I might be wrong. Anyway, turns out the color dilation Unity applies does not go all the way, leaving some transparent pixels still black, which is absolutely terrible for the smallest mip levels. I could swear the dilation used to cover all pixels, but might misremember that one too.
Didn't Unity use to let you inspect what color is stored in transparent pixels? Not in the RGB view, but in the individual R, G and B channel views? Now there's NO way to tell, short of slapping the texture on a material with a non-transparent shader and look at that. And no, I can't disable "alpha is transparency" because the color dilation that this feature enables is exactly what I want to inspect.
I found this postcard perfect view while exploring.
Also, the trees are now a bit more scruffy and not so smooth and rounded, which particularly changes how the tree coverage looks in the distance.
#ProcGen #GameDev
The tree leaves are now swaying in the wind. The "Grasslands - Stylized Nature" pack the trees are from actually already included a wind effect, but I implemented some simple tweaks to make it more to my liking. What do you think?
#GameDev #IndieGameDevHere's a fly-by with the new trees. The fact that they cast/receive shadows even in the distance makes a huge difference compared to the old Unity billboard ones, which destroyed the sense of depth in the distance.
#ProcGen #GameDev
(Video of old trees here: https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@runevision/112186261304893345)
I got translucency working on the trees ☀️🌳
Hell yeah, let's stroll!
#GameDev #ProcGen
When I first used the new tree models, nothing felt satisfying to me anymore. It took me long to tweak misc aspects of the trees to isolate what it was I liked better about the old trees, to be able to replicate the same feeling with the new models. Here's how they first looked vs how they look now.
I've long needed to scrap Unity's built-in tree imposters which don't support shadows and use octahedral impostors plus GPU instancing instead. The tree models I used don't work with that (and look too small anyway), so had to find new tree models too. Finally found a combo that might work?
#gamedevNotes on atmospheric perspective and distant mountains
https://blog.runevision.com/2025/06/notes-on-atmospheric-perspective-and.html
On my recent vacation in Japan, I had ample opportunities to study views with distant mountains. And something about the shades at different distances clicked for me that’s now obvious in retrospect.
As I write in the post, a mystical stairway up through a cedar forest gave me a weirdly strong sense of three-dimensional depth. I got a question about that from
@jkaniarz which made me reflect more on the reasons. 🧵
Aras Pranckevičius