my rocks, same texture

[brave void]

It does look much better, but how is the texture applied

Triplanar, or UVs, or it's newly baked from Substance for that rock geometry?

[drowsy knoll]

uv mapped

texture atlas for several rocks

[brave void]

But it's the exact same flat texture?

I'd expect to see some seams when applied to such a bumpy mesh

[drowsy knoll]

yes and same normal map

probably different tiling

wait you may be right

I might have applied triplanar in substance painter

then it's UV mapped in unity after applying it as triplanar in painter

[brave void]

That means this variant of the rock material is baked for that rock

In Substance

[drowsy knoll]

yes

[brave void]

So it's a different texture, not entirely comparable

[drowsy knoll]

well I can try

applying the same texture on a custom cave wall mesh

the same as with the digger mesh

cause digger is using its own shader

because

digger actually has a broken shader for unity 6

one guy volunteered to fix the shader

he did but I have these normal map issues

probably it's not fixed entirely

I would have thought just ditch digger but he says he sees no issue (maybe he used textures with weak normals) and I noticed the problem on another custom made mesh

but that one actually has fucked up geometry and I think flipped normals

so my first suspect is the digger shader...I will just try on mesh walls

[brave void]

Could be, but applying normal maps on rounded geometry that the normal maps were not designed for is a common cause of issues on its own

[drowsy knoll]

eough terrain too?

[brave void]

I believe so yes, but you can never have too sharp angles with Terrain because it uses a very simple planar mapping that will distort with any texture

Unless you stick to relatively flat hills which hides all issues like that to begin with

[drowsy knoll]

I believe you may be right about that

because

you could see in the example in the video the artifact happened on a shard triangle

but that is because digger doesn't let me go higher poly

another reason why I want to subdivide and sculpt in blender

if I smooth it out with more geometry, it could fix itself

[brave void]

This happens also on this mock up cave, left with cube projected mesh UVs, right with triplanar mapping

Again I believe because when the mesh curves, a tangent space normal map can't really keep up with it

Unless the normal map is baked with the mesh to consider this curvature

Triplanar with much lesser strength looks better, but it ultimately has to contend with the fact that the geometry is a smooth blob

[drowsy knoll]

so you think even with more geometry and less harsh edges, it will still look wrong?

well I can only test

and reduce the normal a bit maybe

[brave void]

Yes, I believe as long as the geometry and normal map disagree about the slantedness of the surface, you'll end up with shadows like that
You'd want the normal map be responsible for the grunginess of the surface, but geometry for the slant and pointy corners

[drowsy knoll]

OK it's a shader issue after all, thank god

this is a normal bnlender mesh

well actually, exported digger mesh but same thing

it looks a lot more normal, no pun intended

a few spots are still somewhat iffy but it will work when I fix everything and I can still reduce normal intensity slightly

[brave void]

Assuming you don't need runtime digging, exporting it could be a good workaround?

[drowsy knoll]

that's what I'm doing

currently sculpting terrain in blender

it's hard work but hey, it's honest work

[drowsy knoll]

I've wanted to do this for some time but I ran into some issues on how to texture the exported meshes since they're obviously too big to uv unwrap and texture

but I will find some mesh painting solution

besides, I have more geometry and better sculpting tools in blender

[brave void]

You don't have to and usually aren't really expected to unwrap entire levels

Usually some kind of triplanar shader is the only practical option

[drowsy knoll]

Yeah

There's for example the microsplat mesh workflow

There is also pokybrush which is free but it allows only 4 textures and somehow doesn't allow normal maps

People edited their shader to allow that

Weird

Btw will it be hard to find a simple runtime mesh painting solution without uv map

Someone said I won't be able to do it but I probably should

[brave void]

Whatever "painting" tool you might want to use doesn't change the situation that none of them can make the choice of texture mapping go away automatically

If the UVs are projected or unwrapped, there's guaranteed to be seams

Planar mapping only works for horizontal terrains

Which leaves you with triplanar (and biplanar) mapping

[drowsy knoll]

There is also a triplanar addon for microsplat so it should be fine

[brave void]

It's expensive to render and might still cause the kind of artifacts that we've seen with normal maps, but it's probably the best option you've got

Baking unique textures for each part of the cave is not something I'd consider viable unless you can re-use the cave parts extremely conservatively

[drowsy knoll]

yeah no I won't do that

what about the realtime painting? Just color painting, that's all

I want to give my players the option to draw on walls with a marker

someone said it would be hard without UVs but there should be some kind of vertex painting asset or triplanar as well or something

[brave void]

That makes everything a lot more complicated

[drowsy knoll]

it does? shit

so he was right?

[brave void]

Triplanar is no-go
Vertex painting is doable but the resolution is incredibly low, and it'll show
Modifying the mesh data of the whole cave every frame might cause performance concerns but can't say anything for sure

You could use triplanar mapping for the rock textures, but have it unwrapped for texture painting

The advantage is that the unwrap doesn't have to be very good, since you don't have to map a continuous pattern to it
Disadvantage is that you'll still need a huge RT texture for the painting despite that, and the resolution won't be great

There's a reason why games tend to very carefully constrain the area of where you're allowed to paint, rarely give you any high resolution for it

Another option still is to simulate paint with lots of decals
This is often the best option, but only if you don't need crisp brush strokes or accuracy

[drowsy knoll]

what do you mean lots of decals

you mean one click is one ''point''

like small ball of paint

[brave void]

Yes, many points could be used to make shapes
Lethal Company recently used this technique

[drowsy knoll]

hm that works

it doesn't need to be precise

the idea is

the cave tunnels are confusing and maze like

player will draw arrows, Xs, or whatever to indicate where he's been and where he should go next

that should be enough for that

[brave void]

You could offer a selection of decals for the player to paint, so just one decal renderer is needed to convey the information

I wonder how effective it is to paint underwater

[drowsy knoll]

I got you

Underwater marker

If I REALLY can't make it work, I'll do different colored glowsticks or something

But I want him to be able to draw

[drowsy knoll]

Nah I want to draw, it seems nicer

[drowsy knoll]

anyway thanks for all your help

you are helpful

[brave void]

[drowsy knoll]

I tried with the ''real thing'' and there are no normal issues whatsoever

[brave void]

How exactly is that real thing made?

Or more precisely how is it textured

[drowsy knoll]

just a giant mesh in blender

good question about texturing

well

for this, I literally just applied the mat to the whole mesh

no painting solution

tirplanar

[brave void]

HDRP Lit's own variety?

[drowsy knoll]

you can see at an angle it also looks good

[drowsy knoll]

yes literally vanilla hdrp lit

I am not sure if I can really make it like that and make it look good, since I would chunk the cave and apply the textures and cover the seams or something but

[brave void]

This is not a very sharp glancing angle, but if the normal strength is not too high, it won't cause a practical problem I think

[drowsy knoll]

it works in theory

[brave void]

Triplanar projection doesn't really have seams

[drowsy knoll]

if this works, so too should microsplat's mesh painting asset, yeah?

[drowsy knoll]

No I mean

[brave void]

I don't know how that one works exactly

[drowsy knoll]

I was thinking if I was to chunk the cave literally just apply different textures to caves, I might be able to cover the transitions

and make the floor mesh out of a different material or something

would be simple and would have no issues but I'll see if I can make that work

[drowsy knoll]

it has a triplanar addon for splatmap painting, it should work just the same

[drowsy knoll]

you can see the normals from this pretty extreme angle

but these look normal more or less, right?

[brave void]

It's basically the same problem as you had originally just much less extreme

Not totally "correct" but I can't imagine anyone will even notice it currently

[drowsy knoll]

thanks