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UNIGINE 2.15 Alpha


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UNIGINE 2.15 Alpha

Key Changes

  • Visual material graph editor.
  • Water System improvements.
  • Advanced data compression for Landscape Terrain.
  • Sandworm tool upgrade.
  • Improved IG high-level weather system.
  • UnigineEditor: updated Brush tools, new Asset Browser and other improvements.

This release brings you a new Material Graph Editor, Water system improvements, a huge Sandworm upgrade with distributed computing included, a high-level weather system and more functionality for IG, along with rendering improvements and a lot more.

Water System Improvements

We have improved wave management for the Global Water object giving you precise control over the wave spectrum. Unique characteristics of each wave system can be set independently through spectral parameters, wave direction and amplitude, and the shape factor of waves (as all the data is now available on the CPU side). You can create multiple waves and wave groups (from largest to smallest) with convenient access to every parameter and an ability to control them via API at run time (e.g. processing Weather Control packets from IOS, etc.). 

 

 

The Oil Platform demo as well as all Water samples in the Art Samples suite now contain the updated Global Water object.

Advanced Landscape Terrain Data Compression

Now you can compress Landscape Layer Map files (.lmap) that you import in your project to significantly reduce their size.

The Compression tool allows you to select a lossless or lossy compression profile for your textures as well as to set up your own Custom profile.

We recommend using a UNIGINE-developed lossless compression method providing better compression results for 2D and 3D textures than LZ4 and Zlib without quality reduction.

Compression method options:

  • Our Method —  recommended.
  • Zlib — for high compression ratio (can provide up to 2 times higher compression ratio, but takes up to 20 times longer).
  • LZ4 — temporary option, planned to be removed in the upcoming releases.

Analytical Fade 

Analytical fade option has become available for Landscape Layer Maps along their perimeter, for smooth blending without any additional textures.  You can enable this fading option for the whole layer as well as for each data type (Albedo, Heights, and Masks) separately.

Sandworm Tool Upgrade

We continue working on Sandworm to make it an ideal terrain generation tool. For this release, we've fixed numerous bugs and introduced distributed computing — a possibility to generate terrains using the united power of your machine crew. So if your terrain takes a really long time to generate (more than an hour), you can speed up the process.

The concept is to use several computers united into a network, one of which is Master and assigns tasks, and the other are Workers that perform portions of work (processing of source data) assigned to them. UNIGINE Editor with the Sandworm tool and a terrain project should be open on Master only, while Workers run a single console application. Source files (geodata) and common cache shall be stored in a shared folder. If a Worker still has available resources, additional processes may be run on it and participate in terrain generation immediately, i.e. without restarting the generation process. Master creates the asset based on the result.

https://developer.unigine.com/en/docs/future/editor2/sandworm/output/export_area.png

The following new features were added as well:

  • Possibility to define the export area per layer for offline sources.
  • Separate set of sources for objects/assets supporting multi-filtering (one item can contain several filters).
  • Double-clicking an attribute in the table adds it to the value cell.
  • Export Area mode that allows working with the Export Area only.
  • Rearranged the filtering approach — made AND/OR operations possible within the same filter.
  • Keyboard-editing of Export Area and Layer coordinates.

The list of other changes is as follows:

  • Fixed an issue with non-responsive behavior at an attempt to generate vector data if object parameters refer to non-existent GUID.
  • Fixed Mask naming for ObjectLandscapeTerrain.
  • Fixed incorrect density calculation displayed in the layer properties.
  • Fixed generation of buildings.
  • Fixed issues with adding and deleting the Export Area points.
  • Fixed issues with creation of insets for layers with a higher data density.

More Tonemappers

We have extended the set of tonemappers with Filmic, several Reinhard variations, ACES, and a combination of the last two. So you can choose the one that fits your project's requirements best, giving the desired look. You can control tone mapping via the Render -> Color Correction section of the Settings window.

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In case you want to enable ACES tonemapper with commonly used settings simply reset all parameters to default values via the corresponding button next to each of them.

