[WIP Asset Store] Fantasy Adventure Environment - Stylized environment pack

Hi there!

Last year I did a project in UE, inspired by Dragon Quest XI and Zelda Wii U (now Breath of the Wild).


My plan is to port the assets and shaders to Unity for the Asset Store. The pack will consist out of:

• Vegetation (with accompanying shaders)
• Rocks/cliffs
• Terrain textures
• Clouds

Most, if not all, assets will have procedural materials, because customization is key!

Of course I would value any input during the development process, which I will share here, since it's meant for you to use!


Updates at end of the thread!

 

WOW Beautiful.

 

Made a good start on the water shader I'm going to be including! The textures are sourced from a Substance material, so it offers full control.

(For future reference, the character is from http://gamejolt.com/games/waterfall-canyon/29106 and won't/can't be included.)

 

Gorgeous. Excited to see more.

 

looks amazing!
why not start releasing trees, rocks ,etc.. ?

 

Good point actually! Perhaps it is best to limit the scope to the natural environmental aspects. I suppose it can be paired with the many great asset packs that are out there already. Or I might just create a separate asset pack for it.

Like the original project, I'm very inspired by Breath of the Wild. However, I severely lacked foliage variation, so I aim to make it more embellishing this time around

On a side note, terrain shaders are beyond horrible to do because of the severely outdated terrain system. So I'm afraid I'll have to leave it at providing nice terrain materials. I'm also super bummed out by the fact that the terrain does not support Substance outputs. Which means the Substance materials have to be modified outside of the editor and then saved as bitmaps

I had this rock shader in UE, which I will most definitely re-create in Unity (I've actually already made one for snow a while back). You can vertex-paint grass and it stays on top regardless of the object's rotation. It'll be super useful for blending rocks with the terrain

 

If you can have the nice specular grass effect BOTW have it's a win

 

Have not had as much time recently to spend on this asset as I'd like. But today I managed to work on the grass shader, mainly on the Subsurface Scattering feature and color variation.


Large: https://gfycat.com/SpitefulSlushyFennecfox

A very preemptive preview of everything put together:


Large: https://giant.gfycat.com/KindlyInsignificantFanworms.gif

The stones on the floor are a plane on which you can vertex paint, paired with tesselation/displacement in the shader the effect is faked.

The lighting of the terrain and foliage don't really match so that is a priority. Once I'm satisfied with it I can start producing more models.

 

Seriously have to do something about the color palette, it's so painfully generic

Anyway, I've implemented that rock grass (or snow) coverage shader I mentioned before. But without vertex color, it seems a bit pointless.

I should point out that the tree and rock models you see are not final.


Large: https://giant.gfycat.com/OrnateYellowDorado.gif

I'd like to add a transitional edge like this... at some point:

 

Added a sunshafts particle effect https://gfycat.com/GrotesqueBlandHartebeest

It has intersection fading and fades as the camera gets closer and intensifies as it moves away.

Worked a bit on color correction and tried to unify the scene

 

Does this include actual buildings (walls and such) or just mostly environmental detail?

Your work so far looks great!

 

Thanks!

As GCat pointed it, it's probably best to limit the scope to just natural assets for this package, I got a little too excited haha. Though, I would absolutely love to make architectural assets in the form of a kit, a skilled artist can put together entire structures using it and it's a great performance/time saver. There are already some great modular ruins/buildings on the Asset Store, some people might not want mine, but just the natural environment stuff

 

Totally understandable. If you're still up to it once this package is finished, I'm sure I know at least one person who will be interested in modular buildings that compliment this art style

 

Pretty satisfied with the foliage shading now, as it can match the scene's lighting conditions.

 

I've been busy mostly with experimenting with rock styles and additional vegetation types. Alongside of that I've made these large constructs to support the terrain. It's pretty oldskool photo texturing, but I feel it hones in on the BotW/Shadow of the Colossus style, so I've decided to go with it.



They use a tri-planar shader with the ability to add grass on top, and to remove/add it through vertex colors. The texture tiling is adjusted by the distance between the surface and the camera, which is still a little rough at the moment. The rock texture is a placeholder for now...

 

I just found out about this asset package via /r/Unity3D and your water shader. Absolutely wonderful looking stuff you have going on there mate. I'm more of a programmer than an artist, but I love the visual style. Consider me a day one purchaser, as this will fit right in with the Zelda-Style game I'm poking at. I know you said it might be available by late August, but I see you're still working hard on it. Any ETA on an asset store submission?

 

Can you get Unity to look like this? The difference in quality can be easily perceived.
Is the UE version in their asset store?

 

Ah yes, I had definitely hoped to finish it by this month. But I'm currently involved in a very exciting project and bills have to be paid of course So it comes down to weekends, where I have time to work on things.

