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Planetary Terrain

Discussion in 'Assets and Asset Store' started by HenryV, Dec 4, 2013.

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  1. Anaes

    Anaes

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    I think that your shaders are broken when used with point lights because they do not generate tangents...

    Here is a quick and dirty fix for it. In TexturePlanet.shader, line 78-80, replace the vert() function with this one:

    Code (csharp):
    1.  
    2. void vert (inout appdata_full v, out Input o) {
    3.     v.tangent = float4(0,0,0,0);
    4.     // A general tangent estimation
    5.     float3 T1 = float3(1, 0, 1);
    6.     float3 Bi = cross(T1, v.normal);
    7.     float3 newTangent = cross(v.normal, Bi);
    8.     normalize(newTangent);
    9.     v.tangent.xyz = newTangent.xyz;
    10.     if (dot(cross(v.normal,newTangent),Bi) < 0)
    11.         v.tangent.w = -1.0f;
    12.     else
    13.         v.tangent.w = 1.0f;
    14. }          
    15.  
    I claim no credit for this - its a verbatim copy from the ATS shader.

    Cheers!
     
  2. angel_m

    angel_m

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    Posts:
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    Is the Gravity.cs script working with character controllers?
     
  3. BackwoodsGaming

    BackwoodsGaming

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    Hey Henry.. I was just looking at your project and I'm wondering if I can achieve what I'm looking for with it. I am just getting starting building an mmo world. I know your tool was probably originally built for a space type application, but I'm wondering if I could use it to lay out the planet to build my fantasy world on. Here is the thought process of what I am hoping to be able to do:

    1 - Use Planetary Terrain to build the planet. Lay out the continents / island areas and be able to save the continents as terrain maps which could then be used to populate with art assets.

    2 - Once the terrain maps are created, I am hoping I can then load them into something like voxeland in order to do some mini caves, natural bridges, mines, etc for my areas that would be available for testing/initial release.

    3 - Once I'm satisified with all the terrain, I would load each continent into a scene where I could then use the tools in Unity, Axis Game Factory, or another tool to place the art assets.

    4 - After all of my vegetation, buildings, pathways, ruins, etc are done I would then be able to start working on my mob spawning,etc..

    Each continent would be work on one at a time with others done as future expansions.

    I think I should be able to pull Planetary Terrain into that workflow if I'm understanding the product as long as I'm understanding what you are doing when you save meshes/prefabs in the video. After selecting an area on the planet and saving the meshes and prefabs, is that creating terrain files that I could then pull into other tools to add environmental details? Or does that process at least create height maps that could be then used in the other tools. And if so, I saw something mentioned about curved terrain. Would there be some sort of method to flatten it? (not flatten the terrain itself but the curved contour from pulling it from the planet)

    I looked at some other tools and a lot of then do infinite terrain.. But I want continents bordered by several squares of oceans for each of them. Yours is the first product that has given me that vision of being able to do that easily by painting onto the planet surface. Being new in game development, I want to start with an island about the size of Teldrassil in WoW or be Faydwer in EverQuest. But I want to have space to grow out from there. Which is why I want to have the planet planned out from the beginning. The world I have planned at the moment will have both a surface area and an Underworld. So an island of that size (doubled to account for underworld area beneath the surface) should be great to start with.

    Also, I noticed someone mention something about converting the world to a rectangular shape for a mini-map plugin. That would be awesome for creating world maps!

    At any rate, if you think Planetary Terrain can do what I'm looking for as far as building the planet and extracting my continents, let me know. If not I would appreciate any suggestions the community has to offer on what tool(s) I should be looking at!

    Thanks in advance for your response.
     
  4. exiguous

    exiguous

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    well, thats already public available not in the package itself but by customer contribution.
    the initial code can be found here and ZJP has made a more convenient version here. but note that those changes must be applied again when the package is updated thats why i put it in an extension method to be independent from package updates.
    but i would find it usefull when this feature would be included in the package itself.
     
