Relief Terrain Pack (RTP) v3 on AssetStore

Hi Thomas

I can not use superdetails textures.
My setup:



Nothing is happening ...

 

Quick question: Could RTP3 be used on a dynamically generated terrain, with dynamically generated splatmaps? I have a game I'm working on that builds a random world every time you play, and applies the textures based on rules (altitude, steepness, etc.), and it creates a pretty good looking default terrain. I'm wondering if upgrading to RTP3 would be easy, or does anything in RTP3 need to be precomputed at design time with a fixed terrain?

Thanks!

 

Hi Glen !
No it does not generate with RTP.
You can use Terrain Composer combined with RTP to generate random worlds.

 

Yes - I mean my code already generates a terrain. I just want to know if RTP3 will work with the terrain I've generated.

 

Yes if you generate mask or splatmap textures.
It does not generate splatmap dynamically

 

I'm wondering if this is due to the fact superdetail basic functionality (applying normals) is disabled. How it is selected and recompiled in LOD manager ?

Could you give some screenshots ? Instancing from prefabs you need to remember:

1. Always save all used textures (esp. I mean textures that are produced by RTP and used by shader - all combined textures tab)
2. After loading a prefab try to refresh your terrain in ReliefTerrain.cs script component attached. You need to take an instance of ReliefTerrain component that's attached to your terrain then make it like this:

instanceOfReliefTerrainComponent.globalSettingsHolder.RefreshAll();

calling RefreshAll function should take care about the rest. I remember somebody already used such approach and in the end it worked (he only needed to have all textures saved first).

Yes, I'll try to make such setup ASAP and will get back to you. Will add a few terrains (w/o materials) and attach RTP to it. Both in 4+4 (2 passes) and 8 (one pass) scenatios. Both should work. Just give me some time. I'm just in the middle of moving to whole new PC. Tons of issues to resolve, moving data, installing apps, licenses. Headache... In the end I'll be making full HD videos for next RTP tutorials. Just needed to get fast desktop with DX11 GPU and full HD display .

Tom

 

I disabled an re-enabled and it's work.

Thank

 

Could you help me? I wrote a script to make it snow in winter and it works when the first time winter comes but for some reason it wont snow after 2nd winters.

Code (csharp):

1.  
2. public float snowStrength = 0f;
3. public ReliefTerrainGlobalSettingsHolder rtpSetting;
4.  
5. void UpdatePer(){
6.    if (world.season.isWinter) {
7.        if (snowStrength < 0.7f) {
8.          snowStrength += 0.01f;
9.          rtpSetting._snow_strength = snowStrength;
10.          Shader.SetGlobalFloat("rtp_snow_strength", snowStrength);
11.          for (int i=0; i<rtpSetting.numLayers; i++) {
12.            rtpSetting._snow_strength_per_layer[i] = snowStrength;
13.          }
14.        }
15.      } else {
16.        if (snowStrength > 0f) {
17.          snowStrength -= 0.01f;
18.          rtpSetting._snow_strength = snowStrength;
19.          Shader.SetGlobalFloat("rtp_snow_strength", snowStrength);
20.          for (int i=0; i<rtpSetting.numLayers; i++) {
21.            rtpSetting._snow_strength_per_layer[i] = snowStrength;
22.          }
23.        }
24.      }
25. }

[edit]hmm, it worked when changing if (snowStrength > 0f) to if (snowStrength > 0.02ff) but I'm not sure if I'm doing right

 

Hi Tom,
I just activated DX11 and it disabled all my RTP terrain textures. Looks as if I can only have one of the two without the other. Is there a fix for this?

 

Dont worry no panic, just was worried that you missed all my posts since i got no answer at all : p

 

Basically - it should work. I'm wondering why do you handle snow coverage per layer as you don't inject adjusted values (from per layer array) to shader/material ? Snow coverage in your case is rather global one, so it's enough to modify global values. per layer values are not necessary I guess.

Have you recompiled RTP shaders for DX11 target platform ? (Refresh All button needed after).

Tom

 

Thanks, didn't actually know what snow strength per layer was. I've changed the code so that only changing the global value of the shader and runtime snow is working very well.

 

Thanks, yes, I did all that, but it rendered all RTP textures in the terrain invisible (black). Do I need to uninstall RTP and install it again with DX 11 ticked?

OK, its working now. I simply deleted RTP and reimported, all fine now, thanks.

 

Hi Tom,
I tried to recompile everything and get a bunch of errors, see pic.
I have import the package in a clean, new project, Win7 64bit with the latest unity3dPro build.


Tia, Jochen

 

Your problem seems to be related to MonoDevelop, not RTP specifically.
I found unity answer on this here:

http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/176305/default-parameter-specifiers-are-not-permitted.html

Which Unity version and MonoDevelop versio do you use ?

