Relief Terrain Pack (RTP) v3 on AssetStore

Dear Ruben,

I can't get any exact date on RTP release that will use most of U5 improvements. It would be fooling customers. Anyway - current RTP version works with U5 beta but with constraints as follows:

1. no 8layers mode (8 layers rendered in one, first pass, 4+4 works fine)
2. no dynamic lightmaps (U5 GI)
3. some compilation glitches in DX9 (DX11 works fine)

Things may change as new betas (current unofficial U5 beta is 14) come.

I haven't touched Jove2. You would need to ask its author if Jove2 handle any kind of custom surface shaders. Pobably not as this is total rendering replacement solution and custom deferred system (so a shader would need to output data needed by Jove2 to a few MRTs like new deferred in U5 does).

Kindest Regards, Tom

P.S. I'm really sorry about bad financial shape of your studio, so I'll try to do my best brining RTP for U5 as soon as I can.

 

Tomasz, many thanks! Everything works just fine now! No more issues. I got used to it pretty well now.


An ok first result, but I am happy that I achieved it.

 

Great to hear you got it. Although I believe you can still improve a lot your scene.

ATB, Tom

P.S. Watching user screenshots makes me happy like a dad who gave lego blocks to his son...

 

Haha, I understand how you feel. I guess I would feel the same.

Yes, I can improve a lot the scene, and I will, but just posted it at this stage, to let you know that everything worked fine.

 

Dear Tomaz.

Thank you deeply so much for your constant efforts in this no other alike extension.

And That is refreshing to ear ! Really Amazing good news you got there Tom !.
We will try it with latest Unity 5. And i will keep you updated and will bring our product results here.

Thank you deeply so much for all your usual amazing Support.

____

Ruben Ismael


Development Director of :
THE ALPHA3D TEAM // WWW.A3D.US

 

Hi Tom, just bought RTP, looking promising so far.

The issue I'm having is that I'm developing for Oculus Rift, which must hit a minimum of 75fps at all times. In addition, Unity has to render two cameras, one for each eye, so performance is absolutely paramount.

Could you give me some advice on how to get the best out of RTP in terms of eye candy vs performance? Are there any particular settings that will have a big impact on performance? It's difficult when you've spent 30 minutes tweaking things to try and get things looking good, only to discover your FPS has now taken a hit somewhere (but where?) along the way.

If it helps, this is what I'm working on (pre RTP):

1 terrain, 10,000x10,000.

Thanks!

 

Hi Tom,
First of all thanks for this great package, without it would be imposible to make terrain(or big meshes )looks good, i've read 41 pages looking for references to shaders working on mobile or problems but i didn't find any real test. I bought your package much time ago but now i have a xiaomi mipad with nvidia k1 GPU and Unity5 b13, i check gles but when i try in device the mesh is completely black meanwhile in the editor is beautifull.
¿Do you have any clues why is this happening?

Thanks so much.

 

I couln't get it to work on my Mali400 tablet either. Although shader compiles w/o errors I also get just black terrain. RTP is probably still too heavy for most of mobiles. Just one customer reported me RTP working on his iPad3.

Tom

 

One terrain - use materials (U4 materials checkbox). Terrain can be still nice looking with global colormap where you could setup some lighting info (like in my example scene I baked a bit of lighting into global colormap). When you use UV blending - try to route everything into one channel (some random cliff or so). 4 layers w/o atlas for best performance. Shading LOD level - SIMPLE. One directional light, render the scene in forward path. Don't use too large detail textures - 1k max. Heightmaps might be small (256). You can't get it working quicker in RTP3.1 where we've got PBL rendering pipeline. RTP3.0 was faster though w/o PBR. So - there is something we need to spend for better quality. RTP's PBR is however faster than U5 PBR for desktops.

You might be also limited by Unity terrain engine itself - check pixel error - with small value you're probably trying to render a few milions triangles (check in profiler) when your terrain heightmap is hires (like 4k). Uncheck terrain shadow casting if it's set (terrain unity settings).

