Relief Terrain Pack (RTP) v3 on AssetStore

Hi all, What's the best workflow for using RTP on a mesh? I have terrain mesh that has 31 submeshes. Can it work with RTP? How do I set it up?

Sorry if it is in the manual but I couldn't find it and surprisingly no video's or google searches were helping.

 

You just attach rtp component on the mesh like you would do on terrain. The dfifference is that it's mesh - you can't just paint coverage there, but you need to provide it yourself attaching RGBA splat textures in RTP/Combined textures/coverage section.

I did my example scene with RTP applied on mesh taking the coverage splat maps from terrain scene. Then I exported terrin mesh, optimized in blender and used back. You can take a look.

If your mesh chunks are composed in kind of grid you could map them with the same global textures (global colormap, optional global normalmap) as long as you span UVs over whole environment. If you'd prefer to use separate globalmaps on meshes you simply range UVs in (0..1)x(0..1) rectangle top planar for each mesh. Meshes need normals and tangents to be present (while terrain derives tangents from normals knowing that UVs are mapped top down on world XZ plane).

Tom

 

Thanks Tom, So you have to put RTP on each mesh? My terrain exported with 31 meshes. Or maybe I will put it in a 3d app and decimate it down first.

 

I was able to decimate my example terrain to single mesh, but your case seems to be more complex. You can export terrain to obj which is managed in 3d app as one mesh. It's only that Unity split it into 65k vertex chunks because Unity uses 16bit index buffers (Unity 2017.3 introduced 32bit buffers so you would be able to import larger meshes but mesh optimization is what I'd strongly recommend anyway).

It might be better to split it in 3d app because you might have it easier to organize after reimport. Unity split meshes by vertex limit and not within rectangle "chunks" the way you can place and arrange your scene clean.

Tom

 

I get the shown white edges when I paint splats from different 4-group inside each other, like paint splat 6 inside splat 1 for example. When the target strength is low so only a little bit of the splat would shine through you get the white areas in the image.

conditions:
- empty unity 5.6 project with RTP 3.3i only
- deferred and linear
- using 8 layers in first pass and no overlap are activated in the LODManager

You have been right with the color map, so having a global color map would fill this white edges with colors of the color-map and would become greenish for example. But delivering a color-map that fits perfectly is at least hard, but maybe in practice even not possible. At least I couldn't manage that until now.

Deactivating the color-map is currently no option, because I need it for my farm-land section and also because I don't know how the "harsh" transition would look which you have mentioned.

Since performance is crucial I also don't want to tick off no overlap, because of the lost FPS.

So are there any further solutions than going back to 4 splats?

 

Using no global colormap means it's white - that's why you have very distinct transition. You can do both:

1. Comment out this line RTP_Base.cginc:

Code (csharp):

1. #define RTP_HIDE_EDGE_HARD_CROSSPASS

2. Or try the feature RTP is shipped with to construct global colormap automatically out of average layer colors. In global colormap section you have button called "Construct colormap from detail color of layers"

Tom

 

Hi Tom,
congratulations on your work and support.

I've bought RTP 3.3 and Real World Terrain to achieve this goal: create an island that in the distance has its own orthophoto but that once you get on boat switch in RTP shader.

I run the following process:
- Create the terrain with RWT with the parameters in IMG_01

- I go to the RTP_LODmanager and set this parameters IMG_02

- Recompile the shader
- I use the RTP tool to generate the HeightNormal Texture for Tassellation clicking on "Render heights" and save it on disk
- I insert the Detail, Normal and Height textures for the 4 layers (these textures have the same size 512x512)
- I go to Settings -> Global maps and set in "Tessellation height & normal map settings" the saved texture generated with the RTP tool

Now

- If I click on "Construct coloma from detail colors of layers" my orthophoto over the island disappears and its place is totally applied to the tiled texture of the first layer IMG_03

- Otherwise, if I leave the orthophoto in the "global settings color", I get the desired result, unless I haven't UV blending between the layers and i see only the first layer IMG_04


Where am I wrong? can you help me? Perhaps the texture of tassellation texture is wrong?

