaps there could be a switch that switches between shaders generated for 4, 8, 16, 32 textures? (64 for people who are insane? and future proofing it)

 

Hi Tom

I have a question... I have now setup a characterController in my scene using an RTP Terrain with tesselation and smoothing activated, and I am yet again facing the problem with the terrain collider no longer matching the visible terrain, thus characters sometimes floating above, and sometimes sinking into the terrain at places with heighfrequency details.

I though about how to resolve this, before I get into writing my custome collision routine which applies the same smoothing (more or less) to the terrain collisions, do you have a solution in mind on how to get around the inaccurate terrain collider? Is there some RTP function that allows me to export the smoothed terrain into a collider (of course not at full tesselation)?
Do you have an Idea how to get around these collision inaccurays without wasting too much CPU cycles?

I though about fixing the "visible artefacts" (thus adjust the characters placement on the terrain collider so it matches the visible terrain more), and not bother about the inaccuray for physics interactions.


Regards

Gian-Reto

 

Collider used need to be placed on different terrain which is not rendered (only has terrain collider). You can use reapply button in tessellation tab/section in RTP to match height data of terrain to what we see after tessellation (of course it needs to be of suffiecient resolution).

So - for display terrain might be of lower heightmap resolution while tessellation texture is hi-res
- for colliding - height data needs to be of hi-res and follow tessellation values

Tom

 

I might have missed some points in your answer, so bear with me reiterating in my own words.

So your process is to
1) create a new terrain, apply heightmap with higher resolution
2) Switch off rendering component of second terrain
3) Switch off terrainCollider of first terrain

Did you mean to just create a second terrain with the SAME heightmap under step one, but lower pixel error to the minimum? Would that get the collider closer to what is shown by RTP when tesselation is used?


If I understood your answer correctly, that is actually easier and more straightforward than thought. Gonna try that tomorrow to see if I get better collision with the terrain that way.


EDIT:

gave it a test today, created a new terrain with the same heightmap, cranked pixel error all the way down to 1, made sure only the collider of the second terrain is active. Same result as before.

Well, to be honest the result does not surprise, given how the tesselation actually changes the shape of the visible terrain.

Did I misunderstood your answer, Tom? Or is this just the best I get before I either hack the collider with additional tris (given the already quite impressive amount of tris, that might not be advisable), or write my custom smoothing routine that adjusts the height of all physically colliding objects on the terrain?


EDIT 2:

Aaaah, after rereading your answer I remembered the bit with using the reapply button under the tesselation settings.... and that does work like a charm!
Great Tom, thanks for implementing such a convinient function when you wrote the new version of RTP

 

Reapply is necessary beause tessellation might mean not only "doing the same as mesh would does" - terrain might be shaped different way due to bicubic filtering.

Collider is one problem, 2nd is to have all other Unity terrain elements matching terrain surface (trees/grass, etc.).
2 terrains might be not necessary though if you not plan to use any other Unity elements of terrain. Using hires collider and lo res terrain would be sufficient then (no gain in performance, just 1 gameobject less in your scene per terrain).

Tom

 

Ah, now I understand what you meant.

Didn't really looked into how to add trees (with Instancing enabled Speedtree shaders, these hopefully need no managing by the terrain system anymore in the future... which is one reason why I pushed back really getting into tree placement waiting for 5.4 to come out of beta), or grass (thinking about a shader based solution. Unsure which grass shader to use... might have some question about yours, but will ask them in the correct thread for that).

Unless there is another thing besides managing the viewdistance of small objects, I see no advantage in having the terrain system manage small objects as soon as Instancing support starts picking up (or when static batching works). Do I overlook the fine details here?