ACES

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Reinhard

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New Diffuse BRDF

Having studied a lot of various diffuse BDRF models we've decided that we need to implement our own, as none of the existing ones provides an acceptable visual result for us.  

 

The main differences of the new BRDF model from the previous one are as follows:

  • Support for multiple scattering (diffuse color is more or less saturated depending on the view angle).
  • Support for the Opposition Surge effect, looking like a distinct bright spot on a surface illuminated from directly behind the observer (when looking at it in the direction parallel to light rays).
  • The majority of new diffuse BRDF models have a too strong rim light in case of maximum roughness values. This becomes most noticeable on the planes having normal maps with a very sharp relief, leading to an effect of unnatural gloss at some angles. Our model is not free from this effect as well, but the gradient looks smoother and more natural.

Abstract Materials

To simplify shaders programming and to hide the implementation complexity of various features we have added Abstract Materials, like abstract classes in object-oriented programming they serve as a template definition of certain parameters and functionality. Other abstract and base materials can be inherited from an abstract material and extend its functionality giving you a lot of flexibility.

When inheriting from an abstract material you can override any values or add some other components to the child material: When the child material implements the shader with the same name, the source code of the parent and the child shader is merged (the parent shader precedes the child one).

You can create your own custom abstract material or use the ones provided "out of the box" Mesh Opaque/Transparent/Unlit with or without tessellation.

Improved Mixed Reality Support for Varjo XR-3

We have made a number of changes to simplify implementation of Mixed Reality applications and improve your experience with human-eye resolution industrial-grade Varjo VR and XR headsets. We have added support for chroma keying, so you can change environments quickly, along with depth testing enabling you to composite and sort real and virtual worlds together by utilizing the depth sensing capabilities of XR-3 and XR-1. Tracking of static or dynamic real-world objects using the video pass-through cameras via markers is also available now.

The VR Sample has been updated to showcase new functionality. 

For more information about the related API changes please refer to the API Migration Guide.

MathLib Changes

The Engine’s mathematical library (MathLib) has been divided into two separate implementations for C++ and C# APIs to make them both faster and more efficient with more SSE optimizations, more convenience, and a lot of methods added. The C# version of MathLib has been remade completely and now supports more of the C# language specific features. This along with some other factors leads to some small discrepancies in the libraries’ features.

Other Engine Improvements

  • Fixed an issue with World Occuders failing to prevent occluded objects from rendering in case of setting low Distance values.
  • Fixed an issue with Video Grabber saving images to HDR formats with the loss of data (.exr).
  • Added an ability to change the application icon for your projects.
  • Expanded BootConfig API.
  • Added a new getVisibleIntersection() methods to the World class both taking into account the distance from the camera, LODs, and other "visual" aspects, the getIntersection() method now ignores the "visual" component enabling you to catch objects hidden by visibility distance (for example if an object LOD is hidden by visibility distance, but the object is within the frustum the intersection shall be detected). For more information please refer to the API Migration Guide..
  • Fixed an issue with Light Planar Probes rendering objects with LODs incorrectly.
  • Engine initialization has changed for more information please refer to the API Migration Guide.
  • Fixed an issue with finding intersections with static meshes at the edges of polygons.
  • C++ components can now be safely unloaded on the fly while the world is still loaded (e.g. when reloading plugins).
  • Fixed a crash on shrinking the size of an array variable in a C++ component via ComponentVariableArray::resize().
  • WorldIntersection::getInstance() now returns correct indices of intersected Mesh Cluster instances regardless of the number of meshes in the cluster.
  • Marshalling functionality of the Wrapper class is now available, enabling you to use Engine's marshallers instead of writing your own, this can be useful when using C++ libraries in your C# projects .
  • Restored the logic of guessing file extension for the FileSystem ::LoadPackage() method.
  • Changed C++ and C# API for Engine initialization, for more information please refer to the API Migration Guide.

UnigineEditor

Asset Browser Improvements

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We have redesigned the Asset Browser to make it more flexible and convenient.

The preview panel has been moved to the Parameters window saving space and improving consistency.

