[Coming Soon] Tropical Forest Pack

For a while now I have been working on my Tropical Forest Pack. Having a lot of fun and frustration with it.

Before I go any further, let me say I am sorry for adding another tropical themed environment pack to the store. I know there are a lot already. I still felt like making one since I love the tropics.

These are not Unity Tree Creator trees. They are handmade in Blender.

This pack is not for mobile. Many textures are 2048. Some are 4096. Every texture/model has 3-5 LODs. So on a good computer this will run fine and can be optimized to work on a lower-end computer.

I am using Unity Indie so the LOD system is using the Simple LOD Manager by Tom Vogt. So the LOD prefabs will work in both Pro and Indie.

Contains (remember still WIP)

-17 trees
-11 rocks
-10 plants
-2 roots
-10 ground textures (each have normals, heights, and specular textures)
-2 structures (docks)

Before release there will be more of each, but especially more of the roots and structures.

You will also find a few demo scenes.

Each of the tree and plant prefabs include four versions.

-Ambient-Occlusion for use on the terrain system.

-AFS for those who have purchased the Advanced Foliage Shader pack by forst. Just have the AFS folder in your project and change the materials with AFS in the name to the appropriate Advanced Foliage Shader. Looks great and also has vertex bending. Bending that matches the treecreator bending with the new tools in AFS 4. Thank you Lars and UV4.

AFS thread

-Treecreator trees using Lars' Custom Tree Importer script are the same handmade trees that act like Tree Creator trees. They bend wonderfully and look amazing. The best part is that they can be used on the terrain. Recommend using Lux or AFS tree creator shaders as the default shaders have some problems. Textures are already set up to so no need to edit textures when using AFS or Lux. Just change the shader.

Custom Tree Importer thread

This pack is set up to work with Lux and the standard shader.

A lot of thanks to Lars for his awesome work for the community.

Here are a few screenshots(open them in a new tab to see them better):

-Ambient-Occlusion for use on the terrain system




-Treecreator trees used on the terrain(not all trees already finished have been converted yet)




For those using Imgur here is my page: http://baldinoboy.imgur.com

 

Looking forwards to this pack, looking great!!!

 

Thanks. Will post some more info and screenshots soon.

 

Wow, it's incredible!

 

Thanks



Forgot to mention it above but the AO, Static, and AFS are different imports not just different prefabs. The terrain tree AO models have one-sided leaves while the Static and AFS models have two-sided leaves. The Static and AFS models are different because of vertex colors.

All these imports are in FBX format. For those who use Blender and still have trouble importing FBX files I am including .blends for all the models.

 

Have not made anything new but instead have been reworking the pack. Working on all the textures to make them act better with physically based rendering. So far it is coming along well. Also optimizing the models. Removed all but two 4096 textures (there were 6!). Also lowered some 2048 textures to 1024. Very small loss of quality. Very high performance gain!

Here are a couple more screenshots:





Will have some new prefabs to show soon.

 

The Ambient-Occlusion is done through the shader right? Anyways looking incredible!

 

Thanks again. The first two pictures show the Ambient Occlusion trees which use the normal Terrain Soft Occlusion shaders. The ground plants in all the pics are using the terrain detail shader which is using the vertex colors for AO. The rest of the trees do not have AO in the shader. So with IndieEffects, FX 4 Indie, or normal Pro effects you can get some AO in there.

 

Oh, do you know of any hacked shaders? That could be interesting...

 

There are ways to get the trees to work with tree creator shaders but I do not want to bother with them yet. Would like to see how Unity 5 changes things first . Even if I do this Blender still does not support alpha vertex color so still no AO.

All the Lux shaders can have AO applied and the leaf shader was made in Shader Forge so there is a way to get AO in the shader. Though I have not figured it out. Whenever I try to use access the UV2 it crashes Unity.

Advanced Foliage Shaders work awesome but still need the vertex alpha on the big trees for AO. Still looks great without it.

