[RELEASED] Vegetation Studio

1. What I call run-time spawned vegetation is the vegetation generated run-time from the Vegetation Studio rules.

If we did a MapMagic node it would use the API to write the spawned trees to the Persistent Vegetation Storage.
This could still be done for a run-time generated terrain. The VegetationSystem component would then read from the storage.

2. When setting up colliders for a tree or object you can select "from object". This option is not complete yet but on the list. The plan is to read all collider settings from the source prefab and use those for the runtime spawn. This will work with multiple collider setups.

 

Indeed the 'Interactive' vegetation is a definite game changer. Fast and the way it is done has all sorts of uses. Super simple to connect of a pooling solution and spawn in FX or GOs to do what you need. This is a difficult but well needed feature. Happy to see Lennart finally tackle this.

 

This is a small test that took only 5 minutes to set up. Just to demonstrate a bit of the power of Vegetation Studio. It is an extremely easy to use and very powerful tool. Soon I will post images of the actual scenes from my developing game.

 

Thank you for the harvesting explanation @LennartJohansen I'll be playing around with this tonight.

1. Saving changes.
For procedural implementation my current workflow goes like this:
Terrain generated -> attached scripts activated -> saved resource changes loaded/applied
Is there not much to worry about if say a 1024x1024 terrain with 5,000 trees has had 2,000 of those chopped down; would we expect to see a bump in the load when placing 2,000 separate masks after generation? I assume a triangle is the easiest form of the mask, or could we consider a circle(point+range) for minor optimization? Some way we could group these into a single object? Create a list of "dead" points? Am I thinking too deep into it?

2. Types of masks
Also, on your website I see the masks have options for removing trees/objects/large objects. Will it be difficult to get more specific than this? for example, remove ore, but not stone, or vice versa. Due to the random nature of placement, things can end up close to each other sometimes and I'd hate to remove a resource node along with another. Or if the position can reliably be considered within 1mm then do we only really need a mask of 10mm?

3. Overlapping vegetation
Is there any worry of say a rock spawning inside of a tree? I understand using masks to stop trees/rocks from spawning inside a large object, but do we have to work with layers of masks to prevent rocks and trees from overlapping?

 

On a side note I'm starting to question the benefits of Unity Terrains with such great tools such as this... It's well known they come with some overhead, but the tree/detail LOD and grouping is supposed to be worth it. Assuming we're no longer using the Unity Terrains for vegetation AT ALL, only height and splat, are we better off going with mesh? I'm not an expert on the subject, anyone?

 

https://forum.unity.com/threads/wip...extraction-toolset.448766/page-6#post-3225805

Read the last post by murpenstein and then start drooling with anticipation.

 

Hi.

1. I do not see a problem with 2000 masks, as soon as the masks are added to the mask manager they do not have any cost in the render loop. Internally they are using a quadtree to find the correct cells to register with, speed is good.

However when we are talking about this many I would consider making a small manager component for your project.
You can do a bit of the work the VegetationItemMask component does for you. It handles creating and setting up the internal mask object, adding this to the mask manager and removing it when you disable or destroy the component.

with a small manager script you can handle this yourself and skip creating the gameobjects and components.

Code (csharp):

1.  
2.  CircleMaskArea maskArea = new CircleMaskArea
3. {
4.       Radius = 0.01f,
5.       Position = Position
6. };
7.  
8. maskArea.Init();
9. maskArea.VegetationType = VegetationType;
10.  
11. VegetationStudioManager.AddVegetationMask(maskArea);
12.  

you need to keep a reference to the maskArea component and remove it from the manager yourself.

There is no need for any grouping of objects, the masks only register on the correct internal cell and is only tested against the same VegetationType.

2. I could see the use case for that. Making a mask that removes a spesific VegetationItem is not hard, but I want the masks to be more general. If you made a mask that removed trees with ID=XXX that would work fine. However if you switch to a winter VegetationPack the mask would not remove the trees spawned in the same location as they have a different ID. This will make the masking system less flexible and harder to manage. Adding multiple IDs etc.

