Customizing Earthworks and Soil Graphics in Unity

Owned by Marc Lievin
Nov 12, 2024
3 min read

Vortex Earthworks Zone

Vortex Height Field Script and Renderer

image-20241001-032705.png

These components correspond to the Vortex soil graphics extensions. The Vortex dynamics zone is a deformable mesh whose corresponding graphical mesh is updated each frame. If asset bundle prefabs are not used, then the Terrain Capture Resolution has no affect.

The undeformed soil texture is taken to be the texture of the dominant material layer in the Unity terrain over the earthworks zone. This texture can be changed manually if desired.

On the other hand, the deformed soil texture must be manually specified by the user. To do so:

  • Copy the defaultEarthworksZoneMaterial, found in Packages/Vortex Studio Unity Integration/Resources/Materials, to the Project’s Assets folder. The defaultEarthworksZoneMaterial already has associated with it our DefaultEarthworksZoneShader, which is responsible for rendering the dynamics zone textures at runtime.

    image-20240916-174756.png

  • By default, the copied material should have these parameters:

  • In the Graphics GameObject (under the Earthwork Zone GameObject), the Material field of the Vortex Height Field Renderer Component can be assigned with this new material:

  • Changing the Disturbed Soil Albedo will change the applied texture for the deformed area. For example:

    In the scene:

  • As you can see from the previous screen capture, the deformed soil area doesn’t blend well with the EWZ mesh. To improve the look, the Disturbed Soil Transition From Capture flag can be enabled:

Vortex Soil Components

Customizing the various soil components (soil particles, soil dust, soil bins, grade quality sensor) are detailed at the pages below. Note that while these instructions are part of asset bundle prefab creation, the instructions for customizing the components are identical if they are used in the standalone integration.

How to Display Soil Particles in Unity

How to Display Soil Dust in Unity

https://vortexstudio.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/VSD2410/pages/3817443405