Relief Terrain Pack (RTP) v3 on AssetStore

Snow presence on the terrain has nothing to do with shadows. They should just be placed. Are they visible when we don't have snow on the same terrain surface ?

ATB, Tom

P.S. with water features enabled when you set water flow speed to zero you can even get refractive ice under snow effect

 

Tom,

Since the release of U5 Beta 15, any updates on fixing the migration issues between U4 to U5.

 

Hi Tom,
Can you help me a little bit? I have an annoying problem that RTP does not show height extrusion. I open my old scene and it's OK, but the new scene terrain doesn't show up.


(new scene)

I tried copying my old terrain and even RTP Lod manager to the new scene but It's strange that this terrain also turned flat, and the old scene's terrain turns into an odd one with weird extrusion:

(old scene become weird)


I tried parallax shader but it's still OK. I don't know why RTP doesn't work
(At first it even didn't show anything except terrain color, just after I delete Triplanar Terrain the texture came back without extrusion).
Thank you for reading this

 

Not yet.

your old scene looks "odd" but this is to be expected when using PM shading mode (Parallax mapping). Lack of extrusion might be caused by many reasons like:
1. zeroed global coloromap alpha channel
2. shading in SIMPLE mode (instead of PM or POM)
3. extrusion height slider per layer turned up
4. detail heightmaps not properly processed (they might not use alpha channel) - check in combined textures tab - heightmaps - they should look like layer 1-4 heightmaps are placed on RGBA channels of combined heightmap.
4. extremely big triangles of underlying terrain

maybe there are some more options, but above are first you should check.

Tom

 

Hi Tom,
Thank you for your fast reply
The scene looks "odd" happened several times ago but not because of PM (I use POM all the time) I still dont know while, however sometimes it works again so I'll still try to figure out.
Thank you for solving my problem, I notice that when I go extremely near the terrain height show up so I decreased terrain size and everything is fine

 

Hello Tom
I'm pretty new to RTP
I have a question about how to best reuse terrain assets like detail textures across scenes. I tried the Presets function of RTP. I then applied the saved preset to a new terrain. I had to manually add 8 Textures in Unity Terrain first, then I could load the preset. The textures were loaded correctly. On the other Hand, the Tile Size in Main Settings was wrong.
So i guess certain things are not saved?

- Do you have a better workflow to work with multiple scenes while using the same terrain assets?
- Also, I would like to dynamically replace each Detail Texture with another Version of that Texture. In basic Unity i would just change the Material at Runtime. Is something like this possible at all for the Textures in RTP?

Any pointers would be appreciated. Cheers. Mirts

 

There is no better way than using presets. If something is not set - I'll need to look inside. It might something to do with terrain size (different across scenes). For dynamic replacement - it's rather straightforward when not using atlases (4 layers mode w/o atlas set explicitly in LOD manager). But - you'll need to combine normalmaps and heightmaps manually then. You might look how it's done on RTP editor side (there are functions in code like CombineNormals or CombineHeights)

ATB, Tom

 

Did that, (used U4 terrain material with default terrain shader) performance is very high as expected (only 50 shader.setpass calls). Turned on RTP shader again, issue is still there. Even tried removing the "pass to render object as a shadow caster" bit from the ReliefTerrain-FirstPass shader, issue is still there. "Other" is a profiler bug, comes from RenderTexture.SetActive.

I've already spent a good day or so trying to debug this, at the moment it's completely unusable, and I'm not going to waste another week or so debugging it. I've tried out many other terrain shaders in my setup before - none of them have had this problem.

Edit: PMed.

 

Hi. It's your choice. You can post me via forum private message. If you're still interested the best would be probably Skype screenshare so I can see whats going on at your machine.

ATB, Tom

 

Hi Tom,

Does light-mapping and/or ambient emissive mapping work with the standalone triplanar shader? I can't get either one of them working with my custom mesh terrain.

