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

If we have to wait any longer the grass on our terrains will grow on it's own...

 

Hahaha so sorry for all the wait :/

 

Note that you can still get this version without the last improvement by messaging me with your invoice, I dont want to delay any of your plans. It might not perform as it will after this new feature, but it works good

 

When you get new ideas to improve uNature, are you updating your trello page the same time so we can see what came to your mind?

I am always curious on which improvements you are working

 

So will this new feature yield performance improvements? Ideally, it would be nice to have a minimum value for grass instead of allowing users to disable it for performance.

 

Oh sorry forgot to update it, wanted to do it yesterday and fell asleep
Going to do it now

uhm what do you mean?

 

Hi EE, it's exited to see uNature finally get released.
I'm using mapMagic for infinite terrain generation in runtime.
How do I integrate uNature with it?
I only see a checkbox in the extension panel, and I checked it.
But there is no documentation explaining how to use uNature with it, any tutorials?

 

Hey!
The integrations in V2.0 doesn't work properly, V2.1 fixes it partially and V2.1.5 will fix it completely.

I will make integration tutorial when I submit V2.1 to the store
(Should be in the next few days)

 

Gald to hear! Look forward to it!

 

Hahah sorry I was kinda musing lol 'cause we give the user the option to disable grass. Ideally, with uNature we want to be able to have a minimum grass range (around 50m).

 

Ohh lol, yea definitely. You can set it up all the way from 1 to 512

 

Hi Elroy, How does the new asset dynamic nature fit in with uNature. Is it the same thing added to some extra goodies like trees/grasses or is it an addition to uNature.

I'm really interested in the moss coverage option but i dont need grass shader (obviously lol) trees,rocks or grasses. Im not sure it would be worth it just for moss coverage of everything and wondered on your take. Sorry to ask here but I could not get the answer I needed over there.

 

Uhmm the integration of uNature and Dynamic Nature is that it allows you to have snow over the uNature grass, it's pretty cool. I am not 100% sure what it does outside of the uNature integration though as I haven't had enough time to play with it. I do know that it has some cool blending shader for the terrain though. Feel free to ask @NatureManufacture for more information

 

Dynamic Nature is separated pack which contains a) enviro assets b) shaders c) shaders which support systems like uNature. You could always contact me by skype and I will show you what you will be able to do with it and Dynamic Nature custom shaders. More info at priv.

 

Hey guys,

Okay so just finishing up the update now, decided to delay the new feature to the next version - V2.1.5 as it would take too much time now as I am going through a caffeine "rehab" which has a side effect which is a lose of around ~70% of productivity.

But other than that fixed many of the issues people had with the latest version I sent out to you guys - V2.0.9, so will send a new version most likely today and submit it as well

 

Release candidate is fully done and ready for submission. If you want to get it before submission, message me with your invoice. This will most likely be the last version as I will be submitting it today

Next up on the roadmap is V2.1.5 and I made sure to make it less busy so it wont take as much time
https://trello.com/b/I4kqOpDC/unature

 

Good to know the new update is on the way, is the new version compatible with MapMagic now?

 

V2.1 is compatible with dynamic terrains of map magic but isn't as good as I would want it to be tbh.
If you arent generating them on runtime then uNature will do the work perfectly. but if you are, it will still work but I can't guarantee how good it will be (It will be fully done in V2.1.5 which is the next version and will take much faster to complete)

 

I see, I'll wait for v2.1.5, take your time
About what time do you think 2.1.5 will be released?

 

Currently there's not much left to it. I will be focusing on tutorials for uNature and uConstruct on Sunday and Monday and from then I will be focusing on the rest. I hope to get that specific feature (Map magic fix) done next week, but can't guarantee

 

Take your time, we are not in a hurry
Tutorials are quite important, love to see them come out.
Eager to know more features of uNature, we are planting massive forests on our islands.
BTW, our game just got greenlit on steam last week.
You can see what we did with uConstruct in our trailer!!

 

Wow that looks fantastic, I like the way you utilized uConstruct!
Great job

Can't wait to see what you do with uNature

 

When I copy foliage, the foliage turns......Gigantic.

 

Lol, could you send me your skype privately? I will investigate it

 

You guys crack me up. Lots of fun reading the back and forth conversation.

I am working with MegaSplat now, and beginning to use GeNa. What I want to do is this:

1. Put Speed Trees into scene.
2. Strip off extra colliders.
3. Bring trees out to project folder as prefabs.
4. Run trees through uNature to have them run on graphic card.
5. Place trees with GeNa.

Am I off base or will this work? Of course it goes without saying that I will run my grass through uNature.

 

Hey
The steps are well-put, but note that uNature does not optimize the trees, only the grass. All it does for trees is that it adds colliders

But the grass yes - it makes it work on the gpu

 

Thanks Elroy! That clears it up.

