3DForge Exteriors

@TommyT This is an artifact that can happen with the Unity built in Culling (this among many other bug riddled features in Unity force me to use Unity as a prototyping software only). This is specifically why I went to my own method based upon raycasting....I used layers to determine if the object should be Rendered or Not. So what should happen is every object is Not Rendered straight away at the start of the scene. Then where the camera 'can see' raycasts are sent out to to hit objects which then choose both Render and LoD type. I have 3 levels of LoD for Static Objects and Vegetation. For character avatars I have only the Base LoD...I am thinking I should have 1 at 40% at 20m or so....so far base level is working very well.

Edit Note: Please note that Each Object itself chooses what Rendering it needs to do. This means the Camera is 'Talking' to the Object via the Raycast. This is Hugely important as this technique makes every Object Alive and reactive. With very little added overhead. Good practice in Parameter Passing is needed with this method.

In any case....I control every facet of this method. I learned how to do this the old way by starting with M2H Culling then starting over with a specifically new design based upon exactly what I need for my camera, characters, and models.
M2H Culling (free) <= Again....a great starting point for making your own culling method. This does work in Unity 5.
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/221

 

Interesting I just downloaded and tried the m2h culling and it actually increased the set pass calls by about 800. Thats odd. Also I tried switching to deferred rendering and my frame rate went from in the 70fps to the 20fps range..

 

That is quite odd. M2H Culling needs proper layering set up on each object (a decent sized task for 3DForge)...once done the performance is basically less objects drawn so should be a lot better. In my Olander's Realistic Weather pics the snow fall pic is the most taxing and is holding steady at 87fps. Adding in 3DForge Exteriors with Interiors in a town (prototyping screen shots later because of my own NDA sorry) to that I maintain 60+fps with my 38k DAZ Genesis model strolling (Tonemapper Deluxe, Unity Bloom Optimized, Time of Day and other Image Effects all happening). I am exclusively Deferred Rendering. So must be something in your settings.

 

Thinking about this, you might need to check all physics calls as well. Avoid using Mesh Colliders unless absolutely necessary. A lot of the prefabs are using mesh colliders and this can cause some troubles as it's very expensive. I had to go back and add box colliders and remove the colliders from all things that don't need it. This will save you some frames as well.

 

OH I see that I missed a huge step in the M2h culling, I didn't setup the actual areas. Looking now at his examples does look like quite a bit of work, its kind of like manual culling but I think it will work for a lot of my dungeon and interior scenes. For my tavern with unity culling the worst frame rate I see is like 72 thats when I'm looking across the whole tavern so its not horrible. My PC isn't very high end either I was just curios as I gave a build to a buddy and he was seeing tearing when moving around, it improved when he dropped the quality settings. Outside may be another matter as Ive noticed some huge drops there as well with the village exteriors, I've got a 16 building town and looking across it diagonally i get sometimes 50fps on my machine thats using time of day as well for lighting.

 

Right. I like what @EDarkness stated as well....I do the same thing for mainly rectangular objects which are a lot of 3DForge things. What you stated above is why I did not use M2H directly.....slow setup and it is singular control. I needed Object Heartbeats for other things so I made a Rendering HB and Live Object HB. If an Object has the Rendering HB it will turn On and Off if not it will be rendered at all times. Very easy to setup and very automatic. Having the raycast go true on the collider will tell the Rendering HB script to Render the Object......since each Object Piece has its own Rendering HB things are amazingly fluid and surprisingly fast.

Also....30+fps will be fine for a minimum standard. There is no noticeable stuttering at that frame rate. 60+fps is quite a bit smoother of course and is a great goal to hit but your 50fps is very good.

 

Thanks I'm wondering what is causing window tearing on my buddies pc. He runs games that have a lot more objects and textures with no visible tearing.

 

Also should I fret about the draw calls if the frame rate is acceptable ?

 

Video Tearing is a sign of bad/invalid V Sync.

If your Prototype Test on the appropriate Hardware level Minimum is what you are designing from is giving you 30+fps then you are sitting good. You may have to have some animated skeletal object moving around....walking waypoints would be fine....to give the realistic test. Never drop below 30fps though. Since youa re at 50fps you have plenty of headroom to play with. Very good.