And performance depends on GPU you've got. What's the resolution of single oculus camera. AFAIK it's not that high so that pixel coverage together cam1+cam2 is below full HD (ca 2M pixels).

ATB, Tom

 

Thanks Tom! Another question - is it possible to disable heightblending between certain textures? It looks fantastic for things like rock/snow, but not so good for two different grass textures, it gives an odd dithering effect.

 

Nope, but you can use any noise heightmap for grass.

Tom

 

Thanks for your help! Another problem, this time with lightmaps... they were working fine earlier today, and at some point they've broken. I think I baked a new one today, and it seems that when I bake a lightmap while using RTP it doesn't get done properly, my mountains don't cast long shadows over the terrain like they used to. So I've tried to reimport the old lightmap which thankfully I had saved, and now I'm having this problem:

If I adjust my directional light intensity, in the scene view the brightness of the terrain still changes, and is too bright at the setting I normally have it. If I turn the intensity down to 0, the brightness appears as it should, so it looks like it's using the lightmap but then applying the directional light over the top. If I turn it down to 0 and press play, it looks just how it should. But if I export and run it, the terrain is completely black. So it's not using the lightmap on export, but it is in the editor.

I've got the No Lightmaps box unchecked, tried recompiling shaders, tried Settings -> Main -> Refresh all, tried saving and reloading unity.

Please advise! Thankyou!

 

Its just taken me hours to find this problem

I decided to test Stormy weather on my volcanic island when this happens:

My lava turns fluorescent blue and all the textures go weird

Hours later through process of elimination I find its caused by adding a point light to the scene.

This is what it looks like with the point light disabled

I can get rid of the point light, I was only using it to make my volcano glow at night. But I'm a bit concerned because I'm playing in Fantastic mode with max 9 point lights, I don't understand what the problem is, any ideas?

PS. I've not spilt orange paint, it's Lava, - Lava Tom.... it will look great when I use your lava and heat effect once I've figured it out.

 

Hi, I've got separate video for lightmapping on my YT channel. Have you looked at this ? There is an issue described with lightmap index which prevents terrain from shadow casting. What kind of lightmap do you use ? It's weird with you light. How it's marked (baked, realtime, auto) ? Is it problem in forward orm deferred. Which Unity version and RTP version do you use ? You could experiment on some small scene to be able lightmapping ti quickly for testing purpose.Might be easier to figure out the setup which makes problem.

Tom

 

Try to experiment with noforwardadd checkbox in LOD manager. You need to be aware that turning directional light power <0.01 or turning it off might cause some problems. Is your lava layer emissive ?. I believe you achieve better results (although more GPU intensive) using water features for lava. Water on the ground can have its color and be emissive, too.

ATB, Tom

 

Hi Tom, it looks like the problem I'm having only happens when I import a lightmap rather than bake it in editor, so perhaps there's an issue there? If I bake the lightmap normally, the "double lighting" issue doesn't happen, but I have the problem with terrain not casting shadows. Is there a workaround for the shadow problem? Is there a way for me to cleanly remove RTP so I can bake the lightmap correctly, and then add RTP back in without having to set everything up again?

Alternately perhaps I'm just doing something stupid when importing my old lightmap? I'm clearing the current one, selecting my terrain, going to maps under the lightmapping window, setting the array size to 1, and dragging the lightmap file into the left Texture2D box. Is this correct?

Thanks!
(Unity 4.5.0f6, RTP downloaded a couple days ago so latest I assume, forward rendering)

 

I tried the No Forward checkbox, it didn't work

I've also been trying to get Unistorm to work with Deffered lighting but I've never managed to get that working with RTP.

When I import Unistorm the camera on the player is set to deffered as default, so as soon as I drop unistorm into the scene the terrain turns black. ( the trees and models are okay) but the terrain is all black.

