VOLUME GRASS - Unlimited Density

Hi Tom,
I am getting a Unity crash in Unity 5.0.0f4. and I am using Mac mini with Yosemite with Core i5 and Intel HD 4000 Graphics card.
But, whenever I import this purchased latest Unity package, I am getting Unity crashed popup.
However, when I create a build from my another windows system and run it in this mac mini, It works fine. and I can able to see the grass.

Please let me know the support of your package for this hardware and any alternative suggestions are appreciable.

 

Hi tom, I'm having some problems with MAC too. When i try to import your asset my Unity gets stuck at the "Importing small assets" stage and won't go further. Does anyone have the same problem?

 

The problem is rather on the Unity side as package works here and I don't experience any problems. If shader for Mac is problematic it is supposed to rather compile with errors rather than just crash (which means internal problem not package problem which is placed on the "upper layer" of the Unity core engine). Anyway - if some "small asset" (twhich probably means - a prefab) break Unity for any reason the only help I can provide is - contact me PM with order number and purchase date and I can try to make a small package for you with only core VolumeGrass functionality (only shader, script needed and basic texture). Maybe that won't resist importing w/o crash.

I don't have Mac to test it. Only Windows where I can run Unity in openGL mode. Will try to check this on my laptop installing Unity5 there. It has Intel HD3000 (on my work desktop I've got HD4600) where more problems with GLSL are reported previously.

Tom

 

One more question: How can I increase the distance the grass is rendered? I want to see them at least 300m but it apperar to be visible only 30m around player. Thanks.

 

VG material inspector - settings/distance far and distance far fade length.

Tom

 

Thanks.

 

Hi again Tom, I tried to import only the basic of your asset. The problem is with the shaders, I tried importing folder by folder, and the problem occurred at the shaders folder. Don't know what else to do. The asset works great on the PC, really awesome, but I need it on the Mac

 

I tried it on all machines I've got. My laptop with build in Intel HD3000 is the most "picky" one when it comes to openGL. I ran newest Unity 5.0.1 on it in "-force-opengl" mode and everything works for me. At this point I believe you should fill bug report to Unity. Even if shader doesn't work and can't be compiled for some reason it's not supposed to crash the editor...

You could try one more thing. Import VG on PC. Then in shader folder you'll find VG shader used that probably is troublesome for your Mac. But maybe it's only problem with Unity HLSL->GLSL shader optimizer/ compiler. So - in the shader inspector there is an button with "compile and show code". Select suboption to compile for GLSL (open gl) with all variants. The resultant shader code will be lenghty, but there is chance that this compiled version when you just copy/paste it to replace original (uncompiled) shader contents will actually work on Mac as far as the code is fine (only compilation process doesn't work).

Tom

 

Hello Tomas,

I've been building a really large mountain terrain with TerrainComposer, WorldComposer, and RTP, but the framerate is too low if there is realistic grass density on the terrain. I was thinking of purchasing this asset to help with this, but first I just have a few questions:

Does Volume Grass work well with TerrainComposer? ie. Would applying grass procedurally be easy/possible? Would I be able to mix different types of grass/wildflowers? I really need a good replacement to the default unity grass, and Volume Grass looks like the best bet.

 

It is possible to use VolumeGrass on any mesh, including terrain. It's separate object that renders upper surface of grass but we see grass blades "thru the pixel shader". However, at this stage VG is not best solution for large terrains. Placing it procedurally would require some effort. You could export terrain mesh then cut it to leave only grass areas in 3d editor. Optimize (to make it low poly). Import it back and use Volume Grass script to to change mesh into grass (you provide upper surface of grass area yourself then). But still - it might be not much effective for large scene. When I finish with my current projects I'll update VG to use textures for grass placement (density textures). Then the VG on terrains will be very easy to obtain.

Mixing different types of volume grass, although theoretically possible it won't be much effective either. You can use VG as danse "base grass" and put some Unity objetcs (flowers) on the top of it.