I had stumbled on an undesirable consequence of using SpeedTree with Unity. Unlike UE4, it does not offer the ability to atlas all the vegetation textures together. Meaning, even the simplest plant holds 2 to 3 separate materials (leaf, stem and flower), which will not be beneficial for performance. So I've decided to model all vegetation by hand (including all LODs) and use a single material.

@Frpmta Regarding your concern, I doubt I can achieve the very same look as in UE4, since it has far superior built-in post effects and lighting. As you can tell from the previous screenshots, the look and feel is progressing still, so I'll do my best to achieve the same. Also, it is not on the UE4 marketplace, although it's a consideration.

 

Yep, that's just the way of things! Typically UE4 looks better out of the box, however with some tweaking, you can get Unity looking pretty close, especially when it comes to Post Processing Effects. Myself, I've found that color correction, anti-aliasing, SSAO, bloom, and a little motion blur go a LONG way.

 

Any update on this package? I know you said you're just working on weekends now. I can't help. I excite.

 

I appreciate the interest I don't have anything particularly exciting to share at the moment. I'm trying out some foliage types for variation in the ground cover, and remodeling the trees without SpeedTree (for the aforementioned reasons). That's currently the biggest chunk of work left.

 

I'm back to bug you again. Just so you know, if you need anyone to beta test anything, I've done it for a couple other assets in the store. Also, here's a rough model/texture of my main protagonist that will be traipsing through your environments.

 

Hello again Johnny10! How is work progressing on your environment? Any new screens to share?

 

Oh wow, sorry, I was convinced I had replied before, only to find out now that I hadn't.

I did an "amateuristic" research paper on stylized vegetation with SpeedTree for my bachelor. Bought a few flora catalogues so I knew which plants to I should make. I made the production assets with this package in mind, so managed to make a variety of flora.
https://gfycat.com/OnlyFlippantCockroach



They're all packed into a single texture atlas, thankfully. I still have to work on a wind animation and LODs.

A bunch of decent rocks is the next thing I'll be tackling.

 

That's looking absolutely amazing. Thank you so much for the update! I love the tone that this package sets. Just makes me want to go out and have an adventure. I see in that gif that it's also using your stylized water shader. Once this is finally up, will this include it, or will it be a separate purchase?

 

That's precisely the feeling I'm trying to instill I will include the water shader as I originally intended. Though, in a less extensive form.

 

Saw this is up for Beta in the asset store! Thought of you and all your tree issues.

https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/76657

 

Finally back at it! (re)created the trees and implemented a bi-directional animation in the shaders. The grass now also bends away from the player's feet.

GIF: https://gfycat.com/WanSplendidFrenchbulldog


Birch tree still needs some more work. But once I'm satisfied with the trees I'll start creating some variations (about 3) and LODs. Afterwhich I'll devote my attention to rocks/cliffs.

 

Absolutely gorgeous. I can't wait!

 

I actually ended up buying your stylized water shader because of the screenshots here! Keep up the great work!

 

Rocks are coming together! In this image only one cliff mesh is used in conjunction with a shader that uses a tri-planar color map and detail normal map. This makes the kit-bashed rocks look coherent.

Currently the list reads about 7 rock/cliff assets of various sizes. Which I'll be starting on very soon.

https://gfycat.com/HopefulRightCockatiel


Having a struggle with getting the vegetation to play nicely with Unity's GI. It's much easier (and so much faster!) to not bake in any lighting. I will make sure the included documentation will go in depth about the various limitations and workflow.

 

One of the biggest hurdles has been overcome, which allowed me to put a pin in the vegetation shaders. Ended up recreating it entirely in Amplify Shader Editor, which solved all the issues I was having with Shader Forge (No proper ambient lighting, no realtime lightsmaps, broken backface shadows (can can still see this on the grass, which has to be redone in the same matter).

I've taken a page from the SpeedTree shaders so it also has features for vertex-color Ambient Occlusion, light transmission and world-position-based color variation. The wind animations are powered by a normal map, which works different from SpeedTree's wind animation method, but works regardless.

Branch textures are run through a Substance material, so colors can be changed freely, as well as adding color variation and controlling detail.

Gfycat: https://gfycat.com/LivelyLinedCondor

 

Amplify always has solid products. I've just started messing around with the Shader Editor myself, and even as a shader coding nooblet, it makes things quite easy.

 

Preview of the capabilities of the included grass asset:

- Wind animation (not supported by Windzones, but wind direction can be manipulated)
- Color variation (Simulates light glancing off blades as they bend)
- Light transmission (By Directional Light direction)
- Procedural grass texture (Substance powered, various customization parameters available)
- Grass bending away from player (Currently limited to one transform, which will probably be your player)

Will possibly extend it with global color map support, so you can plug in a texture that is your terrain color. Making the grass tint itself by the underlying terrain color. Witcher 3 and various other games make use of this.

