Assets [wip] Unity Planetarium, solar system and background generator (New alpha demo available)

I am currently looking at releasing unity planetarium onto the asset store, however it is currently in a pre-release stage and looking for some feedback to see what things people might want added or improved.

A alpha-demo has been released please read below (https://forum.unity.com/threads/wip...new-alpha-demo-available.868330/#post-5954891) for more details and how to get a copy.

About Unity planetarium
UP is a tool that procedurally generates different components of a solar system, there are different types of planets and a highly customizable background generator, this is intended for far to medium distance range and not intended to be able to land on planets.

Here is a first look at what the system can generate, this video was produced a while ago and there has been more work done towards the background generator, see pictures below.

Features
All planet textures are up to 4k resolution with their own custom shaders to handle animations, they all come with a auto generate button via a seed allowing unlimited (or near enough) variations of the planets.
They are all created using substance designer, included will the be the sbsar files to use in unity along with the original sbs files so you can view how they where made and change them to your own desire if you own substance designer.
The plugin will officially support unity 2019 and above at release.
Each planet planet and background type will come with their own shader, each of which was made in amplify shader editor and thus can be edited again with that tool.
There are currently 7 planet types a star and a background generator, below is a very quick overview of each

Barron - Aimed mostly towards a mars type planet, with an atmosphere but mostly rocky and no surface liquid or vegetation.

Gas - Is used to represent a planet that is either made up of a gas, or has a thick atmosphere where you won't see any land. It has layer bands that circulate part of the planet and also animates between bands to give a realistic feel like the gas clouds are moving and interacting with each other.

Habitable - The most complex setup in the list as it has many different components to work in its fullest form, it is designed to represent a planet similar to that of earth, including water, land, clouds, city lights at night, polar ice caps and thunderstorms all in an animated material.

Ice - A frozen world covered with ice, designed to have a fairly flat surface but with cracks between ice sheets.

Metallic - The idea of a planet that had a metallic surface, either static or in liquid form, this texture has an animation aspect where you can give it the feel like the planet is a molten metallic one, while there is no known example of one of these its a cool fictional idea.

Rocky - This planet is designed to be a rocky planet with no atmosphere, thus has craters similar to that of the moon.

Volcanic - A hot planet that is partially molten lava, this could be a proto-earth type planet or even a planet close to the sun. The planet comes with some animation for the lava fields

Star - the colour can be changed to your liking.

Alongside the above is the background generator, this is a powerful tool to create a varied set of space background textures to be used in different ways:- skybox (6 sided cube), element/modular(each element on its own game object), panoramic (inverted sphere), due to the overwhelming options available for this tool there is also an editor tool specifically designed to help ease the creation of your space scenes.




All code will be FULLY annotated with no dll's, your able to view how things are made and change them as much as you like.
Full documentation on all functionality of the editor tool, the generation parameters, initial setup and tips on how to use some functions (most are self explanatory) the editor tool also has a full tool tip system to quickly give an overview of what each aspect does.
Included with all of the above will be 3 sample scenes to show the system in use for you to learn from along with break down tutorial videos for each system.

*Planned features that I hope to bring out after initial release - so at this point don't count them as included with the tool, though if you want to up-vote a feature if you feel it is important then please go ahead.

Tutorial videos on how to make each sample scene

An auto generation button for the background textures - the current one was designed for an older build of the background system and while still works to an extent it may take several attempts to make anything of use, currently the suggestion is to make the background textures using the editor tool itself.

Star solar flares

Asteroids

Black hole - there is currently an asset for this however it needs improving and as its not currently a priority will probably be finished after release.


The release date of the tool is not set, this depends on the reaction here and how long it takes to finalise a few of the features.

I am also weighing up the options for pricing, again suggestions are welcome (be reasonable, I know everyone wants it for free!)

Please leave your thoughts and comments below

 

I just wanted to update this thread a little, unfortunately there has not been much progress on the asset recently due the continuing issue with adobe's substance plugin, however I am incontact with the developers of the plugin over there to get this resolved as soon as I can, incodently through testing I have found another small issue that I hope to get resolved at the same time.

 

I have just been given some good news on the on going issue that was holding this back a few days ago, there is now a fix for it.
There is also a work around for another issue with changing the resolution, exploring this now and seeing what changes to the project will be needed, hopefuly this should be ready soon again (providing I don't find many more issues!)

 

As I mentioned a few days ago that things are progressing, I would like to anounce the first public alpha of the background system.

The current version is a alpha-demo, intended as a stepping stone to get feedback while development continues
As such please backup your current project first before inporting into an existing project! Or alternatively use it in a new project.

First and foremost, the assets contained in this package require the ‘substance in unity’ package from adobe, you can get this free in the unity asset store or follow this link. You may get an error when you first import this package if you do not already have the substance in unity already installed. https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/utilities/substance-in-unity-110555

You can read the full documentation in its current form at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1II1Av_ZZcVaCuVrQmA8_vz74UOR90wPcEveLKcs52uM/edit?usp=sharing

And you can download the current project from https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cbMvDwWtPiQONaXRKdWLUCCR4lNfeWRQ/view?usp=sharing or download from this thread

Please read the getting started file (even if you dont read the full documentation) as it gives a quick overview of what this demo is about and its usage terms etc.

Happy creating!

 

Another small update from the above release.
I have found a small bug that should be fixed for the next build.

if you open the tool window without opening the supporting scene, then use the tool window to open the supporting scene.

