Ferr2D Terrain Tool

@Alessandro.Previti I'm currently pretty far into a vertex painting tool, not sure that it's ready for beta testers yet, but I'll be glad to send you a copy when it's ready =D There's a few on the asset store already though, so you may be interested in those in the meantime. Also, keep in mind that any change you make to the terrain will wipe all the colors clean, due to the nature of procedural mesh re-calculation, sorry o_-

@CSharpMin, I may have to dig into this at some point, I haven't actually used A* with Ferr2D personally. I assume that you're using the 3D colliders, and you're adding them to the terrain during edit mode, right? I'll try and find some time this weekend =D

Awh man, and the release notes were the very last item on the previous page! Shoulda posted these in reverse >.<

 

@CSharpMin, I ended up using another asset called plolyNav2D. It may not be what you are looking for, but I manage to make it work.

@koujaku Great news about the update! Are there any update notes? (I will do a backup, but are there any other steps to do the update?) And yes, if you make a vertex painting tool I will by it. And now a suggestion... I find the Terrain Material Editor a little clunky... I'm not sure how to describe it, and I most certainly wouldn't know how to fix it, but maybe you could take a look at it so that the creation of a Terrain Material is not as cumbersome? Maybe is just me, but I always struggle with it.

Thanks a lot!

 

Just delete the Ferr folder before importing! I've re-arranged the files a bit, and while failing to do so -shouldn't- prevent it from working, you'll have issues with the handle images not showing properly.

And I really want to redo the terrain material editor! Chances are good that I'll switch over to a sprite based system, so I can leverage Unity's sprite editor for cutting up the atlases. Since I'm no longer limited by Unity 4.2, that's a thing I can do now =D While I'm at that, I plan on adding more than 4 sides, maybe moving some of the variables on the Ferr2DT_PathTerrain component into the terrain materials (collision info at least, probably!). Maybe different physics materials per edge? Dunno, there's a bunch of stuff I can do when I revamp that.

Anyone have preferences on what Ferr2DT_PathTerrain properties I should move into the terrain materials? I know there's definitely some room for a smoother workflow by moving stuff over =D

 

Im very new at designing how come i keep getting these purple terrains or a very like blocky one @koujaku

 

@drewsky, Looks like you may be using a 4.x build in Unity 5.x! I recommend grabbing the latest version from the asset store, you may need to download or re-download the package to get it working. That should fix the pink materials.

Also, make sure you're using a transparent shader for the edge materials. Ferr/Unlit Vertex Color Transparent or something like that, that should solve your blocky problems.

Lemme know if that helps! =D

 

Hi koujaku I'm hoving some problems with the update:

Those are the errors. I did delete the Ferr2D folder.. The only modification I did to the scripts was adding a button the generate the colliders during Editor Mode...

It looks like I need to delete some other stuff from my project before re importing the asset

 

@josessito, it looks like you're also importing the 4.x version into Unity 5 somehow o.o Can you walk me though exactly how you imported the package? Did you perhaps update the package while using a 4.x version of Unity, and then import in 5?

If you can't figure it out from that tidbit, let me know by email, and I can get you the right package there!

Also, figured I'd share this little screenshot I just made =D I've been working on some color preservation stuff, so Ferr2D will persist any vertex painting you've done, even after rebuilding the terrain, changing settings, etc! So this is Ferr2D and Ferr Blend/Paint working together quite nicely n_n

Ferr Blend/Paint will probably still be a bit, but it'll do fun things like multi-texture painting, color painting, and I may even try and fit destructible/paint-able terrain into it. Meaning you'll be able to paint the terrain in, instead of drawing paths! (if you want to =D)



Oh, and I also added vertex color gradients while I was at it =D No painting required, just a gradient, and an angle. So uhh, this screenshot is a little garish, but it demonstrates what you can do with it really easily~ Could be really nice for doing like.. fade to black, or lava glows, stuff like that!

 

Uh, this looks really great. Looking forward to that stuff!