 

Shader Forge and Lux rock. Made an AO texture from one of the trees. Using custom UV2 for the AO. Lux was easy. Just enable AO and put in the texture. Voila, AO on the bark. For the leaves I went into Shader Forge and put in what was needed . The UV2 was read fine! Also put in a switch so you can turn the AO off on the leaves too. I think I am sick of saying AO .

No AO


AO


These shaders are only for the Static (manually placed) prefabs.

 

The trees look really nice, even the one with out the ao applied! The lighting is also really good such as the single plant, how many lights were used in the scene?

 

Thanks. Just 1 directional light. The bark is using Lux so it has IBL.

 

Lux looks a lot better.

 

Lux is pretty amazing.

 

yes it is!

 

When I have set up all the models to work with AO and optimized for PBS I will post some more screenshots. Might take a few days. Already looking great. After all this optimizing I am going to get back to creating more models.

 

Sounds awesome!

 

nice trees - Will any of these be able to do touch bending?

 

Thanks. All the models have vertex paint ready for bending. If you have AFS then you can set up the touch bending through the AFS bending setup. I cannot of course include AFS so there is no way to have it all set up. It is pretty simple to do. I have tried it out and it works great. Will eventually have a demo with the AFS models so there will be some touch bending going on.

Here is a link to AFS(Advanced Foliage Shader) if you have not heard of it: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/3253

 

I already own AFS3. I was going to sit down and try to convert some trees to use AFS3 but since this asset is being released soon, I think I will just wait patiently and buy your asset (instead of learning AFS3 right now).

I have not seen any of the other asset store vegetation packs upgrade to pbr ready textures so your sales should do really well.

 

Cool. Hope it will work for you. I will release an AFS demo before release so you can try it out.

 

Have still been working on the models. Here are a few more screenshots. Almost all the trees have the AO set up.

 

Lookin' good

 

Thanks.Will look even better soon.

 

Sorry guys but have not been able to do much lately. Preoccupied with other things. Have redone most of the plants and am planning to redo both cupuacu trees. Was not happy with the tri count for the quality. I promise to post some new screenshots and info soon.

 

Sorry for no updates. I have been working a lot on my pack. One thing I did yesterday was I started making a more interesting demo scene. Here is one:

Smugglers Island



In Unity I prefer to work on smaller terrains but figured some will want a larger environment in this pack.

 

Awesome work, do you know if this is compatible with the water4 shader in the sense that if one were to take the edge blending and then add it to tfp shader would it work, also maybe some waves?

 

Thanks.

The water I am using is a shader that I made in Shader Forge. You can easily add depth blending, reflection, and actual depth in Shader Forge but you need pro, which I do not have. So if someone who buys my pack has Shader Forge they could edit it and have all the goodies. If you want to use water4 all you would have to do is apply the water4 shader to the ocean plane and set the correct tiling.

The main reason why I created this ocean shader instead of just simple water plane is because I wanted transparency without the tree billboards getting incorrectly sorted. I "cheated" the shader in Shader Forge so that billboards between the camera and the water do not appear behind the water. There are still problems like transparent objects underwater disappear and if you are underwater trees above the water disappear. So there is no winning without a depth camera but this should be good enough. Of course you can change the shader to whatever you want. The included water is just a placeholder.

 

WOW, Lux AND AFS support right off the bat! Where do I buy!? LOL

I'll be waiting for this to come out!

 

Cool. Like I said above I will post a small AFS demo before release so you can push some plants around. That should keep you AFS nuts happy.

Honestly it is taking longer to finish than I thought it would. Want to make sure it is great for you guys before I release it. Will post some more updates soon.

Thanks

 

Still working. Here are a few screenshots of a little scene with most of the plants and tree using the AFS raindrop shader:





They do bend when you walk into them. Sorry it is taking so long to get a webplayer out. Want to get a few more plants for variety.

 

Wow that's quite amazing.

 

Thanks

 

I am still working on this. It is slow but still going.