 

Hey there,

Thanks for all your assistance and vast knowledge sharing on the forum, I respect professionalism and really appreciate the value that you are bring to the conversation

Added the containers sheet, the details on the wicker and the cloth bag, just works so well

Cheers
Cobus

 

Hi,

Thanks again for these, I am updating the HD folder just now with all of your files including your diffuses

The details on the containers so much nice, worth the redo
Cheers
Cobus

 

Is there a vsync option in unity somewhere that you need to set for windows pcs?

Also I have simple mesh combine and am thinking of buying the mesh merge and splice to try it to see if it messes up my lighting. Do you think one of those two tools is better than the other?

Thanks again for your expertise Olander

 

@TommyT You will set up VSync in your Quality Settings. Have a look at the Tearing section for a nice description.
http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/class-QualitySettings.html

Lighting. Since Unity 5 I have completely ceased Light Baking and switched to Global Illumination. Point Lights, Spots, Directional (only for exterior Day/Night Cycle) look very nice and there is no need to bake. There is a slight cost for this but it is minimal. The benefit is that now lights can be turned On and Off on the fly and they are blended very well with little mesh issues because of proper shadows. You can even tie a light to a gradient and time to simulate Day Night cycle in a scene that has no Sun/Moon. The end result is stunning.

Give that a go.

Cheers
O

 

Thanks Olander.

I have been playing around this morning with baked lighting and its horrible. I noticed when turning off a good chunk of my lights I almost doubled my frame rate and cut my draw calls in half. So I started playing around with it and when using the gamma color space it looks horribly bright. Nothing like it does using realtime. I did a search and happened to find another forum thread out there where someone was asking about the same thing. Seems to be Unity 5 related. They were using 3D Forge assets so that caught my eye . I guess if you use linear color space the baking looks about the same. Although to me that looks horrible and would require a complete redo of all the lighting in my scene.

Another thing I did in a quest to try to lower my draw calls and up the frames was to create a 3D plane with a new material I made using the 3D Forge textures tiled to the right size. I assigned it a single mesh collider and dropped it in where all my floor tiles were. I disabled the floor and it looked good until... I started moving the player around..what I saw was what looked like lights popping on and off on the floor as I moved around. Using single tiles doesn't have this issue it would seem. Gave me about an extra 10 FPS and dropped the draw calls by 60. but the lighting changes were annoying.

I guess I'm going to stop sweating it. The stats for the largest viewing angle in my scene as as follows: 1850~ Set pass calls and 75 FPS. Thats using real time lighting. The scene I'm playing with probably has the most amount of point lights than any other interior one. My smaller shops have maybe 1/5 the amount of lights and the frame rates are through the roof fast so perhaps I'm sweating too much over this. I just always hear about people wanting to get draw calls as low as possible. That why I asked if the FPS was fine should I even care about those.

Thanks again for all your help on this. I know taking time to answer peoples questions takes time away from you working on your own projects so its much appreciated.

And Cobus, sorry if I have cluttered this thread up too much with these questions...

 

@TommyT No problem at all, at the end I am sure this will assist other in getting answers and improve performance.
@Olander Thank you for the help in getting some technical assistance for @TommyT

That is one of the things I love about the whole Unity community, the helpful nature of almost everyone I have come across, helping each other to grow and produce better results, THANKS !!!

I have just the one "food" texture sheet to complete the HD version of.
Then I am modeling the small selection of walls with windows in, adding the wall caps and check what else I can squash in for the HD / Compatibility update.

Please let me know if there are anything that is small that you might want to add.

Cheers
Cobus

 

How about a forge piece that doesn't have the overhead chimney? I moved mine outside and the chimney looks odd hanging from the open rafters of my smithy shop. Should be easy to split that piece off from the existing model.

 

@TommyT That is looking good
I will add some base sections only in the update as well
The outside version does look very nice

 

I'm not a customer at this point, so maybe I should keep my mouth shut, but it really bugs me that the insides of the roofs use the texture for the shakes. I think it would be much more realistic to use one of the board textures there, and might also help give them some thickness rather than looking like a 2-sided polygon.

 

@ecurtz Thanks for the point made and welcome to the thread

I hope you become a customer soon, and a happy customer at that

The Village Interiors Kit has a huge selection of ceiling options that would mean that the roof insides would never be seen.
With the Village Exteriors Kit I was going for optimization before anything else since you would very likely have several buildings and loading data that for most cases not be visible and therefore a waste of the already limited texture space on the one 4096 map.
I felt that standing off such a large part of the sheet would have been more frowned upon than seeing the the same texture as on the top.