Thanks in advance
Lorenzo

 

Hello Lorenzo,

once when the tesselation didn't work as expected the sRGB on the calculated tesselation-texture was activated. Disabling it in the inspector solved the problem for me.

 

Does your terrain have correct detail coverage mapping? Your global colormap constructed from detail layers seems to be pure brown which looks incorrect. With missing coverage data you will see only first layer upclose.

Tom

 

Is there anyway to get tri-planar texturing and individual tiling for each texture or atleast the texture only using the tri-planar texturing gets individual tiling. This would be so perfect for rocks as getting a rock texture and grass/dirt is hard to make each tile to an even point. I always have to let the grass dirt win and have more tiling on the rock because of this.

 

Thanks for your answers!
Attached to the post you can find the textures I use in the detail map. The "Pure brown" is the result of the sand texture that is the first layer.

Responding to @buc
the heightNormal texture settings are attached i tried both with the sRGB check and no but nothing changes

 

For closeup tiling it's not possible, but for far distance where we often need larger tiling for rocks to keep them looking like rocks not like grid pattern you can control UV multiplication.

Tessellation sRGB issue is only related to terrain shape (and can happen in linear lighting mode, in gama it's not relevant). I don't know what's your coverage info which still seems to be missing. Your HeightNormal Texture.jpg exposes a lot of distortion introduced in global colormap from perlin noise - is it the artistic effect you aim for? When you come upclose to terrain global colormap is blended with detail layer textures, but where a layer is "painted" is stored in splat texture (RGBA for 4 layers).

 

Hi Tomaszek,

I finally purchased your shader and slowly digging into its logic. I found Two things Which I cannot find solution. Maybe I missed it somewhere.

1) I am using 8 textures, so atlasing is necessary and everything seems correct except one thing - I am using 2k Ground textures and as it created atlases these atlases are also just 2k, instead of 4k. I understand that it cost more, but with color there should not be much compuations as with for example Heights... So Is there any way how to tell rtp, I want this resolution of atlases? I still can reduce them in unity texture settings, when I will see they are too heavy, but result seems worth at least for try. Of course I can do atlases manualy, but it is not much comfortable...

2) I was using ats Colormap ULTRA Terrain shader before RTP. And I am confused with one thing. in ats, there is something like texture mixing - use half sand and half grass and result is grass with sands. in RTP it seems like that these splatmaps just select material with highest value and set just this material. So just sand, because sand has 51% and grass just 49% for example. Which makes some not-good looking edges (well still I have to investigate more blending options and play more with heights probably, because I got good result between sand and rock textures, but others resists my attempts) So my question is, so that RTP cannot mix textures? So I should use hard splatmaps (no blending)?

P.S. adding screen of that non-yet pleasant blending. Also that erorr is before I set all textures to 2k resolution, now they all have the same one.

 

Hi Tom,
I'm sorry if I don't understand some things you're trying to tell me, I'm pretty new with unity.
In my case I haven't a painted terrain, I'm trying to get the variation of texturing based on real ortophoto terrain created with Real World Terrain.
I can't understand how to get the splat_map, I haven't ARGB_map to be inserted in Coverage -> Control Map section.
I saved the Height_map, the Steepness_Map and the Direction_map in Coverage -> Acquire section and tried to insert the Heigh_map into Compose as Source_splat section in each layer.
I get now a Splat_map in Control Maps section, but we still do not.
Where am I wrong with this Splat_map?
Thanks in advance

Lorenzo

 

To have well working terrain upclose you need to describe somehow where each layer detail texture is placed. This is what happens when you go to Unity terrain "brush" tab - you select size and style of brush + which layer you'd like to "paint". Then you can paint it ocver terrain. Of course this is only usable for tweaking, not for painting several square kilometers. I don't know Real World Terrain and if it can deliver splat/coverage texture. You could look around other tools that could do the job. It might be possible to extract coverage info from global color texture (by color similarity - like mapping greens to grass layer, browns to dirt layer + cliffs by steepness to rock layer).