 

Hi koujaku, I ended up solving it. First I needed to delete the folder, close my project and then re-import the new version, and that took care of some errors. But there were shader errors still left. Shaders are a completely unknown world to me, but I ended up winging it and commenting out a few lines based on the errors. Somehow, it worked. Here is how the start of Ferr2DTCommon.cginc looks now:

Code (CSharp):

1.  
2. #define UNITY_4
3.  
4. //#if defined(UNITY_4)
5. //#define UNITY_SAMPLE_TEX2D tex2D
6. //#endif
7.  
8. #if defined(FERR2DT_LIGHTMAP) && defined(UNITY_4)
9. //sampler2D_half unity_Lightmap;
10. // half4          unity_LightmapST;
11. #endif
12.  

I don't have a clue way this works but I'm putting it here in case you or anyone else wants to take a look at it.

By the way I can't wait for that vertex tool, specially if it works with Ferr2D!!

 

If you comment out the #define UNITY_4 line, it should do roughly the same thing. But that line isn't present in the 5.x build I uploaded to the asset store, so I'm not too sure why you're getting that build instead! Someone else mentioned they had to do the same thing, so I'm hoping it's just an edge case and not a common occurrence!

 

Working on replacing the existing path code, managed to significantly reduce stretching from points too close together, and from ...smoothing warp? Not sure what to call it, but it's feeling/looking a lot nicer in those cases~ Should also improve colliders and stuff when I get to that as well, the code is waaay better! =D

 

Ferr2D is a very impressive looking tool.

I was wondering if you could add a video on your site which would show an overview of what you can do procedurally with Ferr2D? I am very much interested in procedural creation and/or deformation using this tool, but there doesn't seem to be much showing that aspect, other than (seemingly) a brief mention of properties that can be changed at runtime and a demo infinite runner. Your other videos on this tool are well presented, and I would find it very useful to see an overview on this directly from the creator.

cheers

 

The tricky thing here is that the Ferr2D part of this is just about as simple as "add point, rebuild path", which is pretty well covered by the examples (I hope? If not, let me know!). So the content of the video/tutorial suddenly becomes about procedural content in general, rather than Ferr2D, and procedural content is a big complicated topic!

If you have some ideas as to what type of video you think would be most pertinent in this case, I'd love to hear 'em! I could write an entire class on the subject (kinda have actually) so it'd be nice to know what you guys would find most useful!

 

Fair enough. I've only found out about Ferr2D very recently, so I may be asking goofy questions...and I do not own it yet.

So if it's simply a matter of adding/removing points and then rebuilding the path at runtime, then I suppose my original question should have been: would 'rebuilding the path' be considered an expensive operation?

To give a better picture, let's refer to the terrain chunk you created in your introduction video (before you inverted). Would creating 5-6 chunks (a few more?) similar to that (roughly the same amount of points) offscreen be a taxing operation at runtime? The context here would a sort of infinite sidescroller built with chunks of terrain randomly generated by Ferr2D.

I understand I'm a bit vague and that it all depends on my ultimate goal here (I'm not sure myself at this time)...I'm just trying to get a feel for the tool's capabilities. Although I suspect Ferr2D would work very well for this...but you'd know better than me...

Thanks again

 

the painting looks awesome -- can't wait to get my hands on that!

any updates on the mesh warping request? if i could make terrains like these, it would be so rad -- i want it oh so bad!

 

Hi, Ferr2D is extremely awesome!

I have one question, does Ferr2d support to create accurate collider path just follow the material edge? I am working on a game that have caves, and the cave's edge has different kinds of sharp and convex rocks, player could control the airship to hit the edge, i want the airship to collide exactly with edge, otherwise, it will looks weird.

Thanks!

 

@rockllei, it doesn't follow the specific pixels on the edge, sorry! The colliders are meant primarily for platformer style collision, which needs smooth surfaces. You could treat your rocks and other protruding objects as separate objects perhaps, and add colliders to those!

@rilez, the only one that would be tricky all that tricky is the last one! The rest of them are just regular textures~ The fun bit would be creating the glow towards the edge for the 'lighting', but you can do that with an additive transparent shader and a gradient for your edge material! You don't get the solid line at the top though.



I've got a few other vertex color modes coming that might help though, I could probably add a gradient based on distance from the edge or something like that, could easily fake the lighting effect and still give you room for the solid line along the edge!

@MagicNaught, rebuilding the terrain can be a little expensive, especially if you have the settings turned up! It's fast enough to run now and again during runtime, but definitely not every frame! Cost is generally a few milliseconds, anywhere from 1-10ms depending on the complexity of a small terrain. If you're looking to generate on startup or something, that's definitely quite do-able as well!

