SUIMONO Water System - 2.0 BETA Announcement

Hi,

Thanks again for your help earlier, hope you had a great holiday! I managed to get the buoyancy switching better using Playmaker's get/set property actions, after exposing the 'Is Underwater' bool.

The infinite 3D water is looking excellent, just have a bug with the near and far planes still. It seems like the far plane is rendering over the near, causing the two to intersect at the surface. The posted image should demonstrate this, I have a recording if you want to see it in motion. Again, this occurs in the demo scene too.

Cheers,
Nick

 

ah.. got it! change the Player Settings to:
Rendering Path: Defferred Lightning
Color Space: Linear (not Gamma)

solved everything you should put this into the docs red marked
thanks for the hints

next things is sadly: the interaction isn't working in my project. so the water slpash and so on.
works in the demo inside my project but not in my custom scene.
i compared everything but can not find anything thats missing. is there something in the settings or inside my character i have to take care of?

 

ddnharris - thanks for the screenshot... I'll see about smoothing that transition in the next update!

RobertOne - Glad it's working for you now! It really shouldn't require deferred/linear settings to work properly... I'll do some double checking using forward/gamma modes just to be sure. For the splash/interaction effects you need to add some suimono fx_object prefabs to the objects you want to generate effects. Take a look at the demo for an example of how to set these up... both on the character object and the boat object. I also explain it a bit on this post over on my forum...
http://tanukidigital.com/forum/index.php?topic=421.0

It's pretty straight forward, once you get the hang of it. The official documentation will be updated with more of this information soon.

 

Thanks- I'll be upgrading to Unity Pro soon, it appears that I'll get around a few of these issues by doing so.

I'm still quite concerned by the jitter as I move around at high speed, is there a way to increase the size of the near tile, so it doesn't need to follow the player so often, at the cost of resolution? I'd thought the infinite scale set that, but I recall you mentioned that behaviour is deprecated? I might end up settling for a large single 3D waves surface- I realise travelling at higher speeds over the infinite ocean is probably a bit of an edge case for Suimono.

Edit: Setting Infinite Scale to 120 does actually increase the tile size at runtime, and seems to alleviate the jitter- seems to be a solution for now.

Edit 2: Moving Suimono ObjectScale to -0.6 instead of -0.1 also stops most of the visible surface intersection, and the boundary of the near tile at scale 120 doesn't really show. Only really a problem for moving the camera underwater, though the far plane

My last remaining issue involves the underwater FX. Currently, I have a few cameras I'm switching between in the module, all of which share identical properties with the start camera. When I move any of them underwater, the FX and fog etc. triggers for the first metre or so, but then stops. The demo scene works ok on my system, so I know it's user error, I just can't isolate the problem. Have also used an ocean surface object identical to the demo, but set at world centre, scale 10,1,10 to no avail.

Really happy with how the water appears, I've had a few unprompted compliments on how good it looks now- can't wait to have it running in pro with all the beautiful shoreline effects and reflection/refraction!

 

Hmm, you know I could have sworn that setting was deprecated. I just double checked it here on my end though, and you're right it does still affect the scale. One thing to keep in mind, at least if you're using 3d waves and tesellation, is that the higher this setting is the more tesellation would be required to fill in mesh detail for the waves... which could lead to performance problems if the tesellation is set too high. If you have more of a flat surface though this really isn't an issue.

For the camera, make sure that the active camera that's moving below the surface is also the one assigned on the Suimono_Module object. I'm not sure how you're multiple cameras come into play, or if they all go under the water surface, but you might need to write a script that passes the current camera to the suimono_module object... that is if they are constantly switching... Suimono is only tracks one camera object at a time for underwater views.

and by the way, that sea-jet scene you have looks like a lot of fun

 

I'm currently using playmaker to assign the currently applicable unity camera to the suimono_module object each time I change camera- I've verified that the component is correctly updating. I had another look and the underwater debris particle works correctly, I think it's just the fog effect that doesn't go as deep as it should. All the other functionality that's dependent on having the correct camera set is also fine, i.e. wave foam turns on and off as the camera is over and under water.

The camera settings are basically copied across from the demo scene, have the same MainCamera tag etc. but with different clipping planes which still work in the demo scene.

One of the cameras is driven by UFPS, and I use Skyshop, but the problem persists with both turned off.