Tom

 

When you attempt to create combined texture in RTP you need to make sure all source textures are of the same size. If your detail textures are 2k atlas will be 4k, but it's probably limited by Unity import settings (max texture size is by default set to 2k).

RTP blends layers with both - splat/coverage info and detail heightmaps. You can dim a bit hardness of blending - there is an option in LOD manager (checkbox) to increase hardness and increase hardness "even more". Uncheck both. It's still heightblended though. RTP in current version 3 can't control hardness more (I plan to give more control in RTP4).

Tom

 

Hi Tom,

Sorry I did not saw, that unity limited one of textures to 1k so thats correct, now it generates even 4k atlases. Thank you.

2) Well that is not what I meant. I meant when we take 1 pixel on splatmaps. In ATS I could do 0.125 value of all 8 colors in both splatmaps and result was a mixture of all detail maps equally drawed. There in RTP it seems it select detail map with highest value and paint just this detail map and blend it with neighbour detail maps. But does not have ability to paint more textures per 1 pixel on splatmaps.

For example we have 1 splatMap and using just 2 Textures (Grass and Sand, others are filled but their values in our splatmap are 0)

If we cover whole terrain with splatmap of single color (0.75 R 0.25G) There will be just grass and no sand at all.
What I wanted to ask is if there is an option how to make this to look that there will be grass with some islands of sand in it. Because I used some mixtures of textures (like rocky grass, mudy grass etc) by these splatmaps. It needs to do more sampling (to always sample all 8 textures and blend them together via your height algorithm) so I understand, that it is not in this shader. Just asking, if I missed something or it is not really there.


If there is nothing like that I will probably try to make it. I also modified my ATS, but what scares me a little is that it is 6000 rows shader script. Huh ATS had just 700 or so and took me some time to understand But I just would like to see result and how much big performance drop it brings.

 

To save your time looking for right place to introduce your tweaks. Open RTP_Base.cginc:

1. Line 1625-1651 - here we determine coverage w/o height blending splat_controlA (+splat_controlB for 8 layers) will hold blending values (vector .xyzw for layers 0-3)
2. Line 1783 - tHA variable we sample combined heightmap
3. Line 1789 - 1841 - here we finalize blending

After that we use some helper coverage vectors as well, but generaly to mix detail layer values we have 2 vectors available - splat_control1.xyzw and splat_control2.xyzw (in case of 8 layers mode).

Tom

 

@ Tom

Thank you for your time saving. Now I see my issue is in part 2 I will show the result if succesful

Edit: There are first results:




P.S. Performance seems same. I removed your "pow" multiplications and replaced it with 4/8 smoothsteps for all color channels. Also added smoothnessBlend value to editor, so now I can determine from smooth to absolutely sharp blending by slider

 

Hi, just checking in, is this feature still in the works? I'm using an intermediary solution in my project at the moment, but I would certainly prefer your excellent work! Thanks!

 

Yes, it is. But hard to say when available as I have to focus on D.R.O.N.E. project at least until we have clear situation about funding for this game.

Tom

 

Hi Tom. I have a strange new Issue with my terrain. It displays fine in the editor if the game doesn't run. As I go into play mode, the whole terrain is pitch black. But only when the camera is set to deferred. If it is set to forward, the terrain renders fine. Also, the problem is exclusive to Windows. On Mac, I don't have the issue.

Thanks! Michel

 

Do you have the script attached on main directional light to setup light direction in deferred (refer to my example scene)?

Tom

 

Yes.

What's odd is that if I add another Directional Light to the scene during runtime, the problem goes away and the terrain renders fine.

 

What's the intensity of your directional light? SHould be above some threshold like 0.01? No intensity directional lights also causes problems.