  5. BackwoodsGaming

    BackwoodsGaming

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    Updating the code wouldn't be a problem but extension would be better so wouldn't have to. If it looks like this project will work for me, I'll probably start out with your code and eventually maybe work on ZJPs to see if I can make it into an extension. Are you pulling the map in for a world map view in addition to a mini map of what is close to the player? Or you just doing the player on-screen mini map? And from your time using Planetary Terrain, do you think I can accomplish what I described above?

    Thanks for the info and the links to the code!
     
  6. exiguous

    exiguous

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    my code creates a map of the whole world. if you just need a portion of it either create a very high resolution worldmap and show only a part of it or modify the code so it just queries the part you need (around the player fe). not that until now the generated map only contains the height information. the texture blending is done in the shader and i had not yet time to work on a solution for this. it seems HenryV is working on a feature for a new version which would allow the direct retrieval of textures. so if your minimap is not high priority feature i would suggest to simply wait what is done here.

    well, i think this package is the closest you can get for what you need. it may not suit your needs entirely but its still a very good base to start of and modify it for your special needs. i have not tried the object placement yet but it seems HenryV is also working on this. so your choice would be to do everything yourself or purchase this package and see how far you get with it. and as a customer you could suggest features you require or do it like others and implement them and make them available to the "community"/HenryV.
    afaik there are only 2 projects generating terrain with high detail and the other one has no manual terrain editing, no mesh saving, no objects on surface and is basically dead. so to me it appears you don't really have a choice ;).
     
  7. ZJP

    ZJP

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  8. BackwoodsGaming

    BackwoodsGaming

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    I was actually more concerned about world map creation at the current moment. Minimap will be further down the road and I can probably accomplish that with assets already available since my intent is to serve final terrain from a terrain tool that supports Voxel so I can setup my mining areas and do a bit more landscape tweaking. So sounds like this is perfect.. :)

    Sounds great.. Although I'm still a little concerned about getting continents separated into smaller terrain areas which can be pulled into other tools for my voxel terrain. I don't really want to steer this project away from its' main purpose, which appears to be more space exploration based. But it still looks like it might be my best bet to initially create terrain on a planetary scale, create view from space images of my planet for use on website, and generate an overall world map. Just need a confirmation that I can export my continent heightmaps for import into a voxel editor and I'll be ready to grab this asset next Wednesday when I get paid. (Hate the whole building a world on a shoestring budget thing.. The only child in me wants to play with it NOW! rofl)

    Thanks for the suggestion! I actually already have that in my budget for February! lol
     
  9. exiguous

    exiguous

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    i have no clue about voxels and as soon as i read the word "voxels" in any game description i stop reading and close the tab.

    i'm quite sure HenryV has no intentions to turn this into a voxel "engine". afaik there is some on the asset store but i have no clue about its capabilities.

    i can't confirm that as i don't know what the voxel editor imports and if it is capable of spherical terrain. note that all heightmaps you export are distorted and have a much higher resolution at the poles. if you export smaller patches this problem still occurs but on a smaller scale. i don't know if you can map the spherical coordinates to your voxel coordinates properly. but i think all those things depend more on the voxel side than on planetary terrain package. this can create procedural spherical planets, manually modify them and with the given code can export global heightmaps. what you make out of it is up to you ;).
     
  10. BackwoodsGaming

    BackwoodsGaming

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    Hmmmm... Some food for thought.. My main reason for looking at voxel based terrain options is a different spin on mining. At this point all of the mmorpgs that I have played toss nodes throughout the world on the surface for miners to mine.. My thoughts were to to have prospecting sites available throughout the world where players could stake a claim in order to mine and the voxel system combined with their purchase of the claim would allow them to dig their mine. They would need to use timbers to create braces and such. Possible events could be mine collapse for improperly braced mineshafts, mine being invaded and possibly overrun by npcs, etc. The game plan is overall a fantasy type game but I wanted to throw in some interesting spins for those who enjoy crafting and harvesting. All just conceptual at this point. Maybe I would just need to convert a square unit on the map in locations where I would want prospecting sites and only use voxel terrain in those squares. But I'd still need the terrain contour generated in order to match the surrounding units.

