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Triton Oceans and 3D Water for Unity Pro / Windows [DEPRECATED]

Discussion in 'Assets and Asset Store' started by sundog, Sep 20, 2012.

  1. ronan-thibaudau

    ronan-thibaudau

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    Hehe, often i think a $5 plugin is insane, but often those $5 plugin i find insane are much more expensive in price over invested time than this plugin.
    Comparing just the price is a big mistake a lot of people make :(
     
  2. unityasoft

    unityasoft

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    I wasn't comparing them, it was a freedom of speech kind of thing and I know I could of cleared it up. I don't think a asset over $450 let alone $150 are insane, I bought the photon networking kit unlimited license the night I heard about it. I buy nearly every asset I see on the asset store, I enjoy spending money there everyday.

    I did state that I would pay $70 for this. Did it offend you? well that's how it is when you come to a community where the main god engine costs only 3 times your "water solution" I mean you are selling something that is hardly noticeable unless someone is making some sort of ocean game.

    I'd pay $400 if I had money to throw around or if my game at least 30% based on water. I didn't want to offend you but I'm just saying what everyone else is thinking, way too expensive for my budget.
     
  3. Grespon

    Grespon

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    Well, thanks Shiftyz for comparing my Easy Water with this full ocean system. And thanks Sundog for recognizing my asset's value.
    I'm really impressed with this one. It seems to be the closest to an ocean I saw for Unity so far.
    About the price, well, I think time will tell what's the best price. Some buyers were "complaining" Easy Water was too cheap for it's quality, but the fact is that I tried raising to $ 20 and people weren't buying. It's selling better at $ 10.
    I think Triton Ocean has a complete different target and the price will be adapted to maximize income.
     
    Last edited: Oct 4, 2012
  4. VIC20

    VIC20

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    "sort of ocean game" - exactly this is what triton is about. When you just need some water in a level then triton is not the product you should use except you want some stuff like a realistical harbor scene.

    To be honest $400 sounds like a lot of money compared to all that what you get for the three times higher price of a unity pro license - but I am working on several ocean based games since 3 years and the time (learning, tricks, optimizations etc.) I already invested in trying to create an ocean that looks good, fits to my needs and runs at an acceptable performance is worth more than $50,000. So from my point of view the pricing of triton is extremely attractive.

    Trying to generate (performant) ship wakes on a 3D ocean or avoiding visible tessellation at higher altitudes is absolutely no fun. One of my projects is a flight simulation in the pacific theatre - I worked months till I could say "This looks OK from 0 - 10,000 meters"… but I also thought "I wish it would look like triton" because I've played with the windows demo at different altitudes before.

    Sure some smart and experienced people can do something comparable to triton on their own but I know for me (and a lot of others) it is currently partly just above my skills or it takes too much time.

    Just compare the results of my months/years of hard work to triton - for just $400 I could buy a FINISHED and better looking ocean for windows usage today that just will do almost everything I need out of the box:

    The 3D ocean in my flight simulation close to sea level:



    The 3D ocean in my iOS U-Boat Simulation (on iPhone 3GS) - I think something like triton won't be possible on mobile hardware but maybe this video shows that I have really learned some tricks how to create oceans during the last years and that I know what I am talking about:



    That's why a year ago when I looked deeper at triton on the web (btw: its regular non-unity price is $995) I've wrote a mail to sundog soft if there is any chance for a port to unity. Unfortunately my main targets are Mac OS X and iOS because all my projects are niche products and especially on Mac OS X games like mine are extremely rare and the chances for sales are higher there because there is almost no competition on OS X in those niches - so the real drawback of the unity port of triton is the lack of Mac OS X support - a real pity because my experience with sundog soft for the silverlining clouds for unity was excellent! Usually I've got a solution for problems within hours.
     
    Last edited: Sep 24, 2012
  5. bigkahuna

    bigkahuna

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    Concur with most of what VIC20 has posted. I started the "Community Ocean Water Project" over 3 years ago and IMHO that's the only direct competitor to this product. The two ocean water's delivered with the standard assets in Unity 3.x were both only half completed and full of issues and the other water assets mentioned above aren't really ocean waters at all. The community's ocean water has the advantage of including the source (so you can adapt it to your needs) and IMO looks a little better/more realistic than what I've seen so far of Triton's water (but that could just be what settings were used) but, as VIC20 indicated, Triton includes a number of other advantages over the community ocean project (performance, high altitude viewing, etc.).