New functionality has been added at the top of the window, which has become context-dependent now, unnecessary UI elements are hidden depending on the current Asset Browser layout. Each of the two panels has its own zoom factor for convenience.

A filter for asset types similar to the node types filter in the World Nodes window is now available enabling you to reduce chaos and concentrate on the desired asset types.

Search scope is now limited to the selected folder in the hierarchy. After selecting an asset in the search results and clearing the search query in the field the current folder will automatically change to the one containing the selected asset (similar to the logic of the World Nodes window).

You can quickly expand/collapse folders or show/hide assets in the folder tree via the corresponding buttons at the top. While the two new arrow buttons there make browsing folder history convenient.

Adding assets, folders, and even search results to favorites (per-project) has become available, search scope will be reset to global though.

You can simplify layout keeping only the folder view and using it as the World Nodes hierarchy, or use the old familiar layout if you prefer.

Editor Modes

To improve user experience in world building and resolve hotkey conflicts between different tools we have redesigned the UI for existing editor modes (Object, as well as Landscape and Clutter Mask Paint).

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Accessing the corresponding tools has become more convenient and intuitive as simply switching between modes (available via hotkeys as well). UI tips and quick-access creators provide guidance to help new users get up and running quickly.

We have also made some restyling to the toolbar and other UI elements making all icons clearly seen at different resolutions, and the elements themselves more intuitive and convenient to use.

 

Improved Brushes

Brush tool updates make painting on masks for Grass, Clutters, and Clusters more convenient and intuitive with an accurate current brush position. Objects are now generated on the fly while you draw, all objects using the same mask are updated at once. The updated tool becomes available after selecting Clutter Mask Paint Mode in the Modes dropdown.

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Other UnigineEditor Improvements

  • You can now check out asset dependencies for materials and properties right from the corresponding windows.
  • We have rearranged Settings for your convenience with Tonemapper and White Balance controls moved from Camera Effects to the Color Correction section. The Postprocess section of the Settings window has been removed with its parameters moved to the following sections: Wireframe Color (Wireframe Color picker), Transparent (Refraction sliders), Camera Effects (Sharpen Intensity), SSShadows Shafts (Shadow Shafts sliders).
  • Fixed an issue with UnigineEditor removing non-component C# files located in the data folder from the .csproj file when opening a project.
  • Current resolution of a Landscape asset (.lmap) is now displayed in the Parameters window of the UnigineEditor.
  • New tooltips for asset-widgets (like textures, meshes, materials) now contain a preview of an asset.

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  • When an asset is selected, its name and file size are now displayed in the Parameters window.

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  • Added an option to automatically load the last active world on opening the Editor. You can control this option via the Auto-Open Last World checkbox in the Settings->Editor section (the state is stored in the .user config file). This option is disabled by default as in case of a faulty world it may lead to repeated Editor crashes.

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  • Adjusting curves in UnigineEditor has become even more convenient with new Copy and Paste operations enabling you to quickly set up similar curves. Copying a curve containing n values to the one having more values will replace only the first n ones.
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  • The Editor can now work in the background mode, when you need this functionality simply check Keep Running In Background in Settings->Editor.

  • Fixed issues with multiple rebuilding of a C# dotnet-project after deleting the .runtimes folder or saving an empty component.

  • Fixed an issue on performing Undo operation after assigning a new material to a Landscape Terrain detail leading to empty assignment, now the previous state is restored.

  • Fixed an issue with incorrect camera focusing on a node located far away from the origin in double-precision projects.

  • The FBXImporter plugin now writes relative paths to meshes in the generated .node files. Support for emission textures has been added as well.

  • Fixed an issue with infinite playback of an audio file selected in the Asset Browser.

  • Fixed an issue with resetting the size of thumbnails in Open/Save dialogs, now the dialogs use the last selected size.

