RTP - Relief Terrain Pack v. 2 - features tour

Got no idea Build is web player or standalone ? In webplayer we could have some differences in rendering pipeline as UT updates webplayers constantly. Looks like kind of bug to me (however invoked by RTP, but hard to tell anything as this is not present in editor). Could you give me more specs ? You could try different settings like shadows on/off, render path, RTP shader configuration (4/8 layers, features used) and so on. Maybe we could find when it happens.

Tom

 

Building a stand alone EXE, running on very high end PC.

Using 8 layers, compiled for DX9. Using NM, POM, colormap overlay, distance based normal map.

I'll continue more tests on our side.

 

I am also getting these artifacts in Unity4 on an iMac with a NVIDIA GeForce 9400 256 MB. I can fix it with the Forward rendering and what not, so not a major issue. I just wanted to mention incase it was supposed to be fixed in the latest version.

Awesome tool btw!

**EDIT** Will this work on mobile? Not expecting the shader to work but will it fallback on a standard shader? I am noticing errors in the editor but they could be unrelated.

-Dane

 

Dane,

Look at the bottom of first page of this thread. There is explanation of issue on openGL. If you need geometry blend working well in deferred yo0u'll need to uncomment "Offset" directives in all my shaders (and base cg file)

ATB, Tom

 

I'm using this shader on my project and I'm impressed how it's easy to use it.
I have some screenshots in my post : http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/174372-work-in-progress-new-level-Scardeep

 

botumys - you're living proof of my concepts and this is what happens when right tool is in hands of right artist ! Your screenshots are wonderful.

ATB, Tom

P.S. would you mind dropping a line in your thread about which tool you're using for terrain modelling (and how wonderful it is ), would be much appreciated on this side...

 

It's already stipulated in the first post

 

I tried switching to Forward rendering. This fixes the "flashing" issue I was seeing on the mountains. But it messes up the the terrain near the camera. Any ideas?

http://blossom.friendlysoftware.com/~eric/RTP-forward-rendering.jpg

 

Hi foosart - I've already saw this before . It's Unity rendering bug when we use combination of fog / skybox / postprocess FXes. This is caused by illegal texcoord number (texture interpolarof used) by shader (due to Unity's surface shader compiler work). I'm also dissapointed that rendering pipeline in editor and standalone build differs...

BTW - how many layer do you use ? If <=8, maybe try to use 8 layer option (uncheck 4 layers in RTP lod manager) and back to deferred.

P.S. As you're at high stage of your game development, we could even think about try to solve it "manually" (I could try to find a menthod to force the shader to work with possibility of compromising some features used that needs additional texture interpolator inside badly compiled shader).

 

Thank you based tomaszek, you are truly divine.

 

Hi Tom,

Yes, we are in the final stages. This "flashing" issue is one of the last bugs we need to fix before releasing our title.
I am using 8 layers, with the "4 layers per pass" option un-checked, with deffered lighting. This is the setup that causes the "flashing".

When I switch to forward, the flashing goes away, but then the foreground textures get messed up.

Neither of these errros occur in the editor, only in the stand-alone EXE.

We would sincerely appreciate any help you can provide.

 

I'm quite happy with your opinion (but reserve word "divine" to the only Person who deserve it - God).

Tom

 

@foosart, contact me PM as we'll probably need more steps to solve the problem.

At this moment 2 questions:
Are you using fog ?
Are you using U3.5 or U4 ?

Preferably you could provide me with one (problematic) scene with only terrain, lights, skybox, main camera which has any postprocess effects (that could also cause the problem). Then I'd be able to inspect the exact setup you're using to find the way we could fix it.

Tom

 

@ Tomaszek

Yes we are using Fog. We are using Unity 3.5.
I will PM you about sending you a sample scene.

 

The problem is caused by fog. Once I saw in webplayer (that's Unity4 featured) the problem isn't present, so I guess kind of bug has been fixed there. Maybe you could try to built it in U4 ? If this is not an option I might attempt removing one texture interpolator in shader, but probably at cost of removing a feature.

Tom

 

Actually fog was not the problem. We tried disabling it and the problem remained.

We narrowed it down to one of our props that includes a fire particle effect. After making some adjustments to the particles, the bug is gone.

