[Released] Tropical Forest Pack

Community Showcases
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Tropical Forest Pack

1.3.4 update with URP 14 & HDRP 12(works in 14 too) working packages is up!

(note- No paid effects or extensions were used in the video, screenshots, and demos. An additional free to download unity package is linked at the bottom of this post to use the same effects and settings)

Important

The CTI shaders require Custom Deferred Shaders input in the Graphics Settings when using them in Deferred Rendering mode in the Built-in Render Pipeline. On import into a Deferred project or when switching to Deferred the Leaves will look broken. They need the Custom Deferred Shaders. To fix this please follow my TFP1.1 Import Notes video down below. The Custom Deferred shading should also be compatible with AFS, UBER, and ALLOY. So if they are already inputted everything should work fine.

If using a version of Unity older than 5.6.3 Tropical Forest Pack 1.0 will download show in the import. You need to update to Unity 5.6.3 to download and import the latest version shown in this thread. You do not have to update your project to use this pack but can either install the latest version of Unity to download and then manually move it to your project or PM/Email me with the invoice # and I can send a package of 1.1.

Also for importing Tropical Forest Pack 1.1 without any broken shaders you have to delete the original Tropical Forest Pack folder before importing the update. If anyone wants the original Tropical Forest Pack 1.0 for any reason please PM me.

Asset Store Page

Acknowledgements

Many Thanks to @larsbertram1 for the Custom Tree Importer, shaders, and help to get everything working great!

To AegonGames for Landscaper which has saved me many hours and is the one of the best Assets I have used!

To a few great members of the Unity Community for testing and advice

Packs Content

The trees and plants were modeled in Blender and imported into Unity using the Custom Tree Importer v3. This enables very advanced bending and beautiful Single Sided PBR shading! Also smooth LOD support with Billboards!

Update has some of the original trees updated and also many new prerfabs. Full list of prefabs:

12 Ground Cover Prefabs

2 Falling Leaf Particles

11 Props Including Wooden Boards, Rope Bridges, a Photoscanned Dead Trunk, a Photoscanned Coconut, and 3 Papaya Fruit Prefabs

2 Photoscanned Rocks

13 Trees with new Banana and Coconut trees. All the other trees were updated for the new shading and bending

6 2048 Ground Textures. Replaced a couple older materials with Photoscanned Grounds that include real height and normal maps. Also the diffuse and normal for these two are 4096 but are compressed to 2048

Triangle Counts

The new Single-Sided shaded Leaf Shader helps on triangle counts and adding a little detail without going crazy. Tri Counts for the LOD0 models range from 32 for the simplest dead leaf cover mesh to 9873 for the complex rock mesh. Most of the trees and plants range from 500-3000 triangles. All non-particle Prefabs have LODs setup that bring the tri counts down and most of the trees and plants have billboards to help even more.

Collision

Also all the trees have colliders setup. Most primarily using capsule colliders and some have optional optimized mesh colliders for better collision on non-terrain trees. The capsule collider for the Kapok Tree is disabled by default because it is not great for the complex model it is. If you want to use it with the terrain then just disable the Mesh Collider and Enable the Capsule Collider for the prefab in the Project View.

Also a new Demo Scene- Forgotten Ravine! Sorry for the name but it is a pretty cool scene with most things setup to just drop some bots and your player in and go.

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Tutorials to Setup

SRP Setup

Trees not bending in any scene but the demo scenes-
The Custom Shaders require the Wind For LOD Groups On Terrain script attached to the Wind Zone gameobject in a scene for the wind effects to work. You can also use the WindZone prefab in the 1)Extra folder that has the script already attached.

There are no image effects included with the pack but I do include a package of everything I used in the video and screenshots including the Post Process Stack from Unity and also the awesome Volumetric Lighting solution from @Michal_1 . They are all free to use. Here is the package to import into your scene and use like in the TFP 1.1 Exrta Import video above-

Tropical Forest Pack 1.1_Extra (87 MB)

Tropical Forest Pack 1.2_Extra (87 MB)
(Updated the Extra Pack to match the new video and new Asset Store Page screenshots. Could not update the fog settings in the scenes as that would require uploading the whole pack again. So for getting the values similar I lowed the fog strength to .00025-.0004 and changed the fog color to a bright desaturated green)

Tropical Forest Pack 1.2.1_Extra (87 MB)

Tropical Forest Pack 1.3.0_Extra (87 MB)
(Edited the base image profile to be softer for a cleaner style. Still using the Post Process Stack 1 though)

Demos

Here are the Demo Scenes for you to walk through yourselves. Each include a Windows and Mac build. I have not tested the Mac builds so not sure how they run.

Base Showcase Scene with no effects and exactly how it will look on importing into a new project-

Tropical Forest Pack Assets Showcase (514MB)

These two scenes are densely populated terrains:
Note- Do not recommend using Extreme Quality at 1080p on lower to mid range machines

TFP Demo Scene (792 MB)

Forgotten Ravine (788 MB)

Forgotten Ravine Rain (794 MB)

Email- baldinoboy@gmail.com

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reserved

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Finally! Great work man and honestly you should sell this as a different pack and let the 1.0 folks simply upgrade into this for a discount may be. It was a lot of effort on your part with everything else in life and I’ve seen this through the betas. Great show and congratulations on completing the pack.

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Thanks man! I promised a free update for current customers so wanted to follow through with that without any time limit for a free upgrade. Also this is the pack I wanted to release initially. So feels right to have it just as an update. Will say it was beyond relief to finish writing the description and submit it. Waiting to party until it gets through submission :slight_smile:

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Another beta tester here. It is an immense pack and worthy of higher price. Whatever you have pitched it at good luck and it really does deserve to be picked up in huge numbers.

