Relief Terrain Pack (RTP) v3 on AssetStore

Somebody tested, but it need hardware that's capable of using SM3 limits in textures and texture interpolators - so core GLES2 requirements are not meet here. (It worked for somebody using iPad3). Anyway I see urgent neccessity for doing something like "RTP mobile" soon...

Tom

 

THANKS! That got me going with 5b21 as well weasel!

 

Hey guys!
I bought the relief terrain pack just recently and having an issue with exporting a mesh as OBJ from RTP. It simply doesn't export anything. Anyone knows what the issue could be?
Other than that im really happy with this plugin, fantastic!
/ jim

 

When working with beta21 you quickly realize that this cutsom material switch is only a tiny fix while a lot more things just fail... But relax, I'm the guy who is supposed to get nutz when something breaks (crap, I hate all this issue tracking, fixing and debugging, I should be doing RTP mobile since the beginning of January...). But also I'm the guy who is almost there with RTP3.2b (although submission vetting might be unpredictibly long on AssetStore)

Whould you're trying to save ? Geom blend object or terrain (via separate tool) ? Do you have any ouput in console ?

Tom

 

You are also the guy we all love! : D

 

I think keeping up with the beta versions is going to be a pain in the butt until the first release of 5.0. I don't expect everything to work with every new beta... I'm just hoping Unity 5.0 will be released soon.

 

I can't seem to get RTP working correctly.. I don't have any compile errors, I have 8 layers and after recompiling, refreshing etc the terrain surface shows normal - perlin normal that needs adjusting but it doesn't change the terrain surface and if I click on the surface to paint or zoom in close it shows pink.. I'm using Unity 5 beta 20. There are so many options to choose before compiling. I'm aiming for WebGL and want to use substance materials as many as I can and will probably be using a system like Amplify Texture and the normal Occlusion & Frustum culling to reduce performance issues but also streaming using Sectr complete so hopefully performance wont be so bad, maybe even use a multi threading asset add on once webgl in unity is upgraded. I want to be able to do mesh blending, paint meshes, multi terrain, terrain holes, use the water system. So with this all in mind anyone have any ideal settings they could share and know why the terrain is getting pink?

 

Close pink (you need to select ReliefTerrain-FirstPass.shader in inspector and scroll down to see compilation errors). Far away looks OK but doesn't react ? I was fighting around this issue, too when working on RTP3.2b. So - hopefully new update will fix your problems. As for compilation errors - using too many features (esp. in 8 layers mode) makes shader can't be compiled (too many textures used at once).

Tom

 

Hi there. I've been using RTP for a little while now. Started using it back in Unity 4, moved on to Unity 5, was working great. Recently I've updated to your RTP 3.2 update, and can't seem to get anything working anymore. Nothing seems to be working properly. I am using 4 layers, pretty much the exact settings that I've used before, and nothing seems to work. By nothing seems to work, I mean when I try to change a layer's brightness or saturation, or any setting for that matter, nothing changes on the actual terrain. When I try to change the texture length or width, nothing changes on the actual terrain either. I am using Unity beta 21 right now, and I applied the fix you told another guy to do for beta 21 and it didn't seem to do anything. Right now I am slightly confused because it used to work beautifully but now nothing seems to be working. Let me know if you need to see my LOD Manager settings for further information.

Thanks for your time,
Matthew

 

Hi Tom,

I am having difficulty with my terrain and RTP. I use Simple with Triplanar and everything was fine until I decided to sculpt a part of my terrain. I tried all settings, including switching to PM to see if that was the problem. It looks exactly the same as in Simple.

I did notice that parallax seems to effect it although turning it all the way down does not fix the problem. I don't use parallax really but can't find a way to completely remove it. I doubt this is really the issue though, probably just moving the pixels around.

Turning off Triplanar makes this artifact disappear but I really need triplanar in my project. Otherwise, my textures on my quarry walls look stretched. Like I said, it worked for a long time, never had an issue, even when sculpting but it happened recently.



I know you are busy with the new users but would appreciate some advice on what to do about this. Thanks.

 

Try this... go to your terrain properties, on that last tab is the gear icon that represents "Settings" on the terrain... In the "Base Terrain" section there is a "Material" option that is set to "Built in Shader"... change it to "custom" and then refresh the shader and see if that gets RTP going. Tom has a 3.2"B" update that is going to hit the store very soon that will fix a bunch of these issues.

 

Unfortunately that didn't fix anything, but thanks for trying anyways. I didn't realize unity changed some terrain stuff with the b21 update. Oh well, I can wait for the 3.2b update to come out. Thanks!