Your assumption that the roof has no thickness is wrong as they do not just consist of a athin plane, but in fact has faces that show to the outside and +- .100 thick sides and then the bottom plane
Here is an earlier, think page 8 or 9 image that shows that as well, and you will be able to see it from any of the product web demos as well if you run through them.

Please shout if you want to know anything else

 

I dream of city walls and octagon towers...



Oh and octagon shaped walls around my village... but thats just me I'm kinda weird...

 

Hey @TommyT That is what is nice about the modular-ness and the power of packages that allows it, that you can try new things.
With the City Walls & towers Kit FREE Update, this will be the kind of thing that you going to get your hands on

Thanks for sharing your creations here

 

Exciting news for all Package Owners of the Village Interiors Kit

Village Interiors Kit HD Update

I have completed redoing ALL the textures in the package with them now 2 x the resolution.
- Diffuse
- Normal
- Ambient Occlusion maps for each texture.

I am busy modeling and getting ready all the required compatibility components as in walls with window holes in, wall caps and other small parts.

This will only take a day or two to get ready then I will submit the contents for you to enjoy

This means I will still this week get onto the first FREE Update contents drop for the Village Exteriors Kit,
NEW BLUEPRINTS and many more

Cheers
Cobus

 

What is a wall cap? Is it a horizontal wood beam that you place between walls when stacking them on top of each other ? If so thanks. I've been doing that manually.

 

@TommyT You are right, you did it already.
There have been some users that asked for parts specifically meant for that, so I will make a directory that will have stone and wooden items for that, from 1,2,3,4 and so forth long parts for this

 

Stone caps for columns that currently have a black top? Yay

 

ONE Village Exteriors Kit up for grabs competition on Facebook page

Like the page while you there please

https://www.facebook.com/pages/3DForge/535899169786851

 

Ha, nice competition Cobus - I have been a good customer and brought it already!

 

@kittik I always try look for competitions with the users having to put a bit of work in.

This was fun, those icons are so damn small.
I did not even know if it was there

Thanks always for the continued support

 

Hi everyone,

Just some feedback.

Not only basics Village Exteriors Kit compatibility is being added, but compatibility for the first FREE update that is coming will also be included so that when that contents arrive it will already work with the Village Interiors Kit contents.

More than 100 new Interiors walls parts are being added, very exciting half walls, 1/2 & 1/4 floors and such that will make for some kick-ass internal and external building options available.

Submission soon

Cheers
Cobus

 

I hope so. I'm using the exterior walls as placeholders on the interiors (see below), but they don't seem right for some reason

 

@smada luap YEAH !!!

Most items inside Unity.
Will just add one or two small demos scenes, just showing how the wall caps and such works
Nothing mayor, so that you can have all your toys sooner.

Lots of cool stuff will be delivered via BLUEPRINTS for the Interiors and the combo ones

Cheers
Cobus

 

@smada. That house looks like they had a smokey fire going on in there too long.

 

Will there be floor tiles that are triangular shaped for making 45 degree walls ?

 

Just wanted to post an update to my issues with optimization of the assets. I have discovered some oddities with regards to lighting. I have my scene set with lots of lights to give the look and feel I want. When combining a floor mesh for instance it gets really dark in a lot of the areas. I'm thinking this may have to do with the overlapping of the point lights range ? I'm thinking that the combining of meshes may be the way to go but it will required a whole scene relight. I'm going to try that and see if I can get the same look. Anyone have any experience with this ?

 

@TommyT
I have not added triangle or circular.
I am mainly addressing current Exterior Kit compatibility.
I will some time in future revisit that and see what can be done, for what you going to have on the inside,
needs to also be able to be handled from the outside.
One of the things that complicates that are where roofs meet walls at all those funny angles, but lets see in future.

I am almost done pulling everything into Unity, and then first attempt submission with v4.3.4 and then v5.0.0

 

Hi everybody,

Just to let you know, I have completed all the work, I am starting the HD Update upload inside the next hour.

UPDATE 1.9 - Village Exteriors Kit compatibility Update
80 x Textures = 500mb extra WHOOHOO !!!

