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Terrain Challenge for Indie Devs

Discussion in 'Works In Progress - Archive' started by FuzzyQuills, Nov 12, 2013.

  1. FuzzyQuills

    FuzzyQuills

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    Ok, everyone! After a bit of thinking, I have devised a terrain challenge for those who have unity pro or have my Indie Effects Package from here: LINK

    Here are the rules:
    • The terrain can only be 512 x 512
    • The Screenshot or webplayer must indicate if you're using Indie Effects or Pro Image Effects. FXLab's imageFX are allowed to be used here too.
    • The terrain has to have some sort of water, if you plan on building a tropical type terrain. I have supplied a water shader in the link below
    • You must start the terrain from scratch

    Once you have an amazing terrain to show me, post it here! And heed my words: I will also post my OWN terrains for you to evaluate! You can post a screenshot or a webplayer, whatever suits you.

    Happy terrain-modelling!

    FuzzyQuills

    WATER SHADER: feel free to use this for any purpose you want! It now has auto cameras, eliminating the previous fiddly setup!

    So what are you waiting for - click below to download the water shader for your awesome tropical terrain!
    LINK
     
    Last edited: Mar 23, 2014
  2. Baldinoboy

    Baldinoboy

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    Interesting.

    Should we put trees and detail or just leave it bare?
     
  3. FuzzyQuills

    FuzzyQuills

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    Depends on your terrain: If it's a desert, you would probably leave it bare, unless there was an oasis or tufts of dry grass on the ground. But if it's meant to be a forest, you would more likely put trees grass - It's all up to you!
     
  4. halley

    halley

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    Sounds fun, but this is a call for Collaboration, not a Showcase post.

    Would be interesting to then encourage the top contributors to offer their landscapes on the Asset Store.
     
  5. Seth-McCumber

    Seth-McCumber

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    Very cool Blur! You always have awesomely cool ideas
     
  6. FuzzyQuills

    FuzzyQuills

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    @halley: That's a valid point: i haven't been on these forums for very long at all and actually had no idea that there was a collaboration category. But encouraging others to put terrain on the asset store? It may do this, but it isn't intended!

    @Seth McCumber: Thank You! I presume you arrived here from my other forum link, and if you have a terrain ready to go, go ahead and post! I've actually started one, so keep your eyes and internet ports open for screenshots!
     
  7. Marrrk

    Marrrk

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    Interesting challenge, but why do Unity Pro owners need to use your package?
     
  8. FuzzyQuills

    FuzzyQuills

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    @Marrrk: That could be a valid point, but with the Unity pro effects, they use RTs which are faster than ReadPixels, which is what my package uses. The point being, i would like to see how my package could be used in several environments, so having a terrain challenge means everyone gets to fiddle around with my effects to their heart's content, and in return, i get to see my effects being used in real-world applications! ;) BTW, I saw your Image Effects Package for indie - Nice work! Pitty i don't have the cash to get it though...

    EDIT: Just re-read my own post (Silly me!) and correcting the rules, this won't take long.
     
    Last edited: Nov 13, 2013
  9. Baldinoboy

    Baldinoboy

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    This is a pack that I have been working on to sell on the store. I started this before this collaboration started so I'm disqualified:(. Just felt like showing it.
    I used a large water plane around the terrain. Looking forward to your water shader TheBlur.

    Here are a few images with Indie Effects AA and Star Bloom:

    $Image_Effects_terrain_challenge_image1.png

    $Image_Effects_terrain_challenge_image2.png

    $Image_Effects_terrain_challenge_image4.png

    A Image using Indie Effects AA and Tryders' IndieFX Bloom:

    $Image_Effects_terrain_challenge_image3.png
     
    Last edited: Nov 17, 2013
  10. dyox

    dyox

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    I'm programmer. So i've generated the terrain procedurally. I'm using Unity Pro, and pro image effects.

    $TerrainEngineGlobal 2013-11-16 20-47-58-35.jpg
    $TerrainEngineGlobal 2013-11-16 20-48-33-32.jpg
    $TerrainEngineGlobal 2013-11-16 20-49-38-68.jpg
    $TerrainEngineGlobal 2013-11-16 20-55-01-63.jpg
     
    Last edited: Nov 16, 2013
  11. Baldinoboy

    Baldinoboy

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    Pretty awesome dyox. Reminds me of Just Cause 2
     
    Last edited: Nov 18, 2013
  12. FuzzyQuills

    FuzzyQuills

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    @Baldinoboy: That's fine. But what i meant by starting from scratch was that you couldn't use a terrain model for the terrain, or use a terrain from another game. I am presuming your terrain was started in that project from scratch, rather than borrowed from another project or game, so it doesn't count as disqualified, just letting you know. BTW, that is one epic terrain!