This is also something I'm working on, and hoping to improve in future releases! It's not quite where I want it to be after switching over to Poly2Tri, it seems to be a little heavy handed with memory allocations. I may write or find a different triangulation library that's less complex, but runs quickly during runtime. We'll see!

 

Hi!
I've just bought Ferr2D and faced the conflict: I am currently using another asset Puppet2D, which also using poly2tri library. How should I fix this issue?
Poly2tri source files seems a bit different, and has different folder structure (check package contents here https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/14024)

Thank you!

 

Thanks koujaku.

For sure, I wasn't considering running this every frame. I suspect building pieces off-screen (smartly) should work pretty well. Perhaps an approach where building (pooling) a few pieces ahead of time (using a fixed amount of points), and simply moving those points around would be a sensible way to fake new pieces...assuming moving points doesn't necessitate a path rebuild?

Anyway, I will get your plugin soon'ish and will experiment with it.

Thanks again for your time.

 

@koujaku re: the edge gradient, that's the way we're doing it now we have grass/etc. on the edge as well, to cover up any uglies, but a ferr feature that doesn't require this hack would be welcome.

re: the warped texture, that's cheating we've also tried doing it this way/baking it in... the problem is the patterns are immediately visible/recognized -- this breaks the illusion/effect we're going after.

the solution to this is to either have really, really large textures, or use very small terrains... or have a nifty way to warp the textures

 

Just downloaded Ferr2D v1.0.9 and having a play around with it... Can anyone shed some light on material sorting.

If I create 3 terrains they don't sort... I don't want to have to set z transform to fix this issue and cant seem to get sorting layers to solve the problem. I have some slight success changing fill materials to transparent types but it still wasn't perfect and plus the docs say this can have a hit on performance on mobile.

 

Ok it seems changing the fill materials from ".. Vertex Color" to ".. Vertex Color Transparent" AND then setting up the Sorting Layers AND/OR setting the Order in Layer fixes things.

So really just want to check the documents comment on Fill Material... about transparent materials being expensive for mobile. I'm targeting IOS and Android :/

 

Hello Koujaku, the Ferr blend paint you're showing looks amazing, You really work hard!
Do you have any idea when it will be available and for what price?
Do you think it'd be possible to billboard the segments of a Ferr edge in a consistent way?

 

Hey guys! Sorry for the late replys, been a busy weekend, head down in the code and all that~ Managed to get seamless corners in at long last =D It's not a requirement, you can still use the old overlap method, but seamless corners do open up a pile of other cool things, like being able to use whatever shader you feel like for lighting and things like that!



@rilez, might be able to pull off some UV texture offset painting with my vertex painting tool when that's ready! Dunno if that'll look good enough, but I guess I'll see that reasonably soon~

@richie.greene, Ferr2D uses a small z-offset to sort the mesh segments, I haven't been able to entirely get rid of those just yet! That's what you're seeing in those screenshots there. Using a transparent material isn't the worst thing in the world, it just means that you're more likely to run into overdraw performance issues, but that's not something I'd worry about much unless you've got a lot of overlap going on! Not to mention, many GPUs may actually be smart enough to avoid most of the problems there.

@Alessandro.Previti, glad to know you're interested! It's in a pretty reasonable state right now, I'd be very happy if I could finish it in a month or two! But I'm also pretty deep into the next Ferr2D update, so it's a little hard to say right now! Price will probably be around 30 or so as well, but I'll know that much better when I'm setting up documentation for it.

Also, I'm uncertain what you mean by billboarding the segments, think you could elaborate a little~? =D

 

What I mean is something similar to what the trail render component in Unity does; the trail segments keep on facing the camera. I know that Ferr is ment for 2d, but I'm curious if it is anyhow possible to use it so.

 

I just updated to the new version but I'm getting some errors. I have Unity 5.0.2f1.

 

Hi TheSarcastic, I had the same issue when I updated, it's easy to fix: delete the Ferr folder from your project and then install the new version.
If for any reason you have some custom files in the Ferr folders or subfolders, back them up (better not to have any, generally).

 

I think I saw your reply here before posting. I deleted my Ferr folder, restarted unity and then imported from the asset store again, but got this same result.

 

@CSharpMin @koujaku
Hi koujaku, can you help to debug this issue with A* pathfinding project? I have exactly the same issue with what CSharpMin posted above.

