389 replies to this topic

[DPRoberts]

Birdie,

Can you show me how that tree you made above looks in game? I always felt I couldn't get the ambient occlusion to translate back into Unity as well as it looked in SpeedTree.

Additionally, since LOD0 never actually seems to present in game, the SpeedTrees in JNPG always seem to stand out a bit to me as "fake". Honestly, I think all it would take is a soft shader for the leaves to do the trick. I've not really searched much on that.

[Birdie]

Yes, it's a pain with Speedtrees and lighting. But i think you know that we can make the LOD0 work at least. We already discussed it. But it's really one by one manual editing. I also found a slightly altered Speedtree shader some time ago where the shininess (?) or so is working. I made some tests but i wasn't sure. Probably i had to much other variables tested at the same time that i got blended. Anyway if you want to give it a try... https://forum.unity....-shader.317234/

Here are some in game screens of the trees in the clip i posted. For comparison one with some reshade applied (the slightly greener ones) and one without. The trees definitely and always look different between modeler and game. I still tweak lighting or occlusion settings from time to time. Never really happy in all spots or views on the course. Atm i like my in game brightness at 170 for example. I feel it's needed to get a more less real daylight feeling.

Most of all i couldn't get the palm leaves to look right so i decided to not have them as images but as modelled branches. That helped a lot.

This palm model has something around 200.000 verts btw. That's because of these monster roots. Will see if i can keep them in the end.

 

 

 

[DPRoberts]

I'll be shocked if you can get away with that high poly tree.

I like the look of the first tree in game. The key that you have is maintaining good separation of leaves at a distance. Some of the SpeedTree leaf cards LOD to "leaf blobs".

I think one of the free assets with CF is the American Sycamore. I should spend time improving the look of that one, it's fairly awful in my opinion. Probably could just sub the leaf texture or shrink size of the leaf cards.

As far as LOD0, you're still just adding the extra slot and 100 percent on LOD1 I assume?

[Birdie]

As far as LOD0, you're still just adding the extra slot and 100 percent on LOD1 I assume?

Yes, this way. Other things with multiple trees at once didn't work as expected.

 

I'll be shocked if you can get away with that high poly tree.

 I'll be shocked if i can't.
 

[Mike Jones]

I'll be shocked if you can get away with that high poly tree.

I like the look of the first tree in game. The key that you have is maintaining good separation of leaves at a distance. Some of the SpeedTree leaf cards LOD to "leaf blobs".

I think one of the free assets with CF is the American Sycamore. I should spend time improving the look of that one, it's fairly awful in my opinion. Probably could just sub the leaf texture or shrink size of the leaf cards.

As far as LOD0, you're still just adding the extra slot and 100 percent on LOD1 I assume?

The basic sycamore model is decent but you really need to change the alpha setting on it to over .5 to make it look good. 

[Birdie]

I just gave the Quixel Mixer a try because i didn't found exactly the material i needed for the 18th hazard. I have to say this is a definite wow-tool! I didn't read or watch any manuals. Just played with it half an hour and mixed some stuff, added some river water on top of it in Unity and it really seems to flow around these displaced stones. Will show a clip hopefully tomorrow so you can see the motion.

[Dropzone73]

Looks totally awesome!!! Can't believe this is Unity 5 graphics.

[Birdie]

It's a blessing we can use displacement and tessellation in v5. Paired with photo scanned stuff this really brings materials to life. Maybe even makes it possible to get away with less 3d objects because it doesn't look that flat anymore.

[DPRoberts]

One note about Quixel and Substance, it seems they excel in the 2m-4m range. I've played with Substance designer and love it but wonder if they are designed to be used in a splatmap/painted way.

The only thing that could improve what you are doing is like 3-4 tesselated textures that you could paint. This would relieve the obvious tiling issues. I'm guessing this could be done with Substance Painter as it would create a blended heightmap but you would be on a mesh and the trade off of not blending with CF meshes.

You can use Substance for free if you have kids and use a student's license.

You could probably import your Quixel textures/materials into Substance for use as well. Having played off and on with Substance for 2 years and seeing your talent, I would think you could do some amazing stuff with designer/painter.

I'd probably say start with Painter because we don't need to waste time having you learn how to procedurally generate textures. Haha...

Love your passion and results!

[Birdie]

You can go up to 100x100m in Mixer it looks like. Maybe because they implemented masking features to hide tiling. I was reading something like this. Maybe you could build a whole bunker map or so if you know how to map it afterwards?

I didn't work with splatmaps or terrain painting so far. Something like Megasplat would probably be a nice tool to be able to use. I also heard of Substance sometimes but maybe to much at once for me i believe. Already overkill...

But yes, the blending is still a lock we need a key for. Something like the shoreline blending features of Aquas on displaced materials would be nice. I think also in Blender there are still some options to make the transition to terrain less obvious. Maybe a heavier subdivision on the border of a displaced mesh for less straight edges. I also tried to subdivide only the parts of a mesh a little heavier which are more important after displacement like the rocks in the hazard and decimate the surrounding mesh to keep vert count generally low but high where needed. Pure experimentation with mixed results. Still a lot of unused options to "select" only certain things or mangle meshes to our needs. 

[jurgie]

Birdie, you have put an awful lot of work and research into this great course design. I am not a designer, however your knowledge and understanding of all the techniques involved in the rendering process are obvious. If you ever have any time, would you consider creating tutorials in helping other designers create a more realistic rendition? Realism is what designers are all striving for right?

[Birdie]

Birdie, you have put an awful lot of work and research into this great course design. I am not a designer, however your knowledge and understanding of all the techniques involved in the rendering process are obvious. If you ever have any time, would you consider creating tutorials in helping other designers create a more realistic rendition? Realism is what designers are all striving for right?

Right and no doubt! But you already have a lot of great tutorials on this forum for all kinds of techniques. For tools like Speedtree Modeler, Blender, Quixel Mixer and similar you also find great tutorials online. That's what i'm using too.

But you really also have to use your eyes and compare how this or that looks in reality. You can't imagine how often i look at realworld photos not only from this course to get feedback what to adjust or balance in terms of colors for example. These are often simple things where even no tutorial is needed but which takes time for sure. 

[jurgie]

Right and no doubt! But you already have a lot of great tutorials on this forum for all kinds of techniques. For tools like Speedtree Modeler, Blender, Quixel Mixer and similar you also find great tutorials online. That's what i'm using too.

But you really also have to use your eyes and compare how this or that looks in reality. You can't imagine how often i look at realworld photos not only from this course to get feedback what to adjust or balance in terms of colors for example. These are often simple things where even no tutorial is needed but which takes time for sure. 

Thanks for your insight Birdie, greatly appreciated. I might mention that my posting in regards to tutorials was that looking at all your screenies made me realize that I have never seen many of the textural effects that are evident throughout your entire project. It is really quite stunning.

[Birdie]

Big delay but getting ready for a clip...

[slewin]

Talking of displacement is anybody aware of a terrain shader displacement that is compatible with Unity 5.2.3? Only ones I have found won’t work.

[Abe]

Loving that terrain. Kudos!

[jurgie]

Hi Birdie, you didn't loose the Southwood's course folder did you? lol. When are you launch this little sucker?

[Birdie]

I really don't want to say something about timeframes as i simply can't hold or simply don't know how long to go. Wouldn't make sense. But i'm still very busy on this one. Everyday, everynight, everywife...   

[Birdie]

Some random stuff around the clubhouse against the off topic wave...

Cleaning, balancing as well as adding some dirt. Also managed to add the fringes on the last holes and continued tuning elevations for an alpha hopefully not too far.

 

[Birdie]

And one top-down-fun...