Alloy Physical Shader Framework by RUST LTD.

Hey guys, announcement for ya:

The package on the asset store now contains a sub-package with Alloy 3 beta 4 (for Unity5 RC2).

For those of you playing with effects such as rim/emission/parallax/etc. with a vfx orientation (ie. glowy S***). If you're wondering what sort of map data to use, want some cool ideas, or just happen to like potions, check out a little package I put up of FX Maps and Masks here:

https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/30408

 

Hey,

The pack you posted above looks great. I for one am picking it up. You guys clearly know how to make things look nice and shiny, so any generic asset packs (like the above) you guys think of is a big plus from my perspective ... especially if its geared towards dungeons ! I'm a one-man team over here (although my actual job is not-so-slowly jumping towards the unity band-wagon seeing the stuff I can do solo), so I'll purchase all the help I can get to make things look pretty.

Also, on that note: are you guys still hooking up with amply texture 2? If so, is there a change in workflow if I were to use that with alloy?

 

Hey @xenius, looking at those effect packs, it kinda of begs the question if you guys will be adding stuff like animated normals for things like water? (Basically two tiled normal maps panning in opposite directions to simulate ripples)

 

@Neptune_Imaging You can already do that! The main texture transforms have a scroll option, and the detail mapping does. Camouflage Studios already used the Glass shader with base+detail normal maps scrolling independently to make some ace water! We're probably going to make an even fancier, more dedicated water shader for 3.1 though .

Hi @DGordon ! Thanks for the compliment. I have plans for more sample/example packs for the coming months. I know folks often tend to like reeeally robust examples when trying out complex systems, so I've got some more plans. As for the fantasy/dungeon theme, you're in luck. Medieval stuff is very much in my wheelhouse, so every time I do one of these packs there'll end up being something in it in that style.

Speaking of, here's another fun Alloy 3 pack: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/30401

I FINALLY sorted, cleaned up, and packed together all the sword parts and textures from our old Bladeforge demo!








They're far for perfect, and weren't reeeally built for a game per say (poly heavy), but I'm hoping someone has some fun with them. Regardless, its $20 for a whole mess of content, and if you really wanted to use a lot of them, you could simply swap in some lower poly blades (or just retopo the ones I've included) and you'd be good to go.

 

Very cool. I'll be nabbing that as well if for nothing more than study purposes .

Now if I could only get you to sell some Mixamo FUSE ready armor packs :/.

 

Awesome sauce on the scrolling normals...I gotta play with that.

EDIT: I just had a play with this... that is impressive!!

 

Is there any chance we'll get some of those tutorials anytime soon? Specifically thinking about the skin/hair shaders, but anything else is welcome too.

 

@DGordon
We're currently a bit busy getting some stuff prepped for GDC. So we probably won't be able to do a whole lot in terms of documentation/tutorials until after the event is over.

 

No problem. I don't have an actual time requirement, just interested in learning how to use this stuff better. Thanks!

 

Yep, @DGordon I am looking forward to the tutorials as well... and I will be whipping up a character specific production tutorial (going for video since written will take too long) for setting up shaders and materials with Alloy and if it's cool with @xenius and @n00body, I will be also packing in character specific assets for samples.

The tutorial will also cover creating hair textures briefly and what to look out for. Also the use of Substance Painter and Designer and how they are coupled in the use of Alloy and Unity. I will not be covering things like tesellation until I am sure that Unity has killed the deferred rendering bug involving tesellated meshes. I will save this for another tutorial.

It will be most likely after GDC and my vacation time.

 

Apologies if this has been answered, but how does performance stack up vs Unity5 equivalent shaders? We use linear/deferred. Is it working with consoles?

 

@hippocoder
For equivalent features they're roughly on par in terms or performance, but Alloy is slightly more expensive since it does more by default. For Detail mapping we apply secondary Specular AA to avoid sparkling problems for really smooth surfaces. Also, our emission is slightly more expensive because we have an option for a second scrolling effects mask. Plus, we calculate a view-dependent specular occlusion term that we apply to all specular contributions. Finally, we use GGX for our lighting model, while the Standard shaders use Normalized Blinn Phong by default.

Unfortunately we don't currently have any console devkits on which to test compatibility. However, we have some customers who will be obtaining devkits and will be testing them for us, so we will be addressing any issues as they come up. Although I don't anticipate major issues since the code supporting Alloy 3 was derived from the Standard shader and has been kept up to date with each beta release.

Does that answer your question sufficiently?

 

Certainly. Our game is running well on PS4, and we're just looking into expanding the artist toolbox You can probably get away with more branches on consoles too.

Love the work that's gone into this.

 

@hippocoder
This has been a labor of love, and sometimes hate, for me over the past few months. It took me two months just to make our own surface shader framework to support all the features I needed.