I've tried everything I can think of to get the terrain colors back but the only thing that works is if I set the camera to Forward.

This is a "Show Stopper" for me, unless I solve this problem then I can't use RTP, if my player picks up a torch I want to be confident that the terrain textures wont get screwed, regardless of what quality setting they're using.

Roy

 

I'm an idiot, I had Cast Shadows for the terrain unticked when I was trying to bake the lightmap...

 

RTP in deferred needs ApplyLight_ForDeferred.cs script to be attached to main directional light or things won't work 9black).

Have you managed this ?

Tom

 

The answer was in the manual, I am so sorry I don't read very well, I can read code, I've been a programmer all my life but words, text, books 110 page manuals etc. I've never read a book, I've never read more than a paragraph in a book.

My brain just can't cope with text. I use Ivona text to speech to read stuff to me but that's not good with paths and URLs and technical terms.

I learn from video, I download all relevant videos and use them for reference, I like your accent btw.


Thank you for your fantastic support as usual.

Roy

 

Yes, the answer was in First Steps Video (about the script that need to be placed for deferred)

ATB, Tom

P.S. I know my accent is a bit eastern european (think Russian general from McGyver movie... )

 

Hello,
I have installed Unity 4.6. I have RTP and the Nature pack installed. I am not sure if it is a unity 4.6 bug or because of RTP, but when I create a terrain, the texture is only visible far away from the terrain in the scene editor. If I get closer, the terrain becomes gray. I have no camera in the scene.

 

I am now positive it is because of RTP in Unity 4.6. The terrain becomes gray. I started a new project without RTP and everything worked. After installing the addon, no texture was visible. Please help me to resolve this problem.
Daniel

 

How can i fix this?
https://www.dropbox.com/s/pfxq8zlzxlc2sj7/WeirdBlack.png?dl=0
I'm running Unity 4.5.2 on a Nvidia 9800 GT

Note: all the webplayer demos work just fine, it's just the imported content that looks bizarre.

 

anyone for the terrain problem? Need to work on a project and the previous unity is not for download anymore.

 

If you read the download link you would have seen "Looking for an older version?" Right under the BIG Download button for the current version.
http://unity3d.com/unity/download/archive

 

OK, now I can continue to work!
Anyways it would be good to have RST running on 4.6.

 

Hi Tom, I just got rtp, it's very beautiful, and I'm not even certain I have it set up properly. I'm pretty new to unity. I watched the tutorial videos for 4 textures, so I know how to set that up perfectly. But I'm using 8 textures and I'm not sure I have that set up properly, I tried some extra settings but noticed no variations. When there's no lighting sometimes I get mystery white lines, I've included a photo. (ive also noticed white blotches a couple times on particularly steep terrain. I've also found that sometimes when I'm not doing anything with the terrain (such as working on the player or a script), the terrain in the scene will turn black or lose 4 of the textures. Also I'm unclear, If I paint textures after setting up my map, should I only paint from the 8 textures I built with, or is it ok to add some to use. And then In regards to textures if I'm using 1k textures can I use 512 normals and 256 heights with no problem? And then what are the best settings to use If I want my the least demand on the gpu (assuming I use 8 textures) Do you have any recommendations for voxel or volume terrain systems that work with rtp?

 

Now I also have that bug in version 4.54...

 

Have you followed my first steps video ? My example scene needs to be recompiled first, but this is what you probably done. Can you check this in different setup (forward rendering path, DX9 mode) and tell me the results ? Make sure ReliefShaders_applyLightForDeferred.cs script is attached to the main directional light.

ATB, Tom

 

I wonder if when you install RTP you still try to use default unity terrains ? If so - there are 2 scenarios:
1. by default RTP overwrites all terrain shaders. You need to apply RTP component to your terrains with all steps required (recompilation in LOD manager, using 4/8 layers) - all described in first steps video.
2. you can recompile RTP shaders so they use materials ("U4 materials" checkbox in LOD manager) then you can still use unity's default terrain shading in some scenes and optionally RTP on the other.