 

I didn't have any compile errors on first pass and it was already checked.. (I also have it on 2nd pass) I got it some what working! I have the target platform set to d3d9, open gl and gles.. I recompiled, refreshed.. it was no longer pink but the rendering was messed up, it looked like it was being textured to a mesh below that doesn't exist it and showing through another mesh (yellow) that does.. example:


I don't know what's happening but when I remove the material in unity's terrain settings
it clears the issue until I start to adjust the perlin scaling

 

Well, guess what? I gave up and was working on something else for a while. One thing I needed to do was update the normal map for that terrain since I had changed it quite a bit. So...updated normal map and the weird stretching pixels are gone, hopefully for good.

Sorry about that. Seems obvious now but didn't even cross my mind at the moment.

 

I'm just about release RTP3.2b which should address many issues. It will come in "precompiled" version which means - make terrain with 4 or 8 layers, add RTP compoent, refresh, select LOD manager, then back RTP refresh - everything should work. You might have problem with material vs. non material mode. In beta21 there is probably no way to NOT USE materials -0 they need to be selected when you recompile shaders.

Looks like bad triplanar blending world direction is choosen for this ugly area. What's your setup (exactly) ? How can I reproduce this problem ?

You need to recompile RTP features in LOD manager for different scenario (non material) if you don't like RTP to handle terrain like this (that's why it's attached there always). Anyway - since U5 beta21 seems to be not possible not using materials. Setting features in LOD manager +recompilation +refreshing terrain should work (at least in beta21 with RTP3.2b)

Tom

 

Sure - when using global normalmap - directions of triplanar blending are also taken from this - you can observe the influence when playing with global normalmap strength slider - triplanar blending directions/coverage will be changing accordingly to the normals processed from texture (and amplified by slider). So always take care your global normalmap with its strength actually fits terrain geometry. Otherwise such problems will occur. It's not that crucial when triplanar is not used (still you should fit it and proper callibration is described in my docs).

Tom

 

Yeah, which is why I redid the normal, only too late. I waited because I know I always tweak and sculpt and will never actually be done with it and didn't want to redo the normal map over and over again. It is a pain actually. When you have 16 small terrain tiles, it is not fun to make normal maps.

 

Okay that's good to hear about RTP3.2b. Although the fact that we have to use materials no matter what now concerns me because I know it is not very efficient when using lots of terrains, which is the case for me. Do you think there will be a workaround for that in the future?

 

Hi Tomas,

Thanks for all the replies so far!

I'm trying a scene with multiple terrains in it but while the tile I first set up works well, all the others lose their settings and render weirdly.
What is the best way to handle many terrain tiles (all instantiated at run-time)? I saw in the doc about placing terrains under a common parent object but how do I set this up? The RTP component doesn't like being on a parent gameObj...
I tried looking in this thread, but... 48 pages?!

 

Tom, I normally use this with PC, I know your making a mobile version, but how well does this work with mobile? I was about to try, I want to be sure if I will run into any thing that you already know about If I use it if I try to. Thanks.

 

I'm trying to check this now. For multiple terrains you could try to optimize it yourself disabling terrain tiles that are not actually visible (for flight simulators it would not make any difference...). I'll report later today when I'll submit RTp3.2b on assetstore for review.

In case you'd like to have separate, independent terrains - RTP component needs to be attached to your terrain, not to the parent (look at my working modes video I believe I shown grouping there).

Currently it's no much chance to run on mobile unless it's something like iPad3 with 16 textures and 16 texture samplers available (following SM3.0 specs).

Tom

 

Hi Tom,
I am using unity 5 v18b. After some boxing with the system I got terrains to render properly.

My main CPU processing thread is now at like 40ms and I get 30 fps. I have multiple terrains in an open world environment. Is this part of the problem? Is there anything you can recommend to get a reasonable fps? I should have probably 100 or so.

Thanks!

 

You should always try to hide invisible terrains to get better performance

Anyway - GOOD NEWS
I was testing the issue in U5beta21. It seems that using and not using materials give the same (decent) performance. So RTP3.2b when running in Unity5 will have disabled option for non materials (materials always used). This also saves some confusion for newbie users.

I'll try to submit RTP3.2b today on AssetStore, so we only need to wait for approval.

ATB, Tom

 

Okay Tom, that is good news! I appreciate all your effort for this and I look forward to using 3.2b.

Thanks again,
Matthew

 

Android is what I'm mainly using, so your saying it wont work at all with Mobile or less chance of it working?? Did I understand that correctly?

 

Will the mobile version be a separate release ?

 

Separate?? What I meant was I normally develop games on PC. But I develop on mobile now with TC and WC, so now I need a good shader program, for terrains. So I did not know RTP was not mobile friendly. It makes sense that its not.

Anyways I need to find one, then since its not.