 

Image Generator Improvements

 

High-Level Weather System

Introducing a new high-level weather system enabling you to manage global and regional layered weather both in UnigineEditor and via API. You can create an unlimited number of regions, both rectangular and arbitrary-form, add multiple layers to them, and control each of them separately. Configure and adjust visibility, pressure, temperature, humidity, cloud coverage (with all existing types of clouds supported), precipitation, wind, and other parameters per layer, set up region positions, thickness, altitude, and transition bands for layers, etc.

For more information on setting up environment in IG please follow this link.

Convenient Control Via UnigineEditor

A new IG Editor Plugin has been added with a set of windows enabling you to configure geodetic and date-time parameters as well as to control weather right in the UnigineEditor in a convenient way. There is a lot more you can now see and adjust via the UnigineEditor, from creating weather regions with rain and snow to changing aircraft strobe light programs via curves. Other updates are on the way, stay tuned for upcoming releases.

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Visual Material Graph Editor

(Not included in 2.15 Alpha)

One of the major features of 2.15 - the new node-based Material Editor is at the final straight and will be brought to you with the official 2.15 release enabling you to create your own materials visually without writing a single line of code. 

 

 

Material Editor gives you immediate feedback reflecting all your changes on the preview sphere, it is simple enough for users who are new to materials creation and powerful enough to let you do a lot of things including the following:        

  • Modify appearance of your surfaces procedurally changing their look based on useful information about it (normals, world position, distance from the camera, and orientation relative to the view direction, etc.)

  • Animate and warp UVs

  • Perform repeated actions without overcomplicating your graph by using loops

  • Share functionality between multiple graphs and users via subgraphs

  • Expose your material's settings to the Parameters window, to quickly tweak your material right in the UnigineEditor when building and setting up your scene

  • Create custom function graph nodes implementing desired functionality via shader code in UUSL

  • Use quick type conversion and data rearrangement via port adapters

  • Blend multiple materials easily to create a unique look

  • Use familiar image adjustment operations to change the look of your objects

Material Editor enables you to blend multiple materials easily - just add a special mixer node (PBR Material Mixer) and specify materials you want to blend by connecting Material Reference nodes to the mixer, then provide a blending control value - that's it!

 

New Cluster Brush Editor

(Not included in 2.15 Alpha)

We have completed the first iteration of cluster editing mode. The first instrument implemented is the mesh placement brush. Apart from using mask textures, you can now scatter objects anywhere in the world using brushes.

Several meshes/objects can be scattered simultaneously with the ability to enable/disable drawing for each separate object. Each object stores its own scattering settings.

There are several brushes available: increase opacity, decrease opacity, replace opacity, and eraser.

The tool is still under development but a minimum set of functions is already available to be used in your projects.

Round Earth Geo Plugin

(Not included in 2.15 Alpha)

We are currently very busy trying to create a long-awaited round Earth.

The runtime plugin is designed to implement online streaming of terrain portions based on camera position transformed into geocoordinates. Depending on the distance from the surface, data are more or less detailed.
 

Documentation

Added a new video tutorial on Volumetric Clouds

 

and a set of new ultrashort HowTo quick tip videos in English, Chinese, and Russian:

 

We have made efforts to resolve problems with indexing old versions of documentation by popular search engines in order to remove outdated information from search results. The current stable release version of the docs now can always be found at https://developer.unigine.com/en/docs/latest (version number is shown in the version selector at the top of the page). Old versions are available via their numbers as it was before.

Other Documentation Changes

An updated version of the documentation is available as future.

