Wind System Not Working

[Guidos]

Hi there,

I am trying to get the wind system to work in my 'MVP' project. 

I have a quick Test Gaia Pro 2021 project build that works fine so everything potentially should work.

Strangely I have seen it work in my MVP project but suddenly (or a do something to break it) it stops.

I have adjusted the bend for each spawner so I can see the Alpine Meadow conifers bend ok, but they don't animate like their branches are being blown like the test build does so I must be missing something. 

I was wondering if I should go back to the Gaia Manager, untick and tick the Wind checkbox again and update runtime. To do this I also need to set the player controller to custom and drag my custom player object and the camera there, but each time I press update the system deletes my player, I can't find a way to stop Gaia from deleting it. 

So my question is, is it necessary for me to go back to the Gaia Manager to update the runtime to see if I can get the Wind system to work, (and thus, how can I protect my character) or is there a way I can troubleshoot the wind system to see why its not animating the trees ?

I have the PW Wind Zone object under Gaia Runtime already and it has the Wind Zone component and the Wind Manager (Script) attached. Main is set to 10. 

Any suggestions gratefully received. 

 

[Peter]

Hi @Guidos, it looks like you are already fulfilling the requirements for the wind to work, the objects need to use a shader that supports wind movement (this is the case with the Gaia assets) and then you need a wind zone in the scene, for Gaia there needs to be the wind manager script on it which is the case.
You wrote that the trees do bend, but the branches needles do not move - could it be that you are only looking at the wind effect in editor while the scene is not running? If that is the case, could you please try running the scene and checking the wind animations then? Only while the scene is fully running, the wind frequency etc. from the wind zone is fully processed and you get all wind animation.
Another potential issue when looking at the wind animations could be if you have "always refresh" deactivated in the scene view window:


This would lead to the wind animations stopping as well when there is nothing refreshing the scene view.

[Guidos]

Thank you Peter,

I'm checking on these now. 

Question: I see wind mentioned in a tree prefab's shader's edit window, so is there no actual animation anywhere? Im getting the impression it isn't somehow. 

[Peter]

No, wind animation on vegetation is usually handled in the shader, with some trickery the mesh is deformed while it is being rendered according to the wind strength / direction of the wind source.

[Guidos]

Thanks Peter, all fixed now.