ats color map ULTRA shader [RELEASED]

the free version definitely uses less ressources.
so it is up to you testing, sorry.

lars

 

Like theAfrican I still love this shader too!

Thanks for the reply Lars, you've put my mind at ease.
I'm really happy with the original shader and found it to be extremely efficient

 

Hi,

I am having some issues with TerrainReplacementColorMapUltra_U4_v2.02 shader. Everytime I try to import this script it crashes my Unity and causes it not to respond. Any idea what is doing this?

 

hi there,

importing the shaders just takes a while (up to 30 min).
so i would recommend to setup a new project, start importing the package and have a nice cup of coffee in the meanwhile.
sorry about that but giving you the freedom to choose from a lot of different options just causes this heavy compiling times.

please let me know if you finally have managed to get the shader up and running.

lars

 

I had problems importing as well. Last night, I even left it running and went to bed. Came back this morning and could not open Unity. I had to cancel it in the task manager. I had tried to import it numerous times, but the package never fully imported. The demo was bad and the shaders would not compile, giving me a null error.

Out of pure luck, I tried importing it one more time this morning and it did fully import. It seems to be working now, or at least the demo works so that is a good sign. Honestly though, this was after half a dozen tries.

 

hi teila,

that sounds pretty strange as i would not call my computer to be a fast machine or anything – but the shaders just import fine!
i hope upcoming version 4.5. of unity will fix those shader compiling issues.

lars

 

Thanks! My computer is pretty fast, not lightning, but it usually has no problem.

 

Hey, larsbertram. Minor inquiry here, I really love the tool and its potential, but I am having som problems.
I can't seem to import the two splatmaps and get it working. I just want 4 detail textures and then two decals but then it tells me I can't assign splatmap 2 without 8 textures. After assigning two more that I won't use, IK can assign splatmaps but then it seems to destroy the splatmaps completely and nothing shows up.
I have seen on your youtube video that you do some workaround with duplicating the terrain, painting it and then using the created one as splatmap for the original terrain, this seems a bit cumbersome. I am most of trying to create a workflow where everything can imported in one step, as our team will not have the manpower to paint any terrains in our game, it will have to be imported and kept to a one step process. Is there any way to dothat with the decals, or will I have to keep it to 4 detail textures?

Thank you for an awesome tool, I hope I can get it to work properly

 

hi frederik,

the video you have seen shows a very, very old workflow. so please forget about it.

in order to be able to paint and render decals you need 2 spaltmaps:
1st splatmap controls distribution of the first 4 detail textures.
2nd splatmap controls the distribution of detail texture 5 and 6 and the decals.

as unity does not let us assign a 2nd spaltmap if you have not added 8 detail textures you have to add 8 detail textures.
you may assign a texture already used to slot 5 - 8 so you will not waste any texture memory.

so assuming that you have assigned 8 detail textures you should be able to import your splatmaps.
i just tested it (again...) and it works like charme. i have:
- created a new terrain
- imported a heightmap
- assigned 8 detail textures
- added the script
- assigned 2 splatmaps and assigned them
- hit "create new terrain material"
done

usually the terrain shows up pretty weird if:
- you have checked "enable colormap" but not setup the "average colors" properly
- your splatmaps do not fit unity’s needs: the sum of both splatmaps always has to be 1.0

in our case (as we use decals) this only counts for the first 6 detail maps.
so please check your splatmaps and if the pixels in splat1 are masked in splat0.

you can also post a little preview from your splats here.

lars

 

Thank you a billion times. It works perfectly now. My mistake was that I expected input 5 and 6 to be decals, rearranging for 7 and 8 to act as decals fixed it.

While I'm on here with you, are there any plans to make the shader compatible with the marmoset IBL skies?

 

i am not quite sure if it is worth it.
my lux - open source pbs shader framework offers advanced skyshop compatible terrain shaders and rtp does too.
and upcoming unity 5 will probably change anything anyways.

lars

 

Yeah, I am not neccesarily looking for the increase in quality, the shaders already look stunning and the difference to ibl would probably be hard to notice.
The only thing that is a bit bothering though is that some amount of ambient light is needed for the outdoorsy look and so the lighting will double up on our other assets that already have diffuse ambient lighting. And it would be nice to control everything with the same light sources.
Jerry rigging around it now by turning off diffuse contribution from the skylight, but we are looking for a better solution that does not kill of our vertex occlusion.
Have a good one and thanks for your help.