Regards

Gian-Reto


EDIT:

Only 8 POM Textures... is that REALLY a problem?
There are multiple ways to get around that limitation if you REALLY need it (and are ready to put in a little bit more work):

1) multiple terrains: allows you to use different set of textures each.... edges can be blended together using various techniques.
Now, managing multiple terrain tiles can be difficult, and of course that will only allow you to change the set of textures used spatially, you cannot use more locally in the same terrain tile. If you are just looking to have a bigger selection in a big level, that might do the trick.
2) meshblended decals: in the documentation there is information about sticking decal meshes on the RTP terrain and meshblend it with the terrain.
Its not quite as good as having an additional POM layer in the terrain, because AFAIK meshes blended to the terrain need to have the POM effect flattened around the edges (and meight not be heightblended)...
3) If you don't like limitations, you most probably don't care too much about performance. Why not use real geometry on top of your terrain to spice up the terrain textures with? You know, small stones, Rocks (saves you one Terrain texture if ALL rocks are actual meshes), Grass (wouldn't go as far and cull the grass texture unless you have a REALLY awesome Grass Shader, and blend in global colors as soon as you have to blend out the grass).
Given you are developing for modern PC Hardware, and optimize (meshes with not too many tris or LODs, manage the viewdistance of the mesh objects, set them to static and have them batched, maybe remove them casting shadows), that should still be possible without destroying performance completly.

 

RTP 3.3d and Ceto: Ocean System 1.1.1 do not play nicely when using Ceto in opaque queue and when RTP is has tessellation enabled.

Some Image effects or other solutions require a texture with scene depth, in unity this is normally done with a “Replacement Shader”.

Has anyone attempted creating a “Replacement Shader” for RTP supporting tessellation and bump mapping for rendering to a depth texture?

Edit: Added version information

 

You're right about replacement shader. The simple solution might be using deferred (RTP limited to 4 layers then). Depth/normal textures are generated on fly in g-buffer construction process and image effects can use it as it is. The problem only appears when some geometry is in forward - then replacement shader need to render depth/normals separately.

Tom

 

Tom,

I’m afraid deferred may not help in this case, as I’m already set up in deferred and have limited myself to 4 layers.

Ceto in Opaque mode (in the mode I need it to run in so that Image Effects work) requires a Depth Texture so that during the Alpha Test render queue (where depth reading is not available) it can be Alpha Blended with terrain correctly. This Depth Texture is rendered with a Replacement Shader.

I also contacted scrawk the publisher of Ceto and he offered to help create a replacement shader. He said he already has RTP and that it may be an easy fix or that he may need to contact you if he needs help with RTP.

Since he said he already has RTP I offered to provide him a dummy scene already configured with RTP 3.3d and Ceto 1.1.1 demonstrating the problem.

Thank you,
Steven

 

I believe scrawk can do it easily (he's one of the best shader coders out there) .

Tom

 

Hi Tom,

I'm having a problem I was hoping you might be able to help with. Apologies if this is something simple I've overlooked, but I've gone through all the documentation and searched online and can't find anything.

I appear to be getting some buggyness in the gloss on materials from the first atlas, but only in the far range:


As you can see in the background it changes to a weird black and grey appearance.

This is in deferred lighting and linear color space. I'm using full POM w. soft shadows, 8 layer first pass, UV blend, global color map and global normal map, crosspass heightblend with fake AO and vertical texture map.

I've packed a smoothness map into the alpha channel of the diffuse on the textures but while trying to debug this I've set the gloss min max on all layers to 0. I've also tried building the shaders with specular and lighting completely disabled, and the problem remains.

I'm pretty sure it is something to do with the gloss though, as when I jack the gloss min/max values up (shown on right), only the problem areas are affected (although the gloss is visible close up as well as far away):


This also confirm to me the smoothness map is packed correctly.

The issue also only seems to affect the first channels 0-3, channels 4-7 seem to work fine which makes we wonder if this related to the LOD levels. You can see this on the picture near the trees, the forest floor texture there is on channel 5.

I'm at a loss to be honest - any ideas?

 

@tomaszek

There's an old holdover from 4.x in the geom blend editor. line 219 has a check for advanced license before allowing static batch without a 5x conditional. Probably not a big deal, but letting you know.

 

Far away distance looking so weird makes me thinking it might be related to normals. Can you check first atlas (RTP/combined texutres tab) alpha channel is correct ? To expertise more I'd need your setup (LOD manager, lighting, rendering path, lights present). You could drop me a line on private message on forum with order number and purchase date for verification. We might check it together then on skype/team viewer via screen share.

Tom

 

I'm aware. recently I had an user with indie license which noticed this. I will include fix in next release (3.3d on AssetStore).