What I am looking at is to extend the system we use to include vegetation in masks today. Here you can group one or more vegetation items and include those groups for the mask. This approach could be used for removing also.
This way you can add the same "GroupID" in all packages you prepare for your terrain.

I will look a bit on this and see what can be done.

3. There is a collision system for trees now. Just enable this on each VegetationItem. I am planning to enable this on Objects and Large Object also it just need a bit of internal changes in spawn order etc to make sure result is always the same.

 

Great stuff @LennartJohansen
That's the code I was looking for too =]

 

It will be in the next beta release, I think today or tomorrow.

 

Is the Touch bend grass mobile friendly? Thanks!

 

It should work on high end mobiles. They system requires a Shader Model 5.0 to work with full functionality.
It can run on shader Model 4.5 but some parts that is using compute shaders will fall back to c#

you would need OpenGL ES 3.1+AEP support on Android to use the instanced indirect rendering of grass properly.

 

So I've found that for MapMagic integration, as my game is fully procedural and I start with zero terrains enabled, I can create a 0,0 terrain for vegetation reference, move it off of MapMagic and then delete the MapMagic parent. This creates a shadow Terrain which cannot be pushed into a prefab because MapMagic doesn't actually create the terrainData that unity wants for a solid export. With this shadow copy though I can just disable is and leave it in scene for VegetationStudio to use for copying off to newly generated terrains. Easy fix for now.

add: also had to move the vegetationstudio the infinitemapmagic plugin is referencing to back under the VegetationStudio and disable it. then add tempVegetationSystem.enabled = true; to the plugin to turn on any new instances of the copied disabled instance.

 

This is definitely something I need too. I'm about out of time for today, will see if I can get into it tomorrow.

 

Initial tests are working good =D
Noise doesn't seem to be using the seed properly. I made six or so grass and they all started with a different seed, but they all seemed to be noising out the same. Some more options with the noise would be a plus too.

 

The 2017.3 beta of Unity is out. I did a test import of Vegetation Studio. I had a shader compile error but after fixing it everything seem to run good in the editor There is 4 unity interface change warnings but not important. I will update and fix them.

The shader bug is fixed for the next Vegetation Studio beta.

I did not manage to run any standalone build at all. Even with a fresh empty project. I will try again as new betas are out.

 

I will have a look at noise in general. Add some more functions to randomize and maybe select noise type. Spawning speed would be the same with more noise types available.

 

Example showing the density of vegetation you can get with VS. I just threw a lot at it to see how it copes.

Sorry about the video I was trying to find a clear bit but there isn't any. I will add some masks and rules to get a better look scene.

2km x 2km terrain full of trees, plants, and grass. real time lighting and global illumination. I will put a nicer video together when i pick my jaw up off the floor. Great work Lennart. .

 

On day 1 of release on the asset store will this work with single pass rendering on both oculus and vive VR headsets with the latest unity 2017 version? Been looking forward to a vegetation system in unity like this for a LONG time.

 

Please have a feature where the grass, bushes and small plants bend when the player moves through or apply some force to them. I need it for my stealth game so the other players can detect if a player is moving through the wilderness by observing the movement of grass or bushes. If the grass moves unnaturally, there's certainly a player lurking in the bushes!

 

It works good in single pass VR, the billboards behave correct for VR they are not following head orientation only position as they should do. I did not try in the latest 2017.3 beta but I will get around to that.

Unity did a VR presentation using Vegetation Studio at Unite in Amsterdam.

 

Hi. Have a look here a the touch bend system. It allows grass that is using the included grass shader to react to selected colliders and meshes.

https://www.awesometech.no/index.php/home/vegetation-studio/components/touch-bend-system/

 

How soon can we get our hands on this? I have tons of scenes in VR that could really benefit from all the amaziness you have going on here.

 

if everything goes according to the plan I will send 1.0 version to assetstore review in 2-3 weeks.