I've even tried messing with fog type in the scene render settings, to use the same linear fog, but that doesn't help.

Regarding infinite scale, performance doesn't seem to be affected by higher values, as far as I can tell the subdivisions are the same but spread over a greater distance. Ergo 3D waves just look lower res, which doesn't bother me.

And thanks- it's been pretty cool landing on increasingly larger waves!

Edit: Tried manually moving the camera down further than normal, the fog begins to fill from the bottom when I do that, but there's still an empty area around the underside of the surface- almost like there's a colour range missing?

Further debugging- I deactivated the controller object in the demo scene, and manually checked that the camera was set in the module before running. On starting, the problem occurs. Once again all other under/over water functionality works, just the refract plane doesn't function properly. No error messages or warnings.

 

So the refraction/fog etc starts originally when you first go under water, and then it stops...? can you tell me what happens to the refract plane object... does it disappear, or does it's renderer get turned off? ...or all the effects just stop working but the plane is still where it's supposed to be? Also, I'm just curious, do you have a terrain of any kind underneath the water at this position where the camera is?

 

The refract plane itself 'looks' ok, i.e. it's working, it just doesn't have of the fog effect generated on its surface. Yes, I have terrain underneath, although I even tried it with an empty scene- just a Suimono module, a surface, a camera and a light, and the same thing happened.

This is what it looks like to the camera, it looks exactly the same going from above to below, i.e. in reverse. Works as it should for about 1m below the surface, fades out entirely, then begins to sit around the base of the refract plane.

 

OK, thanks for the video. I'm going to look into this a bit here on my end, sit tight!

 

So I've been able to recreate this here... the problem, at least on my end, seems that when the camera drops below the world-y position of 0.0 the fog effects disappear... I'm looking through the code now to see where this is occuring and to write a workaround. Is this consistent with what you're seeing in your project?

 

OK, this is fixed! I'll be rolling it into the next version update. @ddnharris I'll send you an email with the update. If anyone else needs this update right away, send me an email to konnichiwa[at]tanukidigital.com and I can send you a small file that fixes it.

 

Hi,

That works on my end- sea level has to mean literally y=0 for me, so I must have changed the height of the demo water surface while trying to debug.

Thanks for the rapid support, I have Suimono working really well in my project now. Using it in finer detail I can appreciate how much attention has gone into realism at every level, I'm delighted by how much it's going to improve my game! Maybe I'll have to add a Tanuki habitat on one of the islands.

While I was waiting for the underwater fix, I implemented a simple planing behaviour in conjunction with the buoyancy objects by adjusting the drag value of the aircraft while on the water surface, sampling a curve at the aircraft speed. Works really nicely in conjunction with a bit of swell, you can take off faster by boosting off wave crests too.

Cheers,

Nick

 

Excellent! Glad to hear all is working as expected now.

That should be a prerequisite... for all games!

I'm still waiting to hear about 2.0 being posted to the asset store. Probably a back log going on because of the holidays. Once it's up I planned to put out a new update with a bunch of these fixes, but if it doesn't go up in the next day or two I'll probably post it to registered Suimono users anyway.

 

Hello All,

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Suimono version 2.0.02 is now ready for download...

Download Here: http://www.tanukidigital.com/download

This releases includes a lot of small bug fixes, many of them fixing little issues that have been plaguing Suimono for a long time. Specifically the Infinite Ocean setting has had a number of improvements to how it handles positioning and updating. The Shoreline Generation has been tweaked and improved, and a lot of attention was paid to fixing surface lighting and specular issues.

NOTE: There have been some changes between the last beta and version 2.0.0+ that may cause some console errors if you upgrade a beta version to the full release version. I recommend, when possible, to do a clean install of version 2.0.0+ by removing the Suimono 2 folder from your project, and then installing the new version.

