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Assets [WIP][Sept 16th] Terrafirma - An Auxiliary Terrain Engine Replacement and Extraction Toolset

Discussion in 'Works In Progress - Archive' started by Murpenstien, Dec 31, 2016.

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  1. Xype

    Xype

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    Yeah, in my head it didn't seem hard, but I couldn't find anyone doing it, I even saw mapmagics dev say no in one post somewhere... Yet I know a lot of logic coders like me that are not good with the graphics/shader etc side of things who are wanting that exact infinite terrain nav mesh update system. So I think it would be popular!
     
  2. MarkusGod

    MarkusGod

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    Somewhere on unity channel was tutorial how to bake navmesh volume based on agent position.
     
  3. LennartJohansen

    LennartJohansen

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    Looks like you can just make a NavMeshSurface whenever a new terrain tile becomes visible. With the size of the terrain tile and using the navmesh links to connect to the other tiles.
     
  4. Xype

    Xype

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    Yep none of those are quite right. Lets say just example cases here not promoting any one over another, but we use like mapmagic, then oh some other hook in, then this tool, if this tool at the very end just took its chunks and quickly baked them 1 it should increase performance because the bake will be down to an exact scale, 2 the polys will already be optimized, and 3 the precise control of the workflow to fire at exactly the right time
     
  5. Xype

    Xype

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    30% is pretty standard, you ever look into the publisher cuts for releasing on most commercial platforms? However I think the major flaw on the asset store, is they should be taking that 30% to fund some standards of quality assurance before allowing a release. Plus get rid of some of the unsupported old stuff, I get tired of digging through old unity 4 assets trying to see whats there.
     
  6. Killersan

    Killersan

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    Any update how it goes and when we can expect release ?
     
  7. Baraff

    Baraff

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    @Murpenstien I saw you mention that you were hoping for a release at the end of August. Are you able to give an update on this. I am very much hanging out to jump on this one.
    I tried your email address weeks ago, but there were no responses there, so thought I should ask here as I'm sure others are curious on the release timing too.
     
  8. RobsonFMaciel

    RobsonFMaciel

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    +1
     
  9. Murpenstien

    Murpenstien

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    Update


    TerraFirma is moving to a new home.. Though i will still be heavily involved in it's development from here on in, me and the brilliant designer, Lennart Johansen have forged a bit of a partnership, and the system is now officially, an "Awesome Technologies" production! ;)


    What this essentially means is as a whole, TerraFirma will be far more complete product, with many great features planned between the both of us that should give developers a bigger better suite of tools to enable more possibilities than one coder such as much so could hope to do in a timely fashion.

    With amazing vegetation, terrain and in a sense, scene management, at your disposal.. Well the future is looking very bright from our perspectives. :)


    We are working on this now and will soon start another forum thread and website with updates as the development continues.


    Thank you everyone for your support, and many great updates to come with this as well. !
     
    crocvr, x4000, Elecman and 27 others like this.
  10. RobsonFMaciel

    RobsonFMaciel

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    @Murpenstien This is fantastic.:) Great news. I am very happy with your new partnership, @LennartJohansen is an excellent coder and a very honest staff. I am part of the Beta testers of Vegetation Studio and I am very satisfied with what the tool has provided me so far, simply incredible. Congratulations on the partnership. Anxious for Terrafirma.

    I'd like to be part of the Testers, of course, if I can.:D Thank you.
     
  11. LennartJohansen

    LennartJohansen

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    In a few weeks I will create a new WIP thread for Terrafirma and start adding Terrafirma documentation to the website.
    I will post links here also.

    Plan is to keep you all informed on development progress and when we are ready for a beta.
     
  12. veddycent

    veddycent

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    Congrats on the partnership! I'm looking forward to using this very soon!
    I hope the development to a polished product is a smooth and prompt process :)
     
  13. malkere

    malkere

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  14. magique

    magique

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    @LennartJohansen How close are you to getting the new WIP thread going for this?
     
  15. LennartJohansen

    LennartJohansen

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    On the last sprint of finishing the first version of Vegetation Studio. When that is out we will get some documentation started and document progress on TerraFirma on the forum.
     
