[NEW PATCH] uNature - GPU, Interactable Grass. Interactable Trees, MultiThreading and more!

Absolutely, will reupload in 5 mins, checking the android version now

 

Awesome. Also, is there a performance cost for using this new technique?

 

I think it looks much better and more natural. Big vote for with! Awesome idea i must say.

 

I presume it will help the look of touch bending too?

 

I think they are good for different situations. I personally prefer without, as it seems that you get the grass swivel when you turn around.

 

Nope, not at all
New compare pictures will be up soon!

Happy you like it! and yes, I think it should help quite a bit

Uhm I will make this as a toggle

 

I wonder what it will look like with HBAO but so far I would keep it as it really adds some depth instead just being a plain green field.

 

Brilliant. I cant wait to get working on this now. Looks like an amazing update!

 

I enjoy both. I like the with, alot more than without.

 

It definitely is hehe

Thank you for your feedback! just added a toggle so you can choose between them in either case

 

With the normals rotation on, of course. It is a serious improvement. Great idea.
I suppose that is done in the shader. Is it possible to add a bit of randomness to the normals rotation angle, so that if I use the same grass it might get rid of tiling and visible repetitions.
I would even say that maybe it can vary based on distance to the camera. I like it better closer to the camera. Adding color variation it's not flat anymore. In the distance needs a bit more "rotation", and/or color variation, and maybe a bit darker.
Anyway, for the first time I can say that I'm happy with the look of the uNature's grass.
Looking forward to get my hands on it.

 

Hehe happy you like it
And well - it's based on the rotation of the grass it self, so it won't help much

 

I'm going to go with WITH. That's my naive impression.

To me, the 2nd version (WITHOUT) looks very artificial.

 

Thank you for your feedback! super appreciated!



On another note - uNature V2.1 (changed it from .0.5 to .1 as its just too full of changes lol... I will make sure to make the next .0.5 with less features haha)

If you want to test it before submission message me with your invoice. Note that I will only be submitting tomorrow evening (basically 24 hours from now) in order to get some testing from you guys. so if you find bugs make sure to let me know and I will fix it asap before submission.

Heading to sleep now, so I will catch up on the PMs tomorrow

 

I hate to tell you this, but v2.1 is super slow. I converted a terrain with 3 grass types from Unity grass to uNature and I went from 60 fps to 11 fps. This is with touch bending disabled, btw. I was actually getting 23-26 fps for the Unity grass even on the Wii U. So this new version can't even do half the fps on my desktop as the WIi U did with standard Unity grass. That said, I'm sure there are parameter tweaks and density settings that could get performance up, but we're talking about an apples to apples comparison. I would expect a performance increase just from the conversion and then I could improve from there by tweaking settings.

[EDIT]
The only thing that I can think of that might be wrong that could fix performance would be lighting. I'm using Precomputed Realtime GI. Are there issues with this approach for uNature? It seems to work rather well for Unity grass.

 

With +. It has more detail in my opinion. Without looks too uniform.

 

Uhm thank you very much for the testing, will check it today, I must have made a mistake

Thanks for your feedback!

 

Getting reports on uNature crashing and creating issues. Will adress it and resend it for you guys to test

 

I had a couple of issues which may have been due to some remnants of the old version. I have only briefly tested due to life getting in the way but initial impressions once i got it working are very positive.

Looks much better to me and the distance and fade changes look much improved. I have updated a few camera effects so until i get a bit more time I cannot do proper like for like testing but has anything been changed with the resolution? The grass seems less edgy but again that is an initial impression.

Overall think it is much better so far .

 

I think WITH looks much better!! It breaks up the unatural uniformity which it has otherwise.

But I would suggest having it as an option to turn it off for these users who prefer it without.

 

Yea been hearing lots of those, going to address it and see what I can do, super weird.

Thanks! happy you liked it so far!, the grass shader itself was overall improved so it might be the reason it looks better
You can also now use normal maps and AO maps on the grass shader (switch to the advanced shader on the prototype editor)

Thanks for your feedback! and yep! made it a toggle

 

Am I the only one seeing massive performance drops? I know I don't have a beast for a computer so my performance difference is probably more significant than others, but are others seeing performance gains with this latest version? I'm wondering now if it might be my video card drivers. Unless others are also seeing performance issues.

For reference, my computer specs are as follows:

Windows 7 64 bit
AMD Phenom II X4 945 3.0 GHz
8GB RAM
nVidia 640GT 4GB

 

The grass is flickering and somehow gained about 2-3 feet of height after copying from terrain. It flickers from the original grass to the Unature.

 

I've got better performance than before although I have only painted a 512*512 area and have not copied from terrain yet. I will copy my whole terrain grass layout and give an update.

 

Uhm haven't yet tested it as I just got back from a very long day an hour ago and heading out in few anyways,
I will test the version more and see what I can find

Uhm grass flickering? what do you mean?

That sounds great lmk what are the results

 

The one I tested was a 1024x1024 area which I planted grass using Landscape Builder. It pretty much covered the entire terrain with grass except steep inclines. I had detail distance set to 128 in Unity grass and was getting 60 fps on desktop.Then same grass in uNature was 11 fps. No touch bending, but LOD enabled.