 

Superb !

I had this problem in forward (U3.5) when using skybox + fog + shadows, so I thought fog might be a solution (as you can't resign from shadows or skybox), but I'm glad you found it (sorry - it's not fault of RTP but Unity shader compiler which sometimes uses bad texcoord )

Best Regards, Tom

 

Thanks again for all of your support Tom. Time to nail down a few remaining game bugs and we will be shipping 3 titles!

 

I have an issue that only presents itself when you get close to the texture. It looks fine far away, but as you get closer the texture darkens. Included in this post are 3 images. One of the settings for the texture, one from far away, and one from close up.
Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

Check your bumpmaps are marked "normal map" in their import settings ? If not - change and put then again in RTP after clearing bumpmap slot in layer settings.

Tom

 

Thanks for the heads up Tom
I feel real silly right about now
It was exactly what you said
Simple fix and all is well in the world again
Thanks for the GREAT asset and support

 

Hi!

Just intrested is possible to use some features for mobile - Android last GPUS? )

 

For last GPUs - I guess so (but not 100% sure). Incoming RTP2.5 is very "performance care" oriented, so you could compile shaders with small set of features, use 4 layers and shader should work. I'm not sure if Unity built-in terrain system (dynamic mesh build) is fast enough for mobile CPUs, but when you would use my shaders on prepared arbitrary mesh it might work.

Tom

 

This may have already been asked, but are you using your own meshes? Or are you using heightmaps exported from worldbuilder? If they are custom meshes, how are trees and grasses handled? Thanks.

 

You can use my shaders on own meshes, but RTP doesn't handle additional objects like trees or grass. It focuses on terrain surface.

Tom

 

looks cool but we need a video demostrating the process of using your terrain asset , becuase not all people are programmers they are artist and is difficult to understand how to use split map or splat maps wherever , poor documentation i can say no tutorials i camnot see any in video , you take a lot of time doing this but becuase you are too technique and programmer loose the point there , we people need to see how is done , not only reading the boxes you say in the inspector , also you will sell more if you do that.

As this asset is not made simple becuase has tons of cool things you need to explain better and what better than a video tutorial

Well is not particulary for me but there is people that needs video tutorial for tat but wherever do as you want is a suggesiton.

 

smiljan66 - very true !

RTP3 has much more clear, userfriendly interface. Docs will be much better andI'll definitely make videos (with assistance of 3D artist which can describe things from his point of view as he knows very well my newest release), but please, give me time to finish the product

ATB, Tom

 

When do you plan to release RTP3?

 

Oh man, it was July when I was promising... We're still working on demoscene with Peter, but it's not that far. Still docs are hard work to do, I've got only 4-5 pages done while it will be probably 20-30 in the end (still fixing some errors and testing here). And videos. Before I make them I won't release, because it was mistake that I don't like to repeat - releasing something without strong demo / docs here. I need much stronger screenshots, too for AssetStore staff to not ignore my product like before (1 day featured after a few users asked in my name for this).

Tom

 

Hi Tom!, buying this version I can upgrade to RTP3?

 

Yes, moreover - you'll save $15 (RTP3 will be $65). One might treat it as presale offer.

Tom

 

I couldn't agree more. Where is the documentation?? This plugin offers so many features, you could easily write a 50 pages manual or more about it. How could anyone other than a person with a solid tech background truly understand all these controls? Testing 100 sliders and checkboxes by trial and error? If this is your target audience exclusively, fine, but I doubt it. Frankly, I get nothing to work and I don't even know where to begin asking. With a $50 asset one can expect a thorough documentation and ideally a video tutorial or two. You should also spend some time to explain what exactely PM, POM and triplanar etc. is. Telling people to just look at the examples and saying that 95% of the people don't read the docs anyway is truly a bad joke. Sorry to speak bluntly.
Now I have to wait months for RTP3 and then pay another $50 or $65? Seriously, that s**ks. You should at least update your RTP2 docs for free.

Based on the demos, this plugin looks great and you certainly put an awful lot of effort into the development. My respect for that, in particular because Unity terrain capabilites are far from AAA and you did what the Unity dev team should have done a long time ago. But it's beyond my comprehension why you released this asset without a decent documentation.

