ForestVision [ Artist Essentials Product ]

Hmm. I haven't tested in 5.5, anyway you can try in an earlier version? I'm downloading 5.5 myself now to check.
in the meantime, did you check the assets to make sure the script was on, and categories set?

 

Yes, I checked, all yours are setup correct as is my Teak tree created using normal scene view. FV script was attached fine. That does not show up it editor either.

Skipping back to old version off unity would have to be a last resort due to the work i have done so I will wait and see if yours is ok.

 

I agree, don't want you to have to go back, just curious if you could check quicker than it takes me to install 5.5. I'm almost done

 

Yes, I can confirm that it is not working in 5.5. I have no idea what changed, because it was working in 5.4. I'll look into it now.

 

Looks like a ton of obsolete issues. Should be easy, just time consuming. I'll try to get it knocked out as soon as I can.

Sorry about this.

 

Thanks for the quick response. Hopefully not too painful to fix.

 

It doesn't appear that way. It's just a matter of having the time to dig into it all. Plus I'm going to have to basically make 2 versions now, one for post 5.5 and one for pre 5.5 in order to keep everyone happy. Thankfully the pre 5.5 version is done.

I'm going to try to see how many errors I can knock out tonight, hopefully if my little one cooperates.

 

Ok so digging into it more tonight, I'm not seeing anything that tells me why these thumbnails aren't showing up. The errors are all cleared up and the thumbnails still aren't coming in.

I'll look into what all they changed in 5.5 tomorrow to see if anything stands out there.

 

Ok I think I found something. It's opening other errors, but I was able to get the thumbnails to show up, so it's progress. Time for bed, 2 am is a bit late even for me.

 

Well I see where the issue is. when the script runs through and creates a list of all the items you have in the folder, in version 5.5 it only finds 45 out of 223 items. In the other versions, it finds 223 out of 223.

Code is exactly the same, but for some reason, the number of previews being generated is stopping way short of where it needs to be.

 

Hi Mcbauer,

Any update on a fix for 5.5?

Also is there any documentation or videos on baking the tree (with vines/cards added) down to one material so they can be used as terrain tree's or with assets like uNature or AltTrees?

I can get my tree in the terrain but it misses the extras i have added.

 

I finally got it working in 5.5 today and am uploading the update now.

As of right now, if you want to bake it down into a single material you are going to have to use another plugin to get it down that low. I haven't had time to work on that since I had to spend so much time on this fix. It will hopefully come soon.

I also hope to make a video very soon showing my work flow.

 

I managed to get it working in a fashion but i look forward to the update.

AltTrees is working with it too but i need to get polys down and add lod groups to fill the terrain.

Looking very good though.

I cant wait for your ideas taking it forward, the design makes games look different from the usual default trees.

 

ugh, i don't get it, this was just working, now it's not. I did a couple of tests to make sure I was good to go before the final push and now it's not working again.

 

Did you put editor instruction inside an #if UNITY_EDITOR " code " #endif statement?

I'm pretty sure i had to do that

 

No I didn't. using UnityEditor; and extending from EditorWindow is all that is needed.

Plus my issue is weirder than I once thought.

I built FV in 5.1.3f. My editor now only works in that specific project. If I open another project in the 5.1.3f version, with everything thing exactly the same, it won't work. However, for some unknown reason, it did work for me both in a new project within 5.1.3f, as well as within 5.5. Then it just stopped working, and now once again it only works where it originated. I have no clue what is going on. I'd really like to get on with these other ideas I have, but I'll keep working this. Soon though, if it doesn't get sorted, I may have to abandon the idea and go back to the way it was.

 

AndyNeoman I have submitted a bug report, I just don't know what else to do at this point.

 

I'd love to know if anyone else is having this issue with their versions of ForestVision........

 

I can see the trees in the editor now but i cant create by clicking trunk etc....

The only thing i thought i did was encapsulate an editor statement but if you don't use them maybe i am confusing with another script/asset. It was few weeks ago.

Hopefully they can find the bug quickly as i am really looking forward to trying to create specific types of trees for my project.

 

i tried it on my end and it made no difference for me.

 

Just FYI @AndyNeoman , you can still make your own trees without the editor. The editor just speeds things up a bit, but you are not blocked by any measure. Just use the Collapse and save prefab tool. I'll keep working the issue on my end.

I'm certainly glad to have discovered this issue now because my next round of ideas was going to be a lot of work and really is going to make the editor extremely useful. If I would have finished all of that, and then had this issue I would have been irate. I'm still very upset at what is going on because it just doesn't make sense why it works in one project and not another

 

Did you do anything special to get the trees to show up? @AndyNeoman

 

@AndyNeoman Unity got back with me regarding the bug, which in fact it was a bug and the developers are now looking at it further.