UPDATE: 1/3/2015 - Suimono Version 2.0.02
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
- NEW - Added Foam Speed setting under "Foam and Edge" panel. Used in conjunction with Flow Speed setting.
- FIX - Caustic height was rendering above water level in some cases.
- FIX - Ocean far rendering problems (transparency) in dx9 under Unity(free) version.
- FIX - errors with effects and underwater engaging when not near a water surface.
- FIX - error with underwater fog disappearing at specific world depths.
- FIX - Brightened foam rendering. White is now closer to true white on surface foam.
- FIX - Brightened Unity(free) surface rendering to be inline with Unity Pro version.
- FIX - Shoreline Generation rotation errors.
- FIX - Shoreline Generation speed and artifact improvements.
- FIX - Square light render error with point and spot lights.
- FIX - Point and Spot lights now cast specular lighting on surface.
- FIX - Re-enabled back-scatter lighting.
- FIX - Dynamic reflection tweaked to be less distorted.
- FIX - Water surface position jitter errors on infinite ocean Setting.
- FIX - Foam jitter position errors on infinite ocean setting.
- FIX - Far ocean rendering interfering with near ocean in Unity(free) version.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------


EDIT! Hotfix File Available....

I've had a few reports of dark rendering on the water surfaces and poor performance on infinite ocean setting. I've made some updates and posted them on the download site in a small patch file called SUIMONO Version 2.0.02b (Hotfix!).

The main file and upgrade file have already been updated with these changes, so feel free to download those and ignore this hotfix if you haven't yet download 2.0.02

 

Nice !

 

1) The camera isn't underwater.
2)I can't disengage the camera from the controller because the only way to run the game now is to build it because of unity's 32-bit limitations.
3) The scales are like you said.
4) Even your own demo doesn't run perfectly. Notice the lack of any blending on the edge.

How do I tell Suimono that it isn't underwater Justin. The game is live as of today and i had to make a disclaimer to say "We know the water looks abominable, we're trying as hard as we can to fix it".

FYI The splashing effects both visual and audio have never, ever worked. Do you think this might be related to the fact that Suimono isn't respecting the character, and subsequently camera, position?

 

Hi Ethan,

The screenshot you posted looks correct, except the character looks like she's floating on top of the water... is this what you mean about the blending?

The problems you're having (the "disappeared" water using the underwater shader even when it's not underwater) stem from an issue with suimono not calculating the water height properly. This height calculation affects numerous suimono functions... under/above water switch, buoyancy calculation, splash and sound fx etc.

I really am not sure why this is happening, but I suspect it has to do with your camera controller. This is why being able to test how the water reacts when the player.camera is at different heights could help determine what's going on. But I understand that you're running into Unity 32 bit limits here. (ugh that must be so frustrating!!!)

I can do a temporary rewrite for you to force Suimono to use the correct shader and render the normal above-water view all the time, at least until the cause of all this can be figured out (though youll lose underwater view). Does that sound good? Just let me know what version of Suimono 2.0 you're using so I update the right files...

 

i've used every version you've ever given me but right now i'm using the latest you just pushed 2.0.0.2

At this point i'm willing to lose the underwater temporarily if it makes the water appear correctly above ground until we can find out what's going on more in-detail. Thank you for offering to do this.

 

Thanks for the update, performance has increased noticeably when running the game in the IDE. Slightly less pronounced when actually built, and I get a slowdown of 10fps or so (from about 40 to 30) when I move the camera to look straight down on the ocean surface. Can't really work that one out- I thought it might have been more FX particles from wake etc in the view frustrum but turning them off doesn't solve the problem.

Infinite ocean works well now, at least at human walking speeds. There's no jitter anymore but at the default scale of 5 the edges extending to follow the camera are still quite noticeable- they visibly pop in against the distance object (Increasing the infinite ocean scale to move the edges out further throws something off and introduces pronounced jitter when the near plane moves, so leaving scale alone for now). Does Unity Pro blend the outer edges of the near plane better to fade them out, or if it's an issue now will upgrading to Pro features not fully remove the hard line? Even stationary but elevated, the line is obvious (see screenshot).

I could make a creative decision to just go with large (scaled 100,0,100) fixed 3d waves surface objects rather than infinite ocean, I just need to decide now without really being able to test in Pro. I appreciate I'm probably an exceptional use case for infinite ocean and as such can happily accept that a fixed object might suit me better.

When I get Pro, will the shoreline effects work with infinite ocean? and if so, how?

Finally, I get graphics card issues, see the lower right hand corner of my screenshot- I'm on a 3 year old MacBook Pro with Intel HD Graphics 4000 1024 MB. So not exactly a supercomputer.

 

EthanC - check your email!

ddnharris - a lot of the last update went into fixing jitter issues on the ocean setting, but I haven't yet addressed the seam, or near/far blend issue... upgrading to pro right now won't fix this. I should be able to address this in the next update however. If making a non-ocean plane works for your project I'd recommend doing that in the meantime.