 

Hi there!
I just tested the runtime generation of grass and trees, they looks great!
Just I found the grass are not moving, I think it's because I used standard shader for them.
Does VS has it's own grass shader for wind effects?

 

The standard shader would not move any grass. You need a shader with built in wind.

There is an included grass shader. This supports instanced indirect rendering and the touch bend system.

There is also an included Grass Patch generator. you add any 2D texture grass and adjust the settings in the generator. It will produce a finished grass mesh with LODs.

Have a look here. https://www.awesometech.no/index.php/grass-patch-generator/

The easiest way to add grass is to drop the Texture2D drect in the vegetationSystem component as a new Vegetation Item. Vegetation System will then generate a generic grass patch with LODs and add to the terrain.

If you want to make your own meshes they will need to have bend and phase painted in the vertex colors of the mesh. This helps each grass plane to move independent in the wind.





The painting you can do in most mesh editors but it is much easier to use the generator. The results are good.

 

You are correct good sir. I have my own custom vegetation system that works very well until Lennart dragged me kicking and screaming into AVS. What I found back in v5.1.2, by accident to be honest, is that with Unity Camera Culling set to a really long distance....like 10,000m....then using a selective parameter in component based (NOT Unity Tag Based!!) distance based culling system I could simply do away with everything on Unity Terrain except the shader. Having nothing but the shader on the terrain had enormous performance increases. Also re-leaving the 65535 per object type cap before strange things will happen on terrain objects (disappearing and rendering issues). This also freed me up to other things as well....like dynamic nav mesh and fully interactive AI without having to do really 'iffy' code to integrate with the terrain system. And Unity's performance made a huge leap at v5.4 and has been really solid since. There is no going back to Unity Terrain objects at all.

Cheers
O

 

Honestly you lost me a bit there ^_^ I've since removed everything from my terrain except for MegaSplat, but it's still just a Unity terrain. I assume there are much better ways (especially after looking at TerraFirma) to go about placing a 512x512 mesh, which is really all it has become at this point.

https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/terrain/terrain-to-mesh-47276
like people commenting on huge performance boosts switching from terrain to mesh on assets like this. If all I'm using terrain for now that I'm working with VegetationStudio, I should just go mesh! I can cut holes, add cliffs, have a ball. I was curious if anyone else has approached a switch from terrain to mesh in anyway.

 

Hey there, I'm thinking about how to implement a fruiting system with the colliders

 

I'm trying to figure out how to add a script to spawned objects. Usually player doesn't destroy a tree in one hit, but records several hits until the item is exhausted.

 

What I can come up with is to swap the rendered tree into a prefab tree which has scripts on it and placed with the same transform values as the original one.
Then you can do anything with this prefab, you can even let this prefab return into the VS system after some while if the player does not chop it down.

 

There is a event system on the collider system. This gives you 2 events, when created and before destroyed.
In this event you can do you custom spawn chance logic and add your script containing the trees remaining "hitpoints".

Find this script in your racast/action and update the component.

Code (csharp):

1.  
2.     public delegate void MultiCreateColliderDelegate(Collider collider);
3.     public MultiCreateColliderDelegate OnCreateColliderDelegate;
4.     public delegate void MultiBeforeDestroyColliderDelegate(Collider collider);
5.     public MultiBeforeDestroyColliderDelegate OnBeforeDestroyColliderDelegate;
6.  

Code (csharp):

1.  
2.     void Start()
3.     {
4.     colliderSystem.OnCreateColliderDelegate += OnCreateCollider;
5.     colliderSystem.OnBeforeDestroyColliderDelegate += OnBeforeDestroyCollider;
6.     }
7.     void OnCreateCollider(Collider collider)
8.     {
9.     //Your code here.
10.     }
11.     void OnBeforeDestroyCollider(Collider collider)
12.     {
13.     //Your code here.
14.     }
15.  

see webpage for more info. https://www.awesometech.no/index.php/home/vegetation-studio/components/collider-system/

 

I'm actually not finding VegetationItemInstanceInfo in the namespace? am I missing something?

 

Yes. The new beta I am releasing tonight.

