Voxeland - Voxel Terrain Tool

@Wright
It only happens in some places.
The depth does not know if it is the same in the different places that occur. It is difficult to know, but I would say yes. Or at least it is very similar

regards

 

Try disabling "Hide Collider Wire" in Settings to see the actual collider mesh. Is your character falling through this mesh, or the mesh differs from the visual representation (I suspect at the chunk borders)?

 

Hi @Wright

I have deactivated and activated the option that you indicate me but I do not see any collider or anything different.
I have recorded a small video in case it helps. If I can not send you the scene since it does not weigh much pq is a test project to learn how to handle Voxeland and MapMagic

regards

 

Here is a sloppy video of an shape Im trying to mimic without having to delete the surrounding voxels each time. I still will use the landscape aspect of the asset, but I dont have a lot of experience with coding, more so with conceptualizing and 3d modelling.

Im getting an [Assets/AsteroidGen.cs(36,247): error CS1525: Unexpected symbol `end-of-file'] error with that,

 

Strange. Maybe you pasted the code not correctly?

Anyway, that is an overall idea. 3 dimensional loop + distance check and "if" condition. You can write your own script using such approach.

 

Any body out there played with terrain scale with this? I have set the terrain scale to 3,3,3 and the grass meshes end up underneath the main terrain after re build.Any ideas how I can get the grass meshes to stay on top after terrain scale increase would be good.

 

Try clicking "Rebuild" or changing any chunk after disabling "Hide Collider Wire". It looks like character is going through the ground in chunks borders, I wonder why commenting out that lines of code didn't fixed it.
PS nice animations and animation controller.

That code seems to be correct. Personally I would use deltax^2 + deltay^2 + deltaz^2 to find distance^2, but it;s absolutely unrelated with an error. Seems that you've got a problem with the script file.

Quick fix

 

Maybe Im not using the same libraries

 

@Wright good news: https://twitter.com/AnthonyYakovlev/status/943446715675312129
You can 10x the speed of rebuilding physics by using the proper MeshCollider.cookingOptions, your mesh are already valid I think.

 

Yes! Yes, of course! That sounds so good

Voxeland 5 namespace is called "Voxeland5". Just add

Code (CSharp):

1. using Voxeland5;

in the beginning.

 

I'm afraid not. It's specific 2017.3 feature, I doubt that it will be added to previous Unity version.

 

Hello,

I'm quite new to this, and I only start playing with MapMagic and Voxeland a few days ago. I'm very impressed with all you can do, and i have plenty of ideas for games, so i bought both of them !

I've got a small problem anyways, I've created some-kind of desert land in MapMagic and it looks very good ! :



But when i want to create more or less the same thing in Voxeland, instead of having a flat terrain (like you can see in the picture here in the middle between the small mountains, i've got a all bossy terrain filled with holes and bumps :



Is there a way to avoid that, so my voxelmap terrain looks like the Magic one?

Thank you !

 

This is the issue that I have too (I bought MapMagic and am trying the free evaluation of Voxeland). I think the tool is great but it really needs an efficient way to smooth the mesh so it looks and plays like a regular terrain. Perhaps an alternate smoothing method that the can be selected based on what it is being used for. For me this is the biggest problem Voxeland has and why I haven't bought it yet.

Currently the only solution for a smoother terrain are these settings:

Smooth Normals: sets additional visual terrain smoothness without actually changing the geometry by smoothing only the vertex normals. Increasing this value does not require changing Mesh Margins and does not affect the performance, but this smoothness is a bit “fake”, it can cause artifacts when using crisp normal maps.

Relax Strength: sets the terrain smoothness by moving chunk vertices. This is the factor that controls vertex relax per iteration. Using the value of 1 will return the maximum terrain smoothness with given Iterations count. Raising this value to more than 1 will move vertices farer than their maximum smoothed positions, this can produce visual artifacts. Changing Relax Strength value does not affect the mesh build performance.

Relax Iterations: the number of iterations used to smooth the terrain.
Raising this value slightly lowers the mesh build performance, but requires raising Mesh Margins to weld the seams between chunks (while high margins can affect mesh build performance a lot).

However, relax strength can cause visual artifacts and increasing the number of iterations lowers performance. It would be great if a more efficient solution could be implemented for smoothing.