From Unity:

"It appears Unity does not create new metadata(among which are previews) for prefabs when importing them from elsewhere. That said, moving any prefab upwards a folder seems to then generate it.

As a temporary workaround, after importing the assets, going to "Assets/Reimport All" appears to fix the problem(although takes some time)."

If you get this before I get home, please give this a try and verify that you are working once again. Also, please revert the code back to the way it was, if you made any adjustments that is. I will test as soon as I get home and post up my findings.

 

I am just doing a backup commit then i will reimport - I would imagine it will take a long time my project is around 10gig atm.

 

wow, try the other suggestion which is simply to move the prefabs to another folder. As long as they are inside the ForestVision folder, I'll read them. This should help keep you from a reimport all.

 

It appears to be working now!

I was wondering about using the global snow as moss is there a way to change the snow colour?

 

Awesome! SO glad it ended up being a simple solution. Did you move the prefabs or reimport all?

If you open the shader, remove the code in front of the _SnowColor that says [HiddenInEditor] and re-save.

 

I re-imported, took about an hour while I made food. I had a quick look at the snow but it did not not appear on my Alttree or uNature grass/Trees.

Does it only work on ForestVision trees/shader?

My workflow is make my hero trees in ForestVision then export to AltTrees for performance.

 

Yes the snow only works with the FV shader.

 

I'm considering getting ForestVision. I really need good quality trees. How is this working with 5.5? Also, are there any videos that show the trees in a scene?

 

Hey Steven, thanks for your interest. No issues have been identified in 5.5. Just make sure that when you first import the package, you essentially Reimport All to get around the bug that Unity has regarding how it handles exterior files imported and their meta data--hopefully they will have a fix for it soon. If you don't do that, then the editor will break because it won't be able to generate all the thumbnails.

Regarding videos, I'm struggling to find the time to finish them with my baby still not sleeping very well but here are some simple ones.


This is a video one of my customers made using an early version of FV

I will be pushing up a video very soon showing how I use the FV editor to quickly make new trees. And then at some point, I'll make a few videos showing some demo scenes. It's just been hard lately to get anything done with the youngling.

 

Latest tool has been submitted. ForestVision will ship with the free version of this tool, which will also contain the Foliage Vertext animation property. Basically an upgraded version of the Trunk Shader.

As mentioned there is also a free version of the shader to be released as well.

My goal for this shader is to give you a wide range of textures to be able to blend together. Right now, it contains 3 textures channels, but that will be increasing soon.


https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/multiblender.453444/

 

Been working on next update for ForestVision. Might push them up as I finish them instead of waiting till they are all done, but we'll see.

So I'm adding 2 major pieces of functionality to help you get to where you want to go with this tool.

1) Branch generator: Feed it the types of branches you want on your trunk base, set some parameters, hit generate, done.

2) Tree Painter: select the tree you want, starting painting that tree in the scene with random rotations and scale, done.

I know these are typical tools but felt it was time to add them to this package.

Hope you guys like it!

 

Latest product has been released. MultiBlend Lite, the free version of my full MultiBlend product.

https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/81587

Full version is still in development as the Unity team came across issues running it on a Mac in Unity 5.5, neither of which I tested it with. Should have that sorted out shortly.

Please give the free version a go and I'd love to hear any feedback.

 

Uploading latest update for ForestVision now. Includes the new and easy to use Tree Customizer.

Found from the Editor this is what I've made available.



-----------------------------------------------------------------------
To use: add a branch type to the Branch Spawner, at least one is required. Set the number of branches with the "How Many?" slider. Note I've limited it to 5 at one time simply to keep things manageable.

Per Branch Type checkbox will allow you to generate the number of branches, for each type you have loaded. So if you have 3 branches loaded, with How Many set to 2, then you will get 6 total branches. Without it checked,
you will only get 3.

Delete Old Branches on Generate checkbox, if checked will clear the current spawn variety with each press of the Generate buttons. Uncheck this and you will get more and more branches with each spawn.

Starting height simply offers a quick way of positioning the spawn cluster up and down the trunk.

Up X, Up Y and Up Z offer quick ways to alter the projection of the raytrace spawning. Up X checked means a postive vector, with a negative being loaded unchecked. Basically, this helps you to place branches on both sides of the tree quickly.

Gen X, Gen Y and Gen Z. These buttons take what you have set so far and generates solely based on the given vector.

Generate on All Axis will take your current settings and generate on all 3 vectors at once.

Randomize Branches: simply takes what you have thus generated and randomizes the arrangement.

Clear Branches removes everything from your selected game object.

Rotate All Branches on the following Axis: offes you the ability to quickly offset the rotation of all the spawned children based on the parameters you set.

If you check "Rotate Just Selected" then the rotation offset will only be applied to what is currently selected.