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Known Issues

  • Incorrect masks sorting for Landscape Terrain details.
  • Engine crash due to incorrect marshalling of C# MathLib structures. 
  • Incorrect player behavior on rotation observed in the C# Third Person Platformer and some other demo projects as well (possibly caused by MathLib changes).
  • Keyboard movement controls of the FirstPersonController in the default template world are unresponsive (possibly caused by MathLib changes).
  • Particles with Blend Transparency preset selected and the Soft Interaction option disabled in their material are seen through objects having the mesh_base material assigned.
  • Particles are rendered during the deferred pass even when the Deferred Buffers state is disabled.
  • DecalMesh is not rendered on OpenGL with geometry shader compilation errors in the Сonsole.
  • Errors in the Console after running an application runtime with a Landscape Terrain object with Lossy data compression used. Particularly observed in the Earthworks demo application.
  • Incorrect importing of packages (.upackage) created for previous Engine versions.
  • Editor crash on an attempt to load with an incorrect plugin (e.g. attempt to load the IGEditorPlugin when editing UnigineScript Samples). 
  • Shader compilation errors in the Console on activating the Multiple Environment Probes state for a mesh_base material with transparency enabled.
  • Shader compilation errors on an attempt to bake lightmaps for meshes with abstract materials assigned.
  • Wrong direction of Field Shoreline waves.
  • IGEditorPlugin crashes on pressing Ctrl+Z after removing a cloud layer, on changing cloud types after reloading a world
  • Multiple errors in the Console related to content migration.
  • Editor crash on an attempt to load a double plugin build when running a float build of the Editor.
  • Incorrect Water synchronization on the Master and Slaves.
  • A Slave crashes on loading a database via the console command on the Master (without a Host application).
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Hi,
Maybe I'm wrong because this is the first time I try a beta version, but I have downloaded the engineering_windows_2.15_210913_window-manager zip package, extracted the folder into Unigine SDK Browser/sdks/...
And when I try to run the editor, "Editor_x64.exe" the nagscreen appears and after a moment of waiting...."Initializing plugins..." and the editor stay on the nagscreen ?
In the log file the last line is : Set 0x0 windowed video mode.
If I try to run a sample, I have an error : GLRender::required_extension GL_ARB_gpu_shader5 is not supported.
My graphics card is an rtx 2080s.
Thanks

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1 hour ago, fabre.cedric said:

Hi,
Maybe I'm wrong because this is the first time I try a beta version, but I have downloaded the engineering_windows_2.15_210913_window-manager zip package, extracted the folder into Unigine SDK Browser/sdks/...
And when I try to run the editor, "Editor_x64.exe" the nagscreen appears and after a moment of waiting...."Initializing plugins..." and the editor stay on the nagscreen ?
In the log file the last line is : Set 0x0 windowed video mode.
If I try to run a sample, I have an error : GLRender::required_extension GL_ARB_gpu_shader5 is not supported.
My graphics card is an rtx 2080s.
Thanks

Hello!

As I can see you are downloaded "Experimental" build which is not an 2.15-alpha.

Since release are available to download via SDK browser only, please restart it to update the list of the available builds.

image.png

Thanks!

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Hi,

This update looks GREAT!  Very promising! Very nice to have ig in its own mount point!

Here are a few remarks of my first quick tests:

  1. <cloud_type elevation> is 0 for most clouds in ig_config.xml.
    Shouldn't it be the usual elevation for each type of cloud? Same for thickness.
     
  2. ig_config now defines <cigi_weather_layer> from 1 to 5. What about the ground fog layer 0? Should we still use a stratus layer for it?
     
  3. What is layer_type in <cigi_weather_layer>'s <layer> element?
     
  4. Cloud visibility parameter still controls the *layer opacity* instead of being the visibility distance *inside* a cloud puff.
    The only case they would be the same is when the coverage is 100% (no empty space between cloud puffs). When the eye is in-between clouds, the visibility distance should be controlled by the global visibility range (Atmosphere Control packet).
    For some layer, the discrepancy can be even worse:
    eg: stratocumulus with base=1000m thickness=500m coverage=100% visibility=50m transition=100m.
    With the eye at 1502m you can clearly see you are above the 3d clouds while still being inside the "fog" of the visibility range.
    When exiting the layer at 1510m altitude, the feeling is clearly wrong.
     
  5. I couldn't control the new water global waves through CIGI (tried Wave Control, Atmosphere Control, Weather Control packets)
     
  6. I couldn't control the 2.15 ig windsock object, even though I added ComponentSystem::get()->initialize() in AppSystemLogic::init() (tried Atmosphere Control, Weather Control packets, with the windsock fully inside a cloud layer).
     
