--PolyWorld-- Low Poly Toolkits and More!

I'm currently working on thinking about how LOD Terrain exports could work "more easily", so far I have come up with the idea of "skirts" which I think is probably the cheapest solution. It would not give "perfect" results, but would prevent looking through the geometry - and given the current smeared colors it would not be immediately noticeable.

Will keep ruminating.

 

I bought PW for a school project. It makes 3D so much more appealing to develop in, considering the 3 month time frame we have to work with. I don't need to even think about displacement maps, or worry about if something looks "fake."

Check out this sword for the main character, after several passes through the PW script!

 

How would I go about making an infinitely generating terrain with this plugin?

 

Hmm. well I have been working on that exact problem for a few months now.
"Terrain" is a very loose term, a perfectly flat one would be a doddle.

FLAT: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/polyworld-for-unity.239365/page-11#post-1916113

Spoiler

In the end I used 2 lists, containing all the "9 item" tiles, then sorted them into 4 small 3 tile lists. (N, S, E, W) based on their positional data. and attached triggers. Then added the logic to shift the contents of the opposite list to be exactly located on the other side of the list item that activates. That sounds complicated but isn't.


How do we handle corners? just iterate over both lists!

First move the terrain around, based on existing lists.

Trigger: Am I in North list? Yes I am, Move South list 3* Terrain Breadth North.

Trigger: (I can't be in the South list, I was in the north list) Mr Boolean says so.

Trigger: Am I in East list? Yes I am (I must be a corner!) Move West list 3* Terrain Stride East.
Trigger: (I can't be in the West list) Mr Boolean says so.

// now we rebuild our sorted lists via delgates
RecalculateGrid();
//repeat OnTrigger.

Happy to share the code for that,

https://gist.github.com/twobob/6de4b698a51bc0a387ec
and
https://gist.github.com/twobob/2f53c1daa835c54648bd

and the tree/object population (it's basic raycast stuff) if needed

One with Tiles that have height in the middle but are flat around each edge (to match up) are next easiest

FLAT AT THE EDGE BUT HEIGHT IN THE MIDDLE
In theory: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/polyworld-for-unity.239365/page-12#post-1972417
Working: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/polyworld-for-unity.239365/page-12#post-1984813

Ones with Tiles that have height info that spans multiple tiles and only tessellate at the very edges are next hardest.

HEIGHT SPANS MANY TILES:
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/polyworld-for-unity.239365/page-13#post-2029902

Ones that are purely procedural and wander all over are the most hard (I would say)

And the question you ask is almost so far from this plugins actual usage I would almost suggest another thread...

However: Basically,
Tiling + Pre-renders into useful chunks.

Additionally- using other Toolsets such as Terrain Composer for the initial generations.
Or by hand with the in-game Terrain Tools (I did this at first, you can Set Height to control edges) and just convert those as individual tiles.
Or procedurally on-the-fly using simplex noise (or w/e) and then converting real-time <-- I have never done this yet with Polyworld and have no idea if it could manage this "in-game" without dying.

However, I can say that I would go down the "Virtually" infinite road and have a huge tile set that I just move around inside that repeats at the edges. The guides for making such terrains (that can be converted to meshes) can be found on the pages of the respective tools that do that (generally) Example Tool: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/te...alistic-unity-terrain-in-just-minutes.151365/
or on the web.
Hope it helps

 

Ever convert a mesh and Wish it was two sided?
Well I can't quite manage that but if you duplicate the mesh and then use the following script it will provide an inside shell for your mesh - WITHOUT leaving unity.



Duplicate hair mesh (and the gameobject holding it)
Select game Object - run Tools/Flip Normals


Sorted.

minimum effort.

https://gist.github.com/twobob/637fd92aac7e1d578396
using logic found at http://wiki.unity3d.com/index.php/ReverseNormals but in a more useful way.

Hope it helps someone. I spent days the 1st time I came up against hair conversion problems.
Pretty sure this is the fastest fix-up workflow you can find.