    @dyox: That is impressive! So you generated the terrain using a custom script? I wouldn't mind trying your script out!
     
  13. Baldinoboy

    Baldinoboy

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    Got it. Yeah I made it from scratch using the Unity terrain system.
     
  14. FuzzyQuills

    FuzzyQuills

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    Nice to hear you got the info, like to see more amazing terrain when you ready! (I haven't been able to bang up one of my own though, I might see what I can do tonight)
     
  15. Vanamerax

    Vanamerax

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    You can, for $2500...
     
  16. FuzzyQuills

    FuzzyQuills

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    @wasstraat65: Very Funny... :rolleyes:
     
  17. Baldinoboy

    Baldinoboy

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    Hey TheBlur, are you still working on your water shader? Almost done with my island scene. God the unity free water is ugly:mad:.
     
  18. Migueljb

    Migueljb

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    Creating Terrains in unity can be fun once you know how to get around and use unity's tools. I got some great terrains to show off I just completed in unity 4. I'm probably disqualified for having these done already but I just wanted to show off some great stuff in unity. As an indie dev im always very interested in what my fellow indie devs are creating with the power of unity these days.

    Unity 4 Pro with Pro Image effects being used.
    Unity 4 Water in Tropical scene and Tasharen water in forest scene.
    Terrains use unity 4 terrain bumped specular for textures.
    Terrains created from scratch in World Machine.
    Splatmaps created in World Machine.
    Toms Terrain Tools to apply splatmaps and help out placing some of the vegetation.
    About 60% of vegetation is hand placed along with rocks.

    Alot of extra tender care and detail just moving around terrains and painting more texture variations and adding touches here and there. Procedurally adding vegetation and textures is only half the work when it comes to terrains the ones that really stand out are the ones where you fly around your scenes and just keep painting/adding in detail and touches everywhere until it feels natural or to your liking:) Each picture is a collaboration of the terrain with screenshots of the scene. Here are the links.

    Forest
    https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1619361/Terrain_Images/Forest_Terrain.jpg

    Tropical
    https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1619361/Terrain_Images/Tropical_Island.jpg
     
    Last edited: Dec 12, 2013
  19. Baldinoboy

    Baldinoboy

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    Those are really beautiful screenshots Migueljb. Love the tropical scene. 60% was hand placed! Really awesome.
     
  20. FuzzyQuills

    FuzzyQuills

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    @Migueljb: That is epic! kind a makes me wish i had pro, but ah well.

    @Baldinoboy: While building one of my racing game projects, I had to make a water shader for one of the tracks, due to the ugly water. I also wanted it written in a way so it would allow you to create a waterfall with refractive water, so i worked on a script and surface shader and got the desired effect!

    Here is a screenshot:
    $WaterShaderExample.png

    BTW, this doesn't count as a terrain challenge entry, since I modelled the terrain in blender. But go ahead, comment on the water shader! Hopefully be able to post the water package after christmas or when I'm back at school
     
  21. larsbertram1

    larsbertram1

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    keep on going folks!
    and here comes some more inspiration:



    lars

    p.s.: it is unity 3.5 pro – but no pro features are used (except from the real time shadows which are free in unity 4).
     
  22. larsbertram1

    larsbertram1

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    and a second one:

     
  23. FuzzyQuills

    FuzzyQuills

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    Ok sir, that is pretty impressive! Nice use for fog too, draws out the terrain really well! For those after that water shader, I have modified it since the last post, and should look better than the last screenshot.
     
  24. FuzzyQuills

    FuzzyQuills

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    Everyone, my Water shader is finished! And here is my terrain entry, complete with the Indie Effects newest update! You can head over to my thread to pick it up if you like.

    Here is a link to the screenshot:
    https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2tqYgzg1_lWMUJfc0pTNDNkQnM/edit?usp=sharing

    For the water shader, head up the top - you will see epic changes!

    @Baldinoboy: this is a bit late, but even though your island scene is gorgeous, the webplayer is almost unplayable for some reason. (IT WOULD ONLY PLAY AT 8FPS!!!) If it's my intel Graphics, i have no hope, but if you could optimise it (smaller screen, perhaps? My graphics have a bad fillrate) a little, it might be viewable on my end. and that is an epic light shaft effect!
     
