Ceto (Scrawks Ocean)

See this post for specifics.

https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/ceto-scrawks-ocean.323545/page-37#post-2821817

There is an attempt to find another publisher to pick up Ceto mentioned here.

https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/ceto-scrawks-ocean.323545/page-37#post-2825911

 

Right... I'll try fixin' it for 5.5. But he didn't told the truth... Someone paid him 1 mil dollars so that he takes the item from the market cuz of competition ) hiddin...

 

Post your Unity 5.5 issues so all can benefit from what you are running into with CETO. There is still support until the end of the year (2016) based on the developer's message.

 

Hi Scrawk, sorry to hear that Ceto is no longer supported but i wanted to thank you for this fantastic asset and your hardwork and support. Cheers!

 

Theres no in built function to provide collisions via a rigid body. You will need to use Cetos height queries to find the ocean surface based on the objects position.

I have reconsider handing this to another publisher. This is no longer a option sorry.

I have the fix for Unity 5.5 and have uploaded the fixed shader here. You need to add this file to the Ceto/Shaders folder.

The reason for the shader breaking and the solution has also been added to the manual under the common problems sections.

Heres the fix if you want to make the change yourself.

Open the Ceto/Shaders/OceanUnderWater.cginc file and it it you will find this function.

Code (CSharp):

1.  
2. /*
3. * Calculates the world position from the depth buffer value.
4. */
5. float3 WorldPosFromDepth(float2 uv, float depth)
6. {
7.     float4 ndc = float4(uv.x * 2.0 - 1.0, uv.y * 2.0 - 1.0, depth * 2.0 - 1.0, 1);
8.  
9.     float4 worldPos = mul(GetIVPMatrix(), ndc);
10.     worldPos /= worldPos.w;
11.  
12.     return worldPos.xyz;
13. }

It needs to be changed to this...

Code (CSharp):

1.  
2. float3 WorldPosFromDepth(float2 uv, float depth)
3. {
4.  
5.    #if defined(UNITY_REVERSED_Z)
6.      depth = 1.0 - depth;
7.    #endif
8.  
9.    float4 ndc = float4(uv.x * 2.0 - 1.0, uv.y * 2.0 - 1.0, depth * 2.0 - 1.0, 1);
10.  
11.    float4 worldPos = mul(GetIVPMatrix(), ndc);
12.    worldPos /= worldPos.w;
13.  
14.    return worldPos.xyz;
15. }
16.  

See the above solution to the 5.5 issue.

 

Where is the reply to my message? How can I get a refund from this? You just had a madness sale, then 1 week depreciation notification. It's not much but I want my money back, I don't want to contribute anything to this kind of developer.

 

Re refund requests - Take it to PM, it's not a request, but the right option to do. Support continues until end of year, which is fair enough.

 

Thanks for the very prompt support for making it work on 5.5! It helped me a lot!

Personally, if it works on 5.5 I don't need unlimited support to be honest. It is a great tool, it works, and we should not expect to get full blown support and new features for a few dollars...

I will still continue to use it, since if I think that I would had to hire a coder it would have costed me months of development, and support is for extra cash ofc. And if I would have had to do it, I would have gone crazy with the ton of problems that unity comes packed with, having to put an extra water system on top of that...

 

Oh wow. I just saw that this was depreciated. I really felt like this was one of the best water assets for Unity. I understand that you don't want to work on it anymore, but please do try to find some way to keep it alive for future editions of Unity or perhaps have your work incorporated into another asset.

 

Sorry to hear the asset is gone scrawk.

 

I'm sorry to hear you are depreciating Ceto. After losing your amazing blog and now this, I'm feeling a pit in my chest. You created amazing things and provided quick support to issues, I'm more than a little sad to see you leave.

Are there any updates on what will become of Ceto? What do you plan to do next?

 

Bit of a shame, but I must say now I have it fully working in VR ( I can live without single pass rendering) it is absolutely super, bloody FANTASTIC really. Will be a sad day when it stops working on a later Unity update.

 

There wont be another publisher taking over if thats what your asking. Ceto will remain depreciated.

As mentioned support on this thread will continue until the end of the year but I will keep the support email address open beyond that and if there are any issue in the future you can still contact me.

I will keep a eye out on any Unity updates that break Ceto in the future and add how to fix it to the manual. I have already done this with a small issue in 5.5. Normally issues caused by Unity updates are minor to fix. There will be a point when I stop do that but not sure when at the moment.

 

You're = you are... anyways... (little vent there)

That was what he was asking, but also was curious about what you will do now. Are you done developing for Unity? Are you working on your own projects and staying out of the Asset game?

My take was that you love making things but hate all the other crap. It's like most creatives when it comes time to pay the bills or find more work, they drag their feet.

 

Hi scrawk,

i am realy sorry to hear that Ceto is not available anymore. I thought for a too long time if i should buy Playway or Ceto. Now that Ceto is not available anymore i already miss the features. I just have to ask again if there is no more way to get Ceto.

 

Hi Scrawk,

I understand that CETO is now deprecated, so no worries if you're unable to help with this. Tried to PM but was unable to.