I have full confidence in the Amplify guys, absolutely love how quickly I'm able to steer away from writing CG. I will be sure to convert all the remaining shaders to ASE, so they can be modified with easy (or learned from).

 

Finished up the bark materials for the three tree types (Stylized (fluffy ones), spruce and birch). These are all Substance materials, so some of the properties are customizable.



Terrain texture set (will add a snow material as well)



The cliff assets should be finished some time next week!

 

Do you paint the grass with the standard Unity terrain tools?
When will this release? Will you release the grass now for testing?

 

I always use EasyScatter to paint prefabs, because the Unity terrain system overrides the shaders of detail objects with it's own, and it doesn't work with objects that use LOD.

You can, however, still save the grass texture as TGA file (since Substance generated textures do not work directly with the terrain) and use it as a "Grass texture" object. Like in this screenshot:



Hopefully, somewhere mid-June I can have the assets tested and start on the demo scene/promo materials. Difficult to say for sure, but a release near the end of July seems obtainable.

 

Added a new effect by taking a page from the game ABZU, which uses "fogsheets" to draw the player's attention to certain areas (such as a cave). The plane fades in and out based on its distance from the camera.

 

That's a really neat idea. I never even thought about using a fogsheet to "lead" the player, perse. You'd think fog would look out of place in such a bright environment, but it blends perfectly. Bravo.

 

Finished all the LODs for the assets. The trees have a custom "lampshape" collider, whereas the rocks use the LOD2 mesh as a collider. Cliffs are 2k polygons as LOD0, 1k as LOD1 and 500 for LOD2. I could create a third LOD should it help performance.

I'm developing on a 4-year-old laptop with a GTX 765m (comparable to a desktop GTX 650), so I'm aiming for at least 30 fps in the demo scene.

7/10 of the rock/cliff assets are now done. The remainder will be a smaller in size. The assets were created with modularity in mind. Meaning every rock can be rotated 90 degrees to create variation in the rock structures. Which means you won't need that many rocks, which also has performance benefits.



Slowly starting on the demo scene. Which will require some love as it doubles as promotional material for the store page.

 

Absolutely marvelous. If it's anything like the package you let me see in UE4, then this is going straight to the best-seller list on the environment asset page. By the way, which Skybox are you using in that screenshot? I'm digging the stylistic look. Is it custom or a bought asset?

 

It's a 3D scene I composed and then rendered to a cubemap, which will be included in the package. It's a little crude since I use a legacy cubemap, but it will suffice for the initial release. Afterwhich I can look into a method for rendering a HDR panorama



On another note: I added support to the foliage shader for a pigment map, which denotes what color the grass should be in the world (CD Projekt did this in The Witcher series). This map can be generated through an included script. The usability of which I will improve after release, but for now I need it working for the demo scene.

It also generates a grass heightmap, based on where the grass texture is painted. Where the height tapers off as the grass texture transitions into another. I believe Breath of the Wild also uses this, as their grass linearly gets shorter.

 

This just keeps looking better and better! Can't wait to get my hands on it.

 

Working on the demo environment some more. Having some issues with certain things not working in a build, but I'll get to those! I'm planning on designing the environment so that you follow a path which will bring you through several distinct areas. The starting area showcases the "fluffy" trees for instance.

Not sure if I'm going to officially include the waterfall effect, but it'll remain in the demo scene.

Also added an editor script which allows you to change the material properties of all the cliffs/rocks at the same time. I ended up needing this to tweak the colors, so I'm sure it'll come in handy. It loads the settings on start, so it could be used to set different material settings per scene.

 

Came up with a method to add wind motion to the tree as a whole, not just the branches. Where the scale of the tree determines the swinging speed, which adds natural variety since all trees are scaled between 80-120%.

Unfortunately it breaks with Static Batching and LODS, which you'll need for performance. So I'll have to bin it for the time being

 

Have you looked into hugo beyer's work for the substance textures? I used to have a similar substance to his and it is a wonderful effect.

Link: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/A2ekq

It's achieved by some fancying around with the tile sampler, combining a general high density with the tiny blades and another sampler with the large blades in dense groups getting the same noise. Although he is a lot better than me at using the rotation so they fan outwards from the large groups organically.

You could use the same principle for your grass texture to show actual blades of grass along with the foliage in large groupings to get some variety. You could also have this tie into the real grass length as well, and gives you a very natural approach for the transitions into other textures, as you are separating the blades themselves already.

It will also match the other textures you have made, as it makes the grass a LOT more fluffy and if you adapt this technique to your current style it might give it a lot more character for the store page, as well as more parameters for people to play with

Great work so far, really loving the colors and the shader work, and +56050120 points for your water shader!