Oh, I forgot one other major and rather important difference. In Alloy, all Point and Spot lights are spherical area lights in both forward and deferred mode, while Unity uses punctual lights. So that does add a sizable jump in cost, but for a significant quality boost.

 

I totally get the hate part You hate so we don't have to!

 

@hippocoder
Well given the price we're asking, I feel like our customers expect me to do at least that much.

If you end up purchasing our product, feel free to give us feedback on its console performance. It is my goal to make it work well and look great on all next-gen hardware.

 

I think my question early got lost somewhere.

I know you guys are working with the Amplify Texture 2 guys to get Alloy working with it properly. Can you explain what the workflow for that is, how much (if any) change it requires when using Alloy, etc, etc?

 

@DGordon
Basically when you use AT2 it should detect Alloy and then create a separate patched set of our shaders that work with it. AT2 brings support for three maps, now including a spec map. So it will replace the base, spec, and normal maps of our shaders when you use them.

Does that answer your question well enough?

 

So for anyone who is interested, I am revising our TeamColor feature. Frankly, the one we've had from Alloy 2 into 3 just isn't very good. If you're curious, it works like this:

Code (CSharp):

1. half3 tint = lerp(half3(1,1,1), aTint, masks.a);
2. tint = lerp(tint, rTint, masks.r);
3. tint = lerp(tint, gTint, masks.g);
4. baseColor *= lerp(tint, bTint, masks.b);

As you can see, it's layer order-dependent and makes it basically impossible to have all the colors influence one fragment in a clean way. The only problem it really solves is avoiding black zones between masked colors.

So I'm looking at something more like this:

Code (CSharp):

1. half weight = dot(masks, half4(1,1,1,1));
2. masks /= max(1, weight);
3. baseColor *= rTint * masks.r + gTint * masks.g + bTint * masks.b + aTint * masks.a + (1 - min(1, weight)).rrr;

This one also solves the black zone problem, but still allows easy blending between all tints. So I am planning to adopt this as the official version, while having a config flag to enable the old version for people with in-progress projects.

Any thoughts?

EDIT:
Just a little explanation of what is going on in the new one. When the total weight of the masks is above 1, it will renormalize all the mask weights so that they total 1. When the total weight is below 1, it will add the color white by the remaining weight.

 

Hi Guys!


I wanted to make a quick announcement (if you hadn't yet heard) that Republique Remastered just launched on Steam!
http://store.steampowered.com/app/317100/

It's the first game to launch with Alloy 3 in Unity 5! The brave souls at Camouflaj have been dev-ing on the betas this whole time, converting the game over from its mobile form in Unity4, to gorgeous Unity 5 PC PBR glory. We've worked closely with their team during the whole process, battle-testing things to make sure the workflow, the feature set, and the look was right for a game and team of their scale. A million thanks go out to Stephen, Andre, Jeremy, Michael and Sean for all the excellent feedback over the past months, and for rolling with the punches long enough for us to get things solid.

Make sure to check it out if you're into Stealth games, great world building and art, with an awesome voice cast (yay Jennifer Hale and David Hayter)!

I believe this is a sign of things to come, namely gorgeous, robust and thoughtful PC Unity games made by Indie studios. It's a reminder why we love being part of this thriving community!

 

Also check out their blog post, including videos, descriptions, and podcasts of how they did their conversion from mobile to the PC:
https://unity3d.com/journey-to-unity5-republique

 

This is a beautiful game

 

While your proposed changes are a little over my head, I do appreciate the fact that you guys even have a TeamColor feature. I was looking at other assets to do this before realizing it is already an included feature in Alloy. Nice!

I bought Alloy a while ago, but am looking forward to using it for the first time soon.

 

Hey Guys! AWESOME NEWS!

Alloy 3.0 is now officially released! We've started a new thread HERE

This thread will now be closed/abandoned for future updates, as 16 pages miiiight be past the point of terribly usable. I heartily encourage you to subscribe to the new thread, and join our mailing list on the front page here: http://alloy.rustltd.com/ to stay current with our announcements! We've got a whole bunch of nifty stuff we'll be showing over this GDC week!

 

Hi guys. I know I bugged you about this before, but it is happening again, now with Alloy 3. When I imported it into a relatively fresh new project, I get the following error:

`PlayerSettings' does not contain a definition for `colorSpace'

I have previously commented or adjusted the offending line of code but would still like to know why and how this is even possible. :/ I have used Alloy since launch so even though I already understood the setup process, I went ahead and followed the instructions anyway. Things seem correct, but it still fires that error. Anywho, thanks for the awesome package and for going on sale!

 

Alloy 3.0 is now officially released! We've started a new thread HERE

This thread is closed!

 

EDIT : Wrong thread...

 

I thought shader forge shaders won't work in a scene that has been setup for alloy?
#confused

 

You should ask your question in the "NEW" ALLOY THREAD