  16. malkere

    malkere

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    Just wanted to chime in regarding floating point percision handling...
    For something like TerraFirma it might not be at all necessary (in my case anyway) if the system is just going to let me feed my own Transform positions and heightmaps in. VegetationStudio can figure out the splats and veggies so long as the heightmap is correct. Everything else in my game will work so long as the position and heightmaps match up.

    For infinite games though that shift zero around up to hundreds or thousands of kilometers, they usually control that themselves and don't want a system that just "knows" but rather an exposed offset variable that can be changed in runtime. I'm not sure how the framework of TerraFirma is designed so this might all be unnecessary chatter, just wanted to bring it up that I'm really looking forward to using TerraFirma to simply input and handle my heightmap data into a mesh LOD and batching pipeline. I'm carrying around disappointment after several over-complicated failed attempts at other 3rd party software XD

    Loving the intelligent design of VegetationStudio and am confident Lennart will handle this project with equally wisdom.
     
    PeterB, RobsonFMaciel, Teila and 2 others like this.
  17. ftejada

    ftejada

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    Hi @Murpenstien !!!!!

    This asset is for sale ??? I can not find it in the store.

    Nor do I know if the new forum exists.

    Can anybody help me?

    regards
     
  18. LennartJohansen

    LennartJohansen

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    Hi

    We are in the process of getting Terrafirma to the point where it is ready for some beta testers. When this is done I will post here and also link to a website where we will add documentation and videos as beta features is added.

    Lennart
     
  19. ftejada

    ftejada

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    Hi @LennartJohansen thanks for answering !!

    I did not know you were the same as in Vegetation Studio :)

    How can I access a copy of the Beta to test it ??? I am very interested in TerraFirma
    How much will cost when it comes out?

    a greeting
     
  20. LennartJohansen

    LennartJohansen

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    I will post here when we have a beta ready to test.
     
  21. LennartJohansen

    LennartJohansen

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    Hi.

    Just wanted to tell you all that we are still working on some changes to the core tech of Terrafirma and I will start posting progress soon.
     
    mons00n, ftejada, Killersan and 12 others like this.
  22. x4000

    x4000

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    Sounds good! Having Vegetation Studio come out today is a big deal enough, heh.

    Regarding Terrafirma, do you expect this to have support for things like the Microsplat (or Megasplat, but that's less exciting now) assets? Microsplat is limited to unity terrains, so far, I think.
     
  23. LennartJohansen

    LennartJohansen

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    It should be easy for most terrain shaders to support. It will need an include file and a bit of code in the vertex shader, but Terrafirma will provide this.

    Lennart
     
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  24. hippocoder

    hippocoder

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    Looks awesome! is that some kind of zbrush style terrain? would love to try it... ;)
     
  25. x4000

    x4000

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    Yeah if you guys need beta testers... ;)
     
  26. LennartJohansen

    LennartJohansen

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    Plan is a big beta as soon as we are ready. we did 200+ people on Vegetation Studio. It helps a lot to find the hard bugs and get the product stable.
     
  27. x4000

    x4000

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    I hear that. For most of my games we've done the same. Makes for much smoother launches.
     
  28. gecko

    gecko

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    I'm still trying to understand the use cases for TerraFirma over Unity terrain. I've got a 7x7km terrain, split into 8x8 terrain tiles (partly for performance and partly to preserve heightmap and splat resolutions -- roughly 1 pixel per square meter), using World Streamer with ring streaming.

    I saw way up in this thread that TerraFirma can handle up to 4096 heightmaps, so even if it was super-performant, that's still too low-rez for my complete terrain, so I'd still need to set up at least a few terrain tiles. Would that still be better with TerraFirma (perhaps 4x4 tiles?) than my current plan?
     
  29. malkere

    malkere

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    My plan is to use infinite multiple tiles, probably two sets of 5x5 512m^2 via Terrafirma. I don't think there are any "use cases" where Unity Terrains would be better. They've mentioned it will be able to setup the data required for shaders like Microsplat to work even though they're designed for Unity Terrains.
     
