Multi-tile and terrains

[nachooo]

Hi again from Spain. I wonder if is possible to use the multi-tile technique over unity terrains. I understand the workflow with regular objects, but.. It is necessary to convert the unity terrains to meshes in order to use multi-lite?
Muito obrigado

Nacho

[Ricardo Teixeira]

Hello,

Good to hear from you, thanks for evaluating AT2.

In that case you wont have any problems using the Unity terrain, it works pretty much as our other materials; the main diference is that you do not need to manually setup the UV's when using a Unity Terrain.

Multi-Tile support is available with the Amplify Texture 2 Terrain shader, it currently supports Diffuse & Normal coverage maps. We are actually going to release a video that shows the process of using Diffuse and Normal tile collections with a Unity Terrain, splat map usage will come at a later stage.

In order to use tile collections with a Unity Terrain, simply add the first tile in the collection to the appropriate texture slot and AT2 will automatically adjust it to your terrain.

Let me know if you have any additional questions.

All the best,
Ricardo Teixeira

[nachooo]

Hello, and thanks for thequick reply. Yes you were right again, it works nicely, just note that I have to use a MARI tiles name convention to load the tiles, and that they should be inverted in the Y axis , just contrary of an usual unity terrain base texture.
Awesome software....

[Ricardo Teixeira]

Hello,

Happy to know it worked. We would love to see some screenshots of your MARI tests at a later stage.

My apologies, I don't quite understand what you are referring to. Do you mean Y inverted normals?

All the best,
Ricardo Teixeira

[nachooo]

Hi again, well... what I mean with the Mari tiles convention name, is that to texture the unity terrain using multi-tiles in the amplify terrain shader I was not using using MAri software, I was reffering to use UDIM system in order to get the files accepted by your shader. So I was only introducing the tiles that come from globalmapper using the UDIM system.. changing the tiles names by hand.... .1001 .1002 .1011 .1012 etc etc...

Regarding the other question...I mean that when I use the amplify shader (with or without multitiles) I have to invert the image vertically in photoshop. With the unity 5 terrain shader, The image has not to be vertically inverted.. So in my case..to change from one shader to another..implies invert the textures in photoshop in the vertical plane. I hope I have explained myself... Sorry about my english.

Got a question..
Imagine 16 tiled unity terrains 2049 resolution each one and every one has a 8192 resolution texture
What method is best for the best performance?
1) Divide the terrains until they are 64 and apply amplify to each one of the new textures of 2048 resolution
2) Use the amplify shader with the 16 terrains and virtualize every texture
3)Use the amplify shader with the 16 terrains but with multiles (16 sub-tiles per main texture so every sub-tile is 2048)

What do you think?

Obrigado in advance:)

Best regards



Nacho

[Ricardo Teixeira]

Hello,

You can also use X,Y (U,V) coordinates for the tile naming convention. For example, tile_x0_y0.tga, tile_x1_y0.tga, tile_x2_y0.tga , and so on.

I understand now. I had a talk with the AT2 developer and it seems that they changed the orientation in the recent Unity terrain shaders; in the past we had to flip it in the AT2 shader. It’s not a serious issue but with Unity 5 still in beta, problems like this one might come up occasionally.

We would be happy to help with the conversion/fix, contact us directly via [email protected].

Texture wise it really comes down to your prefered method. There is of course an advantage when using Multi-Tiles, you will be able to use less Unity Terrain Tiles but still use large amounts of high resolution texture tiles per terrain.

From my personal experience, Unity terrains are a bit processing heavy. I would recommend keeping the number of Unity terrains as low as possible or apply some form of optimization such as hiding terrains that are outside of the camera view.

Let me know if you have any additional questions, I would be happy to help.

Un cordial saludo
Ricardo Teixeira

[Ricardo Teixeira]

Got a question..
Imagine 16 tiled unity terrains 2049 resolution each one and every one has a 8192 resolution texture
What method is best for the best performance?
1) Divide the terrains until they are 64 and apply amplify to each one of the new textures of 2048 resolution
2) Use the amplify shader with the 16 terrains and virtualize every texture
3)Use the amplify shader with the 16 terrains but with multiles (16 sub-tiles per main texture so every sub-tile is 2048)
Nacho

In this specific example, I would first test it with 2x2 Terrain Tiles, 2k Height, 16k Diffuse and see if the quality holds up regarding the displacement detail. If not, I would go from 2x2 to 4x4 Terrain Tiles, 2k Height, 8k Diffuse and iterate until I was satisfied with the quality and performance.

[nachooo]

Hi again, yes I saw in your videos I can use other naming conventions..just to figure how to setup globalmapper for that (has a big bunch of options regarding this).
The vertical shift is really not a problem a simple photoshop action can solve this in a few minutes even for 1000 big textures
Your observations regarding performance are consistent with my little experience...I first tried 8x8 terrains at 1024...
then 4x4 terrains at 2048 .. performance was much better...heighmaps were derived from LIDAR data 5 meters per pixel (ultra nice realistic detail...
Finally best performance seems to be at 4x4 tiles per terrain in multi-tiled mode
And yes, seems that a dynamic terrain loader or a page terrain plugin will be next step..sadly unity 5 is still in baby diapers and I dont know a word about scripting....
Anyway I think one of the best features of this software is that it avoids lots of problems regarding memory crashes in Unity..makes the main editor much more stable....
This is work in progress (very basic..still lot of work), ..only learning about terrains and textures..Dont be hard on me.. ...keep in mind I am new to unity since 3 weeks ago...I used bing images, forget the airplane crossair ..I play and design at the same time:). Hardware is old about 5 years ago graphic card




Best regards

[nachooo]

Seems images are not well displayed...
here are the links
http://imageshack.com/a/img538/3639/n9QPzg.jpg
http://imageshack.com/a/img540/2428/p3Bz8q.jpg
http://imageshack.com/a/img661/8716/ZbwtKp.jpg

[Ricardo Teixeira]

Nice one! Keep at it, I think you are on the right track.

Indeed, hopefully the Terrain will be improved soon.

Keep us posted and let me know if you run into any issues.

All the best,
Ricardo Teixeira