Tom

 

Is it possible to code support for texture blending in custom shader without surface shader? Or that #pragma surface is absolutely essential?

 

Geom blend shaders I might imagine that you could implement it yourself (I found U4.5 very useful as this can create "native" shadr output out of surface shader input without any effort). In case of core RTp shaders (using RTP_Base.cginc) it's impossible, or at least very hard to achieve for user (unless you're experienced shader coder).

Tom

 

Getting a really weird bug/error.

Upon trying to load in the 8th texture, it seems like RTP is automatically resizing it to 256, and then giving me an error that it can't load it because all other textures are 1k.

Every time I resize the texture in the texture's properties, RTP automatically resizes it to 256, and then won't let me use it.

Here are the errors:

Detail texture 7 (MISC_Blood_DIFF) has been reimported with 256 size.
UnityEngine.Debug:LogWarning(Object)
ReliefTerrainEditorrepareAtlases(Int32) (at Assets/ReliefPack/Editor/ReliefTerrain/ReliefTerrainEditor.cs:4475)
ReliefTerrainEditor:OnInspectorGUI() (at Assets/ReliefPack/Editor/ReliefTerrain/ReliefTerrainEditor.cs:580)
UnityEditor.HostView:OnGUI()

For performance reasons - all splats (detail textures) should have the same size
UnityEngine.Debug:LogError(Object)
ReliefTerrainEditorrepareAtlases(Int32) (at Assets/ReliefPack/Editor/ReliefTerrain/ReliefTerrainEditor.cs:4498)
ReliefTerrainEditor:OnInspectorGUI() (at Assets/ReliefPack/Editor/ReliefTerrain/ReliefTerrainEditor.cs:580)
UnityEditor.HostView:OnGUI()

Detail tex 0 size=1024 while detail tex 4 size=256
UnityEngine.Debug:LogError(Object)
ReliefTerrainEditorrepareAtlases(Int32) (at Assets/ReliefPack/Editor/ReliefTerrain/ReliefTerrainEditor.cs:4499)
ReliefTerrainEditor:OnInspectorGUI() (at Assets/ReliefPack/Editor/ReliefTerrain/ReliefTerrainEditor.cs:580)
UnityEditor.HostView:OnGUI()

Any suggestions on fixing this would be awesome.

 

Try to change all textures to the same size (all detail color textures should be the same size, all normals and all height textures) then applying new should work. While working in RTP it is not advised to change number of layers after RTP has been attached to terrain. You might need to remove RTP component from terrain. Then add/remove layers to have 4 or 8 and then reapply RTP again.

Tom

 

Hi Tom,

I was messing around with the normal mapping and ended up somehow adjusting the normal mapping strength for one terrain and not the others. When I slide the bar now, all terrains are affected equally - so that one terrain is always a little off. I tried:

• Refreshing the shaders
• Deleting the one terrain and re-adding
• Deleting all the normal maps and re-adding
• Deleting all the terrain and re-adding

Nothing seems to work... it always goes back. I read the troubleshooting and it addressed this (maybe?) using the U4 materials, but I don't use the U4 materials.



Any ideas?

Thanks!
-Mark

 

@Kivak, as we discussed over skype. Something has been desynchronised in RTP and its terrain objects cache. Removein RTP components from all terrains and reassigning it back helps. We need to remember that RTP w/o materials uses terrain testure layers to store global maps. When you remove RTP component it might be necessary to reassign textures in regular Unity engine before adding RTP component back. In such big environments we can use presents (saved to disk). add one terrain tile, add RTP and setup it to your taste. Then save preset that might be helpful later, when all terrains are added and "something will go wrong"...

ATB, Tom

 

I'm going on holidays for a week so I could be not available till the beginning of August (can't tell if will be able to use internet on the island I'm going to).

 

Happy holidays Thomas!

 

Have a great holiday, and thanks for your great support!

 

Regarding this issue (posted on the other/wrong thread): I got a terrain all set up and looking good with RTP. Then I inadvertently deleted the Export Terrain script in RTP (don't ask), which then threw console errors, so to be safe, I reimported the entire package via the Asset Store, But now all my terrain textures are very soft and blurry. Then I noticed that all my settings in _RTP_LODmanager were lost. So I set that up again, and clicked Recompile Shaders. Now the entire terrain is black. Hmm. Any suggestions?

I tried this: Go to settings/main and use refresh all button

But nothing happened, the terrain is still black. I quit and relaunched Unity, no help. Is there anything else I can do?

 

I did a quick RTP setup recently and ran into the same problem. I´m not sure, how I fixed it, but I´d try to reassign the splat textures (are you using Terrain Composer?) and refresh RTP.