I've been having a slight issue with CETO that's been hard to pin down. I'm seeing a very slight flicker in lighting based on head position in VR in very specific cases.

Here's what I know so far:
It's happening on Unity 5.4.3f1
It only happens in a built application (which understandably makes it slower to debug)
It seems to be related to head position.
It only occurs when the majority of the screen is obscured by a mesh or collection of meshes.
It seems to only occur in VR (single pass stereo, GPU skinning enabled).
It appears to be unrelated to the Underwater and Planar Reflection components, as those are disabled.

Here's the effect I'm seeing. It's subtle enough on a monitor but quite noticeable in VR. Essentially it looks like either the foam, or fresnel, or both is being duplicated and overlayed twice. By playing with the worldPos variable in the OceanSurfTop shader, I was able to produce a similar effect so that may be the culprit.

On:


Off:

Interestingly the effect still occurs without any scene lighting, with or without the sun reference in the Ocean.cs component.

I've spent two days going through the shaders and scripts to try to pin it down but I haven't had much luck. I can send you a sample build if you like, and any advice you could offer would be much appreciated. I know the asset is deprecated, so even a pointer in the right direction could help. I'll keep digging around and let you know if I find a solution.

Much appreciated,

Rob

 

"It seems to only occur in VR (single pass stereo, GPU skinning enabled)."

Interesting, single pass rendering works for you? If that's the case I'll have to have another go with it. have never got it to work.

 

Im really not sure what is causing that sorry. As far as I was aware Ceto was not working correctly in single pass stero and I dont think it is fixable due to the limitations of the method. It might be related to that.

There is a similar issue with shadows on the ocean flickering (unrelated to VR). The issue is that as Ceto uses a projected grid the mesh position is not determined untill its drawn but Unity needs to know the meshes bounding box before its draw so it can cull it if needed. To make Unity always draw the mesh I manually set the meshes bounding box to a large size that always covers the camera (in the Projected Grid script).

The issue is that with shadows on Unity sometimes thinks this bounding box is blocking the scenes light and therefore wont rendering the shadows. Not sure why but it causes a flicking of the light. I dont know if this is the same issue (probably not) but its the only thing I can think of. Maybe worth disabling shadows just to check.

If you need to contact me the support email address is in the manual.

 

Really not happy about this.

We implemented Triton into a project around a year ago only for that to become deprecated, we are still using it but it is becoming a bit of a hamstring in regards to unity releases. We then looked at replacements as support is important to us. Ceto came up, looked good albeit missing a few features but it was seen as one for the future.

I bought it a while back to support the development of the asset in the hope it would one day be suitable for what we needed.

And now this, money down the drain.

It's understandable that you wanted to move away from the project, but people paid good money for this.

To be told that passing it on to another developer or being made open source is out of the question just makes the whole thing stink of a cash grab, I feel sorry for the people who picked it up in the madness sale.

Apologies feel less sincere when they are being said while holding a middle finger up.

 

Amazing asset! I can't believe how realistic it looks and how powerful it is!

 

This is something that should be expected when dealing with individuals who do not consider it to be their main line of work, instead of a company. A company like Unity would have other staff to take over. An individual is not a company, unless it's their main income stream.

This is actually quite common with asset store, so YMMV when purchasing assets. I'm not defending it - merely pointing out the reality of the situation. I paid for this myself.

 

This is always a possibility with assets that are made by a 3rd party. In the dev world I have purchased 3rd party systems in the thousands of dollars just to have them deprecate or disappear a couple months later. That is one reason I am very adamant about getting ones that have the source included so as a worst case we can take over the modifications needed.

 

...except with UNet

 

Thank you for fix for Unity 5.5

 

Hi everyone,

I would like to know if it is possible to buy Ceto from one of you. Maybe you don't use it or dont want to use it anymore after the deprecation. Please write me a pm if you can help me.

Greetings onkelv

 

Very dissapointed development has stopped on this, now that I am ready to implement it finally. I did notice (using Unity 5.6), that the top/bottom shaders seem like they are flipped. So I reassigned the materials to the opposite. So Top Opaque material has Bottom Opaque shader, etc. And if you comment out the cull on the 2 top and 2 bottom shaders, you can at least see the ocean now. I'm not sure what to do to get it back to normal, as I don't know what normal looked like. I wouldn't mind putting some work into this though.

 

I'm not affected so far but always eyed on Ceto. And what kideternal suggests here is exactly what also came to my mind in the first place. It's a little hard to understand what speaks against keeping it alive, after such a great track record - Especially when already announced to keep it working with Unity updates for the near future. I think Ceto is a unique solution.

 

I got here looking for his asset too. All of his old projects still work great in Unity5.5, but I was looking for more features. Oh well.

 

Hello @scrawk,

I wasn't able to find a direct contact for you, so i'll write it here: I heard that you have written many good resources for beginners looking to dive into compute shaders. I'm having a hard time finding those (am willing to pay as well), are they available somewhere?