  7. By default, the component system is not enabled in C++ IG template code. Why not adding it by default?
     
  8. The new IG Editor Plugin looks great to help preparing some weather scenario. Though I have a few notes:
    - the IG:DateTime dialog is confusing: what are the sun/moon/stars sliders for? At first, I thought the sun slider controlled the time of day (which would have been convenient).
    - the IG:Geodetic dialog is great! Thanks!
    - IG:CloudTypes: what are padding and shadow?
    - IG:Meteo: what does the "show node" button do? Are regions defined here controllable/usable through CIGI?
     
  9. Missing link in the 2.15alpha announcement above: "for more information on setting up environment in IG please follow this link."

Thanks!
 
 

  • Thanks 1
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15 hours ago, fabre.cedric said:

My browser version is 1.9.31 (build 9161) freshly updated and I don't have any possibility to install Unigine alpha version ?
Thanks :)

Please try again. The list of available SDKs should be updated for you now :)

  • Thanks 1
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16 hours ago, Ugly1-1 said:

Inland water system? Is that still on the roadmap for 2.15?

Inland water system should not be expected for coming this year for sure, according on actual roadmap we're still have planned this on 2.16 next year.

Thanks!

 

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8 hours ago, Amerio.Stephane said:

Hi,

This update looks GREAT!  Very promising! Very nice to have ig in its own mount point!

Here are a few remarks of my first quick tests:

Stephane, thank you for such a useful feedback you always provide, we have already passed it to the our development department :)

 

 

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7 hours ago, bmyagkov said:

Please try again. The list of available SDKs should be updated for you now :)

Is it decided on an individual basis? I have the same problem.

 

ScreenShot_20211001173321.jpeg

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2 hours ago, ANTEVETY said:

Is it decided on an individual basis? I have the same problem.

Hello!

I'm sorry to say, but this is a closed alpha-release and is not ready to be used by everyone due to lack of documentation, still missing vital features and other issues. It is intended for testing only a restricted set of requested features being developed and receive feedback from experts and requester's.

Thanks!

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Hi, here are a few additional remarks:

10. Are the new base mat only for demo in the alpha or will they be as-is in the final release?
What is their role: 1/to serve as an example to custom build our own, or 2/ to be lean replacement for the usual base mat for a specific usage?
Also some parameters are missing for them to be really useful: there is no way to select the UV or a texture for albedo for example.

11. New base mat: the parameter order is inconsistent with the usual mesh base mat
(usual is metalness, roughness, translucent, transparent multiplier) here it's translucent, roughness, metalness, opacity.
I understand the order can be whatever we want when we write our new custom material, but for consistency it may be better to have the same as usual.

12. new base materials are invisible to Impostor creator. I hope the graph-material will be visible :)

13. IG:DateTime dialog.
Changing the timezone doesn't move the sun, I need to also change the time.

14. ig_config: why not sorting clouds by cloud_type in this file?

15. Suggestion: it would be nice to be able to use the scroll wheel to change values in the new tool bar for Move/Rotate/Scale Step Size, simply when hovering the widget.

16. Landscape materials: any way to have an auxillary map? an emission map? (at the moment I must add a lot of decal orthos... not efficient)

17. Clouds/"Sort transparent": doesn't work correctly when a transparent object is within the cloud layer
Eg: looking at the rotor of another helicopter which is within the cloud layer (the moving rotor is displayed with an alpha-blended disk).
A lot of other scenarios also don't work in this case: runway lights, ground fire, smoke...
"Render after transparent" would fix these but breaks when the clouds are visible behind these fx.

18. Maybe an universal way to fix alpha-blended issues would be an option to render some (marked?) transparent materials as opaque with TAA+dithered opacity+supersampling? (with an animated stipple pattern)

EDIT: actually I just discovered that "Jitter Transparency" is already a thing in Unigine! Great, but not so much in fact after testing it. I'll make another port for it.

19. Alternatively, it would be great to be able to mark some materials as "always render after/before clouds". This would be great for cockpit-glass materials when viewing from inside the cockpit.

Thanks!