(if you re-combine them afterwards make sure the inner one is a teeeeny bit smaller than the outer one... word to the wise. Vertices Same space...) ​

 

Hi Quantum, my name is Daniel and I'm amazed with the Polyworld plugin you are the master! buddy I don't know if you understand me but I hope you will I would love to make my game with your plugin, in fact I'm gonna buy it, but I can't just buy the thing because my heart can not stop telling me you have to understand how it works, no matter if just scratch the surface, I'm a programmer and I'm working on my own game idea and stuff for some months ago, and well because I couldn't find an artist that put his heart in the project I decided to learn Blender, and well it's amazing jajaja I love it and the first reason I try it was because I wanted to know how artist made all the 3d art jajaja so I started, and this is the same reason I'm writing this email, because I can't leave without know how to make something like this no matter how tiny it is, right know I just desire to understand how to convert a normal mesh to low poly, just the conversion, could you please throw me a bone, where can I start reading, or where can I start researching I don't know something I'm gonna send you a pic of my current scene, my wolf.

 

In Blender? Use "decimate" to reduce the polygons.

 

Oh but I mean in code, in unity, I want to try to make script that can convert a mesh to low poly, thats why I'm asking quantum I hope he throw me a bone.

 

I'm confused, you want him to tell you how the package works...So you /can/ or can't but the package (seems almost irrelevant which) why not simply buy the package and look through the code since you are a programmer.???

What is hard about this? Buy it. look at it. learn.

Anything else is just dancing around

 

It's hell of a package, I'll buy it I'm waiting for my deposit hahaha should be here any moment, and don't misunderstand me what I want is to understand the theory of how he did this, because I can go and see the code and no matter how good programmer I'm if I don't have an idea of what is he doing I'm gonna be as lost as a kitten in the wolfs cave so deep!! hahaha but I read a little bit of him and he seems to be pretty much a rode model hahaha cause I think everyone here would dream to work for Ubisoft as he did for so many years and gather that experience , specially Ubisoft the creators of my beloved Rayman , so what I want is just some bones to start understanding this kind of topics, cause what I love most of programming itself is algorithmia, and what I got researching is that he may be using Quadric Error and Mesh Simplification but I would love him to answer too.

 

He isn't. However something like SimpleLOD would be.

After a bit of dumpster diving... http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/polyworld-for-unity.239365/page-6#post-1719299
There is another post with similar information but that goes into the splitting (resurfacing) details (somewhat)

Looking at the code will be more illuminating than the average thread discourse. Also quicker.

Rayman v's Abe's Odyssey... I pick Abe : )

 

How do you add shadows to a polyworld environment? Just unity's built-in shadows like for a directional light, projected onto a large texture?

 

poly world shaders support regular shadows if that answers your question?
or lightmapping

 

Hello, I recently purchased PolyWorld Woodland and the Ancient East Packs for a project I'm working on.
Tried the converter. Worked great. But when i add the QT_Modify_Color script to play around with the colours I get an error saying That the converted Object "doesn't have a mesh and that Modify Color requires a game object with Meshfilter or SkinnedMeshRenderer and a mesh". Shouldn't the converted model be ready for color modifying? How can i fix this or set up the model? (also there is a mesh on the game object )

 

Have you selected a prefab? or vice-versa ( a gameobject).

I recall some weirdness about expecting a prefab? or a gameobject..
could be wrong...

EDIT: see below

 

Ok it seems I've stopped recieving email notifications about this thread.. Sorry guys.

PolyWorld doesn't do any triangle reduction when using the scripts. It just makes them more visible, so to speak. As twobob says, SimpleLOD would do fine, or you can even use Simplygon cloud for free.

Just like you would normally in Unity. Add a directional light, turn on shadows.

Yes, the converted model is ready for modification, but make sure you're selecting the gameobject that has the meshfilter in it. If a prop is composed of different meshes (armor, sword, etc), you pick one at a time and apply the ModifyColor script to it.

If it's a character, be sure to use the ModifyColor script on the mesh in it's identity pose.

 

brrrrrrrr!

 

Brrrrrrrrr... ^^
Delicious...^_^

Created in Unity 4 or 5...?!?

 

5, but there is nothing in the 5 featureset being used here.

 

It really is amazing how a few real-time complex shadows pick out the flat geometry.

Spoiler

With shadows:


From above (so beyond shadow range)


With shadows

(No shadows) from above

Blending flat plus a touch of real + shadows = sexy and cheap.

 

So, in other PolyWorld news:

Do you have a VR device such as a Gear VR or Oculus Rift?

This was an initial test of rendering some spherical maps and seeing how they look on my GearVR. They came out pretty nice, so I figured I'd share them and see what you guys thought.

