Assets RockStudio 3 - Procedural Rock Generator

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I am here to present the re-release of my asset RockStudio. I decided to make a new thread for this update
since the code-base was entirely rewritten from the ground up and the asset is in many ways 'new'. This update has been a long time coming and I hope you like it. There are no new big features compared to older versions, but now that the code is no longer one big mess, it will be easier to add features in the future and I do have things planned.

I'm planning on publishing this update in a few days hopefully. There will be no price increase, this is a free update. You can visit the current store page here. https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/modeling/rockstudio-low-poly-rock-generator-87718

What is RockStudio?
RockStudio is a procedural rock generation tool. It can generate low poly rocks and crystals for you in any shape imagineable. The generated rocks are automatically UV-mapped so you can put any material on them that you want.

Why would I need RockStudio?
You can use RockStudio to rapidly create good-looking rock geometry. You can use it to create more interesting white-boxing levels but you can also use it in any low-poly or stylized game. Below you will find some images of beautiful scenes created with RockStudio.

- scene made with RockStudio and Low Poly Water GPU -​

Rock Generation Workflow
Rock generation starts with one of the 4 base types. These are cubic, boulder, crystal or custom. You get several generation settings to play with to allow you to create as much rock types as possible. For example you can choose the rock dimensions, shape, resolution, materials,... When placing a rock in your scene, you have use a handy placing gizmo. You can see this placement tool in the 'UX' section below. It's as easy as point-and-click.

- rocks with high, medium and low resolution respectively -


Here is a video that shows the workflow in RockStudio 3.

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Crystals
In RockStudio you can create several crystal types based on the default 'crystal' type. I've made sure that you can create several crystals based on lattice systems such as octahedral, hexagonal, tetragonal etc.

- several crystals made with RockStudio -
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Materials
All the rocks are automatically UV-mapped. You can add whatever materials you want to them. The tool includes a 'material palette' tool which allows you to create a palette of 4 materials, and when placing rocks the tool will randomly pick one of those 4 materials and assign it to the rocks. That way you can achieve some nice variation.

- the material palette in action -​

Saving and Exporting
You can save the generated rocks in your scene or as an asset in your project folder. You get several useful options with this to add rigidbodies or colliders automatically and you also have the option to combine several rocks into one mesh.

Mesh Combiner
RockStudio comes with several extra tools that aim to improve your workflow. This includes a mesh combiner that will preserve the multiple materials of your rocks.

- from left to right: mesh collider not combined, box collider not combined, mesh collider combined and box collider combined -
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Sculpting Mode
The tool comes with a sculpting mode. In this mode, you drag handles to create a shape that you'd like. Then you can generate a rock that will have that shape.

- a rock structure generated with the sculpting tool -
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UX
I've done a lot of work on making this tool as easy as possible to use and have spent a lot of time on polishing it as much as possible. The UI is clean but still provides all the information that you need.

- the main UI of RockStudio -
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Prefab Painter
In previous versions of this tool, there was a prefab painter included. I've made this prefab painter open source a while ago, and that's why I've decided to not include it in this version. I wanted the tool to focus on the rock generation itself. If you want to use this prefab painter you can get it here on github. https://github.com/AlexanderAmeye/prefab-painter

Documentation and Roadmap
I'm working on an online documentation that will be done soon (before the release). I will also share a roadmap so you can see what features to expect.

If you have questions or comments, please do let me know below.

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This looks like a great tool, however I think a video of the tool in action (especially on the asset store) would be very helpful from a marketing point of view.

 

Will post a video when it gets published, good idea!

 

Here is a video example of the workflow in RockStudio 3.

 

Nice. It would be helpful for the viewers to also see some titles explaining briefly what you're doing in each section of the flow. E.g. Assigning Materials, Creating random stones, Exporting, etc. (I'm sure you can come with better titles than me )

 

Yep! I will edit a video that's kind of a 'tutorial', this was just a quick screengrab to show you how simple the workflow is.

 

Another video showing some level design. A tutorial video will come but this is just a showcase of the tool. Hoping to push the update next weekend.

