AssetStore - get it on Asset Store
Above picture produced basing on real screenshot - go for interactive soccer demo.
As an imposting volumetric solution - put just one triangle and get countless grass billboards !
Although the package is $75, note, that traditionally (like in case of my other products) update to Volume Grass 2 (and up) will be free.
This thread has been reconstituted as old VolumeGrass V1.1 you can find here. VG 1.1 is 3 years old now. It is just about time to forget about that solution as we’re in 2014 now and so many new things can be done since Unity2.6… :).
Main advantages of the new version (1.5) that’s right around the corner:
1. Simplier, more intuitive and clean user interface.
2. Convinient custom material inspector for grass shader. No more “space shuttle cockpit like” look. All features grouped logicaly and to be enabled / disabled dynamically. No more need to configure shaders by hand - it’s all available via material properties.
3. Grass is textured basing on world global coords, you don’t need to worry about how to put VG on your own mesh. Although there is handy mesh editor included, there is also dedicated script that will turn any flat model into volume grass, carving sidewalls and managing basic parameters, rest you can do using new material inspector.
4. Brand new wind handling. You can specify one directional and one spherical wind zone to affect the grass. Look at the new meadow demo for reference. While we’re still making billboards, but they are … special (volumetric), so - it’s elastic like real thing…
5. Grass apperance has been enhanced by much better MIP filtering. No more noisy look - and it’s adjustable. Generally grass color and feel is also easily tweakable. Not only color multiplying, volume grass can do more like saturation by a slider. Changing grass apperance from toony green onion to dry ascetic look is matter of seconds.
6. New editor that makes your life easy when you’d like to customise grass look. You can make grass billboards texture out of source elements (separate grass blades, flowers, leaves and so on).
7. Global colormap over grass coverage. No more dull 2 colored stiff billboards.
8. IBL lighting to follow your HDR/LDR skyboxes or automatically synced with Skyshop sky object (cubemaps +rotation)
… and last but not least:
Works with Unity Free !! (DX9, OpenGL tested, while DX11 needs Unity Pro to resolve grass intersections). Note, that I don’t claim any mobile friendliness (yet). When I only can get it working on my tablet, I’ll surely let you know !
VolumeGrass1.5 is intermediate solution on the road to VolumeGrass 2. I decided to submit what I’ve got now due to soccer sale, but that’s not the finish. Quick plan for features that are under construction is like this:
- We like dynamically place grass on terrain, just painting it - density based on texture not, model based. Massive terrain setups (multiple terrains with seamless grass edges) possible - better to use Pro (using render textures solves many performance glichtes as we can base on GPU).
- We like even better lighting (translucency and self shadowing for most demanding users)
- Breaking the billboards down to the separate grass blades using dissolve maps. This can reduce patternization (rect cell shaped) look
- We like to make everything in world space instead of tangent space. Although this introduces many challenges, it’s possible and we can get real silhouettes of grass on hills.
- ??? (I’ll probably figure something out…)
Tom