Light maps simply don't display and the ambient emmisive maps seem to just use the first pixel to overlay onto the mesh.

(edit: both work on the normal unity terrain)

Thanks!
Collin

 

Hi, Unity lightmaps relies on uv2 set which might be not present on your mesh. Can you lightmap this using another shader ? Global ambient emissive need to have proper bounds set (they uses vertex position on XZ plane and you need to define bounds that will map certain world space XZ plane into 0..1 x 0..1 rectangle). I believe it can be done. Maybe I overlooked something (you need to define the bounds uncommenting material props that are meant for this).

Tom

 

My mesh does have a uv2 set and lightmapping display's when I switch to the default diffuse shader. The good news is I got the ambient emission maps working! I forgot to add the script to setup the bounding box. So i'll probably just use it instead of lightmapping. Guessing this will give me a performance boost over regular lightmapping?

BTW, thanks for the lightmapping video, its was very helpful!

 

Glad to hear - about the performance - it depends on which kind of Unity lightmaps you'd like to use. RTP's GAE maps isn't much expensive though. The thing I know is I will skip this functionality in further updates as U5 GI and new lightmapping can provide us with even better solutions.

ATB, Tom

 

Although understandably I couldn't really get RTP running at vr-standard speeds (95+ fps all the time) at the standards i'd be using RTP specifically for (all the bells and whistles) on webgl, it's definitely still a regular in the bag and it will come up definitely in desktop builds

However some nice looking results were gotten while playing with an old terrain and more experience with RTP and trying to get some strange non-realistic-but-kinda-realistic results, here's a capture

 

Thanks for sharing

 

Hi

How do i actually paint 8 layer splat maps onto the arbitrary mesh?

Thanks

 

You need to provide RTP with 2 RGBA splat textures then. Either prepared in 3rd party software or Unity terrain - then you can save splat textures in RTP (used on terrain) and reuse them on mesh. You can also prepare coverage using RTP's built in tool that can make it out of grayscale masks (they can be produced by RTP itself - steepness for example or tools like WorldMachine). RTP does not copy Unity terrain functionality like hand painting coverage textures.

Tom

 

Hi Tom,

I've noticed that sometimes when I change some settings in my Relief Terrain script that the settings don't save when I go into runtime. Am I doing something wrong? I save my project, refresh my terrain textures and recompile many times, but whatever values I change don't seem to save during runtime, and revert back to what they were before. I never used to have this issue, I just started noticing it recently. Any advice?

Thanks,
Matthew

 

You would need to give me exact scenario to reproduce the issue on my side so I can inspect the problem.

ATB, Tom

 

Hi Tom I'm getting

"RTP Warning
Interfering terrain replacement shader found in your project...."

When I click Show me

it shows me shader Nature/Terrain/Diffuse

What where is that and how do I get rid of it please?

Roy

 

Hi Tom thanks for reply. And sorry for keep asking, hopefully you can help me through. I've got the splat maps from substance already and i've created the sourcesplat (RGBA 8 bit bitmap) from world machine. But it still not showing the splats applied onto the mesh. And when i've clicked the Render Control maps from source splats and it gave me error(see the last screenshot). The mesh that i'm currently working on to test this RTP is the big mountain on the background ( can see it inside red box rectangle shown in unity hierarchy ) and it has LOD manager in the scene as well

I've attached few screenshots what i've done with the setting

 

Just an update, i just used a grayscale sourcesplat images (which need size to be 1024) and when i clicked Render Control maps from source splats, it works and created a control map, and shown it in the material preview but textures still not applied and showed in the object in the scene.

On hand painting note coverage, would it works if i just use T4M for this and use the control map later on for RTP?
When you said RTP can create steepness/grayscale masks, is it works on terrain only?