    From the tools that I've looked at for voxel, I'm looking at probably using TerraVol and from going out and looking at the docs, it looks like I can implement within existing maps so the whole terrain heightmap thing may be a non-issue. I'm also looking at Relief Terrain Pack for overall texturing blends/texture detail/lighting and I have Axis Game Factory that I'm in the process of creating bundles of all of my art assets for which will allow for easy population of vegetation and trees and then I'm planning on using PlayEditor for more detailed, section by section object placement such as rocks, architecture, miscellaneous doodads.. Once I have my first player area created and detailed, I'll look into environmental effects (weather, water, waterfall, geysers/steam, etc) and then start working on creature spawning and UI..

    As far as the terrain curvature. How noticeable is it? Since I'm looking at having the maps render and then pulling the different terrain maps into different scenes, I'm assuming I could build one of the larger maps since players will only be loading their continent and view distance will be limited to the unit the player is in and surrounding units (squares or whatever they are referred as.. I'm new to the whole game client design arena. Hopefully I am making sense.. lol)
     
  11. BES

    BES

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    Feb 26, 2013
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    See I have been trying for a bit ....but I cant seem to get ANY characters to walk like this on ANY planets I make with Space for Unity, Space Graphics toolkit, Etherea1 and Planetary Terrain ..

    This is pretty much exactly what I want ... but starting from space...landing on the planet ..then walking around on it like your web player demo..

    Any chance you can tell me what im doing wrong?

    I place the character on the surface....try to walk ...character gets stuck in the terrain...bounces around ....even falls off into space... it never walks around perfectly on the surface like that..
     
  12. DevJim

    DevJim

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    Dec 23, 2013
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    You will need to code your own rigidbody character i believe, and apply the gravity script provided.
    To stop the character aligning with every slope you'll need to add something like this to gravity.cs

    Code (csharp):
    1. Vector3 up = transform.position - planet.position;
    2.        
    3. Vector3 LookAt = Vector3.Cross(up, -transform.right) + up;
    4.        
    5. transform.LookAt(LookAt, up);
     
  13. BES

    BES

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    Ok thanks ...I been trying to use the UFPS character since it should have been already set up to handle things like this ..but it doesn't seem to be working ....so I guess ill go back to school and make my own custom character ..
     
  14. blackanub1s

    blackanub1s

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    Dec 12, 2013
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    Hi,

    Adapt according to your needs.

    https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/45391150/CharacterMotor.cs
    https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/45391150/PhysicsCharacterMotor.cs
    https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/45391150/PlatformCharacterController.cs
     
  15. BES

    BES

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  16. Lordinarius

    Lordinarius

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  17. Localguy65

    Localguy65

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    Feb 10, 2013
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    Has anyone experience problems with the planet color as Magenta no "Material"?

    I imported the asset and Created a Planet.

    Totally magenta.

    I get a bunch of errors about missing color properites and texture properties... I've re-imported many times.

    Any Ideas,
    Thanks
    Eric
     
  18. DevJim

    DevJim

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    Disabling DX 11 is all that's needed in this case.
     
  19. Localguy65

    Localguy65

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    Perfect... Thanks!!
     
  20. HenryV

    HenryV

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    Hey guys and sorry for the slow responses lately! I have been busy with my other duties unfortunately not related to this project, but the update is still coming along slowly but steadily. More information about that will come along later!

    I have applied a fix that sets the surface layer to same as the parent planet layer.

    Hey, sorry for the late response! Your project does sound very ambitious technically. I think you might be best off starting directly with the voxels, that way you could have the caves and overhangs naturally, but of course it would require some kind of planetary voxel terrain system. How Planetary Terrain works is that it samples 3D-noise and derives the planet surface height maps from that and then there is a modifier layer that the user can adjust to create higher and lower areas. So it might be better to directly use that 3D-noise data to create your voxel surfaces instead of using intermediate height maps.

    At least I think it is possible to create the continents that you described using just Planetary Terrain but I have to say I am not sure how easy it would be to load the data in to a voxel engine. But it would be very interesting to see if you make progress with this!

    The curvature depends entirely from the radius of the planet. I have been testing with radius of 50,000 units lately and the curvature is not visible.

