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Unity terrain

PostPosted: Wed Aug 02, 2017 12:20 am
by adamgoodrich
Hi,

I just created a nice standard unity environment with terrain, speed trees, water etc.

Then went to render it and got essentially nothing but the sun and a few distant models.

Then I read the FAQ and it says that only the unity standard shader is supported - which seems to wipe out a good chunk of what would be possible in unity itself, and a good chunk of the asset store as a whole.

Is this just a setup issue, or does OTOY not support this. And if so, when will it be supported ?

Thanks,
Adam.

Re: Unity terrain

PostPosted: Wed Aug 02, 2017 5:21 am
by Goldorak
We'll work on more material types after baking is done and we get a better sense of Unity PBR path in further releases. User feedback on this is very welcome to help us prioritize. Note we also have scattering for terrain that may be a good fit for cinematic vegetation density.

Re: Unity terrain

PostPosted: Wed Aug 02, 2017 5:29 am
by adamgoodrich
As far as I can tell, and as you have confirmed, there is no terrain support at all.

Where is the terrain scattering support you mentioned. Maybe I can apply one of your materials to Unity terrain instead to generate interesting environments.

Re: Unity terrain

PostPosted: Wed Aug 09, 2017 6:31 pm
by EFS
I would also like to understand what you meant by the scattering feature.

Can I ask how you guys (Octane) are imagining the Unity workflow for creating terrains? Do we need to use 3rd party programs (ie: 3ds max) to create our model, texture it, and then bring it into Unity? Do you plan on supporting something native to Unity? If so, any ideas that are floating around?

Re: Unity terrain

PostPosted: Wed Aug 09, 2017 10:03 pm
by adamgoodrich
It's a real shame there is no support for them :(

I have been looking forward to this ever since it was announced and I first saw the video of the truck driving through the country side!

As the author of Gaia, GeNa and CTS on the unity asset store all I do is create beautiful unity environments - and this showed some promise for bringing them to life.
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/search/page=1/sortby=popularity/query=publisher:15277

Perhaps in another six months or so ... sigh :)

Re: Unity terrain

PostPosted: Wed Aug 09, 2017 10:08 pm
by Goldorak
EFS wrote:I would also like to understand what you meant by the scattering feature.

Can I ask how you guys (Octane) are imagining the Unity workflow for creating terrains? Do we need to use 3rd party programs (ie: 3ds max) to create our model, texture it, and then bring it into Unity? Do you plan on supporting something native to Unity? If so, any ideas that are floating around?


scattering is basically like instancing - it takes a geometry or volume and duplicates it, so it's great for mapping trees, vegetation and grass over a baseline topology. It was used to the Japanese Garden scene for example that you see on the Octane standalone splash screen.

Octane supports displacement maps for terrain, and we will look at mapping Unity terrain to that (including water), similar to have we have handled Unity sky, sun, and ground plane -> Octane.

Re: Unity terrain

PostPosted: Wed Aug 09, 2017 10:16 pm
by adamgoodrich
If you want someone to help test this when its ready to go then let me know.

It would probably be fairly easy to adapt my toolset to automate this and with a customer base of over 10k this might help drive adoption.

Re: Unity terrain

PostPosted: Wed Aug 09, 2017 10:39 pm
by Goldorak
adamgoodrich wrote:If you want someone to help test this when its ready to go then let me know.

It would probably be fairly easy to adapt my toolset to automate this and with a customer base of over 10k this might help drive adoption.


Awesome!

Re: Unity terrain

PostPosted: Wed Aug 09, 2017 10:54 pm
by EFS
Goldorak wrote:
EFS wrote:I would also like to understand what you meant by the scattering feature.

Can I ask how you guys (Octane) are imagining the Unity workflow for creating terrains? Do we need to use 3rd party programs (ie: 3ds max) to create our model, texture it, and then bring it into Unity? Do you plan on supporting something native to Unity? If so, any ideas that are floating around?


scattering is basically like instancing - it takes a geometry or volume and duplicates it, so it's great for mapping trees, vegetation and grass over a baseline topology. It was used to the Japanese Garden scene for example that you see on the Octane standalone splash screen.

Octane supports displacement maps for terrain, and we will look at mapping Unity terrain to that (including water), similar to have we have handled Unity sky, sun, and ground plane -> Octane.


What about splatmaps for texturing? Is there any way to create an octane material which turns a splatmap into the proper textures?

Re: Unity terrain

PostPosted: Thu Aug 10, 2017 7:24 pm
by Goldorak
EFS wrote:
Goldorak wrote:
EFS wrote:I would also like to understand what you meant by the scattering feature.

Can I ask how you guys (Octane) are imagining the Unity workflow for creating terrains? Do we need to use 3rd party programs (ie: 3ds max) to create our model, texture it, and then bring it into Unity? Do you plan on supporting something native to Unity? If so, any ideas that are floating around?


scattering is basically like instancing - it takes a geometry or volume and duplicates it, so it's great for mapping trees, vegetation and grass over a baseline topology. It was used to the Japanese Garden scene for example that you see on the Octane standalone splash screen.

Octane supports displacement maps for terrain, and we will look at mapping Unity terrain to that (including water), similar to have we have handled Unity sky, sun, and ground plane -> Octane.


What about splatmaps for texturing? Is there any way to create an octane material which turns a splatmap into the proper textures?


I don't see why not, using mixed materials and and the new texture projection node. We are adding OSL textures soon which will give you full procedural shaders in Octane for Unity.