Unity's asset quality control team also failed miserably here...

 

First, RTP3 is free update for RTP2 users. That's my policy. Second, believe me - it's very hard to hold even decent level of product quality (not to mention AAA level I'd like to achieve) and the same time make docs, videos, demoscenes, etc. - all not being 3d artist. RTP2 has only basic documentation, I 100% agree, but explaining difference between PM and POM in such detail is out of scope of docs. Anyway - I'll do it. The second reason we don't have docs yet is I put all my efforts into making RTP3 and making docs for RTP2 while new version is on the way does not make any sense. That's why I delay with RTP3. I must be sure that demoscene is OK, product work OK and I have docs which are under construction. Please, be more at least a little bit more forgiving for guy who tries to give you AAA level almost alone for price that in the end turns out to be working almost "pro publico bono" for him. Be sure that situation with RTP3 will be different as Peter (demo scene artist) promised to help me doing some tutorials.

Tom

 

As another "lone ranger" striving for "insane AAA quality in everything", Tom I truly appreciate your hard work and relentness focus and attention to detail in this project. If that means that we users need to spend some more time hands-on experimenting to learn the product (ultimately that's what always happens anyway, even with more in-depth-documented tools) --- or wait just a little longer for more docs, then so be it.

I can't believe there are terrain users who don't know what a splat map is and does --- did they never use Unity's terrain system just to learn the basics?

Anyway, smiljan66 and SeanM3D may be right in that ultimately / in the long run, sufficiently complete and explanatory docs will be required at some point. But I can't support the impatient and "entitled" style used to present their demands to the one constantly hard-working, committed, disciplined and high-quality indie developer dude single-handedly architecting, building and delivering a much better terrain engine than Unity themselves. Everyone should get a grip and keep expectations in check. When I pay $1500 (per platform) to Unity Inc. then I'm rightfully outraged at missing or incomplete docs or editor crashes and the likes. Because they're a big team and charge way too much money. Whereas if an all-around industry-grade AAA project is being accomplished and constantly improved by a single indie dude just like me, and at an incredibly fair price, I feel I should give much more leeway and indeed at times acknowledge all that has been achieved already.

(Props to all RTP users stepping in with their own tutorials and docs now or in the future!)

 

Tried a couple of the webplayer setups - (one "8 pass" one "4 pass") - seemed to work pretty well - 42-48 fps with an NVidia GTX 650. I did get get an odd effect now and then - best described as a not well set up LOD switching effect, almost like the geometry was changing as I moved back and forward.

Earlier in the thread I saw this:

Any more on that ?

cheers, gryff

 

current webplayers don't reflect new RTP3 performance which will be considerably better for this set of features enabled. on GTX650 you'll easily get far over hundred fps full screen (of course depending on pixel error, postFXes, realtime shadows setup, and so on).

Lite version. Yes I though about it, but I won't do it. Targeting A+ quality (instead of AAA) one should consider using Lars'es ATS ($10). I don't want to compete at this price level, just because I admire his pioneer work to make Unity terrains better (in fact he made his shaders the times I didn't even not hear about Unity ).

Tom

 

I own and am learning Terrain Composer. I'm looking at getting RTP2 to use with it. Would I also need RSP? Is RSP functionality already in RTP2? And will I get a automatic upgrade to RTP3 when it comes out or will that be a separate product?

I'm a noob at shaders and materials.

Thanks!

 

TC can manage textures on RTP (for example setuping massive multiterrain scene is now easy because TC takes care about putting right global color textures on each tile and more).

RSP is separate product. RTP has only this fancy shaders on terrain surface, but with RTP3 we'll also have a set of shaders that can be used separately (w/o terrain) for meshes. They'll be PM (not POM or using techniques specific to RSP).

RTP3 will be free update to current users.

Tom

 

Maybe you can add kind of presets in the shader manager, or better, an optional wizard guiding artists to compile the shader fitting
the final product they want?

 

RTP_LODmanager is wizard itself. There are only 3 things to select:

1. terrain/mesh with optional geom blend (so select if you're using terrains or shader on mesh)
2. target platforms
3. 4/8 layers mode depending on no. layers used in project

Rest are just shader features to be enabled/disabled. I'll describe LODmanager in detail in docs.