  30. x4000

    x4000

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    Right -- using World Streamer probably negates some of the drawbacks of unity terrains, but you still get pop-in and it's not one holistic system for handling occlusion, LODs, and so on. World streamer is more like a band-aid in my opinion, whereas the concept behind alternate terrain systems like this is to rebuild the concept from the ground up in a more modern and performant way, while retaining something close to the same interface.

    Yes you'd still need multiple terrains in this sort of setup, but I highly doubt you'd need world streamer unless your game logic is reliant on that for turning off excess AIs or whatnot. I don't really know on that point, I think that's a case by case thing.

    I've used similar systems to what Terra Firma is trying to do, and assuming that they pull it off that's the general idea.
     
  31. hippocoder

    hippocoder

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    @LennartJohansen - I guess when this becomes more mature, it makes sense for Veg Studio to support meshes other than terrain?
     
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  32. gecko

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    Yeah....so I could go ahead and finish setting up my grid now with World Streamer, or wait for TerraFirma. @LennartJohansen, can I get in the beta group when it's ready? Mac Metal tester here! :)
     
  33. malkere

    malkere

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    He has mentioned it's a planned feature.
     
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  34. DiscoFever

    DiscoFever

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    It's xmas soon, where do we get to test/buy this awesome asset ?!?!? :D
     
  35. Freznosis

    Freznosis

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    I'm definitely in for this. Already bought VS and will definitely buy this and/or participate in the beta if it's possible. It's a shame that the users have to create things that Unity themselves should be doing.. but maybe these assets will get picked up by Unity and integrated as standard like some previous assets from other authors. :)
     
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  36. boysenberry

    boysenberry

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    I can't wait until beta testing begins, count me in!
     
  37. blitzvb

    blitzvb

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    me too!
     
  38. nomax5

    nomax5

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    Count me in for Beta Testing,
     
  39. LennartJohansen

    LennartJohansen

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    I will post here when we are ready :)

    Lennart
     
    Rowlan, jdraper3, tapawafo and 4 others like this.
  40. shamsfk

    shamsfk

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    Hi! Can I join the beta testing? I'm in the process of creating an indie MMORPG http://imperium-saga.com/
    And the terrain is quite a huge contributor to our troubles now. A new solution is so much needed.
    I'm quite an obsessive tester when it comes to something that will benefit our game)
     
    Last edited: Jan 3, 2018
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  41. magique

    magique

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  42. shamsfk

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    Oh, thanks for pointing it out. Corrected the link.
     
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  43. Alverik

    Alverik

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    Some of the stuff in your game kinda reminds me of Ragnarok, specially with the word "Imperium" (which is a good thing, lol). I really love the original Ragnarok's class system, I think it's one of the best most customizable I've ever played. Large class variety, 2 or 3 builds per class itself (all class skills have at least two branches for at least two main builds, plus the hybrid from mixing from the two), rebirth and special classes only attainable after rebirth. And even with the large amount of classes you can only choose between 2 in each tier (swordsman can only become knight or crusader, then each of those has their own class paths), so it's not confusing for the players.
     
    shamsfk likes this.
  44. nomax5

    nomax5

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    Alverik and shamsfk like this.
  45. Harekelas

    Harekelas

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    Interesting terrain system, especially now joined force with Awesome Tech.
    Will keep watching
     
  46. blitzvb

    blitzvb

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    For the stitching can it be done at runtime including the LOD?

    Furthermore can a specific splat could be painted when stitching in order to have a smooth biome transition?

    Thanks in advance and continue your great work.
     
  47. Flurgle

    Flurgle

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    We're interested too, if we can squeeze out a bit more performance :)
     
  48. Elecman

    Elecman

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    Any news?
     
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  49. blitzvb

    blitzvb

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    will you support vertex color on terrafirma terrain? I am in need of plenty of texture and my code is vertex color based.
     
  50. Flavelius

    Flavelius

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    I don't think this will make it to a release. If you need vertex colors on your terrain the easiest route is using a mesh and the Polybrush extension to sculpt (if you need that) and color it.
     
    blitzvb likes this.
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