Tom

 

Hi there, I just purchased VG. I'm using a Mac with Unity 5.0. I'm getting the same issues as others on a Mac with the small assets stage of import.

Any update on a fix for this? Otherwise I'll need to do a refund.

Thanks.

 

hey Tomas, I wanted to give you an update on my attempts to get Volume Grass to work. I tried to import into 5.0 and got the small assets issue, where the import process never finishes. I then tried manually pulling files across one by one. This has made it so that every part of the plugin is inside Unity. If I try to open any of the scenes I get a spinning wheel and crash. If i try to look at the shader (which appears Pink in the inspector) I get a crash. If I try and apply the shader to a new game object I get a crash. But, at least all elements are in the project.

I then tried to open the grass in Unity 4.6 Mac as a test to see whether this would work. Importing works ok, but when I look at the scenes I don't see anything but do get a ton of console messages:

Assets/VolumeGrass/_Scripts/VolumeGrass.cs(768,67): error CS0234: The type or namespace name `ShadowCastingMode' does not exist in the namespace `UnityEngine.Rendering'. Are you missing an assembly reference?

Assets/VolumeGrass/_Scripts/VolumeGrass.cs(768,27): error CS1061: Type `UnityEngine.Renderer' does not contain a definition for `shadowCastingMode' and no extension method `shadowCastingMode' of type `UnityEngine.Renderer' could be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?)

This is as far as I have progressed. Please let me know if you need me to help you with any additional information.

I'd love this product to work with MAc on Unity 5.0 but as of right now it's not working for me.

 

Hi Tom,

There are couple of members complaining about Volume grass on Mac OS with Unity 5.0. And you said you are going to share the lighter version.

I want to say, If Volume grass works great, when it is standalone in mac os and crashes only in Unity editor. So,
Can you please send us the compiled version of shader code and respective package, so that we can let you know more on the status. Please try to check it in Mac mini-2008, since it occurs here frequently as I checked it in almost 4-5 systems.

Please share your PM email id, so that I can share my order number and credentials for further steps.
Kindly look in to this issues. Or else you may need to refund our money (And I hope that will not happen).

Thank Tom.

 

Sorry for late reply. For some reason this thread doesn't give me alerts. Need to check this. I'll try to provide some test stuff to @Zander101 who contacted me PM.

Tom

 

I am curious as to what mobile he tried it on so I could get an idea of what he meant by "fast".

 

mali400
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/volume-grass-unlimited-density.256497/page-3#post-1860347

There are only 5 pages you know

 

I sent a PM on your request. Kindly reply to me for the Volume grass support on Mac OS.

 

Pratap, I just spoke with Tomas for some time about mac support. I'm going to investigate this a bit more with Unity because the 4.x product is confirmed to work on Unity 4.X (I just checked on 4.6.1) and when we tried to move across 4.x code to 5 and fix errors we ran into a compile error. So, it seems like something is going on with how Unity 5.0 attempts to compile the project for mac

 

also, I just updated to Unity 5.0.1 to see if there was a fix in the latest build. Shader doesnt work there as well. Next step is talking to Unity.

 

I guess there is some good news for Mac users. With help of Pratap the reason for Mac crashing has been found.

Open VG_Base.cginc and find this line:

Code (csharp):

1.  
2.   #if SHADER_API_D3D9
3.  

and replace with this:

Code (csharp):

1.  
2.   #if !SHADER_API_D3D11
3.  

Seems like not only DX9 has problems with this on Unity5 (which I can understand as shader compiler is now HLSL not Cg), but also openGL (which I don't understand). I think the issue must be somewhere in Unity. Filled the bug report on this.

ATB, Tom

 

Confirmed that this fix works. Thanks for this. All good on mac now.

 

Would you happen to know how I can get around the 40,0000 triangle limit? I'm trying to blanket a rather large terrain with grass.

 

Multiple patches.