 

Let me explain. Mobiles are still limited platforms. When somebody claims in the product description that it works on mobile - it should. But when there is no such description - you have to assume that it might not. That's the case of RTP. If you expect having AAA quality that comes with current RTP version on all (or at least most) Android devices - go and ask first before you buy. I've been asked here many, many times. And many, many times I was answering.

But to go into technic side again:
1. RTP compiles for GLES w/o errors
2. it depends on mobile hardware whether it will work or not
3. mobiles that can handle up to 16 textures at once and 16 texture interpolators at once might work with RTP
4. most mobiles (GLES2) don't meet above requirement (only 8 textures & 8 texture interpolators available)
5. mobiles are slow comparing to desktops, so even if shader works - it might work quite slow

That's why I'm considering doing separate product for mobile - with limited features, but also with better compatibility.

ATB, Tom

P.S. Unity has upgrading plans on their roadmap for assetstore. So - when they will implement this - all RTp3 users will have opportunity to buy mobile or next big RTP4 release at quite reduced price.

 

Hey Tom.. I'm not having this issue as I'm currently developing for Windows. But this might be something to add to the first post under a heading "Does RTP work on mobile devices", or something like that. Or put that question with a link to your post that I quoted in the product description on the store. That way the info is easily accessible and not just buried within the thread. At that point there shouldn't be any excuse of folks purchasing thinking it will definitely work on mobile.

At any rate, I still haven't had the chance to install in my project yet but hoping to play around with it in the next week or two. I'll warn you in advance, I may have some dumb questions to add at that point... heheh

 

Tom I partially resolved the issues with the framerate, but I'm still having an issue with multiple terrains.

If I edit a terrain and change the material in the first slot for one terrain, the other terrain changes as well. If I change the material on the second terrain it overwrites it on the first terrain. Is there a step I'm missing? I don't remember it doing this before. Also, there is just general weirdness with unity 5 where the terrain sometimes goes pitch black, or solid white, or becomes incredibly specular, usually hitting "refresh all" works, and it always works when it plays, but its messed up in the editor.

Any thoughts?

 

Woah Tom, I'm not upset at all.... I was just making sure, because as others said, its buried in the posts. I don't do this for a hobby so going through all this non sense, takes a lot of time, I did go through a lot and I did not see what answered my question. I have had RTP for awhile and even had others buy it.. So again you can't read peoples emotion through a post... I seen a post a few posts above mine and seen a comment that it may have worked with IOS. So that was the reason for my post.. and I seen nothing else saying it did or did not. If I would of not read any of that I would of assume it did not. I know all about shader's with mobile, and how simple some should be and how normal maps, can be super expensive and so forth so I'm aware. But there is a lot to this tool and maybe I was missing out on a feature... Which I have seen again with Unity assets and poor dated docs ..... Not saying this one, but I have seen it plenty of times..

Anyways.

I been supporting TC, WC and RTP and all of Naths stuff, so we can keep you both working and supporting this great assets..but. I expected a more professional reply.. from such a great tool...

PS: so understand coming from a long time customer and a long time Unity user , using it professional we want to make sure we are using the correct tools as money can be wasted, by wasting time.

I also still have used this with atleast two other professional PC games...and have been happy with it..

/cheers.

 

Refreshing issue - decribed before. RTP3.2b comes with precompiled shaders (4+4 setup) and issue fixed. Refresh All button is needed very rare now to fix such problems. If you'd like to use different detail textures on different terrain across one scene you need to to use materials in LOD manager and put independent terrains into separate anchors 9so called grouping - look at my docs in pdf and working modes on my yt channel).

Tom

 

Thanks for giving your point. My reply sounded too emotional ? Well, migt be, but it wasn't my intention. There are absolutely no emotions involved on my side. Tried to answer most professional way I could (giving technical explanation and commercial approach). Anyway - thank you for trusting my product .

Tom

 

Great to hear, keep up the great work, I do respect you, so keep up the great work, I will keep supporting all of your products.

Recon.

 

tomaszek, I sent you an email/conversation invite about the RTP. Would you please reply me as soon as you can? Thank you.

 

Hi Tom, quick question:

I am currently trying to build a tunnel into my terrain. for that I built the tunnel floor as an additional mesh that I would like to texturize using the RTP engine.

Now I did read the PDF on it, and I get that I can just assign the engine script to the terrain and it should work fine as long as RTP on mesh is selected in the LOD Manager.
I got as far as assigning the script, correcting the splat, and that part worked fine. To make sure terrain and this additional mesh blends together perfectly I just copied the script with all the settings on the terrain and pasted as new, which worked initially.
Now, the tile size was reset on the mesh when copying the script... so I tried to set it to the value it has on the terrain.
But that did also change the tile size on the terrain, even though the var on the terrains RTP engine settings script did not change in value (I checked)!