 

The demo scene with Ethan running around looks gorgeous! And nice work on the grass.

 

Yes! I've seen this material come around a few times. Personally, I feel like this example goes further into the "hand-painted" style than I'm aiming for. I purposely opted to keep the color of the grass material quite uniform so it blends better with the grass asset. The grass Substance has a base layer for grass blades but also allows for a secondary layer of bigger blade groups (or smaller, to look like clovers). The size and curve of the blades can be modified per group. I will show how exactly the terrain materials can be modified at a later time.

As far as progress goes: I've managed to fix the issue with the tree trunk wind motion, by baking the tree's "stiffness" into the vertex colors through script. As a result the tree assets are .asset files, rather than FBX files, but that should not be a problem. Color- and wind speed variation will still be lost when using Static Batching.

All the rock assets are now finished. I've composed a demo scene for them with best practises for their usage. The base albedo textures are based on a grayscale color, so they can be tinted properly through the shader and global color map.



A summary of all assets would be:

General:

• Grass, dirt, rock and snow terrain materials
• LODs and collision meshes for all assets that require it
• Custom shaders for trees and vegetation, to enable stylized rendering
  
• Bi-directional wind animation for vegetation and tree trunks
• Amplify Shader Editor support (partially)
  
• Includes a LUT texture

Scripts:

• FAE_CliffAppearance: Change the properties of all cliff materials at the same time, or load them on startup
• FAE_FoliageBender: Attaches to a transform from which the foliage will bend away
• FAE_PigmentMapGenerator: Attaches to terrain and generates a global pigment map from the first 4 textures. This is used for the foliage shader to color itself
• FAE_Sunshafts: Aligns the Sunshaft effect with the Directional Light.
• FAE_WindController: Set the wind properties of the current scene
  • Direction
  • Speed
  • Strength
  • Amplitude
  • Trunk speed
  • Trunk Weight
  • Wind type (Perlin or Anisotropic)
  • Also has a debug mode, which visualizes the wind vectors

Shaders:

• Cliff: Tri-planar color map and detail normals
• FogSheet: Opacity is determined by the distance from the camera. Fades out as it moves closer. Can be fitted with an alpha map.
• Sunshaft: Cross-pans two unique sunshaft textures. Fades out as it gets closer to geometry and as the camera moves closer. Uses Directional Light color, and it's alpha to control the intensity
• TreeBranch: Powered by custom wind system, ambient occlusion and light transmission support.
• TreeTrunk: Powered by custom wind system
• Water: Limited version of the Stylized Water Shader, hardcoded values
• Foliage: Powered by custom wind system, light transmission, player interaction
  • Color gradient
  • Color variation by wind
  • Ambient occlusion
  • Height map influence + min/max height settings
  • Pigment map influence
  • Bending influence, determine the influence of the FoliageBender script

Effects:

• Dust motes particle system
• Falling leafs particle system
• Fogsheet
• Single sunshaft, long
• Single sunshaft, short
• Sunshafts particle system
• Procedural lensflare texture
• Stylized skybox

Rocks:
As seen in the screenshot, from left to right:

• Cliff A through F, and 4 rock clusters.
• 2K texture maps.
• Global color and detail normal map

Trees:

• 3 Birch trees
• 3 Pine trees
• 3 Stylized trees
• 3 Bark materials: Regular, Pine and Birch

Vegetation:

• Field grass
• Thick grass
• Blue poppy + cluster
• Red poppy + cluster
• Bush A & B
• Chervil + cluster
• Daisy + cluster
• Dandelions
• Fern
• Groundcover: daisies, leaves and poppies
• Lilypad cluster A &B
• Single lilypad + lotus
• Speedwell

Todo: Finish demo environment, polishing and marketing assets.

 

Solved most of the issue I had with the assets in builds. And refined the light transmission of the branch shader by a stretch.

Additionally, I worked on the color grading and post processing. For which I'm using the Post Processing Stack, and will include the profile and LUT asset. As much as it is inspired by my original UE4 project, it is as it was inspired by today. An absolutely lovely clear summer day, which is what this environment seems to boldly radiate

PS: Minimum support version will be Unity 5.4. Also tested it in 5.6 without any issues.

 

Getting closer to finishing the demo scene. Of which I will make a playable demo which will be freelyavailable for download. Consequently, anyone who plays it will submit their PC specs and average FPS to a database (that's the condition hehe). So I will be able to compile an average performance level. On my 4-year-old laptop it runs between 45-60 fps, so it'll do fine on any regular gaming PC.

This is a preliminary preview of the demo environment. Still have to polish up the final, spruce, section. I've also managed to render the skybox as a spheremap, so no more visible seams, and it's in 8k resolution