 

Any help making it work through uNET with uMMORPG's NetworkManager?

 

Hey -

Please send over the NetworkManager.cs to the support email (not the whole asset please) and I will integrate it

 

Thank you very much!

Sending it right now. 5/5 support.

 

Hi Elroy,
I'd like to know why when I'm using Unity's shortcuts to move/rotate in the scene the brush is still painting.
I'm surprised that I didn't find any of you talking about this issue, how can you work properly like this (⊙o⊙). Is there some settings that I'm not aware of?

Thanks, and good work by the way!

(In case you don't understand what I'm talking about it's Alt + Mouse Left button)

 

Uhm good point - try using escape to disable the brush easily but I will make Alt a safe key

 

Having a minor issue. uNature will not paint grass on my unity terrain, however, it will paint on things below the terrain. My terrain does have a terrain collider, and changing the layer setting the the grass has not effect.

 

Hey -
What is the layer of your terrain?

 

I tried it with no layer (default), with uNature-terrain, and with just plain terrain.

 

Make sure to follow this video:

V2.0 doesn't apply the mask automatically when you change it, so make sure to regenerate it like in the video (automated in V2.1)

 

No can do. "Chunk does not have manager attached", though there is a foliage manager.

I am using unity 5.4.1

Is the manager attaching to the wrong object?

 

Grass is being drawn, but not on the terrain. Beneath the terrain is a cloud dome, part of Instant Good Day. The grass is drawn there. The paint brush shows above the terrain but the grass is applied to the cloud dome below:


I have MegaSplat textures on the terrain if that makes any difference. Also, when I import uNature there is initially no Foliage Manager. I have used the create Foliage Manager button.

Final thought, the cloud dome has no layer designation. not even default. The parent object to the cloud dome is Instant Good Day in default layer.

 

Yeah I know about the Esc button, but after rotating I still need to activate it again. Do you know how to disable the brush if alt is pressed? I'd like to fix it as soon as possible on my side.

Thanks!

 

So I've got to ask... I haven't played with the tools much yet, but from the looks of things there are no procedural options for improvement of grass on terrains?

I run fully procedural, seed based, shifting 100kms sometimes and need to create terrains from scratch real-time very often. What little I tried uNature it was all editor based pre-play enhancment. Am I missing something for procedural users?

To wonder a little further, I'm not dumping grass all over, it's noise/biome/texture/height and more based. Is it feasible to imagine setting up uNature in the scene to try and handle anything universally and then adding grass at specific locations in world space on the fly?

Thanks.

 

Ah I see, if you can, send me your skype privately and I will check it personally for you

Uhm I am going to submit V2.1 most likely today so I will be sure to include that fix

uNature supports full procedural placement, I guess I just didnt set up any tutorials or demos for that. Will make tutorials and also a demo scene which is full procedural for the next version (Tutorials are first priority so wont take long)

 

Ok, thanks a lot!

 

Is it intended that the Projector/Light shader gets replaced with uNature/Projector when importing the asset?

 

Yea the issue with V2.0 is that some assets were using the same instanceId as the unity assets, I made sure to fix that in V2.1. sorry for the trouble, but for now try to make sure you import the one from uNature

 

Hey guys - another update about V2.1:

Got a new stress test from one of the customers to test on and was able to find lots of issues, leaks and bugs with the system and sat through the whole week fixing them. The scene has 23 mesh grass prototypes all drawn at the same time. The initial usage with the V2.1 gave me 15fps (before all of the fixes and optimizations this week) and with V2.0... well... it was around... 2fps lol.

But now:

2fps -> 90fps averege
5k drawcalls -> 1250 averege
50m vertices -> 9m averege

and well should I even go on ?
that's of course with touch bending enabled, and everything else the system provides so all of you grass lovers, especially mesh grass lovers, that's the version to start with


Going to be sending out test versions hopefully today and then release it on Monday or so

 

V2.1 is done!! Feel free to message me with your invoice to get it before submittion

Changelog:

https://trello.com/b/I4kqOpDC/unature

 

Hi~
Is it possible to paint grass on this zone ?

 

Hey -

In order to achieve that you need to use the generation masks. this will allow the system to read heights only from certain layers. For instance, change the layer of your terrain to something different than the layer of that ramp and then all you need to do is to change the generation mask in the foliage manager to the layer you changed your terrain to and click yes on the dialog (if you are on V2.1 which you are as far as I remmember )


Let me know if this works

 

I'm sorry i didn't make myself clear.
I want to paint grass on the yellow and red zone both.
Is it possible ?

 

Ohh, sorry no, at the moment at least.
Its on the milestones though