What are exactly the steps you're doing ? Preferably maybe you could provide me with a screenshot and your configuration (hardware, Unity version). I believe the issue is not Unity version related (I mean it doesn't matter U4.5 or U4.6 - because I'm not aware about any changes made by Unity to terrain or shading in U4.6).

ATB, Tom

 

8 textures - you can do it using 8 layers mode in first pass settings (then only first pass is needed) or you can render the terrain in 2 passes (4+4). After you make a decision on number of layers (4/8) you're not supposed to manipulate them in Unity. So - make a unity terrain with 8 layers and add RTP / Refresh All / LOD manager setup + recompilation. It's described in my "working modes" video. Have you watched this ? I guess white outlines could be placed where 2 passes overlap in deferred (issue described in my PBL videos).

Black terrain occasionally (when alt tabbing for or saving the project for example) is known issue. You can simply change any of terrain props to refresh it. Although I could make RTP resistant for this issue (some of previous versions were) but this impacts adversely the performance (CPU load).

You can use 1k detail maps (diffuse RGB + gloss A) - all detail layers should use this size while using 512 for all detail normalmaps and 256 for all detail heightmaps.

For best performance when using 8 layers:
1. 8 layers in one pass (turn it in First pass settings)
2. no overlap mode (checkbox next to 8 layers mode)

However you need to be aware that RTP for voxel terrains ("RTP PM triplanar standalone" shader) works with 4 layers only. For recommended voxel engine - RTP can probably work with all of them as we need just a mesh with normals only (no uvs, colors nor tangents needed). I can tell that people use RTP with TerraVol with success.

Tom

 

Hello

In 4.6 I got interfering shader warning on a new project with RTP 3.1 only. It occurred after hitting the recompile button in the RTP terrain demo scene.

Shader message pointed to Nature/Terrain/Diffuse but I could not locate it in my project.

Just letting you know.

(EDIT - This happens when use materials is checkmarked)

Thanks

 

It's the same as in U5 beta - built in terrain shader that indeed doesn't exist in project. I will to handle this because the warning is misleading. If you can't locate the interfering shader - just ignore the message.

Tom

 

Hi, Tom.

Time goes and soon will come Technology. Directx 11 and Tesselation. Can you add to what is already there (Classic, PM, POM) add - Tesselation mode? As example

.

Or Directx 9 threatening just as well stay still for a long time

 

I'm aware about such possibility. RTP is meant to be platform-wise, not only DX11, but I see the potential. Maybe not only for detail heightmaps being displaced (which is however good as we've got silhouettes), because POM does its job quite nice. Recently I've been testing tesselation for new RSP shader suite. It turns out that POM makes better job in many cases, for example nicer self-shadowing. And tesellation isn't a cure for everything, esp. it's not free as we can see on user experience feedback (refering to the product of above video), even though reference GPU GT520 is rather low-end hardware now.

But, terrain shading is not only about the tesselation - we need to take into account many factors that makes terrain realistic as a whole. Be sure I'm quite sensitive about what can be done and user requests. I've been thinking about RTP tesselation for a long time. Technically possible it's not that easy to introduce when we need quite a custom shader (with surface shaders we can make tesselation version in seconds, but it's not suitable out of the box for custom terrains).

To conclude - your video has pretty good timing as I'm currently considering tesselation in next RTP update together with better U5 compatibility. It takes time on my side because I just need to turn my shader code upside-down (vertex program and params passed to frag program). So - stay tuned

ATB, Tom

 

Of course, if this need. In youtube movie tessellation used wrong. I see add tessellation the same as normal map for add new detail generation for terrain. For other i agree with you.