When using the editor window to select the different nebula points on the left, it will not work and won't allow you to select any points. The current solution is to close the tool window (once the supporting scene has opened) and then re-open the tool window - this is because unity was destroying the textures when changing scene


Along with the above fix I have also added a zoom/explosion effect that can be applied on a per nebula basis. Further to this addition I am streamlinming the star background generator to be a bit more simpler as the options at the moment are more complicated than they need to be. I am also looking to do a similar option with the light generation. (getting the right balance between ease of use and options that make a tool more powerful)

I am also working on implementing a quick way to identify and select the blend mode and nebula color into the editor at the moment, if it works as expected it will mean you dont have to go through the menus to find these settings and change it.

 

I have since fixed a few more bugs, one particular one is using the eyedrop tool for the color will give an error. I have also improved the quality of the nebula and has more defined detail now.
Along with fixing the issues and adding the extra editor features mentioned in the previous post I have also added the ability to copy and paste each part of the nebula. This helps if you want to create a slight variation like a layered effect.
I have still yet to streamline the star field and light settings, as these are working I wanted to focus on testing/bug fixing and making the system more usable with new features.
Another new addition to the editor is a seed generator, this will keep all the current settings and randomly regenerate most of the detail types structure, so you get to keep the overall feel of the generated nebula but still change how the final result will look - ultimately making your creation unique!

The next step here will be to do:
1 A bit more testing and release an update.
2 Work a bit more on the documentation
3 Make some tutorial videos
4 Streamline the star field and light settings
5 Update the auto generator to work with all the new functions and features to create awesome nebula at a click of a button (or 2)

 

I have just been asked a question via a PM that I will share here with the response

Question
'HI,
I'm interested in your project The part that interests me particularly is the nebula creator. Is it possible to export a single transparent png instead of a sky box ? I'd like to be able to place nebulae in the sky without putting them in a skybox.'

Answer
'Yes, the texture can get exported to a .png and the option to use it as a background or as just a transparent texture, there is an option to switch between them, I was working on a video to demonstrate this last week until I found a few bugs that has meant I would have to re-do the video once they are fixed. I will most likely make a video demonstrating how to use it as you described in the next week or two.'

 

Progress is a little slower than I wanted at the moment with the system, a bug with the resolution option was intermittent so I have been working on that. I have started on the overview videos and have made some updates to the documentation too.
As per the next steps I have also worked on the star field generator, streamlined it more and while has less controls still gives a varied result.

I am currently looking into cleaning up the light settings - or I might just make the controls clearer if I cant reduce the control count.

As part of the video set I have been working on, here is an example that came about during their creation, was done in less than 10 min (while showing you the controls!) and thought I would post the result here as another example of what can be done (with all the new updates and features)

 

Another feature, another update.

Unity planetarium has now had a feature that will help in setting it up in any scene in any flavour you want.

Before this new feature you would have to look into the documentation or have a reasonable understanding of how unity handles skyboxes (still advantageous to know this) but for those who don't and want a super quick way to setup a scene you now have a couple of options and a button that will set it up for you!

This feature came from what was mentioned above, that the intention is to make it as easy as possible to use for any knowledge level and essentially gives the best value for your investment (afterall why bother with these tools if it doesn't save you time and you have to learn everything anyway?)

The code has also been gone through and commented out more along with adding more tool tips to help understand what all the features/buttons etc do.

The tutorial videos where also under way, but will need to be re-done to demonstrate the new scene setup feature (when doing the videos it was aparant that it would be easier to automate this part too, thus the new feature itself)

Note* the new features are at the bottom of the picture below.

 

Hello,

Looking very interesting!

Too bad this is using substance. This would be so cool for me to use in my upcoming space shooter.

As I understood that substance is not really free? I have no problem if I pay one time for an asset.
But substance requires some License Minimum 19.90 per month...

 

So for substance designer it is a paid for app, this is to create the subtance itself.

However the files that are made from the app, the .sbsar files (that is included in the project) doesnt require substance designer to run. (however the .sbs(substance designer file) & .sbsar(substance designer exported file type) files will be included so for those that do have substance designer can ultimately check out the substance itself and make modifications if they want to).
All unity planetarium requires is the susbtance for unity plugin to access that file type which is free on the asset store.
So as such the asset will be a one-off purchase from the app store and will not require any other paid for add-ons to work. (no need for that 19.90 per month subscription)

The down side to this is the plugin has hadd issues in the past and has been part of the reason for the delay in getting this asset out but have have been working around these issues and with the folks over at adobe (substance) to get the other issues resolved, for the most part things seem vastly more stable than they have been and feeling confident that unity planetarium will be ready for full publish soon. To that end the substance for unity plugin had an update released last week with fixes in it.

Try out the demo above in post 4 https://forum.unity.com/threads/wip...new-alpha-demo-available.868330/#post-5954891 , its a bit rough in that version but it will give you an indication to what is involved and that you wont need any extra subscriptions etc

 

Thanks for the info, I will give it a try then later today

 

Yes, I could create some very nice nebula with it! It is not for commericial use?

 

the alpha version is not, its just a test to make sure people dont have issues before purchasing (dont want to give false hope for something it is not) however the final version, once on the asset store will be the standard unity asset store licence, i.e commercial use too.

 

I have started to look at getting more compatibility for older versions, I have tested it in 18.3 and was able to fix a few issues and only have issues with the UI layouts, so I am hoping that these will be fixable relatively easily and can extend compatibility to eariler than the currently planned 2019, will be testing 2020 versions soon (tested mainly in 2019 at the moment)