 

ah ok I've been hacking away at it anyway =]
this is where I'm at

Code (CSharp):

1.         void OnGenerateCompleted(Terrain terrain)
2.         {
3.             if (vegetationSystem)
4.             {
5.                 if (terrain.gameObject.GetComponent<AwesomeTechnologies.VegetationSystem>() == null)
6.                 {
7.                     GameObject newVegetationSystemObject = Instantiate(vegetationSystem.gameObject);
8.                     newVegetationSystemObject.transform.SetParent(terrain.transform);
9.  
10.                     AwesomeTechnologies.VegetationSystem tempVegetationSystem = newVegetationSystemObject.GetComponent<AwesomeTechnologies.VegetationSystem>();
11.                     tempVegetationSystem.AutoselectTerrain = false;
12.                     tempVegetationSystem.currentTerrain = terrain;
13.                     tempVegetationSystem.enabled = true;
14.  
15.                     AwesomeTechnologies.Colliders.ColliderSystem colliderSystem = tempVegetationSystem.GetComponent<AwesomeTechnologies.Colliders.ColliderSystem>();
16.                     colliderSystem.OnCreateColliderDelegate += OnCreateCollider;
17.                     colliderSystem.OnBeforeDestroyColliderDelegate += OnBeforeDestroyCollider;
18.                 }
19.             }
20.         }
21.  
22.         void OnCreateCollider(Collider collider) {
23.             AwesomeTechnologies.Vegetation.RuntimeObjectInfo info = collider.GetComponent<AwesomeTechnologies.Vegetation.RuntimeObjectInfo>();
24.             if (info != null) {
25.                 if (info.VegetationItemInfo.Name.Contains("Ore")) {
26.                     collider.gameObject.AddComponent<HarvestableOre>();
27.                 }
28.             }
29.         }
30.  
31.         void OnBeforeDestroyCollider(Collider collider) {
32.            //I'll need to log changes here I suppose
33.         }

The problem at this point is that say an Ore node contains 100 ore, and I mine 95 of that. If I walk far away enough for the collider to despawn, when I come back it will be back to 100. It does look like it has it's own numbering system working properly, I'm not sure how reliable that is, but I could setup a storage list to store item #47 on despawn (if not zero), then check fro #47 changes on respawn, or remove #47 from storage on destruction. Not a big deal. Something to think about though.

I have to get up super early tomorrow though, off to bed for now =[

 

I added a VegetationItemInstanceID to VegetationItemInstanceInfo. This is unique to the tree/rock and you can use that for your code to store the script state.

 

How can we participate in the beta? I would like to test it with MapMagic

 

Superb! Cutting down trees a la Breath of the Wild is something I'd love to implement for a VR title. Can't wait to be done with my current project to start trying stuff out (I'm in the last 3% stretch of time that last 90% of the development, lol).

 

Will send you a PM

 

Great news for anyone using MicroSplat (My case).

MicroSplat 1.2
- Vegetation Studio Integration
- Render baking
- Bake out all channels of your PBR terrain to textures
- Fix to streams module on terrains not at 0,0,0
- Fix error when converting a Unity Terrain with no textures
- Fix issue where parallax offset wasn’t working when tessellation is disabled
- Fixed issue with per
-texture properties bleeding across texture boundaries
- Parallax now has a fade start and distance
- Ability to disable anti
-tiling techniques on bendable object shader, as these can cause streaking when relying on triplanar to prevent smearing on vertical surfaces.

 

I have not seen any demo shots or discussion of the possible conflict of procedural trees and objects with ai creatures. Do the ai creatures require a mask of some kind, or can a tree instantiate within a creature or visa versa?

 

well you know where the vegetation will be before hand. you can also bake the colliders so you can bake the nav mesh accordingly. you then have to spawn the creatures based on this. vegetation system will not purposefully avoid spawning over a crature, rather you have to avoid spawning in vegetation

 

While you could add a mask to a moving AI creature the effect would not be what you are looking for. The creature would mask out trees as it moved around the terrain and they would show up again when it moved away.