Thanks



Update: Hm... In unreal engine 4 example terrain shader - has very intesting function:

Of course your shader have the same function (Triplanar) But in this example - it has for first two texture sampler(To create mask between sand and rock dynamical). I dont know how to ask for you about this (my poor English), but i think you understand what happens in the video.

With Best Regards. Leonid.

 

Hi , i just bought RTP along with terrain composer and world composer.
My goal is to create terrain that works on Ipad 2. The environment will have lots of animals with quite complex animations. So hoping to get decent frame rate at the end. Does RTP support Ipad 2?
How do i actually use the "export terrain to obj" . I can click the terrain but there is no button to convert

 

Looks like Unreal has automatic coverge on cliffs using world normal - like in my standalone PM triplanar shader. However - an artist put there many meshes there too to make it more interesting. Anyway - I can't see much features that could not be done in Unity using RTP. Of course - we talk only about the potential opportunities. In U4 this might be easier in terms of using handy authoring tools (nice terrain sculpting and blending).

I can't guarantee RTP will work fine on iPad2. I can't even test it. All I can say is that RTP can be compiled w/o errors/warning for gles target platform and one user reported me it works on iPad3.

ATB, Tom

 

Hi Tom,

I've recently started integrating RTP into my project, and I'm wondering if the sort of performance hit I'm seeing is expected. Here's a screengrab of the profiler: http://imgur.com/p4OLKgR if that's helpful at all. I'm using the "SIMPLE" LOD level, and have removed most options (screenshot of LODmanager: http://imgur.com/ZRDUEZA).
Compared to standard Unity terrain, testing on my high-spec machine has shown a decrease of around 11fps on average (ranging from -8fps to -15fps).

So, I'm not sure if I've got a setting wrong somewhere, or if this is the expected performance impact of RTP? I should note, I'm using Lux + Sunshine in deferred.

 

Tom, if you can (if it's possible) have my shiny terrain building without a sweaty brow for webgl kind of soonish the art world, or at least my art world could owe you a debt of gratitude

 

Hi,

is it possible to set reflection of trees and objects around water for BONUS shader - ReliefPack/Watershader ?
How to do it, please ?

Thanks,

Milos.

 

Thank you for responding to the tesselation question.

It's sad to me that unity is still stuck in the dx9 ghetto. So much could be achieved if unity went dx11 only moving forward.

Time and time again I see asset developers say they.would add such and such feature but they can't, or won't because they want their asset to be dx9 compatible. Depressing really but I understand the business reason for it.

I just wish dx9 would die, mobile gaming has kept its decaying corpse alive for too long. Engines like Frostbite, redengine 2, etc. don't have this problem. Wish we could get our hands on those...

Question, while playing dragon age inquisition I have noticed they use pom, tesselation and varying texture tiling. You already talked about tesselation but what about the ability to tile textures independently on the same terrain. It's been a missing feature in rtp for a long time.

Using the current workarounds just don't produce convincing results IMO.

 

Hi, you can not expect the same performance as on standard terrain, we're using physically based lighting solution (RTP/Lux) with additional goodies like global colormap and UV blend. Also you don't tell what is your hardware. Anyway - 10ms in fullHD on moderately-low GPU should be expected. Compare with the profiler output when using default Unity terrain shader (this with bumpmapping).

Nope, RTP uses cubemaps for reflections. You would need to make reflections different way - like planar reflections seen on water/ocean solution. This would, however, works decent only your reflecting surface isn't curved. And this is not implemented in RTP as a source for reflections. Another solution might be using some screenspace reflections technique, but I can't guerantee there is any that would work with my RTP water.

Do you mean: you're definitely in need of making the RTP terrain webgl compatible ? What kind of problems do you face ? RTP vs. U5 - I'm still trying to sorting out things, but with mentioned previously limitations you should be able to work on U5beta.

ATB, Tom

P.S. Translation of your posts is always kind of challenge... BTW - I remember you mentioned about tesselation. So - maybe I will be able to help you - soonish

 

Stay cool - your concerns will be addressed in RTP - in time.