Thanks!

 

Ok, so I just realized I actually uploaded the Unity 5.x build with 5.0.3! So if you're using anything less than that, the asset store will give you the 4.x build instead of the 5.x build (oops!). Easy to fix! If you're stuck on an early 5.0.x, just send me an email with your invoice number, and I'll get the correct build to you~

@Alessandro.Previti, You can billboard the -entire- terrain pretty easily (some variation on transform.Lookat(Camera.main) or somesuch), but doing it only for the edges isn't likely to work. (I can imagine a way or two, but they're suuuper convoluted, and definitely not good solutions!)

@rockllei, @CSharpMin, what I -assume- needs to happen here is that the 3D collider mesh needs triangulated on the sides, since this will make it a solid object! I did this in the really early versions of Ferr2D, but removed that since it really wasn't necessary for collision, and triangulation is slowish. I'll take a look at adding an option for it back in, but it shouldn't be terribly hard to do! I'll try and find time for this on the weekend, been pretty busy this week so far.

 

Hi koujaku, I been thinking of using terrain prefabs to create some randomness for the levels, but I've read that there were some issues with prefabs of terrains, are those fixed or there are still there?
Thanks!

 

@koujaku I've been away from Ferr 2D for a long time, wanting to use it on a new project, the new features you have going are awesome and what I've been waiting for from Ferr. Do you have an ETA on the next major version?

 

Can't wait to work with the new version of F2D! The updates look fantastic. I assume that updating to the new version will not goof up any of the existing terrain I have already created using an older version?

Thanks again for the fantastic work and support.

 

@josessito, Prefabs are still a little iffy, but they do get better every version! I have used a recent build to create a procedurally assembled game with prefabbed terrain, so it's certainly possible.

@rxmarccall, I'm not sure when it'll be done, but it'll be a much faster update than the previous ones! I'm aiming for... perhaps 2 months or so, but we'll see! Just keep an eye out for it, I'll refine the date a little more as I work on it!

@mrwogs, I completely intend for this next update to not mess any existing terrain up! There will likely be visual changes if you update your paths, but they should primarily be reducing stretch, and maybe small changes in the colliders. I'd certainly take a quick look at everything, but chances are good you won't need to change anything. The seamless corners will be a toggle, so if you don't have the art assets for it, it won't be a problem!

However, update after this next one, I do plan on revamping a lot of the internal stuff, and I make no promises about compatibility for that just yet. It's a ways off in the future though, and I may try and keep it compatible, but we'll see!

 

Great, thanks!

 

@koujaku Have you ever thought about being able to transition between textures on a single terrain? Otherwise the only way to transition would be to have two seperate terrains and put an obstacle in the level or something where the seam is of the two terrains that meet. Any thoughts on this?

Also, have you thought about allowing multiple terrains to be grouped together and share similar points? As an example of what I mean check out this screenshot from rayman legends:

There is the main path that the characters run on, then a foreground path that follows the same shape as the normal path but has a different texture. This would be nice so that you don't have to hand adjust the points of 2 terrains to try and make them similar in shape. Or maybe the best way to do this is just to duplicate a terrain once you are done with it and change the texture? would be nice to not have to do that though because if you change the shape of 1 ever then you gotta do it again

 

So, for transitioning stuff, you might be interested in the vertex painting stuff that I've been working on~! ( http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/ferr2d-terrain-tool.204436/page-19#post-2176851 ) Parts of it will be a separate tool, but it'll definitely accomplish what you're talking about here~ There'll be a couple of different texture transition modes, so it'll be easy to get whatever transition you need.

I'm hoping to add in some extra path manipulation tools, combining, intersecting, could probably add in a copy/paste path values feature! Hoping to get it into the next version, we'll see! In the meantime though, you can probably copy path points through the Ferr2D_Path component (not the Ferr2D_PathTerrain component) using the "Copy Component" and "Paste Component Values" options!

 

Ahhh that looks so tasty, will we be able to paint just the fill or the edge as well? Hope it comes soon... =D

Also if there will be any kind of "beta", put me down please. We are going to be showing our game at a gaming convention and would love to have this feature in our game

 

Yeah, it will definitely be able to do edges! I think it was a little wonky when I took that screenshot, but that's easy for me to get right =D I'm hoping a month or two, but I'm also planning a parallel update to Ferr2D, so I'm not entirely certain, it is pretty far along though!