The shoreline generation with the ocean setting still has some issues, and I'm planning a rewrite for this in the next update using a different generation technique that should work better... this will be Pro-Only feature though.

What's that thing in the lower-right...? is it corrupted pixels of some sort? or a whacked reflection?

 

ddnharris - There is a small performance drop when looking straight down at the ocean near the shoreline, I get it here as well. Most likely this is due to the caustic effects. If the performance is too low you can try turning them off by going to the SUIMONO_Module-->_caustic_effects object and turning off the "enable caustics" checkmark...

 

Hi,

Those are corrupted pixels, they're only rendering on the near plane. Back when I was art director for another job we used to see that sort of thing on customers' older macs all the time, so I expect it's just my system.

I'm still working on the conceptual world design, and one idea was a series of giant pools (not necessarily covering the entire ground) rather than a continuous ocean, so fixed 3d waves objects fit that model. Looking at the demo, it appears having a variety of pools at various heights should work ok with the underwater fx.

Thanks for the great product support, appreciate your quick responses.

Nick

 

After testing and reading a few threads on the Suimono forum (which I'll start posting on instead), I think I'll keep using the infinite ocean, as it's the best compromise for now. You've done a great job removing the jitter, and the edge blending really is the only sticking point, which you mentioned would be improved later. I'm tending towards slightly smaller waves anyway, which lead to less obvious seams.

 

No, the 3d wave setting doesn't have an LOD system.... it does have automatic detail tesellation, but this requires you to be running under dx11.

 

Hi. I Install latest version 2.02b. When i put SUIMONO_Surface in scene it has Fixed rotation X=0, Y=176, Z=0, and i dont Rotate them. When i - try, try, try, try - unity is crashed.

hmmm. sorry. Hi is locked when Infinite mode, but why it shows this strange rotation?

Can you rewrite your water in С# for work with your class, function, etc?

 

Morfeuskiev - Switch the water Surface Type from infinite ocean to 3d waves. Then you'll be able to rotate it.

This change was made becausethe ocean setting causes errors when it is inadvertently rotated, so I set it to lock the rotation in the last update. I may change it back though, and look for another alternative, as the rotation issue has confused a number of people already.

a C# version may happen in the future, many people have shown interest in this.

 

Absolutely sstunning!

 

chingwa

Fx_object has error. Can you add a Rule to particle effect? I have error with array index.

 

Yeah. I try to fix it, but got an error on other (editor inspector) script.

It is better to use List <bool> and Dictionary <int, bool>, than [] array and copy all the values when changing the size of the array.

 

Morfeuskiev - You should be able to add rules, that's the whole point of the system... can you send a screenshot of the error text?

Stridemann - thanks for the tip!

 

Of course. I installed latest version with full clean previous version. In previous version it works fine.



Your Particle has affect on mesh.



How to fix this problems? Use shader depth?

 

chingwa, you make a really great things and I wish your code quality will be better (and my english too ).

Few month ago I use Arrays etc. too and have tons of bugs. And every time I add a new feature to my code I got a new bugs.

Spoiler: Few tips to do, to avoid this:

Use classes, Lists and Collections.

For example you have effect rule:

No need to create arrays for variables RuleType and b_StartActive (and resize it), just write a class.

I can't write it on javascript. js is crap
public class CEffectRule // Your class
{

public int RuleType; //Variable for rule type
public bool b_StartActive;//Variable for start state

public CEffectRule(int type, bool active) // calling class constructor when you create new rule
{

// Setting variables
RuleType = type;
b_StartActive = active;​

}​

}

Variables for holding all your rules:

List<CEffectRule> Rules = new List<CEffectRule>(); // If you want to have just list
or
Dictionary<int, CEffectRule> Rules = new Dictionary<int, CEffectRule>(); // If you want to have your Rule's with place indexes (int).