Scale All Branches Uniformly: scales up or down all children based on the buttons pressed. Again, if Scale Just Selected is checked then it will not be applied to the children.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Keep in mind that this is not going to generate for you perfect looking tree varieties. This is going to jump start your creation process by spawning a set number of branches, onto your trunks. You then will need to offset the branches to get the perfect look, but this is a long jump from doing it all by hand as before.

Next update will contain Substance materials!

 

Liking the update .

The textures are excellent but i noticed rock_moss_sharp is missing its base color texture.

Hoping to spend some time getting forestvision into my scene over the next few days looks great.

 

Hi,

I really like the look of your work and am strongly considering buying it. I downloaded the ForestVision Lite package to try it out. I added the tree to my terrain as a terrrain tree and it didnt work (it was rotated on its side without branches). I assume this is due to the branches being children of the trunk. Is there a way to get your package to work with unity's terrain tree system? If I read correctly you have a tool to condense the tree down into one prefab, without children, does that solve it?

Thanks

 

Yes Forestvision trees, once you optimize them with my tool, are supported as terrain trees.

 

where are you even finding these other textures?! im not seeing anything with that name.

 

Just so everyone is aware, next update is going to require a more recent version of Unity. Probably 5.4, but I might just target 5.5.

I'll still keep as much as I can in 5.1, but I'm running into more and more issues being at such an old build of the engine. So new functionality will not be supported in 5.1 going forward.

Do any of you guys still run older versions?

 

there in your folder 07source/textures/grounds!

its actually mossyrocksharp but it is still missing the base color .

 

ah gotcha, I knew I wasnt crazy. I'll either track it down, or add in some new ones. Meh, I'll just add in new ones anyway.

All I'm gonna say is this next update is gonna be friggin huge.

 

Hopefully, the documentation will also get an update. I just bought the package and the Basic Tree Construction pdf needs an overhaul.

 

I open the ForestVision > Editor, and I don't see any thumbnails. I see a couple Shader errors in the console about FV_Mossy.

Shader error in 'ForestVision/FV_Mossy': failed to open source file: 'AtmosphericScattering.cginc' at line 88

and

Shader error in 'ForestVision/FV_Mossy': Unexpected identifier "SURFACE_SCATTER_COORDS". Expected one of: linear centroid nointerpolation noperspective sample '}' sampler sampler1D sampler2D sampler3D samplerCUBE sampler_state SamplerState SamplerComparisonState or a user-defined type at line 109

What's going on? I'm using Unity 5.5.0p4 and 5.6.0b7.

Also why are all the asset pivots in weird positions? Shouldn't trunks have their pivots at the base and likewise for branches for ease of positioning?

I'm checking out the flora and the scales and rotations are all over the place too. For example, the PinkFlowers every have -1 scale.

I reset the transforms on the PurpleVineFlowers and PinkFlowers. http://imgur.com/KhJc4K9

Are they supposed to be this different in scale?

 

@doq

As stated on page 1 of this forum, if you don't see any thumbnails, it is due to a Unity bug regarding how they handle imported assets and their metadata. You need to Reimport All to clear it up and get the thumbnails to show.

Regarding pivot positions, each of these assets do have their pivots in the correct place. Make sure that you are in Local Space, and using the Objects Pivot point. You can toggle Pivot with the Z key, and you can toggle Local Space with X. Doing this, you will see they all have correct pivots.

Regarding the scale and rotations, yes, some of them are off. I will go through and make sure they are all zeroed out.

Sorry for the inconvenience. The next update will be sooner, rather than later, and won't contain all that I want, as I will push this update out ASAP to resolve these issues, including a documentation update.

 

@AndyNeoman I found it. I'll add it to the update

 

Thanks for the info and quick reply!

 

@mcbauer I did a Reimport All and the thumbnails did not appear. But I did a Reimport again just on the ForestVision folder, and they finally appeared.

 

Unity said they were going to inform the developers about this bug, which I'm glad it turned out to be because I was going crazy trying to figure it out.

I'm glad you got it sorted out.

And thanks for pushing me to fix those issues. I;ve known about them but no one has said anything. It is an easy fix, just with the amount of assets I'm giving with this product its very time consuming.

 

FYI for my ForestVision peeps out there. My latest product is finally up on the store.

https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/82799

My PBR Texture Lib, for only $5, you get 50 materials, already setup so you just have to drag and drop.

Spent a lot of time getting this together but I think it's a pretty sweet collection of materials. As a nature guy, they are more geared towards nature, so a lot of grounds, rocky surfaces, etc, but there's some metals, and cobblestone paths and rock walls in there as well.

I'll probably add another 50 at some point to make it an even 100, but I'll also raise the price to $10, so if you're interested, get it while it's only 5!