    Hey! Yeah the atmosphere shader isn't that advanced and I have plans to make it better. Some users have successfully used 3rd party shaders for now if the current atmosphere didn't suit their needs. Thanks for the references, I have been looking at those for inspiration. The planet surface does receive real-time shadows, of course you it will depend on your graphics settings how far they will be displayed. I think they should cast shadows as well, but I haven't tried a scene that big that there would be planetary shadows.. Sounds like a interesting thing to test though.
     
  21. Anaes

    Anaes

    Joined:
    Mar 21, 2013
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    For those that create the planets programmatically, you may discover that if you switch scenes that load planets, the planets will display properly only the first time, then in all subsequent loads the geometry will not be applied. This is caused by a bug in the ThreadScheduler class. There is a quick fix - again only if you are switching scenes, it works in a single scene:

    Add the following to void Awake() in ThreadScheduler.cs:
    Code (csharp):
    1.  
    2. DontDestroyOnLoad(this);
    3.  
    This will preserve the ThreadScheduler object across scene changes and it will be able to schedule the mesh calculation/application.

    Cheers!
     
  22. _Simmo

    _Simmo

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    Oct 20, 2013
    Posts:
    17
    Heya

    I'm thinking of purchasing this asset and I had a few questions to see if this is right for me - at first I was worried it would be overkill for what I need but it seems to be really scale-able and simple to use, and why re-invent the wheel? :p

    1- Is it possible to generate/randomise every parameter at run-time? Including colours and planet size? Ideally within certain ranges and rule-sets, but the most important thing is randomised terrain type and terrain colours.

    2- Extension to previous question: randomly picking from a bunch of pre-defined parameters to get still random but much more controlled results? e.g. Terrain type dictates which colours to choose from. Basically: is it simple/possible to set generation parameters at runtime from external custom scripts that randomise according to a rule-set?

    3- How difficult would it be to change the shading to be faceted per triangle (i.e. http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/x/d-bl...kground-creative-faceted-crystal-30395247.jpg )? I understand it requires split vertices and stuff which is probably just changing the mesh generation code, but I figured I would ask as I don't know how mesh generation is implemented here (I've played around with very simple mesh generation in Unity but I'm still pretty new to it)

    4- Related to the question above, would doing colour per quad or tri be feasible? Simplest thing I can think of is nearest-neighbour/point filtering on the noise generated texture itself - is this possible?

    This asset looks like exactly what I need and I'm pretty sure I'm going to buy it regardless of the answer to these :D I'm sure I could figure out these things but I wanted to ask just to be sure. Amazing looking asset :)

    Cheers!
     
    Last edited: Jan 25, 2014
  23. lsgheero

    lsgheero

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    Any thoughts on how to use tool to make a realistically sized and detailed earth?
     
  24. Stan-R

    Stan-R

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    Aug 19, 2012
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    Hi All,

    Has anyone else had problems with getting shadows working on the planets? I've narrowed it down to an issue with the TexturedPlanet shader. I replaced it with a diffuse shader and shadows worked fine (the surface of the planet didn't however). I've tried both the shaders that came with the package originally and the updated ones posted previously in this thread, both had the same effect. Additionally the shadows that the trees are casting on themselves are showing thru the terrain, as though the terrain is transparent to the shadows, but shadows only.

    Any ideas would be appreciated. Thanks.
     
  25. blackanub1s

    blackanub1s

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    Dec 12, 2013
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    21
    Hi,

    I try unsuccessfully to create an atmosphere with clouds generated procedurally, style "no-man's-sky" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRpDn5qPp3s).

    I tried several projects (NUAJ, Unisky ...), but none appropriate.

    Does anyone have an idea how to proceed ?

    Thanks
     
  26. Chuckalicious

    Chuckalicious

    Joined:
    Jul 28, 2012
    Posts:
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    What I have done is make the planet small 100 or so....as the ship approaches, I reduce the ship speed and apply that to the sizing of the planet. It's an optical elusion but avoids floating point errors and allows me to display planets that appear very far away. I use the spherecast from the planet to detect the player coming into range. I would love to hear what others have done ;-)
     
  27. Chuckalicious

    Chuckalicious

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    First thank you all for this very enlightening thread. Great topic! I was wondering if any of you have advice, research links, code example, ...anything that would allow me to apply noise values consistently around the sphere.