 

Thank you for your answer. Could you tell me where are those settings located? I'm still quite new to this and didn't find them.

What is weird here, it's that you can manually remove the bumps and fill the holes, so you terrain looks flat. So i guess it's totally possible when auto generated too. Maybe modifying some script or something?

 

You can remove the bumps but then it's flat, when what you really want is for it to be undulating like a regular terrain. This voxel engine creates a lot of steps and bumps that can only be smoothed out properly with multiple relax iterations. I'm making the suggestion that the smoothing should be improved, perhaps with a new approach.

The relax settings are found in the main voxeland script, which is probably attached to an object called voxeland in your hierarchy (Those settings are not available in the free evaluation version).

 

When playing with the variables you gave me, i've found that the map is indeed made of cubes. But some of thoses cubes appear weirdly, and fill the map at some places where they should not be.

Here is some pics :




Those group of small cubes should not appear there, as they don't touch the "terrain elevation", they are just there, in the middle, doing nothing.

Maybe there is a way of removing them in the param or graph creation of MapMagic, without changing all the system. (i don't know, i'm quite new)

 

And here is an image of the reverse, there are holes in the middle of the terrain where it should be flat



It's all theses holes and bumps coming from the terrain generation that's the problem. You can "smooth" them a lot, but they will still be there..

 

@Wright I love you man! thanks for adding the ability to attach the components and tags to each chunk! I just wanted to show you the speed I was able to get adding the asset "InstantOC".

I'm hoping for Megasplat Integration soon, but I'm sure you have a lot to deal with now - Happy Holidays & new year!

 

I'd like to remind you that Voxeland is actually a block terrain, nearly cubical one, like Minecraft. All that bumps you see are blocks. You can either remove them by using more flat graph, or you can smooth them increasing Relax Iterations count. As camta005 said, increasing iterations count will create seams between chunks, but they could be fixed with increasing Mesh Margins value.
Try the following setup:
- Relax iterations: 5
- Mesh Margins: 3
There's no need to touch normals or relax strength values (the default ones are ok in your case).

I'm really glad to hear that!
The video is awesome, I've definitely got to look into InstantOC.

I've started MegaSplat integration yesterday. I've stumbled upon texture arrays - Unity does not provide a neat way to work with them, so I've got to make some texture array tool that should be used both by me and Voxeland

 

Yes, I've been looking more into this, and I need to concentrate on the graph, because i want the terrains to be driven with a car, so he needs to be really flat to avoid weird bumps. Smooth it will not resolve my problem as the cubes will be still there.

Do you have any tips on witch to concentrate to remove those weird cubes? (or fill the holes) They appear even with the more pimpliest of graphs like a noise, a curve and voxeland output.

 

Hello, i've been reading a bit a lot of pages and i've exactly the same problem as you ! Did you resolve it? Those extra "blocks" are very annoying !

 

Since InstantOC works, World streamer should work and may even work better since it completely unloads and loads the meshes rather than the rendering. InstantOC works by switching the rendering between layers so lets say Voxeland has it's own streaming system and perhaps can work the same as the Occlusion Culling so individual blocks are unloaded/loaded. The only problem is that you have two meshes created per chunk -a hi poly and low poly so unless we can force one mesh to be created per chunk then we'd have to resort to each hi and low poly chunk to require custom naming for example "large, and medium") -this is how world streamer organizes LOD for streaming but if we can just get one mesh output (hi or low) and use tessellation then it would just work perfectly. One last thing, if Megasplat can use just displacement without tessellation and if developers don't care about the size of meshes (except for Unity limitations) but prefer performance then just outputting hi poly meshes can increase performance (I think) I was painting displacement in 3Dcoat and had the option of subdividing my meshes so I can paint on or use tessellation but tessellation really killed the speed for painting. So hybrid option could be generating the hi poly -it's not as dense as 3DCoat subdividing requirements but we may only need to tessellate a little bit rather than using a lot of tessellation on low poly objects. Unity shaders may perform better than 3DCoat's tessellation especially with Megasplat but if tessellation requires a lot more resources then it's probably better to have the option to output higher poly meshes only and increase only little tessellation.

 

Hey guys,

I think I found a solution to remove those blocs hand have "flatter" terrains. I don't know at all if it's possible so bear with me.