ATB, Tom

 

I have no problem with RTP_LODmanager, my proposal was just an echo to the idea that a tool like RTP is of course nice for advanced users, but can target more people by adding "automation".
I don't know how to be more specific in my explanation, english is not my native language :/


btw, the new interface (in my version) is very nice and neat.

 

Sorry, I guess I came across a little too harsh. You seem like a sincere and commited guy. It's just frustrating not having a proper documentation you can refer to. A documentation is not something that is only required and expected in a $1500 product and upwards. After so many months of development time I would consider a good documentation the least problem.

Anyhow, in the meantime I managed to get some decent results with the RTP, but at the cost of a lot of nerves. But there are still quite a few options and things in general I don't quite understand:

- Do you have tipps how to best create height maps? For downloaded 2D textures I used CrazyBump to generate a displacement map which I would then use as height map. Is that alright?

- What exactely does "Extrude reduction" do? It does the opposite of what I would expect. When I raise the value the texture becomes more promiment and gets more coverage. I thought it would reduce the visual influence of the respective texture.

- Can you explain the "Control (alpha) maps" rollout? I thought the coverage of each texture is controlled by the splat maps of the builtin Unity terrain. I used the paint brush of the Unity terrain to control how much of which texture goes where. Do these "Control (alpha) maps" provide an additional layer of coverage control? How do they interact with the unity terrain splat maps? What takes precedence? If I load a grayscale texture into one of the "Source Splats" slots, nothing changes. Even not when I uncheck the "active" box.

- What is the global ColorMap used for? To provide large scale color variation that stretches across the entire terrain? What about the global normal map? The same just for normals?

- I thought it would be obvious what the "Extrude Height" slider does. In my scene I use 3 texture layers in the RTP, but when I increase this slider the "depths" of the textures doesn't seem to increase. Only some odd shifting that is hard to describe takes place. can you explain this slider pls?

- Can you give us some rules as how to best use the "Max search steps" and "Step length (in texels)" sliders? I suppose these are the quality controls? But they don't seem to do much visually beyond a certain threshold.

- Does your shader work with dual light mapping? Can the parallax mapping be recovered in the near lightmap as it is possible for normal mapping?


There are some more questions I have but for now I will leave it at that. Just one more:

- Can you predict if the RTP would work smoothly with terrain editors like the "Terrain Toolkit", "P|Terrain", "Terrain Composer" etc.? Or would they interfere with each other?

Thanks and bye for now!

Sean

 

Very interesting awesome looking tool!

Any more info on how it runs on high end mobile devices? (like the ipad3 and up)

 

I'll jump in to give you some tipps there are countless ways to create heightmaps, the displacement maps of crazybump would just work fine, you might want to consider to adjust the levels of your heightmaps in photoshop to your needs, this leads already to your next question ->

PM/POM are actually not extruding outwards as this would not be possible because of silhuettes, its rather working the opposite way(black parts of your heightmap are extruded inwards). Extrude reduction is basically doing the same thing as you can achive by manipulating the brightness of your heightmaps. If 2 textures are blended 50/50, the brightest heightmap wins(heightblending), that means if you have a gray heightmap for your grass and a white heightmap for your rocks, only the rocks would show through as they are higher... of course having just a plain glayscale value on the whole heightmap would be a bad idea in most cases. you have to think about what you want to achieve... You can use layer reduction to see what effect brightening your heightmap would have...if you know more about the system you can live perfectly without extrude reduction because you know how to setup your heightmaps correctly. Its still good to have this feature to "debug" your heightmaps. In the end if you are satisfied with your heighmaps and are able to leave the extrude reduction on all layers at 0 you shoud disable the feature in the LODManager to save some performance.

I'm not sure which Rollout refering to, maybe because i use a later version of RTP... might be that when RTP3 is out of the door that these rollout may be titled/works differently.

Yes, though there is so much you can do with the global colormap, you can bake things like underwater color gradient or ambient light and ambient occlusion into it, integrating flowmaps is also great, you get the best results with all of these(or more). I will make an tutorial about this when i find some free time.