Tom

 

I found the problem, though I don't know how it makes sense. In the culling mask for the directional light, I had the UI layer off. As soon as I turned it on, it worked fine. Does that make any sense? That's on windows only. On Mac I have UI off in the layer mask and it works...

 

For me - no, it doesn't... But it's great you found the culprit.

 

Hi Tom.

Sorry for asking for help again. I noticed one strange thing. If I use tessalation, it thinks it is on different position for depth render. Making area near surface to be ignored by transparent objects like this water. I tried to change height to 0 or to max and it seems it is not affecting. I modified your asset just on splatting parts. I start touching this part just try to solve this issue, but nothing found yet...

 

The solution is not to be ound in the shader code. In forward lighting Unity uses special shader to render depth&normals. It's realised via replacement shader (download built-in shaders from Unity - it's Internal-DepthNormalsTexture.shader). RTP doesn't have RenderType representation in this shader and default opaque pass is used. In deferred we already have information needed as they are part of G-buffer rendering. You can either try to port RTP tessellation displacement/normals code to Unity depth&normal shader or use deferred.

Tom

 

Hello! Is there a way to reduce scene size? RTP takes ~500 mb. I'm using RTP 3.3h & Unity 2017.2.02f2. Can you share manual or any info where i can read about RTP optimization?

 

These are scene object textures RTP object. Save and reuse textures used (combined textures tab - atlases, combined normals, heights, aux perlin). This is described in my pdf doc.

Tom

 

Hi Tom

I've got a layer on the terrain on my scene with specific settings for brightness, glitter, etc. Now I would like to have a material on a mesh that looks exacly like that one layer, with the glitter etc. I don't need geometry blending, just a material that looks like that one layer. Is this possible?

Thanks so much, RTP is the best!

 

saved everything what i can and it still takes 300+mb in scene (scene without RTP takes only 50mb while it takes 420mb now, btw without saved maps as external assets it took 600+mb). Is it limitation?

All maps, what i saved (i checked, that there is no missed refs in rtp script and button 'save map' are disabled for me due to it is already done):


Btw, maybe it helps: i use 8 layers, no lightmaps and next terrain settings:

 

It seems that RTP stores huge sized textures in scene what cannot be saved as external resource.

 

Without RTP and with

 

Hi Tom,

Hope last time I ask I could not google any answer for my new problem. I was using real time terraforming. Which was done via setHeights. But as your shader with tessalation use that combined texture off HM and NM. Is there anywhere any function to call to update this texture at points or I have to write my own? Just asking to not making work which is already done

Also I have to notify that since last my game build before RTP worked perfectly but with RTP, it causes some problems (interuption for the time game is active) to internet connection. What is weird as nothing there or in my game using any internet... The weird thing is that except RTP nothing changed, but we cannot find what causes this issue... I understand that it sound same impossible to you as to us... Just wanted to notify if anybody had same issue.

Thanks.

 

Depends which feature is critical for the look. It might be that it is not that much RTP (for terrain) specific. There are many add-on shaders included in the package. Simply look around. For glitter - in RTP it's related to snow while in my UBER shaders you can use it as general surface property (like for glittering rocks). If you can't find the right shader in RTP I'd encourage you to get UBEr as well (for RTP users it's available for reduced price). Anyway - RTP has a lot of shaders at your disposal. They match 1 layer, 2 layers or even 4 layers scheme.

Looks like still there are resources stored as scene objects and referenced by RTP. This 22MB texture seems like 2k mipmapped color atlas. I don't see you've got it saved on the list. Still 300MB suggests a lot of data is redundant. Possible scenario for such situation is when you use grouping - if you place your separate terrains into separate transforms they don't share properties nor textures. If you've got 10 separate terrains and each of them has independent setup - all of them store their own reference of settings and textures in aReliefTerrainScriptInstance.globalSettingsHolder (you can easily inspect this object using Visual Studio debugger). Although grouping is sometimes useful (for example if you'd like to use different layer textures on terrains), if you use it w/o being aware resources consumed can be extremely big.