Would it be possible to make a small script that detect groups of 2/3 blocs and remove them? (and fill when there is 2/3 void). That way we will "smooth" the terrain, without touching at the mountains etc (because they will be more than 3 blocs anyway).

I have not looked into the code yet at all, so i don't know if my idea is crazy or realizable.

Can someone with experience tell me? Thanks a lot !

 

I post this earlier on the wrong forum.....

Hello. I just purchased Voxeland 5 today. I have an active project that I am trying to implement this into. When I added Voxeland, I have an all black terrain. I have ensured that the shader is set to just Land and not the Land Array. If I try opening the demo scene (whilst in my active project), same result. If I try to integrate this into another project, same result. If I create a brand new project, I can run the demo scene just fine, as long as there are not any other assets integrated.

I am using Ultimate Survival and the closest I can get to using this terrain is seeing an all pink terrain. I have been trying to sort this for sometime, any input is really appreciated.

Update* - I have completed removed both MapMagic and Voxeland5 from the project and re-installed them. I have re-compiled, closed, and re-opened Unity. Whenever I add Voxeland as a game object, I set the generator as MapMagic and it tells me that MapMagic is currently not installed. I was using MicroSplat but have deleted that from the project as well. This is likely user error but any assistance would be incredible.

 

hi @Wright

I did not know that in order to see the lines of the colliders I had to rebuild again. I thought that disabling "Hide Collider Wire" was enough

So doing what he told me I could see the lines of the colliders when deactivating "Hide Collider Wire".

This is the video of what you see. It is clearly seen where the collider is misinterpreted with respect to the "visual" mesh that is seen on the screen.

I have tried again to eliminate the line 516 of Chunk.cs and I have reconstructed again. And now if the problem was solved.
I'm starting to think that the other time when you told me to erase line 516, I did not press "Rebuild". Although I would swear that if I did ...

I'm also very interested in Voxeland working with MegaSplat since I use it. How much does it calculate, if there is no unusual problem, in being able to implement it?



regards

 

Hmm, try using less detailed noise (decrease "Detail" value of the noise node). This may result in a bit more "terraced" look, but should remove those blocks.

What is your build platform set in build settings? Do you have any errors in the console?
Theoretically the problem you've described could happen when Android platform is selected, but it's fixing just by turning off texture arrays. Please make sure that:
- texture arrays are disabled in shader (you've already done it, just mention if someone else have the similar problem),
- texture arrays are disabled in Land Blocks foldout
- all of the land blocks textures are re-assigned

This could be fixed by closing and re-opening Unity. If not, ensure that MAPMAGIC keyword is enabled in Define Symbols (Edit - project settings - player).

So could you solve this problem by commenting that line?

There's already an unusual problem in working with texture arrays I plan to go on working on it in a couple of days, and it will take about a week I guess.

 

Yes. That's what I told you. Sorry for my clumsy English

.....

I'm happy to hear that. Happy Holidays !!!

Regards.

 

What is your build platform set in build settings? Do you have any errors in the console?
Theoretically the problem you've described could happen when Android platform is selected, but it's fixing just by turning off texture arrays. Please make sure that:
- texture arrays are disabled in shader (you've already done it, just mention if someone else have the similar problem),
- texture arrays are disabled in Land Blocks foldout
- all of the land blocks textures are re-assigned

I have completed all the above steps. I have disabled the TerrainArray shader, confirmed that PC/Mac is selected as by target device, deleted the define script section, and restarted unity. The console even displays that MapMagic and Voxeland integration are enabled (screenshots attached). This is coming off of a fresh project install (deleted the project and re-downloaded from the cloud) and a fresh Voxeland5 install. I have attached all screenshots below.

*I am completely aware that this could be something that I am missing/overlooking/not doing correctly. I am completely open to the idea that it could be that. If you could just help point on where. I also don't think you will be able to offer any input on the Easy Build System errors I am receiving but I am open to it if you are.


Screenshot at 11.55.49 shows my current errors (just the EBS ones). Upon closing and reopening, screenshot at 12.02.03 shows my new console.

 

Oh, you seem to mix up those issues. Scripting define symbols have nothing to do with a black terrain, it's about your second issue (in Update). Let's deal with the first one first: make sure that texture arrays are turned off in Land Blocks foldout and the right textures are assigned.