 

Unfortunately that's not really a reasonable option, I'd have to do about 50 (Edit:196 upon further inspection) full sized patches. That would be per map, which there are going to be at least 20 of.

I know why it's there, if you remove it you get a stack overflow from Poly2Tri's triangulation function. But, I had hoped that Tom might know a way to prevent that from occurring. Poly2Tri's main site says that the polygon data needs to be prepared, prior to triangulation when dealing with complex polygons. But I'm not sure if that's the issue here, or how to go about that.

 

I'm sure this is a limitation of the 16 bit index buffer (there are a million posts on this - e.g. http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/255405/vertex-limit.html). The best you can do is use LOD to allow you to make larger patches, but this will have artifacts and you still will need multiple.

The bottom line is that you are not going to be able to drag out a single patch over an entire terrain.

 

I appreciate the link. But that's not what I'm referring to, as is, the patches are at most about 20k verts (having 3 times that at the 60k limit would help a lot, from 196 patches to 63).

As for the limit, the stack overflow is before VolumeGrass starts working on mesh itself, very specifically in Poly2Tri's Triangulation function.

It might be the same issue that's referred to here: https://code.google.com/p/poly2tri/issues/detail?id=74

 

The only reasonable solution would be introducing density maps in VG. Then rendering grass automatically on the terrains will be very easy (you can use separate density texture or just associate it with splat control channel so you can, for example draw a grass with Unity terrain brush and VolumeGrass will appear there instantly). Unfortunately I'm now very busy and focused on another package that come close. Although VG update is on the list.

Tom

 

This looks like an awesome asset Has anyone done anything with this that looks natural i.e. not like a big soccer field with only one type of grass ?

 

Using Unity5, DX9, Laptop (Intel), 8Gig, Win8.1 prof, Intel HD 3000 and the result is this with meadow & soccer. Didn't even try mesh version.

And! Unity 5 doesn't support this:

NpShape::setFlag(s): triangle mesh and heightfield triggers are not supported!
UnityEditor.DockArea:OnGUI()

...anymore!

50€ isn't cheap for being a tester! Unity 5 Ready. My *ss...

What now?

 

I made a totally clean setup (new project) for v-grass:

Shader error in 'Grass Shader': 'LightingLambert': cannot implicitly convert from 'half3' to 'struct UnityGI' at line 258 (on d3d11)
Compiling Vertex program with DIRECTIONAL SHADOWS_OFF LIGHTMAP_OFF DIRLIGHTMAP_OFF DYNAMICLIGHTMAP_OFF GLOBAL_COLORING WIND IBL_DIFFUSE IBL_SPEC WRITE_INTO_DEPTH

Same kind of error with d3d9 earlier. And purple terrain again...

Unity version: 5.0.0.f4 free.

 

I have only a few days left before I have to turn in this project. To be exact : Sunday. So I definately need to know whether I can use volumegrass or not.
I just bought volume grass implemented it in my scene. I get compile errors.
Before I imported VolumeGrass. I had the following plugins installed. Worked fine.

-Terrain composer
-Amplify color
-Relief terrain pack shader.
-Various speed-tree packages
-Advanced foliage shader v4
-Sonic Ether : Natural Bloom
-SSAO Pro

All the plugins were recently updated (update all)

Unity pro 5.0.1f1

 

Those errors are easy to solve. Just remove those scripts from volume grass directory.

That error means: "You have two or more scripts with same class name on project"

This is very common problem with coders which haven't any brains.
Those kind of scripts, more than often are released by Unity already.
But, some coders includes ALL unecessary folders to their packages.
Or they are just so *ucking lazy to take care renaming classes, what
are included with package...

Yep. It seems that I'm too old...

 

Thanks man. I will be really carefull next time.

 

Ok, but, I ment the original asset coders, who includes everything on Project to their overpriced unity packages

 

But to be really fair. Relief terrain shaders by Tom are really great. Well worth the money.

