[Wip] Far From Here Studio MeteoVFX

[frozen bronze]

(Tread reedited to talk only of MeteoVFX 🙂)

MeteoVFX will be a paid asset, it will be available soon.
It's dedicated to run on HDRP project, managing meteo seasons and effect, it have provided shaders for foliages and terrains which are optimized and some Lit shaders support VirtualTexturing, but you can easily make your own using shaderGraph and the provided subgraph.
It support DXR, and work is done to fully support Speedtree conversion to DOTS entities for maximum performance, and with a tutorial on how to extract them from terrains and convert them, as the wind management is central for this asset, and they was no supported SpeedTree wind in Dots, it made sense.

My original HDRP template Github Repo (I am using same environments for MeteoVFX demo)
: https://github.com/Far-From-Here-studio/FarFromHere-Studio-Template-HDRP-Environment

[stoic trout]

oh that looks pretty good. I've been meaning to look into Muse. Is everything here AI generated?

I think I've seen it do textures, but what about the meshes and shaders

[frozen bronze]

Only textures are generated 🙂 , Mesh comes from sample resources (HDRP terrain demo), while shaders are HDRP shaders, this demo is made by combining samples resources and adapting with Muse, to showcase high quality feature like Layered Lit Tesselation shader and Vertex Painting, and to leverage the best of the texture AI tooling and HDRP graphics capacity.

[frozen bronze]

Working hard to release the MeteoVFX Extension
MeteoVFX - Rain (wip)

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Meteo VFX - Snow (wip)

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MeteoVFX: precipitation transition using seasons

[frozen bronze]

There is now a tread in #1080140002849214464 : https://discord.com/channels/489222168727519232/1209435915055796335

I'll keep update my work in progress about the MeteoVFX extension that run on this demo here

Far From Here Studio template : HDRP Environment + [Wip] MeteoVFX extension

[frozen bronze]

[Wip] Far From Here Studio MeteoVFX

[frozen bronze]

4K Render : Screen-Space Wetness Rainy mode

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2.35:1 large fov realtime record using few MeteoVFX features

[stoic trout]

aye that looks pretty good

[frozen bronze]

MeteoVFX is finally ready for a first version! (0.1.0)
Posting it on the asset store atm, it will be available soon 🙂
I am releasing using Unity 6 latest version, I hope to release it for Unity6 first, but it should work for any 2022+ Unity versions.
The Meteo VFX is built for HDRP, to give users the ability to easily deploy advanced features for organics environments, all these features are using Unity's tech stack (VFXgraph, ShaderGraph, CustomPass).
It's compatible fully DXR compatible and should work using ECS with no interferences.
The MeteoVFX Demo is made using Far From Here Studio's Template: HDRP Environment assets and resources (https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/templates/tutorials/farfromherestudio-template-hdrp-environment-271079) Giving users the capacity to test the same Demo Scene with and without the MeteoVFX. I made easy to extend your own shaders using MeteoVFX features with a set of subgraph ready to be used on any ShaderGraph, I am also including the equivalent ShaderFeatures for ASE users.

Features Set :

• Rain & Snow VFX
• MeteoVFX Buffers and Projection system ( windsVFX, color, emissive, alpha, computed height ,vertex height, vertex size, coverage, FarView)
• Terrain Shader (Instanced & DXR compatible)
• SpeedTree8 shaders
• TerrainDetails (foliage) Shader (work with any detail mesh on terrain)
• Ocean/River ShaderGraph (for HDRP's water system)
• Screen Space Wetness Effect
• CustomRT 3DNoise/2D noise Shaders for volumetrics and wind effects
• Centralized Wind Management
• VirtualTexturing (static assets) supported Shaders

(storm and lightings from the lastest video are not included, it's made using Procedural Lightning - High Performance and Shocking Lightning (https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/particles-effects/procedural-lightning-high-performance-and-shocking-lightning-34217) which is an asset I love because easy to use and powerfull)

[frozen bronze]

the lastest feature I worked on : Particle Coverage (VFXgraph ofc!)
Use the MeteoVFX's projection buffers to populate VFXgraph "precipitation effect" (Rain/Snow) and discard lifetime or alpha of particles that met somethings during the fall 🙂
On the ground you can see the result of the rough projection that discard snow.
It's fully rasterized, Scene wide, it follow the player camera everywhere, giving Rain and Snow a natural falling behavior, culling it in caves or under roofs for exemple. This precipitation VFX follow the player too, meaning that Rain and Snow can be triggerred everywhere and will adapt using the MeteoVFX buffers.

[frozen bronze]

@stoic trout check this out

this method bypass the vfx needs of collision with objects on a top-down perspective

[stoic trout]

aye that's pretty cool. How ya culling the snow from falling below a non-static mesh

I'd assume there's more magic than some SDF

[frozen bronze]

the magic come from the fully GPU nature of my "projection buffers"(of MeteoVFX) which render meshes from another pov into specifics buffers, and some of this buffers are capturing and computing thing from Height (both from terrains and objects, so I have scene wide buffer as it follow the camera) once it computed, I can just use it in any shaders/VFXgraph

This projection Buffers are genereted using a custom pass (two in fact), so it can draw, move matrix or pov onto my buffers, this buffers are textures of various types, with the good nodes, it's fairly trivial to use them depending on what you need

this run fast, just cost memories and few op on GPU to generated them.

Writting docs atm on this, for any shaders integration, I not done the VFXGraph node, but there is for SG which is fairly the same, or as .hlsl to include for written shaders

MeteoVFX will provide shaders sample for pretty much everything like foliages and VFX

[frozen bronze]

I have just added the support for ECS/DOTS converted Speedtrees!
It populate wind (global wind only for now) for trees converted as entities with a simple monobehavior, it offer straightforward process , it allow to get more performant forest environment overall (2-3 time more performant than using terrain trees or gameObjects for large forest) using speedtrees assets

[frozen bronze]

using DOTS setup for trees it just run the demo a lot better on 2022 LTS version (the demo forest have a lot of trees already), it's comparable to use BRG/GO and GPU culling on Unity6, I feel it's better but it's pretty close result from one to the other, i'll have to run some test for performance comparison.

[frozen bronze]

In the meantime the MeteoVFX get into the Asset Store, you can grabb the firt version from Patreon