Thanks, same to you!

 

But in my screenshot, I also have one that displays "MapMagic is not installed" even after the update to define scripts.

 

Could you please paste the define symbols you've got?

 

They originally looked like this:

CROSS_PLATFORM_INPUT;GAIA_PRESENT;__MICROSPLAT__;VOXELAND;MAPMAGIC.

I have attempted to flip MAPMAGIC and VOXELAND (I figured it was worth a shot.. I am new at this). I have also attempted this after deleting Microsplat, so it was no longer visible.

Issue 2: After everything I have attempted, including manually assigning the textures and removing the TextureArray shader.. terrain remains black. I have opened a different scene (that has not ever used Voxeland) and same issue persists. The only way I can even use the demo scene is by creating a brand new project.

 

A few more screen shots... I want to make sure I am not missing anything...

With those settings (listed above), the following appears:


(That is a MapMagic terrain in the background).


What also continues to perplex me....



That makes me feel like compatibility mode is enabled. When I try to use it as the map:



This message appears after deleting, re-downloading, installing Voxeland.

 

So that's a project-specific issue... Could you please remove everything unnecessary from the copy of your project and email it to me?

 

@Wright for the higher mesh output could you potentially make it so that the depth map/channel of the triplanar shader/Megasplat is projected as the new surface? I was talking to Jason Booth/Megasplat about this very thing and he said it was possible but of course involves more work. If terrains could be generated with enough hiPoly to replace the need for Tessellation then although there will be an increase of file size, there will be more performance, especially using InstantOC. I was just adding this for you to keep in mind so you wouldn't have to completely rework the code if this makes sense and you're interested to integrate the feature (I will submit this on Gitlab). Again, I see Voxeland not only for games but for film making as well which is more so now being promoted by Unity and the film makers of Adam.

 

*Update*

Issue is resolved. I had Metal enabled on my Mac. Disabling this fixed the texture issue.

Previous issue-

It has something to do with the terrain shader. I have updated my project to unity 2017.3. This resolved the MM/VL integration issue. I now have access to MM through VL. When I create a new terrain, it is immediately black. I have tried unchecking the "use texture array" from the Voxeland editor and manually adding a few textures to "Land" shader, followed by a re-build, no change. I have enabled "use texture array" and setup a texture set, changed the shader to texture array, rebuilt and still.... an all black terrain. If I switch the shader to the Standard shader (from Unity), I have a terrain with the base color (first time seeing that in this project).

I have also attempt to re-import the Land shader, as I saw that resolved the issue for some.

 

Good morning, and happy new year! I am using Voxeland for the first time, and everything is working as expected so far. I have one special requirement for my project that I need to ask for help, though.

I need to use Voxeland to create objects that can be seen from all sides, including below. In effect, what I need to do is make a giant block of stone and carve it to the final shape. Is there a setting somewhere in Voxeland to have it render from all sides, behaving like a general "lump of voxels" instead of like a terrain?

Thanks for making a great tool! Other than this one issue (which I admit is not the normal use-case), it's working great for me so far. I'm impressed that I was able to get started with just a few minutes in the documentation.

 

Ummmm.... I have a problem, and need to get some debugging help. I suspect it's pilot error by me, but I *thought* I was doing things by the manual.

I created a Voxeland terrain, 300 meters square, and sculpted it to my requirements. I used the "Save to Asset" feature to make an asset file. I exited Unity and came back into my scene, but decided I wanted to do some editing on my Voxeland block. The brush had no effect at all, although I could see the orange cursor showing which voxels were selected for edit.

Thinking something might need a reset, I clicked the "Rebuild" button. The system rebuilt my land back to an empty, unedited bare plane, and I seem to have lost all my work. I tried importing a backup of my asset file (which I had made as a precaution), but again, it's just a flat plane which I had generated.

As I understand the manual, once you have saved the Voxeland object as an asset, further changes modify the asset file, but this appears not to be happening for me. Can you explain what I'm doing wrong? Also, why would editing not work after reloading the scene in Unity?

Thanks for your help. I really like Voxeland so far, and I'm pretty sure this is my mistake, but I'm not clear on what I'm doing wrong.