    Background: I create procedural mesh cube (6 planes each position transformed to form a cube. Each plane is save into a collection for later reference) and normalize vertices to 'Spherefy'. So now I have a procedurally created sphere. The process of modifying the mesh is all done on background threads. The next step is to take the sphere mesh and generate noise for the texture mapping using LibNoise ported to Unity. From this texture, I can create the height mapping....here is where I'm blocked.

    Example 1:
    I try to add a texture (made from noise or imported asset) use texture_2d.getpixel and apply the returned float value as height to each vertices. It ends up tearing the mesh at the seams. I have used a nice algorithm, from the 'Procedural Examples' asset, to identify the edges. By not applying heights to the edges I stopped the tears (tearing...lol, that too :>) Anyway, this leads to issues with how to 'blend' the height values on those edges, in a sense averaging the heights so those vertices can be lifted in alignment with everything else... well, my efforts in this did not work out. I need advice from you pros.

    Example 2:
    If I try to just generate noise and apply this float value for each vertices (no texture used...just noise applied directly to the mesh), I get a nice result on the front and back, but all other sides are not applying the float values correctly. I get elongated deformations as if only the x or y values are applied. Hope this makes sense. If anyone has any advice...code to read or article to research and study...I would be forever indebt to you.

    I know I could just purchase the asset, and most likely I will, but I really want to learn this and understand everything. It's a great exercise.


    Thanks so much!
     
  28. aubergine

    aubergine

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    Sep 12, 2009
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    Hello people, i finally finished my shaders for this package, it includes:
    scattered atmosphere (clouds is a simple texture layer)
    scattered ground (doesnt do normal mapping yet, it will be in a future update)
    scattered realtime reflective/refractive water
    scattered space objects (moon, sun)
    with smooth transition from space to ground level.

    and they all work on SM2.0 yet.

    I will submit the package to assetstore sometime next week, i was wondering what price range would be acceptable?
     
  29. exiguous

    exiguous

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    could you please upload a webplayer to see them in action? what "parameters" do they provide to tweak the appearance?

    do the clouds throw shadows on the ground (and possible other objects)? are the clouds somehow animated?

    how far in the future ? ;)

    for the price its hard to tell without seeing it. if quality is "stunning" and the named "issues" are adressed/added i would pay up to 20 or 30 $ for it.

    HenryV, any news about the update? rough ETA?
     
  30. aubergine

    aubergine

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    Cant upload a webplayer yet, it does let you chose a light source as "sun" and sun power, atmosphere density coefficient and generic atmosphere colors for horizon, zenith..etc color calculations. Other variables are auto calculated based on standart scattering calculations.

    No, and i never thought of that, but now that you mention it, would be easy to add although wont be accurate.

    Thanks for the price input, ill consider it.

    EDIT: I forgot to mention, these shaders are PRO only. Ray calculations use depth map instead of too many extra sky sphere vertices. Also HDR is used.
     
    Last edited: Feb 12, 2014
  31. softrare

    softrare

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    Is it possible to implement gravity/colliders? Does it perform well if you have multiple planets with gravity (like 10) in the same scene?
     
  32. blackanub1s

    blackanub1s

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    exiguous +1 : if quality is "stunning" i would pay up to 20 or 30 $ for it.
     
  33. Glaswyll

    Glaswyll

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    103
    Is there a way to paint textures separately from the mesh? I would like to be able to create a variety of landscape details. Right now, unless I'm doing something wrong which is very possible, if you look at the planet from the right angles, the height based texture separation is very obvious.

    Additionally, considering most earth like planets have a wide variety of climates, is it possible to use more than 4 textures on a planet? I would like to have the ability to have some areas be temperate and others be arid and others be snowy.

    Thanks in advance!