    I'm on the fence as to whether I'll be buying this (if it were under $100 it would be a no-brainer but the community water works fine for me for now) but I'm certainly glad to see that it is available in case I do need it some day.
     
  6. ZJP

    ZJP

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    Truth. But,


    I think there are three developpers profiles.Those like Bigkahuna really need such a tool because it is their livelihood, those (Vic20 for example) who want to do a project around the ocean because they like it, and other opportunistic "Oh, I love this tool. Maybe i can make something about the ocean?!. "
    The price?. Profile...

    Personally, for 130-160$ (Without SilverLining 3D Cloud/Sky, Underwater effet), i'm ready to be an opportunist ;)

    JP
     
    Last edited: Sep 24, 2012
  7. mariobyb

    mariobyb

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    Wayyyy 2 expensive for a piece of water asset. I'll pass on this one.
     
  8. sundog

    sundog

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    @VIC20: A MacOS version of Triton isn't out of the question if there's sufficient interest. I've got the Triton engine running on MacOS already, I just need to get our OpenCL code working with it before I'll be happy with the performance. In fact, a MacOS Triton for Unity could be even more efficient, since Unity exposes its underlying texture ID's for OpenGL, which we can use to avoid copying textures across the Unity / native boundary.

    iOS however would be a different story. I don't think Unity exposes the hooks needed to do native rendering from a shared library on mobile platforms.
     
  9. VIC20

    VIC20

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    Great news, thank you.
     
  10. sundog

    sundog

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  11. ronan-thibaudau

    ronan-thibaudau

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    And it's even been purchased once already :)
     
  12. eskimojoe

    eskimojoe

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    Does this come with sources?

    Does this work with Android and iOS?
     
  13. sundog

    sundog

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    No - full source licenses are available separately from our website, however. It is Windows-only at this time; Unity doesn't expose the hooks needed to do native rendering form plugins on mobile platforms.
     
  14. sundog

    sundog

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    A minor update (Triton 1.1) has been posted both to our website and the asset store. This update brings compatibility with deferred rendering, and prevents near clipping issues when the camera is near the water's surface. It also is built against the latest rev of the Triton engine, version 1.55.
     
  15. imtrobin

    imtrobin

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    Does this have underware or just surface?
     
  16. sundog

    sundog

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    It will shade the water surface properly when underwater - there's a screenshot of it earlier in this thread if you'd like to have a look!
     
  17. Lord-Simpson

    Lord-Simpson

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    I’m looking to add water simulation to a game and have a couple of questions.

    Would Trition be able to handle a few km square section of ocean with full object interactivity at a reasonable resolution (for example distance between wave grid points no further than 10m). An example situation may have around 20 boats each producing waves (and being effected by the water), a number (0 to 100 or so) of collisions per second creating ripple waves as well as objects that would reflect, dampen or stop waves (the light house in the demo video doesn’t seem to do this), also allowing for wave amplitudes ranging from small (~1m high) waves up to insane walls of water (~200m high) all while running smoothly on a relatively modern Gaming PC. I realise this is probably an insane and impossible ambition so an idea (and maybe stress test video) of what Triton can handle while keeping a smooth FPS (30-60) would be great.

    Also is there any scalability built in so I could give users on lower-end hardware the ability to turn things down (other than just turning it off).
     
  18. sundog

    sundog

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    Well, no, Triton won't reflect waves off of objects or support 200 meter high walls of water. I don't think you'll find an asset that does. But, you can have however many wake generator objects as you wish. Triton won't render the wakes from an infinite number of objects, but it will chose up to 22 wake waves closest to the camera to render at any given time. (22 is just a function of how much data we can reliably pass to a shader in DirectX9.)