Edited by Amerio.Stephane
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Stephane,

Much thanks for the feedback, it's very useful! :)

Most of the small issues related to the IG are already has been resolved. This related to the: #1, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #13.

Now to the specific topics:

Quote

 What is layer_type in <cigi_weather_layer>'s <layer> element?

0 - No type (just data)
1 - clouds
2 - precipitation
 

Quote

 2. ig_config now defines <cigi_weather_layer> from 1 to 5. What about the ground fog layer 0? Should we still use a stratus layer for it?
 4. Cloud visibility parameter still controls the *layer opacity* instead of being the visibility distance *inside* a cloud puff.

We get all the requirements from your team regarding proper ground fog and in-cloud visibility distance. Righ now after 2.15 our team will do a research on how to properly implement these features. We hope that some results we can get next year (Q2 2022).

 

Quote

- IG:CloudTypes: what are padding and shadow?

image.png

Padding in the cloud settings is basically coefficients that we can use to calculate the precise cloud borders (using the formulas from the above picture). Refresh button inside Editor plugin uses this parameters on recalculations.

Shadow is not implemented in alpha, but this would be a coefficient that tells how this cloud should affect environment lightning.

Quote

   10. Are the new base mat only for demo in the alpha or will they be as-is in the final release?
   11. New base mat: the parameter order is inconsistent with the usual mesh base mat

New abstract materials are used to create new materials (either by writing a code or internally in shader graph). It's basically a very small template that you would modify anyway for you specific needs, so in which order parameters are there have a very little sense. Missing parameters are also would be missing, since there is no point to add all the mesh_base material into it, all the required functionality you would need to create in code or via shader graph.

 

Quote

    12. new base materials are invisible to Impostor creator. I hope the graph-material will be visible :)

    15. Suggestion: it would be nice to be able to use the scroll wheel to change values in the new tool bar for Move/Rotate/Scale Step Size, simply when hovering the widget.

Yeah, we will see if that can be adjusted before 2.15 release, but there is a chance that it would be implemented after 2.15.

 

Quote

    16. Landscape materials: any way to have an auxillary map? an emission map? (at the moment I must add a lot of decal orthos... not efficient)

Adding new texture to the LandscapeTerrain would slow down the streaming performance. For the same reason we do not use Normal Maps here (nor the Auxiliary textures). Adding each additional feature will cut the streaming performance, so we do not want to do this.

 

Quote

    17. Clouds/"Sort transparent": doesn't work correctly when a transparent object is within the cloud layer

Yes, this i known limitation (and it always was) due to the complexity of transparent objects sorting with transparent clouds. Right now you can control it only by discrete switch (based on the camera position) or do rough automatic sorting. We will continue our attempts in improving this behavior in the future versions, but it's hard to give some estimations here, since there is a very little things that we can do without losing performance.

 

Quote

    19. Alternatively, it would be great to be able to mark some materials as "always render after/before clouds". This would be great for cockpit-glass materials when viewing from inside the cockpit.

Yeah, it would be great to have, but right now Clouds implementation is not designed for such use-cases. We would think how to improve this behavior in our further clouds research.

Thanks!

How to submit a good bug report
---
FTP server for test scenes and user uploads:

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Hello,

can we also get access to the 2.15 alpha version please?

We have a project which uses the experimental 2.14_210409_water-spectrum SDK and we are eager to migrate it to 2.15 once it is released.

If I can get access to 2.15 alpha I can check if the C++ Plugin and the Unigine script code are still working, ahead of the release.

Plus we need to do some content work on the water/waves settings.

Thanks

Helmut

 

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3 hours ago, silent said:

Adding new texture to the LandscapeTerrain would slow down the streaming performance. For the same reason we do not use Normal Maps here (nor the Auxiliary textures). Adding each additional feature will cut the streaming performance, so we do not want to do this.

Understandable for emission. Although, in the case of Auxiliary, it actually "replaces" technically the albedo; I mean if we are viewing the aux buffer then we don't stream the albedo, and vice-versa. So unless I miss something, adding the  aux texture would only add to the lmap content, and shouldn't put stress on the streaming (switching between albedo and aux would of course trigger a full reload of the textures with a lot of latency, but that would be expected). Typical usage would be one slave seeing the albedo, and another seeing the aux (sensor).