Each is 8192x4096 and rendered using Unity's RendertoCubemap function, then converted to a spherical panorama using 3D Studio Max. So you're just seeing the raw scene camera with no color correction or other fx.

Woodland 1
Woodland 2
Woodland 3
Woodland 4

 

I don't have either sadly, out of our remit here somewhat. However the scenes look spectacular; wonderful parts, put together well.

 

hmm new sky there?
Awestagerringly ming-bending lanscapelicious, loving it.
Only enormously jealous

 

Thanks! No, it's a tinted version of one of the skies included in the packs.

These last two shots are of PolyWorld Vistas, a pack of simple background meshes used to flesh out your scenes much quicker than relying on terrain. The pack will have a plethora of terrain types, each with a demo scene to inspire you with ideas.

 

​

PolyWorld: Vistas is now available in the Asset Store! It's a collection of low-poly-style meshes to be used to enhance your PolyWorld scenes.

- Mesh sets in 5 biomes: Snowy Sylvan,Dry, Icebergs, Volcanic, Sandy Cliffs.
- Demo scenes of all biomes
- 14 faceted skyboxes to give you a variety of lighting conditions.
- Unparalled support via email.

*PolyWorld scripts not included.

Link: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/34775

 

<3 as always

 

I'm having an issue with baking vertex colors that I'm hoping you can help with. When I convert my terrain, it gives the low poly mesh, but I can't seem to get the colors to bake correctly.

My terrain looks like this:


But when I bake the colors, it turns out like this:


I'm at a loss as to what the issue may be. I've fiddled with lighting settings but it doesn't help much.

 

1. Make sure the Unity terrain is visible when you bake.
2. Set the game view window to something square, like 512x512
3. Make sure you're using the correct shaders.

If none of these work, shoot me an email at support@qt-ent.com and we'll take it further.

 

I am having difficulty getting the custom windows to show up. I purchased the Low Poly Woodlands pack and managed to get it to work after importing it into a project earlier but after reimporting it into a new project I cannot get the Quantum Theory section to appear in Windows. I am fairly new to Unity so I am sure I am just doing something wrong but I am lost. I am using Unity 5 currently.

 

Something in your project is not compiling. Check your debug console for more info.

 

Hi Guys,

It's been almost a year since I've released the first Polyworld pack out into the wild. You've made it a great success and for that I'm thankful!

I'm compiling a wishlist of items for the tools. I really could use your feedback on what you'd like added! Here are some of my items to look into. Please note this isn't necessarily a to-do list:

• Faster terrain generation. Possibly skipping the generator tool altogether and investing in a complete in-editor sculpting solution. I'd much rather do this than mesh-based as it is now.
• More control over the triangle count of the resulting terrain.
• If I have to go mesh-based, a simple function to average adjacent edges, LOD the meshes..
• New UI for both scripts. It's a bit ugly right now.
• 1-bit color blending option.

Even if you have any other requests relating to PolyWorld, let me know.

 

Hi, unity 5 problems for me.. I've started a new project but when I try to bake my vertex colors I get an error message in the console "Custom shaders not found! Please manually assign a shader that supports vertex colors."
I didnt have this issue with Unity 4 so I don't actually know how to assign a custom shader. Looking in the project files for Quantum Theory I can find the shaders folder, but there are alot of shader files and I don't know which I should be using. Any ideas?

 

Click thing.
Click Material
Check shader assigned.

Assets\Quantum Theory\Polyworld\Shaders\VertexColors\IBL\BLAH I think

 

I would appreciate automatic LOD matching on terrain chunks.
Would be good to have an option to make 3 - matched - LOD's (just based on resolution) and have the highest res match the lowest res' vertex positions.

 

I'm trying to bake the terrain colors not an object, there is no material any other ideas?

I just restarted the project and tried to bake without using custom shaders, this time I get the following error:

"TerrainColliders can no longer act as triggers since unity 5.0"

Is this asset not actually compatible with Unity 5?

 

Spoiler

Well, terrains do have a material, kinda, plus you can set a custom one in it's material slot (which is what I was thinking you had done maybe)

"tried to bake without using custom shaders", I have no idea what you mean here.

As for the other thing. Do you have your terrain colliders set to trigger for some reason? That really isn't supported in Unity 5 IIRC. Is it /actually/ set to that - or are you saying this is errant information. And when you say "Error", do you mean big fat red error or just a warning.