 

hi fredrik,

you describe a problem that is caused by skyshop – not the terrain shader, as skyshop has to set the ambient lighting to 0,0,0.
so it won’t work with any non skyshop shader.
but instead of using skyshop you could think about using lux.
or editing the skyshop shaders and adding just a single additional pragma.

lars

 

HI Lars,

I just bought your asset and I got a problem with the lighting.
I tried everything but I couldnt find a solution.

It even occurs when I just attach the script and dont assign a splatmap, colormap, or normal map.
The attached screenshots show the problem. Both images were taken on the same map with your shader enabled, I just looked in different directions and the lighting seems off.
Do you know why this happens?

Thanks for any help.

Best regards

 

hi there,

the shader uses the built in lighting functions – so it is hard to imagine that it would corrupt lighting.
but may be you haven’t setup the normal maps correctly?
doing a quick test using a spot light on the terrain everything looks like expected (see attachment).

lars

 

thanks for the quick reply,

i figured it out, that it was caused by the splatting distance/fade length.
Adjusting those values helped solving my problem.

 

I'm having trouble getting the colormap to appear on the terrain. This has worked for me before, so I don't know why it won't work now. I was on 4.3.3 when the problem first appeared, I've upgraded my project to 4.5.2 but still having the problem. I'm using Mac Mavericks.

My procedure:
1) Create terrain and add four splat textures
2) Import raw heightmap
3) Assign custom colormap, terrain normal map, and custom splatmap 1.
4) Click Apply Splat Map(s)
5) Paint the entire terrain with a texture brush (opacity set to zero). (I do see the colormap while painting.)
6) Save and reload the scene. This normally forces the colormap to render on the terrain when the scene camera is more than the splatting distance from the terrain. But now that isn't happening; at those larger distances, the splatmap is shown on the terrain instead of the colormap.

I've tried this again and again, and can't get it to work in my project. So I tried it in a fresh project -- and it does work. So maybe I've added something to my project since the last time it worked. Any idea what might cause this kind of problem?

(I did make an export package from the fresh project, but when I import it into my main project, I have the same problem again.)

 

hi gecko,

i am a bit clueless.
i am using os x mavericks too and everything works just as expected.
maybe there is some other terrain shader active overwriting the cmu far terrain shader?

lars

 

I had a few other things like Tom's Terrain Tools in the project, but I deleted them and reapplied the splat, and repainted, and reloaded the scene. No help. Any other ideas?

 

not really, sorry.
but you may pack your project and send it to me so i can have a look at it.
just send me a link to larsbertram69(at)gemail.com

lars

 

Hi,

I followed the instructions step by step and i can't get it to work correctly.
The 7th and 8th texture dont display correctly, instead it uses another texture from the first 6 and
then they are very dark with sharp edges, no blending going on.

Or is this terrain shader limited to 6 textures only ?

The default Unity terrain shader also has more pronounced normal displaying and
displays the normals exactly as i made them in NDO2, this shader displays wrong depths
and the effect isn't as strong as the default terrain shader, if i up the strength with the slider the normals
are even worsely displayed. i'm sure i have setup the textures and normals correctly and also the combined normals,
what could be the reason that it doesn't work correct ?

Also, the demo you supplied actually does not display the normals correctly either, at first i thought it was because of the combination of a total terrain normal combined with the regular texture normals, but if i empty the total terrain normal slot, the texture normals are strange too, grass does not look like small strains of grass, instead it is a bumpy (not strains) surface, it just does not look good.

I also noticed this a long while ago with your free version, what is the reason that the normals aren't correctly displayed,
and has no one ever noticed this, or am i the only one having this problem ?

 

hi there,

as it is said in the description on the asset store: the shader supports 6 detail textures.
if you paint your terrain using the 7th or 8th detail texture the shader picks up texture 3 or 4 and adds those as decals: – which means: heightmap based blending. so what you describe is exactly what the shader offers.

wrong setup of the combined normal textures i guess ;-)
those are no regular normal maps and compression and import settings can totally corrupt the shading.
simply add a "regular" normal map (imported as "normal map") to the slot: "assign combined detail normal maps" --> "normal12" and see how shading gets corrupted.
go to the import settings of your normal map, change it from "normal map" to "advanced", then chose import type: "default" and see that the shading will look like you would expect.

the shader handles normals correctly (i haven’t noticed any wrong depth).
but it combines detail normals and the terrain normal in a pretty simple way so that detail normals usually get weaker than one would expect.
if you want crispier detail normals you could raise the normal elevation or change the shader code:

find:

Code (csharp):

1. o.Normal = lerp(normalize(o.Normal + farnormal), farnormal, fadeout);

and replace it with:

Code (csharp):

1. fixed3x3 nBasisN = fixed3x3(
2.                 fixed3 (farnormal.z, farnormal.y,-farnormal.x),
3.                 fixed3 (farnormal.x, farnormal.z,-farnormal.y),
4.                 fixed3 (farnormal.x, farnormal.y, farnormal.z)
5.             );
6. o.Normal = normalize ( o.Normal.x*nBasisN[0] + o.Normal.y*nBasisN[1] + o.Normal.z*nBasisN[2] );
7. o.Normal = lerp(o.Normal , farnormal, fadeout);

a bit cheaper but less accurate would be:

Code (csharp):

1. o.Normal = normalize(float3(o.Normal.xy + farnormal.xy, o.Normal.z));
2. o.Normal = lerp(o.Normal , farnormal, fadeout);

lars

 

OK, i did not read that about the 6 detail textures, that is something that could be improved upon, since the standard Unity system handles much more detail textures, i know it takes only four textures in the first pass and 4 to 8 in a second pass and so on, and that it is somewhat costly, and i also know that your shader handles the 6 textures in one pass, so that is a very good thing, but it would be better in my opinion if it where possible to add more detailtextures in aditional passes, even if it costs more processing power. You can always warn people about the processing power cost, but it would be nice if it where atleast possible to use more detail textures in your system, then it would definitely be rock solid.

I use DDS textures as normals so i dont have to set them as normals in Unity, so they are being read as normals just fine, and i use the correct corresponding normals to the first 6 detail textures, in other words, i know what i'm doing, so i doubt that i have set it up incorrectly, i also use the correct combined textures, i'm quite sure of that.

in addition, i like the fact that i can use a color map and a normal map for the entire terrain, so in that regard your shader is very good, but i surely see some room for improvement on the amount of textures and normals that can be used, and i thank you for the shader code snippets you supplied, i can program in C# reasonable well, but my shader programming skills are somewhat lacking, so thanks for that.

These shaders are still better in my opinion then the Relief Terrain Pack, but 6 details is just not enough for me to use it, then i'd really have to set it up with a color map and entire terrain normal for it to be usable, and it would be very good if it could be used without color map and so on and have more details to paint, then it would be more flexible and be the best terrain shader there is for Unity, think about it if you will..

 

hi there,

using addpass is just a no go in my opinion: not only that it is very expensive as the whole geometry has to be rendered twice – it also does not allow to have accurate blending between the passes (especially normals)!
so the only possibility is to use texture atlases – which would probably give you 8 detail textures but does not support anisotropic filtering.
so if you need more detail textures think about adding decals to the terrain (e.g. by using dantus’ decal system from the asset store): probably much faster than anything else.
nevertheless: using a color map helps a lot to get more variety and hide tiling artifacts.

lars

 

that is indeed a good tip to use decals to create variety, combined with a color map it would most definitely be enough to create a diverse terrain, diverse enough cause the plantlife and other objects do enough in addition.

question, why is it that you can use 6 detail textures in one pass while Unity uses 4 in the first pass, and if you can use 6, why not 8 ?

It must be a specific engine limitation, cause when i was modding Fallout and Skyrim, gamebryo had no problems rendering 30 textures on the terrain at once, so i guess i am a bit spoiled here.

EDIT: i finally figured out what went wrong here, your shader won't render combined normals with DDS textures. You might want to add this to your documentation, i have been messing with it for a while till i noticed it does not work with DDS. I should have known but i wasn't paying attention to my console for a while, still the error didn't clearly state that it didn't work because of the texture format, i just had a hunch it could work if i'd use another texture format, and it did.

 

hi there,
the number of detail textures is limited shader model 3 which allows to use 16 texture samplers:
some of those are needed for lightmaps and light cookies, so we only have 13 left for our purpose (if we do not want to break any compatibility and support forward and deferred lighting).
so even 8 detail textures in one pass would require texture atlases…
if one would skip some unity features like lightmaps we could have more – but of course not 30 – at least not in one pass. anyway: this would be a very specific shader.

and i am glad that you nailed down the problem with normal maps.


lars

 

so, RTP has a option to not use lightmaps and cookies by setting that conditionally in the shader with a if statement.
And then you can use 8 detail textures. So you set a boolean in a script to circumvent those options in the shader.
This is a good thing imo cause many people use realtime shadows without lightmaps and i never use cookies anyway.
2 more would be better imo.
That way people can choose what they want..more options is always good.