Thankyou

 

I'm also wondering if it's possible to buy CETO somewhere after it's been deprecated?
I need it for a super simple HTC Vive project, but haven't found other assets besides PlayWay that can offer me those features and $100 is insanely expensive for a 1man indie dev. Basically, I need the player to get submerged by big waves, and I've seen that CETO can handle that.
Anyone who can help with either selling me a version, or pointing me toward a reasonable alternative?

 

Hi mariamism, I had CETO and after depreciation I had to look for an alternative and I looked at all of them.... Playwater is awesome but very expensive for a one man indie team so I feel your pain :/ Aquas is one that is becoming quite popular but unfortunately the waves etc that you need is not in Aquas its great for lakes and rivers but not like the deep see waves etc that Ceto and Playwater had, and also there is a reflection issue with VR if I remember correctly, they said on the forum but I think hes working on a solution hes also a great guy and very active on the forum and also Aquas have underwater camera effects that looks great.

But I found a little gem take a look at Hydroform Ocean System it has great potential, the updates are awesome with each update he adds great quality for example he added a fog solution to give that misty feels... the only thing that might be a problem is he is currently working on the underwater camera effects etc that you need I also requested this from him, as this is the most requested feature on the forum atm and then VR, hes also a great guy very helpful and active on the forum" hopes this helps and good luck with your project!

https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/76960

 

@GMax Thanks so much, man. That looks like an excellent asset!

 

It's a pleasure! Glad I could help

 

If I look (underwater) straight upwards, everything is fine, but if I don't look straight upwards, I only see black and green solid colors.

Who have an idea?

 

Just pointing out this free Community Ocean solution, in case anyone wants to use it or contribute to it:

https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/the-community-ocean-shader-open-source-unity-5.370818/

 

@hopeful this is AMAZING, thank you

 

hi @scrawk,

First of all, I'm aware that CETO is deprecated, but I think this should be something easy to solve, so if anyone could help me I'd really appreciate it.

I'm currently working on a simulator project, and I need to create these oil stains that float on the ocean. The way they were implemented when the project was handed to me was with wave overlays, but for some reason, no matter where the (black) texture was put(height, normal or foam textures), it would always show as white, like the foam color was filling the whole of the texture, no matter what image I chose as texture(so much that if I change the foam tint to, say, black, the texture color changes accordingly, but so does the rest of the ocean's foam).

My question is, is there a way for me to keep the original black color of the texture, and if so, how can I do it?
(the texture image is a .jpeg, if that matters). I'm including a picture of the ocean with black and white foam tints so you can see what I mean.

I'm sorry if it's a stupid question, but I'm quite new to the project, and I think there might be an easier way than rewriting shaders to fit my needs. If anyone knows how I could fix this, I'd appreciate it very much! Thanks in advance!

 

No particular idea how to rectify that but if you want it tested on another machine you can pm me and I'll try it on mine just in case it is your set up.
Paul

 

Hi everybody!
Does anyone have Scrowk's example project named "gpu-gems-to-unity-2d-fluid-simulation"?
Could you share it please?

Thanks!

 

@wildermind69 i'd definitely be interested in that too

 

https://www.digital-dust.com/single-post/2017/03/15/GPU-GEMS-to-Unity-2D-fluid-simulation

That one?

 

@CaptainMurphy that's a cool site thank you

 

Hi, @scrawk

I really love your ocean system, and I want to use it. Can I redistribute freely (as a video game) or do I have to pay a price. which I am willing to pay.

Also, how should I credit you?

Thanks,
LinuxPenguin

 

@LinuxPenguin
Sadly the author has left the community and refused to transfer Ceto to another publisher. It seems you can not get Ceto if you haven't bought it before it got off

 

It appears that most developers seem to be migrating to the Play Way Water system. At least that is where I see most developers who used to post in the Ceto thread and post comments these days.

But I did notice on the author web site had another ocean topic which is interesting ...

https://www.digital-dust.com/single-post/2017/03/30/Brunetons-ocean-in-Unity

 

This looks quite Ceto alike...
And even the same author? Strange.

 

As far as I know, it is an older project (seemingly updated for newer Unity versions, given the 5.5 download link) from his old blog. His blog had a bunch of ocean projects focusing on different elements of ocean rendering (different wave generation algorithms, adding white-caps, a DX9 compatible version etc.). Eventually he decided to make a more ambitious and polished asset for the asset store, in the form of Ceto, that improved on these earlier efforts and added more features.

https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/ocean-renderer.171651/ See this thread for some history on the development of the old systems.

 

Yes I remember that the author said he started Ceto with several open source water projects. It's just strange to me that he updated the old ocean solutions rather than continue to maintain Ceto.

 

Open source doesn't mean that they allow commercialization of the code. It may just be a licensing problem coupled with the requirements of maintaining the product that keeps it from being released to another party.

 

Just keep in mind the stuff on that blog was originally posted to a different blog long before Ceto arrived. So it's not as 'fresh' as blog post dates indicate. It's just been brought back as a service for those who miss the original blog, its not new stuff. To the best of my knowledge anyway.