 

i've managed to make the splat map works by creating new scene with just one mesh.
Could you explain how i should setup the groups.
In my case i have few custom meshes area and each of mesh are broken into smaller pieces (for occlusion culling)
For example:
TerrainMeshA01, TerrainMeshA02, TerrainMeshA03 , etc up to 9 mesh
TerrainMeshB01, TerrainMeshB02, etc up to 6 mesh
TerrainMeshC01, etc up to 5 mesh
up to TerrainMeshH

Do i apply ReliefTerrain script to each mesh ? And each group has to have a parent empty gameobject?

Also i can't seem to have the parallax mapping works. I set the LOD to POM and was trying to increase/decrease the extrude height value but not showing any change.

 

In U4.6 you can simply ignore this. I'll fix in next update.

 

With the exception thrown by RTP it might have soemthing to do with texture size or format, but good to hear you've got it working now. As for - T4M - you can use any tool that can produce normalized splat (control) textures that are made the same way as terrain uses it.
Aquiring steepness mask works for terrain only.

I'm not sure if grouping works fine with meshes but it should. To use independent setup for each group you understand it right - you need to place group terrains into separate parents (no matter what's the parrent - empty object or whatever - it just need to be separate transform/gameobject). For parallax not working you need to check a few things (that are all described in my pdf):

1. global colormap shouldn't have black alpha channel
2. you've got right detail heightmaps (check this in combined textures / heigthmaps - heightmaps from layers 1-4 should be placed on channels RGBA respectively)
3. extrude reduction feature is not used (it's not by default unless you selected this in LOD manager)
4. triangles on your mesh shouldn't be too big or you'll have bad distortions on parallax.

Tom

 

Hello, I just bought RTP not long ago. What additional goodies are you using in the island showcase video?

Thank you,
All the best.

 

While I can't speak for the talented work behind the island demo, i can assure you that you don't really need anything whatsoever to make RTP terrain look incredible (Always a bit of a special moment when you've been tweaking away then you look at the ground as it's blending texture and height between detail textures and looks near enough photorealistic in both shading, subtlety and definition) short of what you're given.

Two things I do recommend to any erstwhile terrain creators however are Worldmachine, which is absolutely great for getting both your terrain generated and just as importantly, your coverage maps, and a good library of textures to get the most out of RTP's features, especially if you take the time to get a good understanding of its PBR implementation. You can go to cgtextures.com and get an app like pixplant and generate all kinds of textures but I personally recommend gametextures.com, their subscriptions are extremely good value, imo, their textures involve a full set of any map i'd consider needing for the vast majority of shaders (diffuse, normal, height, spec, gloss etc) and they have PBR-specific sets for most too. As RTP is continualy creating different blends of textures across surfaces you tend to get a lot of mileage out of your textures too

I'm subscribed to the preorder deal on Quixels Megatextures library but it's been 'coming soon' for ages and last i checked it hadnt changhed. Might be worth looking at when launched though

Edit: Ooop, i thought I better add - if your terrain needs start to grow and you need real world terrain elevation and satellite imagery, World Composer is great, and Terrain Composer, by the same author, is amazing for generating and managing large numbers of terrains - these tools work great with RTP and help setting up large numbers of RTP terrains quite easy

 

Ok, i'm gonna try the grouping later. Seems like number 4 was the culprit and distant start value was too small as well. So i had to zoom in really close to get the parallax pop up.
Thanks Tomas

 

What do i need to change to get rid of this annoying message that pops up all the time so i don't have to wait for the update?

 

WorldMachine
terrain composer
Photoshop
AFS
gametextures.com as source for textures with hand tweaked versions
ocean stuff models (remodelled by Peter, but we still used fish textures)
big env pack bushes, palms from a Man. K4 package
custom skybox shader (with 2 layers for 2 states - sun on the sky and behind the cloud)
water4 shader - heavily tweaked to get nice caustics and reflections/foam
a bunch of custom shaders (translucency for flags)
EasyRoads (for elevating paths)
there are probably many more but I can't remember...