    Here are some examples of what I'd like to achieve:

    $Unity-terrain.jpg

    $terrain_unity_world_machine_3.jpg

    $terrain_triplanar_iso.jpg

    $Terrain_6.jpg
     
  34. aubergine

    aubergine

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    Attached are some photos of clouds test for scattering.
    Used a normal sphere planet for testing purposes.
     

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  35. aubergine

    aubergine

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    There are some artifacts in the 3rd picture in the above post where the sun is visible, thats because my testing computer is ancient and those are precision artifacts.

    EDIT: This is all SM2.0 and only one pass for each atmosphere, clouds and planet itself.
    It is possible to improve this alot more if speed is not concern.

    Still the main reason the quality of the clouds suck in these photos is the texture is very low res and the test planets radius is only 10, so you see the curvature. If you dont see the curvature of the planet, it is much better.
     

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  36. aubergine

    aubergine

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    Henry, please tidy up code and put it under namespaces for the next update. It messes up stuff.
     
  37. GregMeach

    GregMeach

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    THAT should be an asset store requirement!
     
  38. exiguous

    exiguous

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    i don't want to be pessimistic or negative but HenryV's last forum activity was 3 weeks ago. i fear this asset takes the route of abandoning like the other similar one. it's a pity and definitely not good customer treatment.
     
  39. blackanub1s

    blackanub1s

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    I feel the very same thing. :(

    When is it that your project will be available?
     
  40. angel_m

    angel_m

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    +1 :sad:
     
  41. ZJP

    ZJP

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    This is why i will ask for a refund if the next release does not solve the collision pb i've found. Etherea and this!!. That enought. I do not use Planetary for several weeks. I went back to an older version of Ethereal that i optimized for my project and Unity 4.3.x. Better result. Much better.
     
    Last edited: Feb 19, 2014
  42. HenryV

    HenryV

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    Apr 25, 2012
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    Hey everyone and sorry that my response time has sucked lately. Don't worry, I still plan to release the update but for now I would need to ask some more patience from you. I am neck deep in a game project as well and haven't been able to work on this as much that it really deserves. I hope you guys understand and I will try to find more time soon!

    There are so many use-cases for this kind of thing and it is hard to try to make it suitable for everyone with all kinds of projects. Someone needs AAA-quality detailed terrain, someone else wants cute tiny planets for a mobile game and so forth. I do my best to cater to everyone, but I have made it for my specifications and because of that it will probably always be a compromise. To really get the perfect solution for your project, you will need to tailor it to match your specific requirements and my hope is that this package as it is would act as a good starting point!

    Thanks for your support and understanding!

    (I will answer individual questions separately)
     
  43. aubergine

    aubergine

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    Sep 12, 2009
    Posts:
    2,878
    Dont mind specific requests Henry, there are always people which ask for more and which is not done before in a very short time with "fantastic quality" for such a low price.
    You have already delivered what the package promised. And i think its worth the money i spent. People know they should add improvements for their specific needs themselves.
    However, you also have to help us do this by tidying up your code, make it readable, using logical namespaces and most importantly terrain rendering speed.
     
  44. exiguous

    exiguous

    Joined:
    Nov 21, 2010
    Posts:
    1,749
    i agree with aubergine. you can't make a package which supports all possible customer needs/requirements out of the box. there are some good suugestions which would enhance the package overall but you don't need to include "exotic" wishes. in the end you decide what fits your vision of the product. (btw craters are still a good suggestion which helps everyone ;) ).

    i also agree.

    i agree again. and one important thing for beeing able to adjust the package to personal needs is comments in the code and the shaders. if the code is cryptic most of your customers will not be able to do what they need and molest you with requests, if it is well explained chances are higher that they are able to help themselfes.

    HenryV, i don't know if you are aware of the other planetary terrain rendering package (name omitted) and its dolorous demise. the author of it has given up the project and refuses to provide support and dire fixes. so the package is dead and i think he will not sell many in the future. the customers are pissed of and there was "euphoric" hope when your package appeared. but its sad to see that you are also busy with other things and ignore questions for 3 weeks. i don't know about your game project and if the sales of your product justify the work you have put into it. but i know for sure that bad customer support is the death of a business. you have released the package and some?/many?/few? have purchased it so you also have a little "responsibility" for them. this package cannot serve everyone out of the box and thats fine. but this no excuse to deny support and further development. i think there is an active and interested tiny "community" here and some people are willing to contribute and improve the package and share some stuff for free. but seeing your inactivity demotivates them. just some food for thought.
     