ATB, Tom

 

Cheers for the reply! Sorry for my confusing english haha

I'm basically doing a demo to convince the owner and tech staff of a well known website to adopt webgl content produced by Unity and perhaps other engines as a feasible submission type for its users (Along with existing support for images and video and some vector formats iirc). The consequences of this scale of adoption in a setting that redefines the medium away from the word 'game' could be quite considerable, particularly when VR inevitably (And i cannot see it as anything other than inevitable) explodes. Biggest repository of all-possible-content-filled VR experiences on the net thanks to webgl? Yes sir

There is absolutely nothing available on Unity i've seen that compares to RTP when you've gotten on top of your creation of your terrain (Added details, done coverage, fixed up the biggest errors and got it looking roughly how you want) and when an RTP terrain reaches a 'polished' level it looks phenomenal. So yes i'd much rather be using RTP than anything else, and obviously with the submissions to the site intended to be enjoyed from a browser, webgl support is imperative

While Unity webgl support is in its infancy i'm going to work with an attitude of things being time-critical so yes, i'd feel both webgl and rtp together could benefit well from playing nice!

It currently builds and doesnt crash and is navigable in my testing in the legacy deferred renderer but it looks quite poor at the moment although i cant place why. The lack of linear colour space in webgl might well raise issues with any pbs stuff going on, and im just figuring things out as i go along otherwise

Good news on the tesselation! I'm wondering if tesselation can mean a good performance balance on suitable terrain where gpu tesselation in near distance can mean much lower pixel error values regarding the terrain complexity as a whole?

I'd really quite look forwards to a dx11 supercharged RTP, i'm sure there are further benefits to be gained with dx11 opened (Regarding an earlier set of posts in the thread, a big upgrade including good use of dx11/12 features would definitely make a charge for the upgrade reasonable). I guess that is a little windows-centric though.. CUDA is mentioned in the sites U5 articles as possibly being available later in the cycle as its used internally anyways so that might help

From what I can tell it would make sense and possibly greatly reduce complexity by looking into adopting U5's PBR as evidenced in its 'Standard' shader, its really nicely and will continue to be further nicely integrated into other engine features. Don't know if there's some fuss between messing with surface shaders vs hlsl though

 

I didn't expect RTP to perform the same as Unity terrain -- I'm actually not comparing it to default Unity terrain either, currently I have some additions like terrain decals. An ~11fps decrease across the board without even using POM on my i73770k/7970HDOC seems a bit excessive.

Should I be seeing around 1700 Shader.SetPass calls on average in the profiler (For Hidden/TerrainEngine/Splatmap/Lightmap-Firstpass)? Compared to the terrain I was using previously, I only saw about 80.

 

Do shadows not show up when using your snow shader? (ie do they not project onto the snow?)

I absolutely love the way your snow works (makes things actually look cold) btw.

 

So. Backup the scene. Recompile RTP shder to use materials and place Unity's bumpmapped terrain shader (this from - Nature/Terrain/). There is nothing simplier (considering you need any quality). Compare in your profuiler. For 7970 you should experience nice performance I'd say. But Unity terrain is sometimes full of surprises, no matter the shader is used. I saw high "other" GPU hit there, too. Does it come from shadows or ?

Tom

 

I'll look closer at RTP vs U5 and its webgl export features later. RTP doesn't have new deferred implemented yet (terrain is always done in forward - for one directional light and no "noforwardadd" it's quite reasonable). For near update I don't plan to rely on U5 lighting as far as forward is concerned. For new deferred - it's just "hidden" thing (replaceable but I won't play with this) so - you'll be probably able to enjoy U5 PBS in new deferred. In further update I plan making more "drastic" changes as something like "RTP4", to have AAA (and I mean true AAA) terrain shader, but this will take more time. Now I'm trying to manage stuff quickly for incoming U5.

ATB, Tom