 

Only, if those shaders works. And! Forcing to GL mode (which didn't help either) is a TOTALLY
wrong way! Most of Computers on this planet runs under Windows & DXx.

VG didn't work with 5.1.0 + HD3000 either. Just wondering, how many thousands laptop / desktop computers have inbuild HD3000 graphic chip on main board. If this wasn't Unitys fault, I mean 5 - 5.x.x.x, then this VG is useless if it requires SPECIFIED graphic card to work with. Hovewer. As long as this VG is advertised as Unity 5 ready, this is just an expensive scam.

This is the reason, why I hate to buy anything, if there is not trial version or demo version with limitations available. The best way would be: You don't need to pay, if you don't earn anything. Without any childist and useless limitations (which are a quite easy to disable btw...).

I'm wondering will I ask my money back from Unity's store.

EDIT: Not yet. I unbox my spare desktop computer ( 5 months old, super one) this evening. IF vg works with editor (5.0.0.f4) with ATI card and compiled web versions works with my laptop too (like VG web demos does on Tom examples site) I'll try to start use that desktop only. It's shame, since I like to code everywhere. I just take my laptop and....)

 

OKAY!

Tested with 4.6.2.f1

WORKS FINE! So, there is no problem with my hardware!

BUT, it DOES NOT WORK with any Unity 5.x versions under Windows!

It didn't work with ATI powered desktop Computer neither.

 

Easy, easy. I don't know what's going on with thread notifications. I haven't realised there's somebody with the issues. Let's sort it togehter. Give me you order number on PM and we can make a screenshare via skype to solve your issue.

It's quite suspicious that lighting function is throwing such bug means there's something very wrong with the package version or Unity version you've got. I believe fixed this issue many weeks ago when Unity introduced new lighting functions in ther surface shaders implementations. 'Grass Shader' is supposed to be present in Unity4 package version ONLY. If you downloaded this under Unity5 it's definitely not the right package. There is _separate_ version of package for U5 only and has this one 'Grass Surface Shader (no zwrite)' shader included. If you just installed U4 package on U5 - fail. If you downloaded U4 package when working on U5 (which means AssetStore bug!) - try to clear package cache. There is a bit about it:

http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/45050/where-unity-store-saves-the-packages.html

I guess there might be still issues with AssetStore package downloading which is out of my control...

Tom

P.S. Suggesting that I've got no brain and overusing invectives leads nowhere.

 

No change. I did try this with my desktop ALSO, when it has ONLY U5 installed with clean, new win 8.1.

As you can see, there isn't shaders available. And what comes save caches & package stores, the first thing what I do every time with this kind of situations, I clean them.

 

Tested now also with IE, Thunder, Opera...

Just upload this package somewhere and send download link for me. I'm starting to burn my two little gray brain cells totally!

 

Don't push it too hard. I see on your package contents that they are definitely NOT 1.5d for U5 ! Look at my screenshot attached. There is GrassSurfaceShader(nozwrite).shader file inside, not GrassShader.shader. So still AssetStore outputs wrong package version for you... Simply give me your order number and purchase date via private message on the forum and I'll give you link to the package somewhere on my server. And ask Unity about this issue. This is not supposed to work this way...

ATB, Tom

P.S. I'm going offline because it's a bit late here, but will response ASAP tomorrow if I won't do it today evening.

 

There's a bug in the Unity 4-5 asset downloading program that has cropped up for other assets. If I have it right, the problem is that if the asset is released for - say - v5.0.1 and the user has a lower version like v5.0.0f4, then the Unity 4 version is what is downloaded for that user.

This was a problem with Marmoset Skyshop early on, and it's happened elsewhere, but I don't remember where.

The solution for the user is to get onto the latest version of Unity. The solution for the asset provider is to release the asset on 5.0.0f4. Or something like that.