Tom

 

There is an issue that's been around forever in RTP and I'm wondering if you can address it in the next release. Before adding the relief terrain script to an existing terrain we are supposed to assign at least 4 textures to the Unity terrain. If I have a terrain with 4 detail and normal textures assigned, when RTP takes over the normal maps are not assigned in RTP. Can you insure that normal map assignments are carried over when switching to RTP?

 

OK, I'll do.

Tom

 

When I add RTP to my terrain the base map distance became like this (below pic)
If I increase it again, after playing the game it will back to this again.
I'm pretty sure it happens just when I applied RTP, is there a way to solve this?

 

We recently started using RTP, and while it works fine with our current settings in Editor, on PC, and most PS4 dev kits, there is a particular dev kit that has problems with RTP. It is worth noting that this dev kit is on the exact same system software as the others.

On this particular devkit, the entire terrain gets tinted a very bright white. I found that the problem only seems to happen if there is a camera in the scene actively rendering to a texture.

I attached the frame debugger and noticed that everything rendered using RTP shaders had a light blue tint over the emission buffer in deferred, which appears to be the source of the bright white color in the final image.

Any idea what the underlying issue is here? To me it seems like there is some undefined behavior going on, which explains why the problem only visually manifests on a particular dev kit.

 

RTP takes control over basemap distance. For close distance RTP uses complex shading, at farther distance it uses simplier shader (and Unity's basemap shader is replaced there).

Without any specific clue it's virtually impossible to find the reason in that huge shader. Try to disable some features in RTP one by one and test it on problematic dev kit. If we at least could narrow the behaviour to particular RTP feature it would be much simplier to find out the reason. For example - if you use snow or wetness - disable it one by one and check. Emission in RTP comes from wetness or glitter - that's what I could suspect.

I'd need exact LOD manager and scene setup (light setup, camera - LDR/HDR), number of RTP terrain detauil layers used so I could try to reproduce the issue.

Tom

 

Hello Tom

We would like to use Multi Scene Editing in our Project, in every SubScene would be only one Tile of the whole Terrain, putting them together is a MasterScene (9 Terrains in total)
These MasterScene also holds the _RTP_LODmanager and manages all TerrainTiles in the SubScenes.

Is this a valid way of RTP use?


Regards

Marko

 

If terrains are in separate scenes it means they will use separate/independent globalSettingsHolder boejct which controls terrain. If you'd like to do it this way - it's fine, only take care you LOD managers per terrain have the same setup (shaders compiled by LOD manager are globalized across project).

Tom

 

Hello again;

we use only one _LODmanager, stored in the Masterscene , the single TerranScenes have NO LODmanger for their own.

There are 9 TerrainTiles, every on in an extra Scene with nothing else in it.
We load this Scenes together in a MasterScene whre a LODmanger is set.
Will this "Global" LODmanger handel the terrains in the Subscenes or do we need to but an extra LOD manager in every single of the 9 Scenes with Terrains.

Sorry for Askin again , but it is not really clear for us by now

Regard

Marko

 

Hi Tom,
Is it possible to use terrain tesselation with exclude_path:deferred?

I get significant artifacts, but I very much would like to tesselate heights. I am using exclude deferred to try to correct the 'gloss' problem when viewing terrain at a sharp angle (everything shines and terrain detail colors are washed out). If there is a better way to either handle the gloss/color washout than forcing terrain rendering in forward with deferred camera, this will also work.

Is there perhaps a few lines in the shader that can fix this?

setup:
- deferred camera
- exclude_pass: deferred
- tesselate terrain

result: huge areas are black. comment out 'exclude pass' and terrain tesselation renders properly, but 'gloss' problem washes out terrain details.

 

Yeah, right now I am in the process of incrementally removing things to isolate the conditions that cause it to occur. I will let you know if I am able to find out more precise steps to make the bug happen.

 

LOD manager is only used for editing (runtime it has only small helper function to change shading level, but you can grab this functionality and do it on your own). If stores current setup (when you click on lod manager it gets features used by analysing shader files) and can recompile shaders with given set of features. RTP component "asks" lod manager for active features. This way only used are visible in RTP component inspector. (ReliefTerrain script inspector). RTP component at OnEnable() adds LOD manager to scene if this is not present. That's it.