 

Wish you happy holidays

 

Mmmhh, I changed to the Net 4.0 framework, as it shown in the link. But i get again the
Compilererrors CS0241 .... It is Mono 4.0.1, Unity 4.5.2f1

 

Have some nice Holidays!!

 

I've set the Aniso level on all my textures to 9, but they are still blurry when viewed at an angle. I created a simple new terrain in a new scene, and the same textures there are not blurry. Is there anything in RTP that I need to tweak to reduce that blurriness?

 

You shoul try to reduce the mip offset, i am not sure how its called as i dont have rtp open right now but i believe its the mip offset.

 

Does anyone have a good step by step guide on how to take the dual lightmaps from beast and merge them into a emmisive map for RTP? I read the docs and tried to follow it but I can never get my shadows to show up. Even a nudge in the right direction would be great.

Thanks,

Collin

 

Thanks for that tip, Becoming. I missed that parameter.

Now another question: Is there any way to set the Snow viewing distance. It looks great at near distances, but when the camera pulls up for a birds-eye view, the perlin (I assume) pattern is quite obvious. I have a special "snow" version of the colormap that works nicely for mid and far distances, so I'd like to have the RTP snow fade out at a specified distance. Is that possible?

 

I assume you made it. You might need to use settings/refresh all button or button for restoring params to defaults (sometimes when upgrading to newest RTP3.1c brightness param per layer is set to zero).

This might be possible with a bit of shader code tweaking. If you would like to use this - post me PM (with your RTP purchase order number) and I could guide you then. More than this. You can modify shader by switching custom param in RTP_Base.cginc so that your snow coverage map is taken from wetness mask (it's decribed in pdf docs). Playing with coverage and damping snow bz slope zou can get desired results, too. Perlin mask is obvious when the coverage is set at moderate level and perlin mask over the snow reveals visible patterns. Set snow coverage high, then play with level and level threshold + damp by slope params. Your global colormap used as snow coverage mask might work at far distance but this will be harder to sync it with close distance coverage so everything is coherent.

Tom

 

This is not problem of RTP. It's just Mono complains about default parameters in functions which should be possible to use. Try to google for this. For example here you could find a clue:

http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/176305/default-parameter-specifiers-are-not-permitted.html

Tom

 

By default RTP renders with no aniso filtering. As Becoming said - you can try to modify MIP bias in RTP Settings/Main or enable aniso filtering in LOD manager (although there will be some restrictions put other features when using aniso).

Tom

 

I'll try to make more tutorials on RTP one by one. Making emissive map is on the list. I'll start working on this next week.

Tom

 

Tomaszek, have you has a chance to check out Jove V2... would it be difficult to port this great asset over to work within Jove's new rendering engine?

 

No, I haven't played with Jove and current version is v1. I couldn't find (on the last page of Jove's thread) v2 statements so I can't tell which features you're refering to. RTP as 100% custom, terrain dedicated shader (but not limited to terrains) has its own PBR implementation. You can refer to my pdf to get the idea how it works in my package.

Tom

 

It's in the WIP forum:
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/jove-2-0-replacing-the-rendering-pipeline.230141/

He's writing a whole new renderer...

 

So we might ask if his renderer will be capable of using "very custom" shaders, because implementing all his fancy toys (most of them are DX11 only) for RTP would take too long to implement. And I'd like to RTP to be DX9/OGL/DX11 compatible. I'm not sure how his solution generaly works. If this is replacement for rendering pipeline (with own deferred lighting and post processing) I would see a slight chance to make it working together. But Jove is not the only solution that comes. Unity5 is also thing that I might consider to work with RTP (U5 PBL lighting). At this stage it's definitely impossible to make any statements about it now as either Jove2 nor U5 are released.

Tom

 

i need help when i add new textures on one terrain i get replaced on all terrains all in one scene

is one scene can only hold only 8 layers for all terrains ?

 

You can use different texture when using materials in LOD manager (an option to be checked when compiling shaders) and terrains that uses different texture need to be put in different parent objects (object grouping). Refer to my docs for more info.

Tom

 

i add GameObject1 child Terrain1 GameObject2 child Terrain2
naw i cant paint on terrain and all is black i get errors

8 textures

Material doesn't have a texture property '_MainTex'
UnityEditor.DockArea:OnGUI()

 

Give me exact setup in LOD manager when you try to compile this. I assume something went wrong in compilation, but when your terrain is not pink (shader comp0ilation error) but black it might be only the resreshing issue - go to RTP/Settings/Main and use Refresh All button.

Tom

P.S. I recently found a bug in shader when you try to compile with triplanar and 8 layers mode. It's now corrected in RTP3.1d (available on AssetStore).