The trees are procedureal and spawned at run-time but this is done from a base seed. There is no problem to pre calculate the tree/rock positions.

The ColliderSystem has a function to bake out all configured colliders to meshes for unity NavMesh calculatoion, or as gameobjects with colliders for other pathfinding systems. There is also API access to this if you need to add this to a custom pathfinding graph





If your AI creature is only using raycasting to navigate around it is possible to increase the range of the spawned colliders and maybe create a script that detects colliders and moves it out of the spawned tree.

Today the collider system is producing run-time spawned colliders for the visible trees within a range and the closest behind the camera.

I have been looking at making an additional collider selection method. It would accept a list of transforms and instantiate the colliders in the close area around each of these. This could be outside of the camera area.
This way there would be raycast targets for the AI creatures when they move around.

 

Sorry about the lost in the forest. Game Objects are essentially 'Containers' for 'Things'....so a Component is a 'Thing' in the Box or Container. You can make scripts that have only a Start and nothing in the update...or better yet....place a bunch of Like Objects into a Master Object (Parent with a script)

Explanation:
_Tree_Group0001_x00y00 (Empty Game Object with a Script and code is happening every 50ms *Update with math)
_ <= Designates it is a Master Object (Main Parent that does something with All Children)
Tree_Group0001 <= the Group Number....up to 9999 Groups possible
_x00y00 <= Coordinate Grid location of this Master Object....lower left. Think similar to multi-tile but not related to terrain.

_Tree_Group0001_x00y00
Tree_Oak0001(1)
Tree_Maple0001(1)
Tree_Plane0003(1)
Tree_Plane0003(2)
Plant_Valarian0001(1)
...
Tree_Oak0001(456)

What happens is the Master Object holds each Child in an Array. Each Array is limited to 1000 objects but could be various numbers depending upon design. When the Grid is Triggered to be rendered Each Master Object turns on the children rendering. Each child is responsible for their own LOD. This gives a lot of flexibility of binding like objects to a Property (Script Variable) that is very controllable and each child is very easy to attain and do something with it. Rendering speed is very fast since you are controlling small-ish groups of things.

This is why moving things off of an internal terrain system handler and into Game Object land is hugely beneficial. It makes game design incredibly robust and easy for artist and coder alike. All of which can be database backed quickly for persistency over saves/loads.

Hope that helped.

.....

Since this is an AVS forum....AVS does things a bit differently...a lot happening behind the scenes. This is why having access to these Game Objects that are being handled by AVS is a very large success. My current issue is that handshaking me spawning objects and transferring them into AVS will be and interesting endeavor. It may end up being a 2D Array of floats to handle position in lieu of handling game objects directly. Not sure yet since this is so new.

 

There is an included Vegataion Studio module in the free Microsplat core that will show up when Vegetation Studio is installed. This will blend in the vegetation color mask at the distance grass and plants are culled.

Enable the module. Generate the mask and assign it to the MicroSplatTerrain component.

Vegetation culling distance is updated automatic. There is also a tint color feature if you want to fine tune the mask blending.



This is included in the latest Beta.

 

Can I try the Beta, too? Really like the features and I would like to try it with MicroSplat..

 

Anyway to work this with meshes then? =D I built a mesh generator which is limited to 128x128 patches of course, but I can stich and LOD them all I like =D Only to remember I'm being asked to input a Terrain =o
I'll put that on hold for now and crack open 5.2

add: working great =D I wasn't able to get masks to work at 0.01f radiu but it worked at 0.1f. Also I don't see them showing up in the public masks list if they are supposed to, but I don't really care if they are there or not =D

 

had the chance to try out the package with my Fantasy Adventure Environment assets. Need to make a few modifications to the assets, so they work with the Vegetation Studio grass shader. Trees however, work out of the box with the FAE shader.

 

Really nice ..

 

Wow that's a lovely post process effect!

 

I was hoping you would be supporting this asset, because I'm planning to use your asset and vegetation studio heavily on its release.