Any idea what is going wrong here? How can I achieve initially copying the engine script with all values to get the same look on the layers, but then be able to tweak the settings separately without affecting the terrain?


Thanks for any help in advance.

Gian-Reto

 

Answered

 

So - you've, got RTP on terrain and RTP on mesh in the same scene ? And tiling parameters for mesh and terrain seem to be not independent ? That's the issue ? I'll check this tomorrow (today's Sunday - so family go first... ). Meantime you could get your mesh and add geom blend to this. Then rebuild it and clear blending channel (so only underlying mesh that mimics terrain is visible). The underlying object should be then perfectly synced to actual terrain. You don't need to render overlying mesh then (disable its renderer). Might be quick workaround and should be simplier than using RTP on both terain and separate mesh in one scene.

ATB, Tom

 

Tom, no problem about checking later... I totally understand that! Great to get answers this quick. I really don't need to solve the problem today.

Basically the setup is this:
1 Terrain with RTP engine script
1+ Meshes built in a 3D Modelling tool as tunnel floor, with RTP engine script enabled

They do not share the same parent, though there is only a single RTP_Lodmanager object in the scene (should there be multiples?)

But I will give the geom blend feature a try... if it means I do not need 2 engine scripts with independent values, it would make the whole thing easier to manage.

EDIT:
Gave it a try, mixed results (but keep in mind I never got around to really trying the geom blend features so I might make many newbie mistakes)...
It did work, I do see RTP shaders active on the mesh created by geom blend, but:
1) it seems splat colors are just taken from the terrain above the tunnel floor... that is not really what I am trying to achieve.
2) normal map seems to be lit from the wrong direction... most probably stupid mistake by myself when setting up the geom blend feature.

What I did was: make sure the mesh collider is activated on the tunnel floor object, add geom blend feature in component menu, add terrain to the global var, paint > set alpha, select a geomblend compatible shader for the underlying mesh, then deactivated the mesh renderer.

 

OMG!! Unity 5, Terrain Composer, and RTP... Nothing here but the default textures and trees that you can get for free... It's hard to go wrong folks.

 

Looks quite good...

what is still missing is realistic erosion on the terrain heightmap. See if you can still get the Terrain Tools for Unity, if Terrain Composer has a function to erode the heightmap, or give World Machine a spin... the last is a fully blown separate application with a quite steep learning curve, but you will get beatiful and realistic terrain heightmaps out of it with some tweaking.

 

WM is the only tool i tried so far that can give good erosion results, and the learning curve does not have to be so steep if you just import your heightmap to give it some erosion : )

 

Thanks for RTP3! Awesome tool makes my vertical cliffs and harsh dirt paths more bearable.

 

Thanks for the response as always. You are incredibly patient with your customers and I really appreciate it.

A little clarification:

Should you not generally have different detail textures in different terrains in one scene? I plan to have at least 8 terrains in one scene. Or at worst, load them in later dynamically. I have an open world game.

I dont know anything about "put independent terrains into separate anchors 9so called grouping"

Is there a section on grouping in your docs?

Further, is 3.2b Out now?

 

Below, from 17:53 terrain grouping is described:

Wouldn't be bad to see the whole tutorial though.

Tom

 

Tom i I didn't realize that was what "grouping" meant. All of my terrains are already deeply nested in parent objects.

 

The reason you might have problems with your setup is your tunnels don't have the same global uv coordinates. Like on the terrain we have it spanned across terrain with uv=(0..1x0..1).

When using geom blend which seems to be simplier solution you can attach your own control textures directly to the material attached to the underlying mesh (the one we need). For bad lighting it's the most probably because underlying mesh isn't independent. As we'd like to blend it perfectly with the terrain it needs to have exactly the same tangents and normals in vertices that the terrain has. So - we've got perfect blend on the borders where tunnel and actual terrain intersects but tunnel interior has exactly the same normals as terrain over it. So - I'm wondering what could be the ideal solution here. Maybe you'd able to modify normals/tangents inside tunnel yourself so they are correct (while leaving them as they are on the borders to blend with terrain) ?

Tom

 

So - every terrain should have it's own setup (independent). When you change anything on terrain A, it shouldn't influence terrain B. Still remember about saving all textures produced by RTP so they are persistent assets, not scene objects (loading such objects or treating them as prefabs will break texture references).

Tom

 

Are you ever going to release that amazing water shader from your videos? I'm just wondering if it's worth waiting for or if I should go with another asset/waste time on my own.

 

You should not expect anything in this matter from my side soon (at least months).

Tom