  45. angel_m

    angel_m

    Joined:
    Nov 4, 2005
    Posts:
    1,160
    I agree with "you can't make a package which supports all possible customer needs/requirements out of the box", but it seems as the package has some problems related to collisions and rendering performance and they are fundamental by the nature of this asset, so I hope you will fix or improve these. ;)
     
  46. Glaswyll

    Glaswyll

    Joined:
    Feb 13, 2014
    Posts:
    103
    Yeah I hope my question wasn't taken as a criticism of the package, it's phenomenal. I was just curious if it was possible to do more detailed texture painting on the output. If not I'll find some other way. =)
     
  47. tomaszek

    tomaszek

    Joined:
    Jun 18, 2009
    Posts:
    3,862
    Hi,

    Last week I've been working on RTP shading power that might be injected into Planetary Terrain (and any planet model that meets some small requirements on uv mapping and vertex color treatment). Of course we can not shade well a planet object with standard RTP approach, because we talk about sphere not flat ground. Additionaly planets need a bit of special care :). That's why I've decided push it further than only simple triplanar mapping.

    Here are results. First of all planet must be uv mapped like spheremap for global maps like color global map, normal globalmap. I tweaked a bit a few scripts of HenryV and can tell you what to do to make it RTP compliant. Anyway would be better if HenryV introduce such modifications in next PlanetaryTerrain update.

    I handle fog special way - we can define atmosphere depth so that fog might apper on lower parts (layered fog). Additionaly fog color depends on lighting to fit it with atmosphere scattering which I haven't put in screenshots below (screens with good starfield and atmo / clueds sphere around planet could look realy gorgeous I'd say as I see Aubergine's attempts above). Anyway - all about rendering planets is not only making them look decent at distance, but to manage large scalability - from the very close ground level to be detailed up to space.

    What you see below is proof of concept that (esp. for far perspective) planet doesn't need to be much tesellated to look detailed - due to perlin normalmap and global normalmap+global colormap applied. More detail would be introduced by dynamic planet mesh LOD levels.

    You can see snow coverage that can be driven from height above "sea level". Additionaly we can boost it on polars and reduce on equator. Snow used is RTP snow so this is highly adjustable (removeing snow from mountain slopes, etc.)

    I put there vertical mapping - canyons look much better at mid distance then.

    Generaly coverage can be driven like it's now in Henry's package (by height) + additionaly by slope (for example rocks on steep slopes) and derived from global map colormatching (for example global colormap greens can be mapped to a grass layer coverage).

    One more thing - using complementary lights allows to not loose bumpmapping at unlit part of planet - there are some screenshots showing this (dark blue ones).

    OK, let's stop talking. It's showtime :)























    Tomorrow I'll make some screens of Earth with another feature - emission mask taken from global colormap alpha channel - thiswill be useful for unlit part of planet which emits light (city lights in case of Earth or lights from any Alien Light Emitting Installations Placed On The Ground :)

    ATB, Tom
     
    Last edited: Feb 28, 2014
  48. Glaswyll

    Glaswyll

    Joined:
    Feb 13, 2014
    Posts:
    103
    This is super close to what I've been looking for. I was already planning on buying RTP, but now it's definite. I can't wait to put this into the pipeline!
     
  49. Frantico

    Frantico

    Joined:
    Jun 1, 2013
    Posts:
    16
    absolutely great work tom, thats exactly what I have been looking for and I already own your great rtp so this really makes my day :) thank you for your great work and of course great work henry too :) Please both of you continue to work on making this as tight as possible because this is really good.
     
  50. Deleted User

    Deleted User

    Guest

    very promising stuff, looking forward to RTP3.1 + Planetary Terrain!!
     
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