Adding new rules.
List:

Rules.Add(new CEffectRule(1, false));
or collection:
but check for free place on index 0 ! :
if(!Rules.Contain(0));

Rules.Add(0, new CEffectRule(1, false));
​

or just create function to add rule to first free index:
void AddNewRule(CEffectRule rule)
{

int FreeIndex = -1; // Must be -1 if start search from 0
while (Rules.ContainsKey(++FreeIndex)); // Increment index and check for free place in collection
Rules.Add(FreeIndex, new CEffectRule(1, false));​

}
Usage:
AddNewRule(new CEffectRule(1, false));

Get value list/collection (same):
but check if it contain it on index 0 ! :
if(Rules.Contain(0));

Rules[0].b_StartActive = false;​

Getting values in loop
List:
foreach(CEffectRule rule in Rules)
{

rule.b_StartActive = false; // set active to each rule​

}

Collection:
foreach (KeyValuePair<int, CEffectRule> rule in Rules)
{

rule.Key - index (place) of rule in collection (int)
rule.Value - your rule instance of class (CEffectRule)
rule.Value.b_StartActive = false;​

}

Use this things and you newer will get problems. Hope it helps you)

Few days ago I rewrite all your plugin to C#. Works fine.

 

Morfeuskiev - thanks for the error screenshot. I'll look into this a bit and get back to you asap. The particle screenshot.... yeah there must either be a shader queue order issue, or a rendering mask issue. You'll need to examine the shader on your boat as well as the shader for the particle effect. Is that a built-in suimono particle? and if so which one?

Stridemann - Coding is one of those things that constantly has the opportunity to improve. My coding is better today than it was yesterday, and if I continue to keep my eyes open and listen to others around me it will likely be better tomorrow than it is today. Thank you for the run down on Lists/Dictionaries and collections. I'll took a more in-depth look and see about incorporating them into the codebase.

Good to hear! I hope it wasn't too much trouble. Now that 2.0 is "Final" I'd like to look at making a C# version before too much time goes by. I've been reluctant to do so during the development phase... it would have slowed down my momentum quite a lot, which was already slowed down enough!

 

SUIMONO Version 2.0 is now available on the Asset Store!

Forum Post: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/suimono-2-0-interactive-water-system.289311/
Asset Store: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/4387

I'd like to extend a big thanks to everyone here in this thread, for your help, your patience, your criticisms, and your patience! Of course Suimono development is not over, it will continue to improve and evolve into the future just as Unity will. This is a huge milestone though, and I'm so excited to have reached this point!

Now, I'm going to go put my feet up for a while and have a well deserved donut...

I'll probably be locking this development thread pretty soon, but I'll keep it open for now while some of the above issues get ironed out.

 

This thing helps me http://www.m2h.nl/files/js_to_c.php After conversion requires to renaming class, adding "new" to Vector3(... , replacing ".length" with ".Length" and some trobles with defining type of variable. But works fine at all.

 

Morfeuskiev - I've tracked down and fixed the fx_object rule bug you posted about. I'll be rolling this into the 2.0.03 update, but if you send me an email to konnichiwa[at]tanukidigital.com I'll send you back a small patch that will fix it for you.

 

Which way is the better to activate\diactivate fx_EffectObject (script) from other script? I set emitSpeed to 0 to turn on the particle and 1000 to turn off. I think it must be controlled by Rules, but I can't use it while bug described under is present.

 

Yes. This is standard Ripple effect. When i used them - it rendering above boat (boat has standard shader Bumped specular). This visual "bug" i see in several versions ago too. But in the Beta 2 version 0.50, maybe before, particle worked fine.
P.S. I wanted to ask about this for a long time, but then forgot

I have your mail

 

This would be awesome! Been holding off on buying Suimono while working on other aspects of my project. Was really hoping you would get around to doing this as it would be the only part of my project that is not C#. lol Can't wait!

 

I've been spending some time today looking at this... and actually a number of related issues with shader ordering and compositing. I hope to have some fixes in soon. Stay tuned!

For SHAME! I can't say exactly when c# will be coming, but it's definitely on my to-do list.

 

Well.. I am quite a ways off from having a world to show and for current testing, unity water is... well.. sort of ok.. But Suimono is on my wish list and definitely has features I want to use. If I have to use the unityscript version, I will. Just saying the C# version would be a plus.

 

I'm just going to go ahead and post a link to our game, which is now live to the general public in Alpha stage 2 so you can see exactly what Suimono looks like for us.
The files you sent me "kinda improved it", but again, once you walk to the waters edge you'll see exactly why it looks ok, but definitely not what i'd consider professional-looking.

Anyone who asks about the water is being told "It's Suimono" so they don't think we did it ourselves, and I wanted to leave the original offer i made on the table one last time about taking just a few minutes to look at our actual game source and finding out what's causing it to look so terrible.