    Last edited: Jan 5, 2014
  25. FuzzyQuills

    FuzzyQuills

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    Sorry about the google drive trouble folks! Turns out i forgot to enable sharing before i posted the link, so it should work now. Enjoy the water shader! note that the water shader may be hard to set up, though, as i haven't added autocameras yet...
     
    Last edited: Jan 13, 2014
  26. Baldinoboy

    Baldinoboy

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    I tried out the new water and it is awesome. Looks really great. Only problem I am having is using refraction the frame rate drops into single digits. Could there be a way to set the resolution of the refraction camera? It also doubles the draw calls. Maybe there is a way to only have the refraction camera render objects that are layered underwater or something.

    Still looks great without refraction and no performance drop either.

    Here are a few screenshots of my WIP island with IndieEffects Bloom and the River Water shader for the ocean.

    $Island1.jpg

    $Island2.jpg
     
    Last edited: Feb 12, 2014
  27. FuzzyQuills

    FuzzyQuills

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    @Baldinoboy: four letters... E-P-I-C. About the lag though... this is caused by the terrain engine which is actually quite expensive on the GPU, and this means, unfortunately, that to use this water at 30FPS, that you would have to have pre-modeled terrain in your scene!

    with the resolution drop, i actually used to capture the camera with a smaller rect, but noticed artifacts where the refraction would jerk if the rect was too small. But that was back when my water shader used OnPostRender()... Might have a look at what i can do.

    BTW, the doubling of draw calls should not have happened... I only got about 10 more in my computer with the water enabled, so try using a lower poly water plane.
     
  28. Baldinoboy

    Baldinoboy

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    Thanks. Will try with a custom terrain.

    Do not know what is up with the draw calls. Using a simple plane for the water. Will figure it out.

    Just wondering. This is something you will have to charge for. Could you make a water shader with waves like Cryengine has? It does not even have to have refraction or anything. Just nice waves. That would awesome.
     
  29. FuzzyQuills

    FuzzyQuills

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    @baldinoboy: A Linux User? Charging money for assets? NO WAY!!! If you want Cryengine-style waves, I will do them for free! One Problem though... I actually haven't seen cryengine graphics. :D And sure, once i find an example of these waves, i will do them! BTW, is that my bloom shader generating an anamorphic lens flare in your screenshot?
     
    Last edited: Feb 13, 2014
  30. Baldinoboy

    Baldinoboy

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    Here are a few screenshots. It is pretty cool. Of course it does not treat my computer well:(. Like I said before I do not have to have all the effects. Just love the 3D waves.

    $Cryenigne_Water2.jpg

    $Cryenigne_Water1.jpg

    $Cryenigne_Water3.jpg

    The lens flare effect in my screenshot is just a lens flare I made. Can you do that with your bloom? That would be great.

    Oh and by the way. You should definitely spread the news about this water shader. Start a thread dedicated to the development of it. Maybe some other shader guys will help out.
     
    Last edited: Feb 13, 2014
  31. FuzzyQuills

    FuzzyQuills

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    @baldinoboy: Sure, who DOESN'T want water on unity indie? As for waves, I will give this a shot. the current wave effects i can see in these images seem to be a parallax offset, so a wave map could do this easy. As for my bloom, I am trying to do gaussian blur in the shader for more natural bloom, and may 'accidentally' generate a lens flare!
     
  32. Baldinoboy

    Baldinoboy

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    Yeah if you could do that it would be great. Always loved video game water. That is why I do not like to leave tropical scenes in my work. Islands with nice water are the best. Thanks so much for your work.

    For the bloom I will just quote what I said in the Epic Radial Blur thread:

    [Your new bloom is great. You should definitely use Gaussian blur. Much smoother. It would be great to have a stretch setting so you could have a lens flare effect from the bloom. One thing the bloom shader should have is a bias setting. So you can select only the brightest objects to glow.]
     
    Last edited: Feb 14, 2014
  33. FuzzyQuills

    FuzzyQuills

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    @Baldinoboy: Sure. I will work on this shader for the wave effects. And i agree about the water thing - some scenes just can't do with the default water in place. And i was thinking of starting a dedicated thread for this shader, as it has developed to a stage in that it would be better to have the water shader on it's own thread. BTW, i am so sure one of your posts pointed this out, but i can't find it anywhere! (maybe a server error. that happens with my posts every now and then - the new post i may have done some time ago disappears from the thread!)