ATB, Tom

 

Waiting for next RTP update . Seriously - you can just serch in files (current project) in mono for "don't bother" phrase in scripts and just commnet this part out. In U4.6 and U5 betas RTP reports hidden/built in shaders that are not actually interefering ones.

Tom

 

Hello, Tom.
Can you explain technique of cross-pass heigh blending?

If it is certainly not top secret

 

In addpass I'm taking splat texture (RGBA - layers 0-3) coverage map and combined heightmap there. This way I'm computing alpha (decal) blend in addpass vs first pass, the same way as I would do it in 8 layers mode. Nothing that much of rocket science behind . As you see this costs 2 additional textures to be used in AddPass though.

Tom

 

Thx! Im on the right way.

 

Hi Tom
I'm having issue with one of the mesh in the group not showing textures setting properly. I copied paste the Relief terrain script on other meshes and refresh all, and work for others except this one mesh. Both of meshes selected shown in the hierarchy are in same group/parent. Can see the screenshot below

 

Hey Tom I have been using RTP for awhile now and have to say that it is such a great asset. I am having an issue that I hope you can help resolve. I recently started using with Lux and had no problems doing so. But I updated to Unity 4.6 today and am getting a ton of errors. Most of them begin with "Maximum number (64) of shader keywords exceeded". Is this a common error for my situation? Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

The problem might be with copying script. Try to remove RTP script from problematic group member, then attach it again. Setup of all params per objhect is definitely tedious. That's why you can use preset functionality to copy/paste RTP params from one object to another (the objects must be compatible - mesh vs mesh or terrain vs terrain and using the same number of layers).

RTP does not use that many keywords (in fact I use maxium 5). I think Lux uses more for its options. I got the same error in U5 beta (and probably U4.6 if I would try to do the same). When messing up with shaders keywords pool is probably not properly managed by Unity causing this limit error. But I also found restarting Unity helped me.

Tom

 

Hi Tom,

do you have any hints what could be the reason for the rectangular artifact in the attatched screenshot?



I had set up my scene with one directional light first and tweaked all RTP settings to my taste, then I added the first additional spotlight and the artifact appeared. It only shows on the terrain with RTP shader and all meshes with the Geom Blend shader, all other shaders (mostly Marmoset IBL shaders) in my scene look correct.
I played with all the settings that came into my mind (fog, ambient light, shadows etc.) but nothing changed regarding the problem. The only change to it happened when I set the Pixel Light Count to 0 in the render settings, then the whole patch of terrain in the light's influence zone got lit up.
I'm using RTP v3.1g on Unity v4.6.1p1 FREE in DX11 mode, if you have no clue and need my RTP LOD settings or any other info please let me know.

Heiko

 

Your directional light should be off nor of intensity less than 0.01. You should uncheck "no forward add" option in LOD manager if you plan to use spotlights in the scene (the problem is related to forward rendering path only).

ATB, Tom

 

That's already the case, the directional light is never off nor drops below 0.2 intensity, and the no forward add option was not checked as well. The artifact is even visible at bright daylight in the scene (but less so of course). Mhm, so is my only alternative option is to have light projectors then?
I was planning to have a couple of spots and point lights for lamps and (dynamic) fire in my scene, not sure what the alternative could be if that artifact isn't going away in the forward rendering path. :/

 

Thank you,
all the best.

 

I'm gonna try this on my example scene. What's your RTP setup ? How many layers do you use ? I believe I triple checked this before (spot lights on the terrain) and basically it works. Can you try this the same scenario on non RTP terrain ? Maybe there is something wrong with terrain engine and light culling itself (out of RTP scope though) ? If your lamps are static I guess it might be best to lightmap them (preferably you could bake it using RTP's global ambient emissive map - look at my lightmapping videos on YT).