You have to be carefull as this slder is very sensitive and depends on other values like the step lenght and search steps. the best way to deal with it is to start from 0 and slowly increasing the value while looking at a spot with a contrasty heightmap(a heightmap that uses the whole range from black to white) assigned to it. just push the value as far as needed when you see the odd shifting you describe you went too far Also check the next answer as it is related to this point aswell.

Oh, and use always 4, 8 or 12 layers, 3 layers don't cost less performace than 4 afaik.

These sliders are more of a performance/quality trade. You can think of POM as extrusion with stairs, stairs = search steps, step lenght = height of stairs. The more search steps(stairs) you use the better the quality is (and more expensive for the performance). You can get away with less search steps if you use a bigger step length.

I think dual lighmapping works, Tom will need to confirm though as i try to avoid the usage of lightmaps whenever i can. PM/POM is independent of lightmapping and will work regardless of lighmapping.

Generally RTP does not interfere wih tools which are used to make the terrains shape... Like i said above Terrain Composer and RTP compliment each other perfectly and the authors work together to make sure this is the case, I haven't used Terrain Toolkit since a while but as far as i remember it does manipulate the heightmap of the terrain and does not come with any shader that might make a problem, if it comes with a terrain replacement shader you can remove it and use RTP instead. I dont know P|Terrain.

I hope this helps and everything is correct(if not Tom will surely correct me)

All the best and good luck learning all the countless features of RTP(soon there willbe good documentation and tutorials)
Peter

 

@Tom

Thanks I bought RTP 2 today and look forward to using it. I have RSP on my to buy list to. I allow myself a few assets treat every payday.

Thanks for the nice asset!

 

@SeanM3D

1. control maps foldout (in RTP3 this will be accessible quickly from tab) allow you to:
a. view/replace unity splatmaps as they are stored in unity's terrain engine
b. build these controlmaps automaticaly using grayscale masks. placing these masks do nothing until you actually click button at the bottom to build controlmaps out of there greyscale source textures
c. acquire helper textures that can serve as source textures for point b. For exmple grayscale terrain heightmap, texture that visualise steepness or depending on direction.

2. tested RTP with lightmapper and it worked, however many separate terrain tiles in large environment setup lightmaps takes ages to compute in Unity. Even in singlelightmap mode we can restore some bumpmapping at close distance (as this is a feature of RTP), but dual lightmaps works better there.

3. RTP uses replacement shader in U3, and U4 when we don't use materials (which are then optional). If any of your project assets is terrain replacement shader - remove it as this would interfere with RTP. Other things about using RTP with terrain tools like TC is just fine as RTP focuses on terrain surface rendering, it doesn't manage terrains (only allow this splat controls making described in point 1), their vegetation or so. Of course - sometimes classes of different packages might interfere against each other, but I believe RTP uses enough "uniqe" class names. In case of TC which is just the best suggested complementary tool. Also as I closely cooperate with Nathaniel (TC/WC author) we're testing our tools together. More - TC has <RTP> button which allow to quickly put RTP script on multiple terrain object made by TC and manage it's global colormap (for example from satellite photo data - look

here

- it was made by Nathaniel using his tools and RTP, however we've got only screenshot there it's under construction and what I saw it looks quite good in action).



http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/151365-Terrain-Composer-A-Tool-for-making-AAA-photorealistic-Unity-Terrain-in-just-minutes/

Tom

P.S. Peter, thanks for helping me with customer service job

 

Thanks Peter and Tom!

 

Would just like to say, a brilliant job well done!

 

Hi Tom,

Thanks for a great product. It does have a bit of a steep learning curve, but I spent several hours today and have an understanding for a vast amount of the shader, and it's awesome! There are a couple of questions I have though.

When I select a Substance and click the "Get Textures", it returns black, blue, and black textures. If I click it again, most of the time it will replace these with the correct textures. Sometimes it won't. Trying to debug it, I had some success clicking on the Substance and changing the first texture from Diffuse to something else and back to Diffuse, and then it would grab the textures correctly the first time. Is this a Substance problem?

The other question is in regard to rendering 8 layers. I put 5 splats (all 1024) together, and clicked the "Prepare Atlases" button, and I noticed that it created 1024 res atlases, so then my scene becomes very undetailed looking. As soon as I delete the fifth splat, the details all come back. It almost looks as if the POM is not running in 8 layer pass mode too. Is this true? Is there a way to increase the atlas size above the splat resolution (i.e. 1024 splat and 2048 atlas?)