 

that mast be the bug i update

 

Hi Tom

Finally I got around to upgrade RTP in my project to 3.1

1) First, congrats on the way the layers blend in 3.1. Looks really good, with one tiny exception.

I get small artefacts around the point of blending, which increase in size when the difference between extrusion get higher.

I made some pictures to illustrate the problem. I choose the two textures where the problem is most obvious. One of them, the rubble one, seems to have too much contrast in the heightmap compared to the newer sand texture, so I used the Extrude reduction function to reduce the height temporarily (by 0.4).

This is the artefact I get with extrude reduction on (red circle around problematic area):



And just to somehow overexagerate the problem, I switched off the extrude reduction. Now the problem is much more visible, you can see the sand texture hover over the rubble texture, with "holes punched into it" where the stones from the rubble texture should be... but somehow, the rubble texture is shown below it instead of on the same level:



Any Idea what went wrong here?


2) Then, I am using Deferred as I like the option to have more pixel lights in my scene than is allowed in forward. I feel that I am loosing out on a lot of the options of RTP 3.1.

Will using Lux allow me to use most features also in Deferred? Any Idea if the situation changes even without Lux for Unity 5 (with the new GI and PBR Features)?


3) From reading the documentation and the comments I get the feeling the fresnel term should work for deferred. But when I activate it, the shader breaks, everything is black. Is it only usable for forward?
I use two directional lights in the scene, is this what breaks it?


Anyway, the small artefacts and open questions aside, RTP 3.1 is nothing short of stunning. The quality of rendering gets better with every release.


Cheers

Gian-Reto

 

Hi, nice to hear you switched to 3.1. The mentioned problem is due to parallax error esp. visible POM (in PM it's not that obvious). When you strongly extrude the terrain the transition between two separate layers might reveal this as I'm approximating some values. I'm raytracing 4 layers (or even 8 layers) at once when performing POM steps. To get 100% results I would need to make them separately, which for bovious reason wouldn't be acceptable on performance side (4x more expensive POM). This is how it worked from RTP1 and it will work like that in any near future (till 780GTX will outdated GPU ... )

In deferred don't forget about assigning applyLight_for_Deferred.cs (name of script I don't exactly remember out of my head, but this is available in scripts / common subfolder) to your main directional light. Then fresnel will work for this particular light (as well as POM with selfshadowing).

I don't have any specific details about how things will be resolved in Unity5, but if only new deferred renderer will be capable to render from custom surface shaders I think I could make RTP working with that. And from what I've read new deferred will consits of only 1 geometric pass so we'll gain much performance here for objects of high polycount/draw calls like terrains are.

Installing Lux wiht RTP and you'll be able to get nice results in deferred, too with only a few constraints (fresnel from one directional light and weaker flexibility over two pass rendering and geom blend specularity). Remember that not only Lux redefines hidden deferred lighting "prepass" but also Skyshop, Alloy and other so thety might interfere.

Tom

 

Hi Tom

Thanks for the reply.

I think I might have omitted the Heightmap and only used the normal map for POM until now.... Just found out some days ago that this makes a difference (stupid, I know ). I GUESS with only the normal map these artefacts at the layer borders are not so visible as the extrusion is also less visible.

I am searching for this script for days now, but I cannot locate it in my project. It was not there in my RTP 3.0 directory, and it was not there when I upgraded to 3.1... so I deleted the rtp directory and reimported. Still not there.

Any chance I did something wrong? Has it been omitted from 3.1?


Good news all the way from Unity 5. I am pretty excited about it. Now, only DX 12 left and maybe Unity will get a much needed performance boost.


Regards

Gian-Reto

EDIT:

Correct me if I am wrong, but I guess the reason why these artefacts at the layer borders are so highly visible in my case is because my heightmaps are not "normalized"... I did not make sure they all use similar ranges of grey for similar heights, and that the "ground level" is at the same grey tone.

If I edit all my Heightmaps this way, the artefacts should become less and, in the best case, dissapear, right?

 

The script is located here:

Assets\ReliefPack\Scripts\Common\ReliefShaders_applyLightForDeferred.cs

You may try to reimport RTp3.1d posted a few days ago. Sometimes Unity badly handles packages cache and reimporting RTP will cause you still don't have the newest version until you manually remove *.unitypackage from cache (google where it's placed in your local user folder, I can't remember this).

For artifacts - yes you can always try to manipualte heightmaps and as far its only one opertion in image editing software (like normalizing in Gimp or Photoshop) you can make it relatively quick to check. Anyway - parallax error will always be placed there when observing high extruded POM at grazing angles (only on layer transition borders)

Tom