 

Right on, let me know if you want any testers when a "beta" phase comes around. Keep up the great work

 

Hello guys, this is the first game I'm developing, we are using ferr2D to create levels, we are adding our art in the game and we will change the pattern that comes in ferr. This is a early alpha. Ferr2D amazing tool.

 

Is it possible to flip one ore multiple terrains?

 

@Too Nerd To Die, that's lookin' pretty awesome! glad you're liking it, and I can't wait to see more! =D

@maltakereuz, you can rotate on any axis by 180, or scale any axis by -1, but I'm not sure if that's what you mean. Could you elaborate a little more?

 

Hello, I am trying to get Sprites to cast shadows on Ferr2D terrains that are behind the sprite in the z-plane. Even though the mesh-renderer on the terrain object is checked true to receiving shadows, it does not receive any
However, they cast shadows effectly...

I am using a custom shader that I put on my sprites to have them own a shadow to cast and it works on 3D mesh-renderers. See below:



The white point light has the red terrain casting a shadow on a a 3D primitive. The red point light is doing the same (demonstrating the sprite shadow [rather poor implementation still]). The filler terrain to the left (using a lit shader) is not receiving any shadow from the terrain that is in front of it (red). It does not receive from the sprites either.

I am not quite sure what the problem is here and I've spent too long looking at a bunch of shaders to be able to figure it out now

Also.. if anyone has a better sprite shadow shader I'd like to pick up any tips you can offer!

Thanks.

 

Heyas! So the trouble here is that the Ferr2D shaders are -super- cut down for speed, so they don't really support shadowing at all! I generally target mobile with my shaders, and real-time shadows generally aren't.

You'll want to use the regular shaders if you want to get that effect, but you'll have to be careful about the terrain corners. Since they're overlapping transparent meshes, they don't play well with Unity's multiple draw calls from per-pixel lights. You'll have to be clever to avoid that artifact!

Next version of Ferr2D will have a seamless corner option, which means you won't have that overlap issue and you'll be able to use whatever shader you want! But that's a few short months away just yet.

 

@koujaku Darn! But my project is many months or years from being done so I have many other things to work on instead of sprite shadows...

I look forward to your new updates!

 

@koujaku I just purchased your plug-in. I am impressed by how functional it is...

I do have one issue that has come up with it...



if you look at the pipe.. how the left side has a end yellow line.. meaning that no edge collider is present... so thus.. you could travel into the pipe....

and on the end of the pipe... there is a Green line... so thus.... you can't travel out or in of the pipe from the end...
I am trying to find a way of making it so you can open up the right side of the pipe so thus making a "true pipe" that can be entered from one end or the other...

I have tried a few settings in the roll out options with no success... can you please let me know on how I should make this happen.

update: I was thinking that perhaps a option in the editor that would allow a collider edge selection to get ignored from the collider edge building process.... so I could select the "End of Pipe" and then make it yellow....

Thanks alot! Great work btw!

 

Can somebody confirm?

Using only one edge of a material (let's use the built-in pipe material as an example), on a Closed Path with the Terrain's Smooth Path enabled, the point where the start of the path joins with the end is broken.

The screenshots have Split Middle disabled but it's broken even if it's on.

 

@SkyboardSoftware, the yellow line actually means that there may or may not be part of the collider there. My collider system gets a little weird at times, especially around pipes type materials! In theory, the "Generate Colliders Along" options would be what you're looking for, but it seems that's only working properly on pipes that use 3D colliders right now.

I am however doing a complete overhaul of my pathing system right now, so colliders should behave completely as expected when that's finished!

@Pharan, I assume that's the closing segment of the closed path? This is also an artifact of the current pathing system, and should be fixed when I complete my current overhaul!

 

@koujaku Sweet news. I look forward in seeing the adjustments. Please try to focus if you can on getting some working pipe mechanics... like for example...

imagine a pipe that can be entered on both sides... and also perhaps another segment that connects to it that would also allow a collider to open up where the opposing segment touches...

so someone could make a T intersection for example...

@Pharan I do confirm the issue with the broken section...

In this video you will see the issue with not being able to enter the second pipe due to the collider being not opened where the pipe is placed....