Flowmap Generator for Unity

I've made a tool for Unity that generates flowmaps using a fluid simulation. You can control the simulation using fields like vortex, directional, calm, etc. It's also possible to have the flowmap update dynamically within Unity, so you can move fields around, turn them on and off, change the level geometry, etc. It's also possible to export the flowmap so you can use it in other engines. I've submitted it to Unity's Asset store, hopefully it gets added soon.

I set the suggested price at $60. I'm also planning on making a stand alone application, so people who don't use Unity can use this.

If you use the baked texture the performance all depends on how expensive you want to make your shader. Compared to the usual way of making a water shader by adding two panning normal maps together it's two extra texture fetches (the flowmap and a noise map for offsetting the phase) and a few extra math instructions. There are flowmap shaders for Unity for iphone, so it's certainly possible to get this working on mobile platforms.

If you want to continuously simulate the flowmap so it updates dynamically it costs a bit more. On my computer (i7 2600k, nvidia 580gtx) it adds about 1-2ms per frame when simulating a 512x512 flowmap, using GPU acceleration. This only works in Unity and is only viable when using GPU acceleration, it takes about 16ms when using 8 threads on the CPU.

Quote from kikette

Hmmm.. I saw this one wich is free.

Why should I buy your's ?

http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=105399

Btw, you did a great job. I just want to point out the fact that an other tool exist.

They're very different tools. That one focuses on painting by hand, mine uses a fluid simulation to generate the flowmap. Painting by hand is nice when you're not changing the scene all the time and only have to paint once, but my tool lets you re-simulate when needed. If the area that your flowmap covers is quite large with complicated geometry it's quite often a lot faster and easier to simulate, using fields to push the fluid around.

It did give me some ideas of what sort of features might be needed in a full simulation though. They also use a hand painted method, using Houdini.

From the "Future work" slide I've added this, "Render dynamic flow vectors per-frame so animated objects cause flow changes".

I've also tried this one, "Flow height maps and use tessellation hardware" which works pretty good. I did need to add an extra scrolling heightmap as areas where the flowmap wasn't moving very fast looked a bit odd with waves that just stand there. I'll have to make a video or demo of that.

It's up on Unity's asset store now. Here's a post on their forum with a link to the asset store.

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/194577…lation-RELEASED

I've been working on a stand alone version. Most of the work has been making a scene editor to handle all the stuff that I relied on Unity to handle like moving objects, undoing, importing meshes, etc. All the features that normally require Unity Pro such as GPU acceleration and rendering heightmaps from the scene will work in this version. It's mostly just a few small fixes and then doing a UI pass that's left. Since I'm using Unity to build the stand alone I've got builds working for Windows, OSX, and even a webplayer version (which might be useful for a demo).

[Blocked Image: http://www.superpositiongames.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/FlowGeneratorStandalone_01.jpg]

Thanks When you select the modifiers they draw a wireframe bounding box showing the range of their influence. The falloff texture is then stretched to fill that bounding box, so it should be pretty easy to get a feel for exactly where they will have an effect. The sprites are just there so you can select modifiers by clicking on the sprite.

I've now released the first version of the standalone program. You can now create flowmaps for any game engine and use features that the Unity plugin version requires Unity Pro for, such as GPU acceleration and interacting with scene geometry. There's a 30 day trial, just download the program and you can start the trial. The output is limited to 256x256px, but all other features are enabled. Purchasing a license removes that limitation and gives you access to all future updates. I've mostly been testing the newer features on my Macbook, so let me know if anything looks odd in Windows. Download now [Blocked Image: http://www.superpositiongames.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Standalone_v1.jpg]