    Triton's performance while maintaining a FFT-based 3D wave simulation is its big selling point. You can expect over 60 FPS even on systems that don't support CUDA or OpenCL - but anyone with an NVidia or AMD card from the last few years with reasonably current drivers will get between 100-200 FPS. That said, if you do need to scale things down, there are several settings in its underlying TritonResources/Triton.config file that you can use to trade off performance with quality, such as the grid resolution and FFT resolution.

    You asked about that grid resolution - it's actually variable and based on screen space to achieve a dynamic level of detail scheme. It uses a technique called a "projected grid", which is what allows us to render infinitely large ocean scenes without computing a ton of unnecessary detail in the distance. Basically we take a grid in screen space, and project it to the water surface. So, the rendering time of Triton is pretty much constant (and small) regardless of the size of your ocean area. The resolution of the underlying physical simulation is one meter, and that too is configurable.

    I'd encourage you, and anyone interested in Triton, to try out the free evaluation package from our website to see if it meets your needs.

    Thanks!
    Frank Kane
    Founder, Sundog Software LLC
     
  19. Rasenger

    Rasenger

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    This looks great. I think those complaining people don't understand that this is aimed at those who need realistic surface simulation and whose product is all about ocean. I've tried implementing FFT ocean with projected grid and the math is way too hard for me, so it cheaper and faster to buy this than hire someone to do it.
     
  20. sundog

    sundog

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    Thanks Rasenger - you're right in that getting the FFT's working properly was one of the hardest parts of developing Triton. The projected grid turned out to be a lot harder than expected as well - getting it so that the horizon doesn't look jaggy and the waves don't appear to move strangely as the camera rolls was a big challenge, as was getting the projected grid to work in geocentric coordinate systems. I agree it's a very focused market that we're going after, but for folks who need something like Triton, the build vs. buy decision tends to be an easy one.
     
  21. jvil

    jvil

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    $475 really?? You just lost one buyer.
     
  22. NavpointSoftware

    NavpointSoftware

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    This does look great and if I ever get the funds together might concider buying....though thats away off.

    Still saving for Unity Pro, the kitty for that has taken a dent as ive been hit with £210 bill to get a front tooth fixed that I shattered afew weeks ago, but ill get there. :roll:

    As my game is based in the Atlantic this coupled with a decent weather system would be amazing.

    How does this handle bouyancy and how easy/hard would it been to simulate ships sinking for example?

    Regards,

    John
     
  23. sundog

    sundog

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    Ouch! That sounds painful.

    Be sure to have a look at our SilverLining 3D Clouds Sky package if you're in the market for weather effects. It's fairly unique in having individual 3D clouds you can fly through and accurate sun/moon/star positions, if your game is a flight sim of any sort.

    Triton doesn't include a buoyancy model, but it does include everything you need to power one. The TritonUnity.cs script includes methods to retrieve the ocean surface intersection point and surface normal along any ray, and this method is highly optimized in native code. Here's a video from one of our customers showing what they were able to do using our intersection tests:

     
  24. sundog

    sundog

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  25. Jason210

    Jason210

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    Hi

    Very encouraging to see this. Nice buoyancy effect. The wake effects are excellent, too. For deep ocean simulation this is nice, where caustics are not an issue.

    But I think it is a bit pricey because it lacks polish. Foam along the sides of the quays, and along he sides of the ships is essential; and I don't know if it the water passes through the hull of the ship, or not? Is this easy to fix?

    Regards
    Jason
     
  26. sundog

    sundog

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    Thanks for the feedback, Jason.

    I agree it would be super-cool if more refined interactions were possible between objects in the water and the water itself. Triton's API allows you to specify the position and velocity of objects in the water, from which it will create 3D wakes with foam and prop backwash. But, since Triton's underlying API has no knowledge of the geometry of the actual objects, we don't attempt to line the object with foam - since we don't know where the edges of the object are. For ships in the ocean, this is less of an issue since the foam from a wake emanating from the bow will produce some of the desired effects.