 

I see, going to check it out first thing tomorrow, thank you very much for the feedback!

 

I'm just copying across a 2k*2k terrain with 8 varieties of grass. Will let you know.

Edit. There is a slow down with the copied grass. I am seeing 46m tris. Im not sure if this is because I copied from Terrain composer or just having more grass. On the profiler the culprit is Material.SetPassUncached which is accounting for 25% of all cycles and 6ms to process.

There is no real need for me to have quite so much grass though so I will tone it down and see. I am getting 30fps when I was getting 60fps with normal grass. I have touch bending activated.

The grass is great though, possibly the best active grass I have seen in a game. using 10-12 varieties of tropical ferns and grass. It looks amazing and I will definitely be using it, just a case of how much coverage I squeeze in at this stage along with all the other things I need.

 

OK, so I'm not the only one.

But losing 50% performance, why would you use it? The whole point of this plugin is to improve grass performance not lose it. I so much want to use this, but not if I lose performance. I've had such high hopes for this.

 

It only seems to effect the performance when I copy from Terrain Composer and go way overboard on amount. The look is very important to what I want to make and also the touch bending.

To be fair I agree I want it to be every bit as performant as possible and look and animate well but there is always going to be some compromises.

I am confident it will be up for the task (in fact I think it will even be on a mobile port when i get there).

I hope the paint tool gets a bit more robust because I get issues with my system slowing down even after removing the grass - so it's got bugs to iron out for sure, but it is pretty early in it's introduction.

 

Thanks Andy happy you like new shader changes

The version I sent out is a test version, the results are not final and issues like that are to be expected. I will have a look and fix these issues. That's why I sent it to you guys before submission

 

Actually, no. From the beginning Elroy has said this will perform better than Unity grass, period. This was not a compromise solution. Perhaps touch bending, a new feature, might compromise slightly, but pure grass rendering should far exceed Unity grass rendering. That's been the goal all along as far as I can tell. Or did I miss something?

 

I understand. I just think others are not expecting this to outperform Unity grass and I don't think that's right. Hasn't it always been the goal to outperform Unity grass in every case?

 

As I said, its a test version. optimization issues are also considered as bugs and will be looked at. The main goals in uNature were:

1) Fix the loading spikes
2) Provide better shaders
3) Give great performance and possibly surpassing unity's performance
4) Give much more features

The performance isn't final and the reason I sent it to you before submission was so you guys can test it and I will fix it. Therefor I will fix the performance issues.

 

Hmmm. I guess I misunderstood this part then. I always thought it was the goal to outperform Unity grass. And, yes, I understand it's a test version. I wasn't attacking you. I hope you realize that. I just thought it was odd that others were complacent with a huge performance drop in exchange for touch bending and nicer looking grass. And I know performance is not final, but despite that others were making comments like it was just fine as-is. I hope that makes more sense now.

 

You've misunderstood my meaning. Is there not compromises with unity grass? I actually fully agree it should outperform unity grass and I think it will.

What I really want to do is test like for like before making a full review as I feel copying from terrain doesn't do that (although i think it should). The grass is always in rows, which leads me to change density, spread etc.. not sure what effect it has but increase poly count.

I also still get a bug that slows down unity after using uNature for example i press play now and it takes 20 seconds, no idea why but I think it might be to do with grass maps. The same on exit, this is my biggest gripe at the moment because it slows my whole dev down. We are testing a brand new asset though so have to expect that or at least hang tight until a bit later down the line.

 

Interesting. So just copying over from terrain isn't apples to apples like I thought? It looked the same to me as far as density, amount of grass, etc. Now I don't know what to think. I don't know how to get a proper comparison then.

 

No no don't get me wrong I wasn't offended, I am through mobile so I am writing shortly

But yes, that's the goal at the end of the day - will work on that today and tomorrow and see what I find about that aspect

 

Awesome. I'm finally getting close to combination of tools that should improve my outdoor game performance so I can do what I need to do on the Wii U and maintain 30 fps. uNature is definitely a part of the pipeline along with Alt Trees, Terrafirma, and now considering Mega Splat. If it all comes together, I'll really be happy.

 

That's my take on it, my grass is completely different. I have to increase spread to 2, change density, there was other settings but they've gone in this version.

I'm going to try and hand paint as much as possible and flick between my grass on terrain and get a proper comparison.

 

I'm definitely interested in what results you get.

 

Okay after some research I was able to find some bugs with the new rendering system and there's indeed an issue there.
Going to fix it this week and send the version out again.
Sorry for the inconvinience and I am happy that it was found early.

Big thanks goes to @turboscalpeur as well who tested his assets with uNature and found some leads to the bug.

 

I was wondering has anyone tried uNature with a lod or occlusion asset and had any success?

I'm not sure its even possible but thought I would ask.

 

2.1 comes with a built in culling system

 

Almost done with the fixes. Got basically 1 thing left and then I will send it out again

 

Sounds great.

 

Okay guys another note - Adding some cool enchantments to the rendering system now to make it a lot faster, I have to delay the release of the new version for just a bit longer, but it will be worth it. Implementing something very very interesting now

 

Thank you for all the work youve been doing on it!

 

Ok its been 12 hours spill the beans Elroy

 

Just a bit more I want to get a bit more progress into it