Unfortunately because of problematic exporting/importing issues I have had to remove Lux from the pack. The textures are still ready for Lux though. Even the textures for puddles with the wetness shaders. All you have to do is import the Lux folder(makes sure to use the one from Github and not the Asset Store) and set up the materials with it. I will have a demo scene with the Lux shaders shortly before release.

Hoping that U5 comes soon so that I can have the materials using standard shader before the initial release. Still have a lot to do so U5 will probably be here.

I have a question for the community and potential customers.
I want to have some man made structures but I am not sure if people want to have more modern or older structures. Crysis 1 or Assassins Creed 4? They will all be pirate/smuggler structures but what period?
Still am going to throw in some old ruins. I am leaning to more of a South America environment so will do some research accordingly.
I might not get all the structures done in the initial release but there will be updates.

Here is a big thing. I am using Lars' Custom Tree Importer Script. That means that if you want to use the trees on the terrain you can use them as treecreator trees. They bend MUCH nicer and are lit nicely too. There will still be AFS trees but the treecreator trees have the better bending and the bark is lit like bark should be. Thanks very much to Lars. I highly recommend you use either AFS tree creator or Lux tree creator shaders as they solve many problems that the default shaders have. When switching over to those shaders there is no need to convert any textures. That is done already. Just change the shader.

Also I have downloaded and worked on some audio files from Freesound.org. I only used ones that use the Creative Commons 0 license so you can use the audio files without worry. I have not worked with Unity audio too much so the scene setup may not be perfect but you will have them so you can do what you wish. So you will have anything from distant waves crashing to a howler monkey in the trees.

So what do you think? Also if anyone has any advice or ideas put them here or send me an email. Sorry again this is taking so long. I will post some more screenshots soon.

Thanks

 

Here are a few screenshots of the treecreator trees. Not all finished trees have been converted yet. There are also no plants or rocks on this terrain yet as the purpose is to test out these trees. Open them in a new tab to see better. Here you go:

 

I'd like to see a mix, of more older stone ruins or stone objects from AC4 time, and some more modern structures. There's a good free concrete tex pack on the asset store.

 

Thank you for the advice. I will use my own textures. Do not want to use someones' asset in my own. Probably not even legal according to the Asset Store. Have some good ones from CG Textures and even in my camera.

Sounds like a plan. Anymore input from the community. You do not have to buy my pack if you comment here.
Or do you.

No really any advice or preferences will be very much appreciated.

Thanks

 

Made a quick AFS touch bending demo. Not all plants are in this scene and there will be a lot more. Just wanted to throw this out there for fun. Will make more as more plants are made. Using the Ethan third person character for a better vantage point. Let me know if a first person scene would be better for you. Can do that too.

Let me know what you think. Here you go: Tropical_Forest_Pack_touchbending_alpha01 (140mb)

 

I am still alive and working on this pack. I may never finish it but will try my best. Playing around in C# and am attempting to make a Day-Night cycle. Just wanted to post a couple screenshots.

Sunrise


Sunset:


Only have directional light movement setup in the script. So not fancy sunset colors yet.

Back to my pack. I have not added much but have edited a lot. After working on a few trees I am going to attack ground plants. Make as much as I can find online and will hopefully be able to fit them on one texture. This will help a lot on memory and will also allow using the AFS shader and placing them on the terrain as detail meshes. Cannot wait to get that going. When I do I will post a few shots here.

Thanks for reading.

To the Unity team,

Thank you guys so much for Unity 5. It came out amazing. Also can not leave out many thanks for the personal edition. As you can see I am abusing the heck out of the effects(maybe a little too much). Also having the LOD system in personal is going to help quite a few Asset Store devs. So thank you very much for your work and support in Unity.

 

That look awesome. What's name of the lens flare?

 

This: http://armedunity.com/topic/5845-dirty-lens-bloom/

Except for the dirt textures it is free to use. So I made my own texture. It is a cool effect. Also using normal bloom with lens flare. I prefer the normal bloom so I set the quality to low on the dirty lens bloom and raise the blur iterations all the way up. So I get the good bloom from Unity and the awesome dirt effect from the Shader God(aka willywill).