The only thing you might find problematic is when you want all 9 terrain tiles to have the same settings (same textures, parameters, etc.) - when terrains are distributed over different scenes they will be loaded at separate anchors I guess - this causes "RTP grouping" (by RTP component transform anchor). If this is no problem for you (you need to setup scenes separately) - it's fine.

You might consider reusing saved textures (RTP/combined textures tab) across terrains/scenes where applicable to reduce build size/RAM needed.

Tom

 

I can feel your dilema. In deferred we can have better performance in presence of many lights, but deferred has lighting functions globalized across project (anyway - we can't render some objects in deferred using one lighting model and with different model for others objects). Simply in deferred lighting model is relized by screenspace shader (project settings/graphics/deferred lighting shader). For RTP you should use RTP dedicated (in presence of UBER package - use UBER one).

So - in deferred by default GGX / hi-quality specular model is used. It's fine, but mostly useless for terrain (that's what you've actually noticed already). If you can compromise and ask all objects to use lower level normalized blinn-hong specularity model w/o GGX you can enforce it in deferred lighting shader by using:

Code (csharp):

1. #ifdef GGX
2. #undef GGX
3. #define GGX
4. #else
5. #define GGX 0
6. #endif

to turn of GGX in deferred. To use lower spec model (for me it's not that model BTW):

Code (csharp):

1. #define UNITY_BRDF_PBS BRDF2_Unity_PBS

This is what I do in ReplacementPBSLighting.cginc which applies to forward (where we can ask lighting model per object).

Now back to your question - if you would like to render everything in deferred and only terrain in forward - OK. Open all RTP terrain shaders (firstpass, addpass, faronly and Internal/terrainbase) and find all #pragma surface surf at the end of this lines add exclude_path:deferred. Save to recompile shaders. Now terrain will be always rendered in forward regardless of rendering path deferred or forward.

Tom

 

RTP 3.3d is on AssetStore. Submitted from U5.3.2 and from U5.4b22. When should work on official and beta Unity versions. Fixed a few additional glitches. Closed my server update functionality.

Tom

 

Tom, this is already what I am doing. Is not ideal perhaps, but it works.

I am testing terrain tesselation though, and with exclude_path:deferred the tesselation does not properly render. There are large black spots on terrain until I remove exclude_path:deferred or change deferred camera to forward.

I have read your manual many times. It is very informative on both terrain engine and rtp in general.

Setup:
- Camera: Deferred
- RTP Terrain: tesselation ON
- Shaders: exclude_path deferred

RESULT:
- RTP terrain has large black areas with no texture rendered.


This is bug with 'exclude_path deferred' + tesselation?

 

Ouch, sorry. Should read carefully your post before elaborate... Tomorrow I'll look into this with excluded deferred path.

Tom

 

Hi @tomaszek,

Having a problem with the new store version. Been playing around with only the Tesselation settings in the example folders 'TerrainScene' and seeing some artifacts or something. It is more visible on the beach area near the bridge. The problem also is more obvious when moving rather than stationary and is seen in editor or play modes. I have tried linear/gamma/deferred and forward just to see but same in all. I reimported RTP and tested again. Only changed the tesselation amounts slightly but still same problem.



Thanks

doc

Edit - forgot to add using 5.3.5p6 windows 10 64bit. Ther are no console errors.

 

Hi @tomaszek, Problem goes when Tesselation is turned off. Am I doing something wrong?

 

Hi @tomaszek !
We're trying to build a scene usign RTP on a terrain mesh on XBoxOne, but we have an error saying that the shader isn't supported on this platform :

In the RTP_LODManager, we have the checkbox DX11 / XBox ticked, is there anything else we're missing or the shaders are not compatible at all on Xbox One ?

Thanks in advance,
Robin

 

For certain Unity version (can't remember which one) xbox has separate platform specifier for surface shader compilation. In RTP3.3 I removed platform selection and RTP should work out of the box for XBOXone. RTP3.3d is ready to download on AssetStore. It's submitted from Unity5.3.2 so you also need such Unity version or higher.

Tom