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5 hours ago, silent said:

Hi Helmut,

Beta access is already available for your team, but looks like your license for SDK updates has been expired recently. We've extended it for two more weeks so you can check the alpha build and water :)

Hello Silent, thank you very much :-)

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Just a quick question,

where are now the post materials located?

Also, if I manually create the entry in the world file the material doesn't seem to get applied

<post_materials>post_color_correction_0</post_materials>

Thanks, Helmut

where_are_the_post_materials.PNG

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Hi, in 2.15 we removed post materials, as they are no longer needed, since you can use Scriptable Materials instead, as they provide more functionality overall, with better structure.
Post materials that are placed in core/materials/default/post are still old post materials and will be scriptable in 2.15 release. Also the new location would be core/materials/base/post/

Material Graph required a lot of changes to our materials, and we are also moving from XML base materials to ULON base materials in 2.16.
Keep in mind, there is also a lot of key changes in UUSL shaders that will be in 2.15.

https://developer.unigine.com/en/docs/2.14.1/content/materials/scriptable?rlang=cpp

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Hello

Quote

core/materials/default/post/  have you created a child mat of post_color_correction.basemat (so creating post_color_correction_0)?

Yes, thats exactly what I did.

 

On 10/16/2021 at 9:30 AM, sweetluna said:

Hi, in 2.15 we removed post materials, as they are no longer needed, since you can use Scriptable Materials instead, as they provide more functionality overall, with better structure.

Thats totally fine for us. I have only a simple custom post material which shouldn't be difficult to port over into ULON format.

Thank you

Helmut

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  • 3 weeks later...

Hello,

I'm encountering some rendering issues with the otherwise very beautiful clouds. It appears after running the software for a couple of days (but less than a week) at around 70fps. It seems that some noise is accumulated over time, changing the downsampling mode and/or the interleaved rendering mode changes the appearance of the noise, but it doesn't go away. (Switching off the interleaved rendering does solve the issue, but thats not an option for performance reasons unfortunately).

clouds_fixedcamera.thumb.png.0291bd43c27051b3bc7d66df2cdbd260.png

Its worth mentioning that the camera is not moving - as opposed to all our other artworks we have produced so far-  but the sun position is changing.

But even when I move around with the editor camera the issue is still somewhat visible:

clouds_editorcamera.thumb.png.abe4dbd3bf06a197cd654b093a6f86ff.png

Changing settings like FXAA, TAA or SRAA doesn't change that much in the resulting image. Likewise, all post effects (bloom, lens, cross) have no effect and I'm not using any post materials.

I think it is also worth mentioning that I'm using the original/unmodified cloud shaders (from the sdk) here.

Many thanks

Helmut

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On 11/5/2021 at 6:21 PM, helmut.bressler said:

Hello,

I'm encountering some rendering issues with the otherwise very beautiful clouds. It appears after running the software for a couple of days (but less than a week) at around 70fps. It seems that some noise is accumulated over time, changing the downsampling mode and/or the interleaved rendering mode changes the appearance of the noise, but it doesn't go away. (Switching off the interleaved rendering does solve the issue, but thats not an option for performance reasons unfortunately).

 

Its worth mentioning that the camera is not moving - as opposed to all our other artworks we have produced so far-  but the sun position is changing.

But even when I move around with the editor camera the issue is still somewhat visible:

 

Changing settings like FXAA, TAA or SRAA doesn't change that much in the resulting image. Likewise, all post effects (bloom, lens, cross) have no effect and I'm not using any post materials.

I think it is also worth mentioning that I'm using the original/unmodified cloud shaders (from the sdk) here.

Many thanks

Helmut

Hello Helmut!

As you already mention most likely it's happen because of interleave turned on, but to say for sure we need to have a more closer look on this and investigate what exactly caused such an issue.

What is your hardware specs and used graphics API by the way?

Thanks!

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