And this works with Unity 5 afaik.

 

The colors are baked in the mesh when you hit the button. From then on, you don't need to hit the Use Custom Shaders button. The reason you can't see any mesh colors is because you didn't assign the shader to the new terrain's material. If you're unsure about the material pipeline, there are tons of Unity tutorials on youtube!

As far as the shader not being found, I'll have to look into that.

I get this too. It's not related to PolyWorld. It's some new error that pops up in Unity 5. It's safe to ignore.

It's compatible.

 

Thanks for the replies. I seem to have figured it out. After you create your poly terrain it creates a base mesh under the scene name in the herarchy. You have to go into this base mesh and assign the vertex lit shader to that object. it then lets me bake the colors. Same error if I click Use custom shaders though, so i'm not sure I fully understand the point of that button.
All my colors look kinda washed out though. I guess im going to need to keep playing around with this to get good results.

 

If you're in Linear lighting mode, use the Linear shaders.

 

I noted that this appears to occur (in another project) when setting "Enable Tree Colliders", in case that information is useful to you. Could provide a route to silencing the warnings. Unsure.

Cheers

 

What ive seen so far of this pack looks amazing, but i cant figure out how to use the polyworld mesh converter. I select the model and go to "Window > QuantumTheory > Polyworld Mesh Converter" and it duplicates the model but it still looks exactly the same. No faceted style at all. Am I missing something?

Ty in advance.

 

Send a support email to support@qt-ent.com with your invoice number. Thanks!

 

Can anyone confirm mobile performance? The Rendering Statistics Window on the mobile demo scene shows approximately 178 k Tris & 410k verts, isn't that an excessive amount of polys for mobile?

 

Hi Quatum,
I got some questions.

1. Is it possible to add or multiply a texture onto the vertex shaded models?

2. Kind of similar - Is it possible to add (lightmapping) abient occlusion to the converted models?

3. What actually happens to the UVs after converting?

4. Is the break in chunks function also possible for other big models like non-unity terrains (fbx)?

Thanks!

 

There is a shader included that does just that, but it's not working on the android platform. I'll have to fix it.

If there are lightmap uvs on it, lightmapping works just fine.

Nothing at all.

The chunk function is just for Polyworld terrains. There are no plans for chunking up individual fbx models as that's better handled in a 3d application like Max or Maya.

 

Here's some good vibes. I convinced a live event organiser to look at seriously integrating vr into his events last new years day by showing him a demo I made from polyworld Asia running on a HTC one and Google cardboard! Just goes to show. He was pretty gobsmacked, much like everyone else at the party having a look. Only said now as I'm about to start planning such an event integration and it crossed my mind. Poly world is very pleasant, not just for the tools and aesthetic or not even, even, more the generous well made extremely handsome model libraries that come with each back. This kind of thing could become ubiquitous for mobile where the look is compelling and enjoyable but the rendering cost can be extremely low (and if you feel like it keep the shaders super simple vertex color based and make up for lost textures with a liberating excess of tris)

 

Hey @QuantumTheory,
Just bought the PolyWorld: Woodland Toolkit and I'm having issues with the Divide Meshes Into Chunks feature. Basically if the base mesh is split into multiple parts during the initial conversion from Unity Terrain, the divide function always errors out with:

This happens with any terrain over the size of 500x500 converted to Half of Full resolution meshes using Unity 5.0.2. Any ideas on how to fix this?

 

That's great to hear lazygunn. Sure! The visualization usage of Polyworld could be pretty sweet. That style was used back in the day in that demo scene on c64's and DOS. It was fun then and it's fun now.

Regarding model packs, yea I'm way ahead of you I've always planned on making this a series and I'm starting two in the next 7-10 days actually. They will pair extremely well with Woodlands. That's all I'll say.

Polyworld is ideal for VR. Indies aren't technically inclined, so developing games or experiences for VR is very touchy. If the content guy, me, can solve 90% of their woes with my work alone, that's just fantastic value for the customer. I'll be pushing hard on VR marketing for Polyworld once these new packs are available. More and more games are using Polyworld, so that's really encouraging.

BTW, the PolyWorld mobile demo scene with a modified shader running on a GearVR doesn't even overheat the device. It stays lukewarm which tells me I'm on the right track even though that scene is made for desktops.