 

well: tom is a maniac.
and rtp configures most of its features by recompiling the shaders. cmu uses #pragma multi_compile instead has but this definitely has reached the limit: the generated shader code simply gets too huge...
and do not underestimate mesh blending: cliffs and overhangs may use a completely independent texture adding more variety to your terrain.
roads and paths should have their own geometry as otherwise texturing might look a bit dull (not following the curvature...).

but i will have a look into the shader when i find the time.

lars

 

hahah, yes he is..
but it is cool if you can expand on this, needles to say it already does it's work quite well now that
i have got it working, this screenshot proves that..so thanks for your replies and ofcourse good shader.

i did have some problems with the mesh blending feature in the demo, the edges wheren't blending ok, they where too bright and sharp and there was quite a amount of z-fighting going on.

 

No offense to others, but I find not using lightmapping is an inefficient use of resources, it shows a lack of knowledge in scene optimization for both assets, as well as static based objects such as terrain and various non-interactive environmental objects. There is no reason you should be having your entire scene using all real time lights and dynamic shadows,(especially soft). You end up overusing your GPU, memory, and CPU cycles for things that could otherwise be used, e.g. physx, AI, asset loading input/output. By using all lights and real-time shadows, the level of optimization regarding framerate/asset performance both min/max but also median frame rate count is low to say the least. Want to put forth a good game? Use good housekeeping, programming, and knowledge of lighting, and asset management within a scene is vital to a successful project.

 

i have made a weather system where my sun traverses the sky, i can't have static shadows, and i use only 1 directional light..so i don't know what you are hollering about, and i have a very small world with almost no objects in it, it's easy to say that people have a lack of knowledge, but if you don't know what kind of environment i have, and you start judging my method, that is called prejudiced, and i do take offense, this is the only thing i will say about that.

I'm not planning on making a game, just messing wih small environments.

 

Well, then my opinion has no bearing to your "project" then now does it. I am talking about actual games, and the overzealous use of light sources in combination with complex geometry, and complex shader use. This has been one of the main issues that I have experienced; in which I had to either clean up, redo, or inform the project leads of the given issue or merely depart the given project due to the lack of experience of the team or individuals that responsible for these offenses. So, calm down and chill bub.

 

it looks to me like you are pretty frustrated about game optimization, and then you tell me to chill out..think again.
This is a thread about the shaders from forst, not to discus your frustrations and opinions about game optimization.

 

I made an observation, made an opinion from experience that was relative to this asset as well as in general which by the way is pretty good asset for terrain design. Just noting a lot of issues stem from user error. But that being said, I am not frustrated, i have no reason to be. Anyways, moving on. Good luck in your project.

 

@larsbertam,

I made a terrain with worldmachine, exported a splatmap and normal and colormap.
But from what i understand i need 2 splatmaps.

Do i need to make 2 splatmaps with 4 rgba channels ?
And then do i need to set the last two channels to 0 because there are only 6 details available.
Or do you place the remaining two detail textures (7 and 8) without normals according to the b and a channel of the second splatmap ?
It is not thouroughly explained in your documentation that's why i ask.

 

well, splatmaps are a bit difficult...
in order to control 6 detail textures and 2 decals you need 2 splatmaps – each rgba ( 2 x rgba = 8 channels = 8 textures).
but you have to make sure that the sum of r1 + g1 + b1 + a1 + r2 + g2 = 1.0
this is super important!
i think someone has made a node for worldmachine that takes care of unity’s needs – otherwise it is a bit work in photoshop.
if you just import the lower 4 detail textures from worldmachine (first splatmap) it should just be fine.
you could add the other details using the built in painting functions: unity will create a 2nd splatmap as soon as you start to paint with detail tex 5.
may be worldcomposer also handles this for you.

lars

 

OK, that's cool and understandable, thanks, but the decals, how do i add decals ?
are those detail textures 7 and 8 ?
And can they have alpha's for transparent parts and then be painted within the terrain manager too ?

If anyone knows where i can find the node for World Machine, i'd be very grateful for the information.

I used this myself, maybe that is what you ment i dunno;


EDIT: i just tried to paint with detail 5,6,7,8 but i get no second black splatmap like you said
and as stated in the help. I use psd textures, i hope that is ok.