Look for the functionality needed in the code of my editor script that's called when you select it from menu. Its source code is included in the package. Then you can get the function/mechanics behind the action taken after you click "create height&normals texture".
Well, I've never noticed nor being reported about RTP in relation to internet connection. Seems very odd. I don't deal with Unity networking at all...

Tom

 

Hello, Tom.
I use only one terrain.
Do you know what is the reason why color atlasses cannot be referenced (i think it is ok, due to they are referenced to splatMaps of terrain data)?



Thank you.

 

Atlas slots are not filled if you use 4+4 setup (first pass 4 layers + addpass 4 layers). Then, with 1 terrain I've got no faintest idea why your scene with single RTP terrain can possibly take 300MB... As far as I'm aware textures are the only big data structures stored in there that can possibly pump up scene size. Have you tried to save it to another scene in case Unity didn't pruned unused(unreferenced) objects?

 

Tom,
it doesn't help. but i find the solution: completely resetup RTP settings on terrain gameobject (delete it and add again). But now i meet another issue, terrain rendering pipeline is broken if i save combined textures (heightmaps & normal maps).
Thank you!

 

Illustration:

It seems that height is wasted when i save any maps.

 

Tom, solved.



All textures during export should be forced disabled sRGB.

 

height and normals - yes they are linear textures. I remember I fixed this in the very neest version... Glad scene's fixed now when you reset it.

Tom

 

Hey Tom,

I've been using RTP for a while now, and finally wanted to approach adding tesselation to my scene. I have multiple terrains that are re-arranged at runtime and stitched afterwards. So far, everything was working fine.

What I have done now is generating the tesselation map at runtime (referring to the code you use in the editor) and apply it, after the stitching. Sadly, when I do this I'm getting seams in the terrain:
The settings I've been using are:
Normal strength = 1
Substeps (close): 15
Substeps (far): 9
Terrain pixel error: 200

When I'm setting the normal strength to 0, the seams seem to be closing when the camera is close, but they are still visible when the camera is farther away (~50-60 units).

Do you have any hints on how I can make the seams disappear? :-/

Thank you,
Regards,
Patrick

 

I believe you need to take care edges of adjanced normalmaps perfectly match. The same for heights themselves. The first is most important when you displace details or use bicubic sampling. The other for obvious reason to have the same positions of stitched points on both terrains.

Tom

 

Hey Tom,

I believe the heights of the terrains match rather good - else the stitching (without tesselation afterwards) would not work as good.
I've been using both, displaced detail and bicubic sampling though. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I wouldn't need the bicubic sampling anyway, if the stitching already ensured smooth curves at the edges, right?

Regarding the normalmaps, is there an easy way to ensure those are at the same height? I've never done normal map manipulation before...

Edit: Disabling one or the other does not seem to help, but disabling both did the trick for now. Still interested in using displaced detail maps, though!

 

Global normalmap (in tessellation scenario it's encoded in 2 components of the height&normals texture) directions are used for detail displacement. Textures have set wraping to clamp but it doesn't guarantee your adjanced terrain ednges match. To be sure of that - let's consider an example where you have 2 terrains stiched sideways (right side of terrain A is stiched with left side of terrain B). You need to take care that rightmost column of pixels in texture for terrain A is exactly the same as leftmost column of pixels for terrain B.

Tom

 

Thanks Tom, I'll see what I can make out of it!

Another question, how can I apply the tessellation map in code? Is it enough to assign the map to the NormalGlobal property?

 

Set it in reliefTerrain script instance and call reliefTerrain.globalSettingsHolder.RefreshAll(); This moves texture reference stored in script to material used for rendering.

 

Hey Tom.

I'm looking to implement dynamic footprints on an RTP terrain. I'm thinking simple Mesh Prefabs could do it. Any special shader recommendation in RTP that could give the footprints some depth or another RTP-specific smart way to do it? Or would UBER shaders give me the ability to add depth to the foot imprints?