ATB, Tom

P.S. A quick thought - could you try this w/o fog (disable in LOD manager) ? It looks like there is something that adds on whole terrain submesh patch. Presumably - in 4+4 setup (in addpass). You can also try to check if this is problem of RTP using 4 layers only.

 

I checked your quick thoughts first, no luck though. Disabling fog and switching to 4layer mode brought nothing different. You're right with the add on the terrain submesh, and moreover, if you move the cam around the light in a circle, it also behaves a bit like a cam oriented billboard - or a halo - that is cut at imaginary borders (presumably the submesh borders). It's almost as if a stencil is used somewhere, which brought me to the thought that it could have to do with the latest addition to Unity Free in 4.6.1 - the stencil buffer access. But I don't really think that anywhere in RTP a stencil buffer is used, nor in the Unity lighting.

What I did next was to make a duplicate of the whole scene and remove the RTP script and material from the terrain. Voila, the effect on the terrain is gone and only visible on the mesh with the geom blend shader now. So I don't think it has to do with terrain exclusively.


Here are all my current settings (the last one is the directional light for reference):



As I'm having a dynamic day/night cycle (using Time of Day and Marmoset IBL skyboxes heavily for mood) and all RTP texture slots are full as well, lightmapping and global ambient emissive are not an option (yet) unfortunately. But I just got an asset that optimizes (aka lowers) the light/shadow projector impact, if I use it sparingly (and it really works, have to test it more), maybe that would be a way to go as well for now.
I'd love to use Pro features so much, but my current situation unfortunately makes that impossible for now and for a long time to come.

 

Yea after a restart this eventually went away and all was going well between Lux, RTP and 4.6. After a few days now I have an annoying warning popping up everytime I select a terrain in the editor or when I press play. "RTP Warning Interfering terrain replacement shader found in your project!" I select show me option and it says Nature/Terrain/Diffuse. I looked for this shader but I cannot find it! If I open it in mono it is called Compiled-FirstPass-. Any idea how to fix this?

 

Found it! My Ambient correction setting under the Main tab in the Shading color adjustments section was maxed out (255 all the way), don't know why, but after sliding that down the rectangle disappeared.

Another question: Is there a global slider to modify the IBL diffuse exposure for all layers at once (like a multiplier) that I just can't find? As I'm working with the Camera exposure value of the Marmoset Skies during day and night changes, it would be quite handy to change the terrain layer exposure from script as easy as well.

Thanks for your time!

 

Annoying, yes, but it's harmless. Will be fixed in RTP3.2

Nice found ! Indeed I should handle ambient correction better way in shader, but it's meant to be "correctstion" rather than tweaking terrain that hard. If you need it brighter you could use RTP/Settings/Main - layer brightness slider maybe ?

ATB, Tom

 

Thanks Tom. Looking forward to the update. RTP is invaluable to my project.

 

Hey,
I am trying to set the global wetness with a script, but it doesn't seem to update the shader.
It updates the global wetness value but no wetness appears on the terrain. It only updates it when I pause the editor or click on anything apart from the game view and go back in to the game.

I am using this line to update the settings:
reliefTerrainScript.globalSettingsHolder.Refresh();

Any help would be appreciated.

 

it seems that RefreshAll() function is more suitable for this - but RefreshAll() is a bit expensive. So if you tweak just one parameter, I guess doing it manually is a lot better: The param in shader is named:

Code (csharp):

1.  
2. TERRAIN_GlobalWetness
3.  

So - depending on where do you use RTP shader you might do it globally:

Code (csharp):

1.  
2. Shader.SetGlobalFloat("TERRAIN_GlobalWetness", TERRAIN_GlobalWetness);
3.  

or

Code (csharp):

1.  
2. materialInstance.SetFloat("TERRAIN_GlobalWetness", TERRAIN_GlobalWetness);  
3.  

where materialInstance is either your material on mesh or materialTemplate on terrain you'd like to modify.

ATB, Tom

 

Thanks, Tom.
It's working now.