The textures are awesome and a couple have gone straight into my game. The tree’s are beautiful and a great shader too. If you don’t have this pack add it, a no brainer at the current price.

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The update is up!

Now I am having a party :slight_smile:

The new price is $35. Free upgrade to all who already purchased it. I updated the main post with the tutorial videos for setting up and also the TFP1.1_Extra package for getting the same effects I used in my screenshots and videos.

Hope you guys like it and message me for any issues or questions you have!

Cheers

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Hi Baldinoboy,
I just updated to 1.1, but all materials are pink. I try a reimport, but that doesn’t helped. And the particles in the waterfall are kind of dithered.

3202411--244825--TFP.jpg
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Hi franky_li, Sorry for this. What version of Unity are you using? Also any errors showing up?

You might try re-importing just the CTI Runtime Components folder in the 1)Extra folder. Unlikely a fix but worth trying.

Will get this working.

Also for the waterfall it is a dithered deferred shader. An attempt at making a decent water shader work in a scene with deferred shaders failed as it had to be forward and it broke the scene horribly by not receiving fog and shadows. Used Shader Forge for the custom water and particle shaders. I am not happy with the waterfall shader but if you have a good premium particle or water shader you can replace it. This is why I did not mention includes a waterfall because I did want to not market the pack with that. The water also is unimpressive but can easily be replaced with any premium water solution you might have.

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Hey franky_li,

Did some test and found that when importing 1.1 in a project that has 1.0 the new shader break. Not sure why because the shaders are completely different and the whole pack is under a new folder name. Non the less 1.0 has to be deleted before importing 1.1. Tested it and you can just delete the Tropical Forest Pack folder and re import 1.1 and it will fix any broken shaders so you do not have to reimport all of it again. Will update the main post. Thanks for bringing this error to my attention.

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Thanks, that fixed the problem:)

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Great! Sorry again for that and thank you for finding the issue.

Cheers

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Thanks for the nice asset:)

I have an other problem now, all the trees and plants are not reacting on the wind anymore when I load my project and my scene. But, strangely enough, when I then just load your demo scene once and then my scene again without doing anything in your scene it works. No glue what’s going on here.:frowning:

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Oh sorry I forgot to add the setup for the wind in the video or readme. For the custom shaders to receive wind you need to add the Wind For LOD Groups on Terrain script to the windzone gameobject. Not sure how I forgot to mention this but it is needed to work in scenes. You can also drag out the WindZone prefab in the 1)Extra folder into the scene and all the wind effects will work like in the demo scene.

One thing though I have not tested weather extensions and am not sure how or if you can customize the wind gameobject that it creates.

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Yeah I echo that, Baldinoboy has done an outstanding job on what was already an excellent asset. My favourite environment pack by far with outstanding support. No biome captures the imagination of the player more than a tropical rainforest, and thanks largely to its countless particle effects such as the leaves rolling down the river banks and the beautiful waterfall fall that flows into it, not to mention the trees waving in the breeze and the realistic sound effects, make this environment feel ‘alive’ rather than just a static collection of trees and rocks. No place on earth is so teeming with life as a tropical rainforest and this asset wonderfully recreates this experience. The attention to detail is clearly visible and definitely well worth the asking price. Really looking forward to adding some AI animals and fish to complete the experience.

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im curious were u have found all the textures, or do u live nearby a tropical forest and photographed them yourself?
i find it really hard to find usable leaf textures

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Thank you @jonfinlay & @AndyNeoman ! Really appreciate your guys testing and support!

Hey @Mister-D ,

Yeah have found this to be the hardest part of environment creation. Right next to reference and inspiration. The first versions was a combination of baked models for leaves, branches and textures from CGTextures(now Textures.com).

For the update though I took a lot of pictures of foliage and photoscanned a lot of trunks and a coconut while visiting family in Florida US. There was no great tropical giants to scan there of course but there was enough palms and tropical foliage to piece together. The banana leaves and palm fronds were quite tricky to capture as some of them were huge. Think the dead banana leaf was more than 3 meters long. Was worth it though as I do not think there was one acceptable source for them on the web at the time.

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thought so, tnx for sharing.
the pack looks great, congrats :wink:
been thinking of making a ancient forest pack myself(offcourse also with lars’ plugin) but i will need to find a good pipeline of baking leaf textures…

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Thanks man! Yeah it can be a bit tricky but is always possible. Have seen your trees and they are really good! Love to see artist using CTI. Texture baking is definitely the best way to make the branches. There has been a lot of improvement on texture sites so you can grab smaller leaf, branch textures from sites like Poliigon and Megascans. Then model out your branch using a sample image in the background for reference in Blender or whatever 3d app you use and bake the diffuse and normal from that modeled branch. Gives great results. Just make sure you have good reference and base leaf, bark for the branch, textures to use.

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Hey guys,

Please let me know here, a PM, or through my email ( baldinoboy@gmail.com ) what you think of the update and if you are having any issues. It was a big thing to setup and I want to make sure it is working for everyone and that you guys are happy with it.

One thing I found is that there are some simple but important optimizes that can be done with a few ground cover models and LOD setups and when I have time I will do that for a minor update. Also will probably add a few ground cover models like bushes. You can see with the GroundCover texture there is a lot of unused foliage types just from that one texture.

Anything else that anyone feels they need done with this pack for it to work better? An issues?

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One thing I am stuggling to get right is the deadleafground cover. Not sure if the scale is bit small or something with the mesh. Gena doesn’t seem to like populating with it although i am a newbie using Gena so it could be me.

I am close to getting some vids/pics but I have also been integrated automated weather effects across the environment and want to get it included first. I was toying with the shader to try and get the wet effect but I’ve been alternating with AFS too, both look amazing. Oh and don’t forget the banana when you get chance :-).

1 Like