 

I have been running into a similar issue. Whenever I re-open unity, I can no longer modify the terrain. It is almost as if it unlinks from the editor. I need to delete and add a new static Voxeland component and I can modify it again.

 

Mine is working now after I hit the "rebuild" button. I think there's a bug there, but I have found this is a workaround for me, at least so far.

One caveat is that you have to make sure the current version is *really* saved in the asset file before hitting the rebuild, or else all work is lost.

 

Rebuild clears all of the Voxeland chunks and creates them from scratch. If something went wrong or you think Voxeland behaves unexpected - hit Rebuild.
The issue you're describing might occur when disabling "Save meshes" toggle. It's fixing by pressing rebuild after scene load in editor and should not occur in playmode. But removing all of the scene data is the bug I'm not aware of. Can you reproduce it?

Currently you'll have to sculpt this lump manually. I have a plans for creating a special asset that will use only one chunk of Voxeland to create stones, caves, asteroids and other non-terrain stuff, but still it's only a project.

I have not looked into MegaSplat displacement yet, have to deal with the initial integration to decide where to move next, but I'll keep that in mind.

 

Not any more. It happened several times for me, and now, thankfully...not.

I thought I had found a way to do this. I went below the terrain and, at a very oblique angle, shaved off voxels to make it just slightly thinner from below, thus forcing all the lowest voxels to be tagged as modified. This looked fantastic, but then I discovered that the next rebuild basically reset that work (at least visually -- I can't tell if the voxels are still tagged modified or not).

When you get your other asset ready to release, count me very interested. In spite of the startup challenges I've had today, I have my terrain working as desired now. The results I've gotten with Voxeland in this scene exceeded my expectations -- it looks so organic and natural!

 

default:


meshCollider.cookingOptions = MeshColliderCookingOptions.None;

 

I still haven't been able to get the grass mesh to track the main terrain chunks when you increase the terrain scale to 3.
The mesh gets lost underneath.
I tried the quick fix on the chunk code but it through up about 3 or 4 errors and didn't work so I ditched it.
The reason I wanted to increase the terrain multiplier is to get larger areas with less overhead to engine and 3 seems to work well.

 

Curious if anyone can offer any input... I haven't quite grasped the concept of setting up pinned terrains (through MM) to work with VL. I looked through the tutorials and I didn't see any information surrounding how to make this work.

Also, when working with VL, my editor is set as static whilst my runtime is set to infinite. I am getting a huge gap in space at one point (no way around it, renders that side of the map unusable) and any need terrain is appearing with only one of the default colors.

I have also found that after a certain amount of time, all changes are not appearing anymore. I have unchecked and rebuilt every possible option. The only way (that I know) how to fix this is by deleting and re-creating VL.

 

Thanks for that fix for 2017.2. It worked for me.

I'm getting a similar error again but now in 2017.3 Can you make a fix for it when you have time?
Here is the error I'm getting now when I compile.
"
Shader error in 'Voxeland/Grass TextureArray': invalid subscript 'vec' at line 205 (on d3d11)
Compiling Vertex program with SHADOWS_CUBE
Platform defines: UNITY_ENABLE_REFLECTION_BUFFERS UNITY_USE_DITHER_MASK_FOR_ALPHABLENDED_SHADOWS UNITY_PBS_USE_BRDF1 UNITY_SPECCUBE_BOX_PROJECTION UNITY_SPECCUBE_BLENDING UNITY_ENABLE_DETAIL_NORMALMAP SHADER_API_DESKTOP UNITY_LIGHT_PROBE_PROXY_VOLUME UNITY_LIGHTMAP_RGBM_ENCODING"​

 

I need the same thing...as well as a bunch of other people it seems. It might be some good news though. I found an inexpensive asset that allowed me to make a cave...(not fancy but it worked)
Skinned Metaball Builder: https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/modeling/skinned-metaball-builder-38054
I would still use Voxeland to do this if I could though...because I like the fun controls and easy of use, but yeah, people need to be able to make small landscape features like caves and big organic rock formations...

 

Looks very impressive. I will definitely set mesh collider cooking options in next version.

Using this fix is a way to do it. What were these errors?

This error looks different. I will look into it right after I'll get back to my PC

Ok, Voxelump will be my next asset. Well, next after a small free asset that will be announced in a couple of days

 

I still think you should call it Voxelith since it's made of stone.