 

The update is live on the store. https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/modeling/rockstudio-87718



I am still working on the documentation files but they should be live soon here.

https://alexanderameye.github.io/rockstudio/

 

Awesome! I am heading over to the asset store to check it out.

 

Great to hear. If you need any assistance or have any questions do not hesitate to email me at alexanderameye@gmail.com.

I'm hoping to get the documentation done soon.

 

wheni import it i get this error Assets\Ameye\RockStudio\Scripts\RockStudio\Handle.cs(4,14): error CS0101: The namespace '<global namespace>' already contains a definition for 'Handle'

 

Do you already have another script in your project called 'Handle'?

 

Well apparently you are not alone in bad manners of choosing global names. I guess some other asset uses the same name. Maybe it would be safe in general to use something like "rockstudio3_handle" for your stuff to be more or less safe and not run into issues with using generic names like "handle" only ... when i find the other "handle" perpetrator ill inform that dev too... in the general world of 1001 asset packs from the unity store i assume some clearer name handling is needed to avoid such clashes.

If u could fix it on your side to have exclusive names for all your scripts that would be great. I'll contact the other dev when i find him.
thnx alex and keep up the great tool work!

 

This looks pretty sweet man, just grabbed this and am going to play around with it later. : D

 

I will do exactly that! 'Handle' is too generic of a name and I will fix it. Will push an update later today.

 

Thank you for the support. I appreciate it! If you need any assistance, do let me know. You can always email me at alexanderameye@gmail.com.

 

Is the asset itself not namespaced? If it is, it should not be an issue if something ends up having the same name.

 

All the scripts were namespaced except the 2 handle scripts. Added a namespace to them. Update should be live soon and the issue should be fixed.

 

@macish update was just approved. Let me know if you're still experiencing the issue!

 

Hey there Amey, I am loving the asset, but I seem to be running into a problem; whenever I try and export one of the rocks (to somewhere inside my project) I get an empty mesh. If I try to export somewhere outside my project, ie the desktop, no file is even created.

 

Thank your for purchasing the asset, I appreciate a lot.

I imported RockStudio into a new project and generated a rock.



I then loaded in the generated rock into the 'Object' slot and pressed 'Export'.



I get the rock in my project folder as it should. And I can place it in my scene and it shows up as expected.

So I can't really seem to reproduce the issue... Do you get no exported object at all, or an object without a mesh? Does it say 'Mesh exported.' in the console window?

Feel free to email me at alexanderameye@gmail.com for more assistance. Maybe some screenshots could be helpful too? Let's figure this out!

Regards,

Alex

 

Hey there Amey, thank you for getting back to me.
I tried using the asset in a fresh new project to make sure it wasn't just some arbitrary setting in my current project causing this. But the behaviour is still the same, sadly.

I do get some warnings in the console.




And the mesh exported log does indeed appear:


The exported objects (inside my project) end up looking like this:

The object does exist, but there's just no mesh.
It seems this even happens if I try to drag a rock from the scene into the project explorer to make a prefab instead of an fbx.

 

I can't seem to find much about the error online either. Could you let me know what version of Unity you are using?

I am testing on 2018.3.1, could you let me know if you get the issue on that version as well?

Also, does the rock have a standard shader on it, so not a shader for the new rendering pipelines?

Regards,

Alex

 

Hello,

I'm looking to dynamically create a field of meteors in my game. Can these generated rocks have craters in them, or are they strictly convex shapes? Also, can the rocks be generated on-the-fly at runtime? If so, could you share a quick code example for how that would be done?

 

Hello! I'm exploring some options to add mesh denting in the future but at the moment this is not supported.

For the run time-generation, yes this should be possible however I advise you to not do this. It would be far better performance-wise to generate a certain amount of rocks (10 maybe), turn them into prefabs and then spawn them with varying position, rotation and scale. You would get the same effect of a meteor field without having a performance drop.

 

There is now a basic documentation available. It is still a work in progress and I will improve it some more with pictures in the future.

https://alexanderameye.github.io/rockstudio/

 

Is there an API ? Can i call it to generate myself ?

 

Yes you can! In the RockStudio namespace there is a 'CreateRock' method. It takes a list of vertices, a position, and some more parameters.



I hope this answers your question. I will be revisiting the asset in January for an update.

Alex