    I wouldn't say this is a lack of polish, but more of a conscious design decision to keep the underlying API of the native Triton code simple and easy to integrate with other engines. Another factor driving a simple API is that currently all of the foam and wake effects are implemented entirely in the shaders, allowing us to do everything in a single pass and keep our performance up. If we had to blend in foam along arbitrary polygonal outlines, we would have to do that as a separate pass on the water surface, which would hurt performance. Most of our customers (even for Unity) are in the training and simulation space, and they value holding a hard 60 Hz framerate above all else.

    Sort of a long winded answer, but I hope it helps to understand the sorts of tradeoffs we have to make with a product like Triton. Features like this come at the expense of performance and complexity, and striking the right balance or finding creative ways to avoid these tradeoffs is something we're always struggling with.

    Thanks,

    Frank Kane
    Founder CEO
    Sundog Software LLC
    http://www.sundog-soft.com/
     
  27. Jason210

    Jason210

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    Thanks for your repsonse. There are a lot of things I like about this plug-in. It's much more than just a shader.

    My concern is not just about missing foam at the water-line, but also about the way the water doesn't hump up around the bow, and the wave that forms along the hull. This applies to water edge near quays also and so on.

    I don't know if it's feasible to add, or to provide an alternative to have it if you want it, but without it,there doesn't seem to be a connection/interaction between the object and the water.

    Everything else I like!
     
  28. sundog

    sundog

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    Ah, I misunderstood a bit. Actually what you want is possible; if you attach a WakeGenerator to an object at the bow of your ship and give it a positive velocity, wake waves with foam will swell up and originate there. You could even have one WakeGenerator at the bow and another at the stern if you want.
     
  29. bigkahuna

    bigkahuna

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    I just gave the Triton Oceans demo a spin for the first time with Unity 3.5.6. At first everything looked about right, but after moving the camera around a bit I started to notice some weirdness with the reflections and also the GUI (notice how the bottom of the window is cropped). This was tested on a Toshiba Qosmio i5 Laptop with 1 GB Geforce graphics and Windows 7.

    $Capture.JPG
     
  30. sundog

    sundog

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    Thanks for checking it out, BigKahuna.

    Is there any chance you might be using an older download of Triton for Unity? Those both look like issues that existed in the original release, but have since been fixed. The newest version is available here from the first download link at the top.
     
  31. bigkahuna

    bigkahuna

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    Definitely possible. I'll download the latest and give it a try next. Thanks!
     
  32. JaZZyCooL

    JaZZyCooL

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    Hey nice work bro.
     
  33. sundog

    sundog

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    Hi gang,

    A quick note to let you know that Triton 1.3 is now available in the asset store and from our website.

    Triton 1.3 introduces about a 50% performance speedup (YMMV - it's much more on some systems, a little less on others.) Surprisingly, we found that moving our FFT calculations from Unity's main thread to the rendering thread performs substantially better.

    It also introduces a "World Units" parameter that you can use to integrate Triton into scenes where one unit does not equal one meter.

    Thanks!
    Frank Kane
    Founder, Sundog Software LLC
     
  34. ronan-thibaudau

    ronan-thibaudau

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    As the person who requested the world unity change, thanks! Modifying it by hand instead of in editor was a bit of a pain.
    I can confirm the speedups as i went from a large 50MS cpu time on a complex scene to around 16 just from this update!
     
  35. Baykush

    Baykush

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    Greetings!

    I'm currently considering the possibility of using Triton for Unity Pro on a project. But something is bugging me: While the asset store page says nothing about it, on your website checkout it is writen that the Triton license is good a for single project only ...is that correct?

    Thanks!
     
  36. ronan-thibaudau

    ronan-thibaudau

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    As far as i know any assets sold on the asset store that doesn't mention a custom licence uses the asset store licence (this is why i don't purchase out of the asset store, single licencing terms).
    I questioned support long ago to understand what the licencing terms were (unity support, not triton support) and got the following answer:
    So since triton isn't music, i assume it isn't per title but per company, i would wait for an answer from sundog on this but this is what i got from the unity support as a global answer for all non-custom licenced products, hope this help.
     
  37. sundog

    sundog

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    Ronan is correct - when purchased through the Asset Store, Triton is under the standard licensing terms for the Asset Store, which is per-company and not per-title.