    EDIT: Tried doing waves with a parallax offset, it not looking so good. does anyone know how to displace the mesh from script? (i tried this in the shader, but the method i tried is DX11-only...)
     
    Last edited: Feb 23, 2014
  34. Baldinoboy

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    Love the idea of the adding Lux to the water. Thank you for posting a link. Have not heard of it.
     
  35. FuzzyQuills

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    @Baldinoboy: So that's how you found Lux! fair enough, there always has to be a starting point for everything.
     
  36. The_Code

    The_Code

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    This is super impressive. Thanks for sharing it
     
  37. Baldinoboy

    Baldinoboy

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    Just noticed your edit. I think Cryengine uses a POM (parallax occlusion mapping) shader. I've always wanted one of those:). It is very difficult to get Unity's parallax shader to work. If you can figure a POM shader out that should work. Thanks for your work.

    I looked and Unity forums refer to this as a relief shader. I think of it as POM.
     
    Last edited: Feb 28, 2014
  38. FuzzyQuills

    FuzzyQuills

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    @baldinoboy: Ok then. I will google it and get results, then i will tweak shader... :cool:

    EDIT: I found a relief shader, but it appears to be a vertex/fragment shader, so this might end up a full rewrite at this rate... :eek:
     
    Last edited: Mar 1, 2014
  39. Baldinoboy

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    They seem pretty complex. Do you work with vetex/fragment shaders?
     
  40. FuzzyQuills

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    @Baldinoboy: Yes and no. for special effects they are a must, but for shaders interacting with a mesh, i usually use surface shaders, since I didn't realise implementing lighting wasn't so hard after all. (the shader I found actually had a pretty simple structure for interacting with lights!)
     
  41. Deleted User

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    Ok I'll bite :D

    So we have our own SSAO and Amplify on this with some custom tree and grass shading goodness: Background courtesy of world machine:
     

    Attached Files:

  42. Baldinoboy

    Baldinoboy

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    Looks great. The grass is incredible.
     
  43. legacy-Games

    legacy-Games

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    Take a look at one of are terrains/scene's for are first Game Legacy . Feedback is really helpful and if it can be posted in one of are forum pages/thread the easier we can find it .
    $first map.jpg
     
  44. Baldinoboy

    Baldinoboy

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    Can you post a link for your forum threads? Would like to know what your game is about. The screenshot looks great. Big terrain.
     
  45. legacy-Games

    legacy-Games

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    Last edited: Mar 3, 2014
  46. FuzzyQuills

    FuzzyQuills

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    @legacy-games: Could you tell me how you did SSAO? because if you're using IndieEffects to achieve it, i am actually trying to write an SSAO shader myself, but it isn't going so well... I keep getting what looks like one of those weather report ring type patterns instead!

    EDIT: I may have found a shader to base off! but i still wouldn't mind taking a look at yours... ;)

    EDIT2: the code is HLSL, and i don't know how to port HLSL to cg! If anyone can help me out of this pickle please let me know!

    Oh, and BTW, nice terrain! how did you do the bloom effect?
     
    Last edited: Mar 3, 2014
  47. legacy-Games

    legacy-Games

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    Hi FuzzyQuills , the ssao is made using are own developed code , but the bloom effect is very easy to achieve , that has been created using the unity assets but then adjusted and changed to suit the scene , it is the snow flake effect within the prefabs we an altered the shape and size then just changed the colour .
     
  48. legacy-Games

    legacy-Games

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    new menu's $legacy menu.png
     
  49. FuzzyQuills

    FuzzyQuills

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    @Legacy-games: Does your SSAO use my package? or is it Unity-Pro Only? I am trying to develop SSAO myself, but one implementation came out looking like a weather report... and the other implementation is HLSL, which looks similar to cg, but i am finding it really hard to port!
     
  50. legacy-Games

    legacy-Games

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    Hi FuzzyQuills , we have not done much on ambient occlusion the effect you may be seeing is that we have are render distance as high as we can and are directional light intensity May be different to yours . Also noticed you are quite interested in the game , we currently have an very early stage alpha version of the game which is playable , but doesn't have any main story and only the fundamentals of the game , if interested contact us on are website and just say within the forums on there , the download for the very early alpha will be available tomorrow .