Divergence: Online - Alpha 2
http://www.divergence-online.com/download/Divergence Online Installer.msi

 

Hi Ethan,

I had a chance to download and login. The water looks the same whether you're near or far, I don't see any obvious issues when near the water surface. Here are the problems that I do see....



1) the underwater surface doesn't show up properly (because of the temp file I sent you), but otherwise the underwater switch does happen as expected and you do get the refraction fogging view underwater.

2) no splashes... probably related to #1.

3) Caustics stay lit at night, this is easily fixable. Open up the main scene and drag your main scene light onto the "scene light object" under Suimono_Module-->_caustic_effects. they will then modulate with the light intenstity.

4) water surface refraction effects look too strong to me and I'd recommend turning them down a bit., but this is probably just an artistic decision.

5) no obvious reflections on the water... Are they turned off or is the reflection color turned down in the settings? and are you using the dynamic reflection setting or a static cubemap reflection?

6) no 3d waves, but this is probably intentional?

Thanks for spreading the word

 

I suggest if you have rewritten suimono javascript into c# hand it to the author so he can halve his translation time of the code. No point translating it twice ! And above all it means that any updates will be in c# and integrated properly with the authentic edition of the product

 

Quick note about Unity 5. We are now on Beta 19 and it looks like alot of the shader bugs are disappearing such as the work done for RTP now works. Has Suimono been checked and investigated on unity 5 beta 19?

 

I was told by a Unity tech a few days ago that the specific bug that broke Suimono rendering will be fixed in beta 20. I haven't tested it in beta 19 yet, but I don't have high hopes after looking over the release notes. We'll see what beta 20 has to offer. I'm also looking at other ways to get around this bug in case Unity lets us all down.

 

@GXMark Already done. c# version handed over, but, rightly, @chingwa wants to wait until the beta is less mercurial before committing to a long term "c# version" commitment. That said all of the changes to the Array types (and 4 or 5 other little peculiarities) required to effect such a process in the future have been documented, which will indeed utterly smash the amount of time required to do it, at that time.

In other news r20 came up with the goods so this thread can have a happy ending after all.
Joy.

 

Hello.

I came across a bug with Suimono's underwater fog when a gameobject uses the shader: Nature/ TreeSoft Occlusion Leaves.

The top of the seaweeds are cut off by the fog way in the distance. I need the seaweed to stay that shader or else Unity's terrain/wind zones don't work on them.
any suggestions on how to fix this?

 

Hmm.. I got around that by using the madfinger (Environment/UNLIT + WIND) shader from the old SHADOWGUN demo level
(I just made it work without Lightmaps and initialized a few of variables IIRC.)
http://blogs.unity3d.com/2012/03/23/shadowgun-optimizing-for-mobile-sample-level/

Incidentally, This is not a "SUIMONO" issue, you are talking about UT shader, and UT Fog. Neither of which are anything that Chingwa has written. (I think, or that was the case that last time I gave the code a cursory search, if that isn't the case let me know and I will dig more)
nope it suimono alright...


Pretty sure I just answered a very similar question on the main thread (which this isn't)
Hope it helps.

EDIT: Ah yes here is the default unity 5 shader doing much the same thing
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/suimono-2-0-interactive-water-system.289311/page-2#post-1930036 (last picture)

here is the current thread (FUTURE READER)
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/suimono-2-0-interactive-water-system.289311/page-2

Here is the proper support forum
http://tanukidigital.com/forum/index.php?board=5.0

And here is that shader looking awesome

It has a z depth issue when actually passing /through/ an object but meh, I've never actually passed my eye through an underwater plant before so... could be realistic

It wobbles attractively when used with the following settings


Pros: It's free. uses about 1 -2 draw calls. (The leaves thing uses about 6 or 7 IIRC as it supports shadows but even without shadows I think it uses one more)
Cons: requires some extra work to get shadows working (not in 5.0 obviously, where there is a nice button for the job)

Seems to work fine with depth (forward rendering here IIRC)

 

The problem here is that transparent objects don't write into Unity's depth buffer, which the fog effect relies on to render around scene objects. The SoftOcclusion shader is using the "Transparent+99" RenderQueue... this needs to be switched to a renderQueue that supports ZWriting, such as "TransparentCutout"...

...or as @twobob suggests you can look for an alternate plant shader that supports zwrite..