ok tpo spam this channel with several

[honest bronze]

You can do it here in a thread

[stone flame]

cool

ground before digginh

[honest bronze]

By "digging" do you mean modifying Unity's Terrain, or using something else like Digger?

[stone flame]

pick engaged ready to dig

[stone flame]

modifying the unity terrain

like ingame you dig for gold or something

one swing, decal seems to work, but is flat

here is another angle so you can see the decal is flat

this is about 6 swings and there is about a 2 foot deep hole (depression) in the terrain

[honest bronze]

What type of decal is it
Projector component? Decal Projector component?

[stone flame]

and finally I turned around so the decal is not on the hole, and you can see the hole (depression) I made

[stone flame]

umm let me check

I cant remember where I got it now, its a package of about 6 scripts

Ill h ave to check the asset store to see which one I got

[honest bronze]

If you select the decal, what components does it have?

[stone flame]

this is the asset https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/particles-effects/simple-decal-system-13889

DecalBuilder. DecalUtils, MeshBuilder, MeshUtils, PolygonUtils, TerrainUtils

those are the scripts and there was some sample decals

the decal itself is a sprite

[honest bronze]

As far as I can tell this decal system generates a new mesh with the decal material, contouring the mesh geometry that it hits
This is different from unity's Projectors and Decal Projectors which work entirely on shader level and don't generate any mesh data
That to me implies that this decal system might not respond to changes, without discretely "regenerating" the decal geometry

[stone flame]

I did understand it produces a mesh thats why they suggest delete the decal as you go or you end up with hundreds of these things bloating the scene, but I couldnt find enough info about Unitys system to make that work

I also saw some people suggesting splatmaps I think they were which is basically another whole terrain texture that is allowed to show thru at discrete places, but I couldnt find enough info about that either

do you suggest Unitys projectors?

[honest bronze]

They would be my first option
Projectors on Built-in Render Pipeline
Decal Projectors on URP and HDRP

Still, this decal system may work as well if you find a way to reset it when the terrain changes

[stone flame]

ok using BIP

[honest bronze]

Assuming you've confirmed that they do react to terrain's contours at all, at any rate

[stone flame]

seems they react to the contours as set at the start of the play game

but dont react to changes at runtime

[honest bronze]

It could be calling a recalculation method in Start

Or Awake, but have a method for it nonetheless

[stone flame]

the docs said it works dynamically at runtime

[honest bronze]

These generated mesh decals are in many cases the cheapest type of projector, even if you have hundreds of them since modern computers can handle some hundreds of simple meshes
They would do no calculations at all after you initially generate them, or force them to change
That is if they are generated mesh decals as I assume

[honest bronze]

This could mean they work at runtime when you spawn one, not necessarily that it reacts to changes in environment

[stone flame]

but I only assume that means it registers changes in the terrain heightmap at runtime, maybe it doesnt, mayber they just mean it will stamp at runtime as opposed to some systems which are just terrain stamps that only work at build time

[stone flame]

thats what I am thinking now

[honest bronze]

BiRP Projectors from what I understand re-render the entire mesh they hit
Which means each Projector would have as much polygons as your whole terrain

[stone flame]

so that will cause a small lag spike?

depending on the size of the terrain texture?

[honest bronze]

Not a spike, and maybe not small
A constant rise in rendering cost
Imagine duplicating the whole Terrain whenever a decal appears

Or so I've heard, anyway

It'd duplicate the geometry, not the material
The material comes from the Projector

[stone flame]

oh, every time and they stack? thats scary there will be hundreds of these

[honest bronze]

It is scary, but it's worth confirming that theory by profiling

URP and HDRP Decal Projectors on the other hand could project against depth buffer so they are quite cheap if the GPU is good, and even cheaper if they're not in view
But those render pipelines are probably not an option

[stone flame]

I play lots of games that have this type terrain texture modification, it shouldnt be too outrageous

[honest bronze]

Every game is different in this regard
Even Unity has many drastically different options for this

[stone flame]

I've tried the URP and it cause all kinds of significant issues wit the whole project, so I stuck with BIRP

well thanks for your time and patience, I will investigate projectors

[honest bronze]

Most other games also have engine programmers and graphics engineers who know precisely the costs and how to optimize this stuff, so you can't draw direct comparisons

[stone flame]

yeah, I have me and my limited knowledge

[honest bronze]

Modifying Terrain's splatmaps / control textures is another option, but another can of worms as well

[stone flame]

worms, always worms

[honest bronze]

That's what digging got you, in this case ^^

[stone flame]

ahh I see what you did there 🪱

ok I better go, its late here

thanks again

I'll prob be back in a few days

see how it goes

byeee

[stone flame]

HI, Thought I would let you know, I found the issue. I had put an invisible plane on the surface for something else, I forgot about it, and this surface was what the decal was stamping on which is why it was flat and not following the hole. I added a layer mask, now everything I dont want the decal to appear on gets assigned to this layer mask. It works 😃

[honest bronze]

So the particular asset does react to runtime changes to terrain without requiring any reset method?