NEW additions: 201 NEW items + v1,9 Example Demo scenes

- 88 New wall meshes
- 88 New wall prefabs
- 84 New floor meshes
- 84 New floor prefabs
- 11 Stone wall-caps
- 11 Wooden wall-caps
- 4 Pillar caps
- 3 Large wooden tables
- 3 Large tables cloths

Just to explain the methods of uploading
A publisher can submit a package with more than one version of Unity.
The purpose of this is if the user has v4.X, he will be given the v4.3.4 version that I am submitting first
The user that has any v5.X will get the version 5 submission.

Each submission take 5-7 hours to submit, but somewhere on the weekend, both versions should be available ether if you buy for the first time, or if you choose to update your local package.

Please note:
I have left all the current textures in the package as well, but have updated all the materials to use the new HD textures and normal maps.
The Ambient Occlusion maps are included even for the v4.3.4 submission.

These all will be present in the v5.0.0 submission using the Unity shaders !!!

Cheers
Cobus

 

Just to clarify, this is an INTERIORS KIT update, correct? Just want to clarify so people don't start looking for an Exteriors Kit update and come confused because they don't see one. I'm pretty sure this is the Interiors Kit update to make it better compatible with the Exteriors Kit. Correct me if I'm wrong, Cobus.

 

@Shawn67 OOOH, yes, thanks for pointing that out

 

SMALL 24 HOURS SALE !!!

DunGen is the current 24 HOURS DAILY DEAL !!!
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/15682

Check out DEMO1, it used the Village Interiors Kit

For that same 24 hours, the $50 that you save,
can get you the COMPLETE Village Exteriors Kit with a $10 discount.

Cheers
Cobus

 

Cool. Looking forward to seeing the new stuff. What's next on the list?

 

@EDarkness On the weekend going to also Play with the "LEGO" set and get a cool Demo scene out that shows Village Interiors Kit together with the Village Exteriors
Maybe some underground passages to showcase that as well.

Then on Monday Yehaaaa starting first Free Update item on the promised road map.
I will Update that to have them as they are going to happen and each time a to-do list as with the v1.0 release

Very excited with what I am going to deliver.

Cheers
Cobus

 

Have you decided what the first update is going to contain yet? *hides*

 

@Shawn67

Thatch Roofs, the lower sloped and steep sloped roofs with everything that goes with that.
At any given time I will also add small to the rest of the whole package, not just that specific subject

But I will update the first post on the weekend with the plan of action simple and clear

Cheers
Cobus

 

I was looking at the Crypt Demo and I noticed that all of the floors and walls have Mesh Colliders, wouldn't it be faster for them to be box Colliders?

 

@nosyrbllewe I think you are right, but when I played and tested both the FPS & the Top Down demos I has no speed or performance problems so I kept it as was.

Also if the cool walls with those niches had box colliders, then I think it could hide the cool flares from items like candles, this way, whatever you place inside them lighting wise will pour out and provide a much more scary mood

 

I think it is totally reasonable for walls with niches to have mesh colliders, but for flat planes, mesh colliders just hurt performance. http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/box-collider-vs-box-mesh.46868/ Here it describes the differences between using a box collider and a box mesh collider. They claim that using mesh colliders hurts performance 8-12 times more. My current performance is fine, but I mainly want this fixed because I want to minimize performance troubles later. Plus, minor things like this can add-up to be a headache for low-end mobile developers and VR developers trying to push over 90FPS. Thanks.

 

@nosyrbllewe

Cool, then that is easy to just select the items in the folder and change the colider type if that is what you prefer.
I have had several users that are very happy with the VR results that the Village Interiors Kit has delivered to their projects.
They were very happy with the assets, the scaling everything was 100% for there projects.
It is important to have these things right

 

So I've made some progress on my optimization a with the 3d forge assets I can post a quick summary of what I have done if anyone is interested. Just by combining walls floors ceilings and reducing the amount of point lights I've dropped my draw calls from close to 1900 at the largest. Irving angle to just over 400. And I'm sure by combining more pieces I could drop it further.

If anyone is interested let me know and I can do a post to let everyone know the steps I've used.

 

The v4.3.4 HD Update is LIVE

I am starting the upload for v5.0.0 inside the next hour.

Will post here when the Unity5-Ready download is available

 

@TommyT I would suspect the lowering of the number of point lights has been the biggest factor in the number of draw calls dropping