In the LODManager, there's a checkbox for 4 LAYERS per pass, but it just says turning it on will render 4 layers per pass. What happens if I turn it off, 1 layer per pass?

Also, is there a way to disable Extrude? I have good maps, and the extrude puts a really blocky pattern in my terrain, have to set the snow and cliff textures to 1.0 for extrude reduction to make it blend well.

Last question. The Layer # Specular slider doesn't appear to change the scene. Is the shader expecting specular/gloss to be embedded in the detail texture, say in the alpha channel or something?

Weird! One last thing, just happened to me. I was getting the "Prepare Atlases" option and info about using 8 layers, but now that is gone and it is telling me I am using a 4 layer shader, and now the details all look good with 5 splats. It's like something defaulted thinking it was an 8 layer shader when I was really running the 4 layer shader. The only thing I can think of is that I clicked on the LODManager to look at its settings, but I did not rebuild the shaders. Any ideas?

Thanks,
Chris

 

Hi supernat,

Many difficulties you're getting are related to RTP2.1 only. In RTP3 things hould be more clear (for example I named the checkbox "8 layers in first pass" instead of inverse logic "4 layers mode").

1. Substance sometimes choke there and I really can't tell why it doeas. In RTP3 I'm forcing refreshing Asset Database when you put a substance into its field in RTP inspector or change this there. Then it should grab substance textures right when you click "get textures", but ... not always and I can't tell why . Anyway even this option might be sometimes a bit imperfect it can help speedup workflow because you don't have to export textures from substance by hand (which is also buggy and sometimes didn't work for me !). That's why I'm leaving this even though I know about problems.

2. Atlases are used only when "4 layers" mode in RTP_LODmanager is not checked. Then shader will attempt to render 8 layers in one pass. Atlasing is necessary there because of vast number of texture samplers needed (with atlas we use 2 instead of for layer colors). RTP3 better handles this and try to build atlas as soon as its just needed so user doesn't need to think about it. If all your color textures for layers 0-7 (use 8 instead of 5 because it cost almost the same performance so there is no sense to waste texture memory for atlasing 5 layers where on 2nd atlas only 1/4th it is used). Remember to use all textures of the same size (1024). Then making atlas should generate 2048x2048 atlases - you may check this in inspector where atlases are shown. To play a bit with LOD crispness you can try in main settings slider for MIP BIAS adjustement.

3. "4 layers" mode means - no atlasing, up to 4 layers per pass. For 5 layers there will be 2 passes present. The 2nd pass wil render only 1 layer, rest will be handled, but not used (would use some default texture which also has to be sampled in shader). So - use even number of layers 4 or 8 for maximum usage of resources.

4. extrusion means parallax depth for given heightmaps. Remember that heightmaps should be compressed with Alpha8 (available when texture mode is set to advanced in its settings). In RTP3 I also handle greyscale DXT1, but RTP2 need to use height textures with alpha channel as heightmap. If your heightmaps lack of alpha channel or you simply don't use them you may expect problems with blending. RTP is written for heightblend usage. One layer w/o heightmap doesn't hurt, but if don't have it on any layer - bad. There is also slider named "extrude reduction" in layer properties. It's used for adjusting heightmaps while rendering - the same you could do reducing dark parts in your heightmap. In RTP3 this is optional in to use (set in RTP_LODmanager).

5. Glossiness need to be baked in alpha channel of layer color texture. Use attached tool (refer to doc) to merge texture channels from different files - available from Unity main menu.

6. indeed sometimes RTP_LODmanager gets dizzy about what's the real state of shaders and what should be recompiled. It's even more problem of Unity which sometimes compiles shaders which uses cginclude file that has been changed, but sometimes not... When you changed options in manager and click "rebuild shaders" and you feel that shaders haven't been compiled while they should be - try to recompile them by hand. In ReliefPack/Shaders/ReliefTerrain you'll find shaders - right-click and choose "Reimport" - this force Unity to recompile them.

I hope RTP3 will be released soon with extensive docs (this is what I do now) that will help people using it efficientl way.

ATB, Tom