Start Addressable Build gets stuck

[kbaer]

So, I've been experimenting with Gaia Pro 2021 with Gena Pro lately. My goal is making 3d nature environments with a path or road the play travels along using Pegasus. And the target is running on mobile with streamer loading using Addressables. I've referenced the articles on Canopy and on the Procedural Worlds site.
My problem is that it is getting stuck when after tapping the Start Addressable Build in the Build and Deploy tab. The progress bar gets to about 2/3 completed, and says "Importing Assets" but I left it overnight and no progress.
My terrain was 2km by 2km with 4 x 4 512m tiles.

I wanted to get to the point where I can build and load a remote tiled addressable scene. And I tried to get that done with SECTR and World Streamer 2 and had some roadblocks with starting with scenes with too much complexity (NatureManufacture's Meadow Environment), or terrain Materials that had custom shaders that weren't working on tiles (Mars Environment). So, I wanted to give Gaia Pro 2021 a shot with the built in tile streaming functionality. I feel like I'm so close to my goal, but I'm not sure what to do with this particular roadblock.

I am using the built-in render pipeline and the build target is iOS.

[kbaer]

@Adam @Bryan On Discord, you asked me to post my question here. Here it is. Can I get some feedback?

Thanks.

[Bryan]

3 hours ago, kbaer said:

@Adam @Bryan On Discord, you asked me to post my question here. Here it is. Can I get some feedback?

Thanks.

We are looking into this and will get back to you as soon as possible. 
 

[Peter]

Hi @kbaer, when you are looking at the addressable configuration that was created from the gaia scenes, does the information in there check out? (are you seeing only entries to assets that exist, and that are part of the scenes included in the build)  You can't of course check every asset in there, but just a general check if you got a good impression of the config would be good.
When it comes to the hang / crash, do you see any error messages in the console? What are the last few lines you can see in the unity editor logfile?
When you click the build asset bundles button in Gaia, we do not do anything different than starting the asset bundle build from the unity asset bundle config window, so we need to find out what in that process of the bundle creation makes unity hang.

 

[kbaer]

Sorry for the delay. Work got in the way.

I hope these screen shots will help. I started this project on my personal MacBook Pro where I first had this addressable build problem. I loaded it onto my work MacBook Pro (which is a little slower than my personal one) and I had a slightly newer version of Unity, and in the process the terrain is now black, but only in the Game view. I'm hoping you have a tip to fix that new issue, I've had it happen before.

I tried building the addressable again from the Addressable Groups tab, and it hangs in the same place.

And there are errors.

I am using the coniferous biome, and am not trying to use Flora. 

I am using Unity 2020.3.26 (started with Unity 2020.3.21) with built-in renderer targeting iOS.

[kbaer]

I don't know why it's referencing HDRP shaders when my render pipeline is set to Built-In and I'm building to mobile.

Are the standard Gaia biomes using Flora and pulling in shaders that are HDRP-only shaders?

[kbaer]

I removed the PW_Details_Foliage_HDRP.shadergraph from the ...214924 Addressables group, and building Addressables successfully completed. 

I still have the problem with the terrain textures showing as black. 

[Bryan]

22 minutes ago, kbaer said:

I removed the PW_Details_Foliage_HDRP.shadergraph from the ...214924 Addressables group, and building Addressables successfully completed. 

I still have the problem with the terrain textures showing as black. 

Make sure you dont have to many textures on one terrain. 
Typically this is the problem if your terrains are going black. 

[kbaer]

The terrains have the Material Default-Terrain-Standard applied.

[Peter]

22 hours ago, kbaer said:

I don't know why it's referencing HDRP shaders when my render pipeline is set to Built-In and I'm building to mobile.

 

I'm not 100% certain, but I have a theory: There are material settings stored together with the flora configuration in the spawners. The flora configuration is being created in HDRP originally, but when the spawners are being used in built-in it should switch to the built-in shaders accordingly. I assume (!) it somehow pulls those HDRP flora shaders from this original configuration, that is an issue we were not yet aware of.

 

20 hours ago, kbaer said:

I still have the problem with the terrain textures showing as black. 

That one is odd, normally when building addressables it should change nothing in regards to how certain shaders are being rendered in the editor. Could you please try to disable / enable "draw instanced" if it helps if you switch to the gray unity default material, and then back to "Default-Terrain-Standard" again?

[kbaer]

The terrain (and village) went black when I updated the project from Unity 2020.3.21 to 2020.3.26.

I may just clear it all and start over...again.