Also, in the documentation it says that i need to flip the splatmap and heightmap on the y-axis, that is flip horizontal in photoshop, but i have to flip my color map and normal map too vertically to get the color map on the heightmap correctly, otherwise it lays mirrored.So then i start to doubt if the normal is correct, cause if you flip the normal on the x axis, you also need to inverse the green channel to get the bump pointing upward, the entire thing doesn't look bad, but i'm in doubt if everything is layed out correctly now.

example:

 

hi there,
first of all your terrain looks great: well done!

adding decals:
you just have to any: means ANY detail texture to slot 7 and 8 (the shader will simply ignore those, but unity needs them to allow you to use detail texture 7 and 8).
then choose a brush, texture 7, set "traget strength" to "0.9" and add decals. decals in this case are height map blended detail textures. decal 7 is detail texture 3 and decal 8 is detail texture 4.

EDIT: i just tried to paint with detail 5,6,7,8 but i get no second black splatmap like you said
and as stated in the help. I use psd textures, i hope that is ok.​

unity does not update the terrain object in the project folder automatically. choose "reimport" to make both splat maps to show up.

Also, in the documentation it says that i need to flip the splatmap and heightmap on the y-axis, that is flip horizontal in photoshop...​

it is up to you which textures you flip. but as you said: flipping normals is not that easy.

cheers, lars

 

Thanks, I'm slowly getting the hang of it, i just found out that i can use a color map and set the average colors to 50% grey that i retain the original colors of my detail textures, that is superb, cause earlier i thought that worldmachine wasn't very accurate in making a high quality color map, and that the color map desaturated my detail textures, but with grey colors on the shader i keep my texture quality..Lovely !

Right, so textures 7 and 8 are dummies for Unity so i can paint with it, thanks for clearing that up.

OK, i found that the splatmap is visible when i expand the terrain object in my project view, so it is there, it just doesn't show up in the second slot on the shader, even when i reimported the terrain object, but that's ok..

I also found that if i disable the colormap first, i can flip the splatmap so that it fits the geometry correctly, then i enable the colormap and it looks perfect.

Thanks for the help Lars, i think i can go and do some magic now..

 

Hi there.
I followed the instructions step by step . But every time they go out these horrendous results.
Because ? Can anyone help me?
Thanks .

 

not unless you provide some more info/screen shoots about your setup, input textures and so on ;-)
lars

 

My settings.

 

well, i have not had a look into the "regular" inspector for a while.
but unfortunately your settings do not tell much about the color map you use.
from what i can see i think your colormap is just pretty low frequency.
so the shader might do exactly what it is supposed to do: mixing your low frequency color map with the detail textures.

quick tip: rework or tweak your color map (by simply adding odd colors here and there) and look how this effects the terrain shading.

lars

 

Hello there.
I upload my Colormap Using World Machine and I use the procedure to build the standrad color map (which I learned from tutorials on youtube ) .
Adv Perlin / Layout / etc .--- > . Filter ( Erosion , Terrace , ) ----> Colorizer ----> BitmapOutput (PNG 16 bit 1024 res ) .
The color maps appear so " skinny " and "simple" ? Why? Do I have to edit them manually with the PSP / GymP ? In the video tutorial on youtube did everything ONLY with World Machine.
Thanks for your support .

 

I am by no means any world machine expert, but have you tried some of the macros? http://www.world-machine.com/library/

You do not mentione splat maps, have you generated that as well?

I managed to get a nice result with the following colormap using one of the macros on WM's site. Though it was a while ago so I can barely remember the setup of ats

 

For the record I used the "Costal Overlay" macro, but there are many good ones

 

hi flrss,

as i thought: your color map is absolutely low frequency which leads to a terrain that looks as if someone painted it with a very huge brush.
if you look at the colormap uploaded by ramsdal it shows much more details.
and that is what it is all about: if you just have one solid green for grassy areas the color map will NOT add any variation to the tiling detail texture but personally i think it should. otherwise it is more or less worthless.

lars

 

p.s.: at also looks as if you would have to flip the color map along the y-axis as it does not fit your terrain (mountains are green?). please have a look at the docs for details.

 

Greetings Can I use another type of program to create a world , rather than World Machine that is conpatibile with the asset ats Color map ultra ? Thanks for your help.

 

you can use any tool out there that outputs heightmaps and – may be – even splat and color maps.
that is not a limit by the shader but by the way the terrain is handled in unity (and most other engines as well).
nevertheless: world machine is just state of the art. so if you are interested in aaa terrains there is probably no way around it.

lars