 

I hate to change unity version on the fly, when everything else works perfectly. With u4 series (while updating
versions) I got too much hedeaches. Mmmmm. Have to look the registry, if I can somehow lie to assets store, that I'm using 5.0.1 or something... Don't remember right now is there a version number lines, which is used by unity executable, but we will see....

(And I can't look very long unity's original light gray screen. I will get a huge hedeache. Yep. I'm old man. So, I have to find every time the patcher to change background color to black. Since idiotic unity maker's didn't think with their brains, with *ss maybe. My windows setups are very dark on the other porgrams too.)

However. Quick test. YABADABADOO!



Thank you TOM! (and Hopeful for new information).

EDIT:

-> To: Hopefull

Btw. I tested earlier with newest U5 too. Downloading VG from store, Didn't work either...

 

Hey there, looks a bit cartoony is there anyway to change that? I bought it but didn't invested much time on getting it to work.

 

If you've got enough patience - Windows/VolumeGrass Tools/Prepare grass texture + color tweaking. Enjoy .

Tom

 

Tomas!

Do you have API or list of current function calls for vg. I noticed, that I can use this vg as farmers hay fields aswell. Just own grass heights, colors etc... The vg demo "custom mesh" as an example, is a quite narrow for runtime programmes like I

Right now I can do it by premade vg mesh fabs, but the ideal method would be grow the farmers field area at same time what farmer throws a seeds to the ground.

I would like to use that same method also, when I insert textures for my game levels terrains. I have a full automatized (self made) editor for terrain texturing and I'm more than satisfied what it can do for me right now only with one button click. I have to create >20 different "game levels" for first game version. With vg (via API) implemented to my own terrainbuilder will do that easily. Ofcourse, I CAN set gras fields by hand, but it will take months to get all levels done.

And.... you had something called as lawnmover (2011 ?). I saw the demo while ago. That kind of code would be more than nice, when farmer cuts the hay straws with scythe. Also, when I create runtime roads for carriers (EasyRoads3d as runtime), I would like to cut grass mesh under the road, or hide part of it, or "cut" it so short, it won't seen from under the road.

Edit (with picture):

And... since my gardeners can put a tree plants to grow all over the accepted area (based on terrain texture ID at terrain position and working area radius), I would like to cut a hole for new growing trees. Right now this doesn't look so good for runtime trees. I CAN put always a little "mesh bump" between the tree's bark and ground with grass and bumb meshes + textures.... hmmm... one mesh more to render for slow machines...., but with cutting option it would be more slow machine friendly. Yep. Lawnmover needed

 

Hi KC. You can do whatever you want with settings. It will take a time. Alot... But, you will get a very natural look a like field. Tested with U4.5 a while ago. All color settings for several textures, texture modification itself, wind styles etc.

For me this is easy. I NEED cartoon like outfit

One thing, what I didn't test yet. Multiple grass planes mixed with existing planes with different grass textures, different colors, heights... Mmmm. naturall way, should I say...

 

You could customize it to your needs but this would mean constructing lawn meshes on the fly. This isn't that hard - look at my VG on custom mesh script(+its inspector) - top planar uvs, + sidewalls with height encoded in vertex color channel. But this has limited control. I dropped lawnomowing. It was slow and difficult to setup. Far better way will be going to density maps which would control the grass coverage via texture (like coverage of specifig texture on terrain). I plan to work on this update soon, but first I need to submit UBER (standard shader ultra) to be ready on the store before Unite.

Tom

 

Thank's!

Somehow I missed that c# source totally. There seems to be almost
everything what I need .

No problem anymore.

EDIT (before I start to code even 1st line):

You had a thought, that we can use terrain texture(s) as a VG-controller in future. So:

- Do you have any ETA for that?
- I suppose, runtime edited terrains will act in the same way then, in realtime updated or calling update routine?

 

hi Tom,I bought volumegrass1.5d from asset store today,and I use it for unity 5 on PC follow your quick start info,but it doesn't work at all;besides it shows 1.5b in my downloads.so,can you help me with this?