    Our original license terms when purchasing Triton for Unity from our website were per-title. However, it doesn't make sense to have different terms between the Asset Store and our website for the same price and product. I've updated the license terms included with the SDK from our website, as well as the product description on our online store to reflect unlimited distribution with Triton for Unity Pro. Thanks for pointing that out.

    -Frank Kane
    Founder, Sundog Software LLC
     
  38. Baykush

    Baykush

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    Awesome! Thanks for the quick reply guys, we're on the edge of the scedule here :)
     
  39. sundog

    sundog

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    If that order I just saw go through was yours, Baykush - thank you!
     
  40. Rasenger

    Rasenger

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    Would it be possible to make a version of Triton for free Unity? So that all physics stuff would work, but graphics would be simpler or performance worse, so that it would be possible to develop with free tools and buy them if it seems that a project is going to be completed. Would suit hobbyist developers like me better.
     
  41. sundog

    sundog

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    I wish that were possible (there is certainly a larger market for Unity Free users!) Unfortunately Triton's physics depend on computing Fast-Fourier Transforms in real time, and I'm not aware of any way of doing that from Unity without calling out to a native plugin - and native rendering plugins are only supported with Pro.

    Triton does work just fine with an evaluation version of Unity Pro, however.
     
  42. Rasenger

    Rasenger

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    Okay I understand. I'll have to figure out something...
     
  43. Baykush

    Baykush

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    I've built my scene but instead of the Triton Water all i'm seeing is a pitch black background. Other elements are rendered normally.

    I did installed the DLLs in the exe's folder, with the resources folder algonside it, what am i doing wrong here? :p
     
  44. sundog

    sundog

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    Hi Baykush,

    Please send me a note at support@sundog-soft.com and we'll figure it out. I haven't heard of this happening with other customers so it's likely something we can work through. I'll need to know if it's working in the editor or not, and I'll need a copy of your output_log.txt file when you're running it from a standalone.

    My best guess would be that the path to the resource folder is invalid. Try putting an absolute path to the folder containing the resources folder in the Resource Path parameter of the Triton Prefab to see if that's it.

    FYI, there is no need to move DLL's around to get it working with the editor, that's only for your standalone installation.
     
  45. sundog

    sundog

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    One of our customers sent in this screenshot of Triton working with the latest Unity 4 beta. I have to admit, I'm a little amazed that it "just worked" given all of the low-level stuff Triton does :)

     
  46. Baykush

    Baykush

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    Thanks for the quick reply, Sundog!

    In case anyone else is getting this as well, black sea happens when you place the TritonResources folder on the right spot, but the TritonDll.dll is out of place (which should be alongside the executable). Dragging the Dll to it's place should do the trick.
     
  47. ronan-thibaudau

    ronan-thibaudau

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    You forgot to mention it's not just unity 4, but unity 4 running in DX11 mode!
    I'm a happy customer :) felt like some assets were likely to break there and (not because of work quality but because of asset complexity) i too quite expeted they would need fixing. Hapily continuing use of silverlining + triton :)
     
  48. adamh1

    adamh1

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    that looks fantas..how much???
     
  49. Baykush

    Baykush

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    I've been unable to render particles atop of the sea, is there any way i can reveal them without inserting a difuse object underneath the particle system?
     
  50. sundog

    sundog

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    Ugh, sorry for the delayed response guys. Looks like my email notifications for thread activity stopped working for some reason.

    adamh1 - it's $475.

    Baykush - The issue here is that Triton does its rendering at the end of the camera's rendering. That means any objects in the scene that don't write to the depth buffer may be overdrawn by Triton's water, such as translucent particles.

    One solution would be to explicitly draw your particles after Triton's water via scripting, by modifying the TritonRenderer.OnPostRender() method.

    Another approach would be to set up a second camera for the scene with the same position, orientation, and FOV, and just use this for your translucent particles. Set its Depth to render after the camera that is attached to the Triton Prefab, and set it to not clear the depth or color buffers.

    AFAIK, Unity doesn't expose any hooks for native rendering plug-ins in between drawing opaque and translucent geometry. If anyone can think of a better approach please chime in!