Alloy Physical Shader Framework Version 3 For Unity 5

I think that's what I wanted to hear. Because early on in the Unity 5.0 beta, I was attempting to understand what was going on in the Standard shader, I started having a completely basic understanding and then they changed stuff and eventually I gave up, since figuring out what was going on in that code was not exactly fun (and man, the standard shader code needs some docs...!)

What you described sounds like something I can handle (at least with some effort).

Cheers.

 

Check your post effects as well. These can consume a ton. I think really, we need to track shader keywords. It's becoming a problem so I wonder what @Aras might think about that?

 

Good morning guys. Just a heads up for those of you using Substance Painter 1.5, if you are using the alloy shader the specular values for some reason will not render but you can change them and it will show in the texture. I did a video of this showing the problem. Even created three fresh projects and the results were the same...

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/158971/2015-08-28_01-23-03.mp4

 

I'm wondering if the Transition shader, or any Alloy shaders that support cutout, work with Depth of Field?

As I understand it, the amount of blur that Depth of Field applies is based on the depth buffer. So for partially transparent objects (fade mode), if the transparent object writes to the depth buffer, the portion of background objects that can be seen through the transparency are only blurred as much as the transparent object itself. If the transparent object does not write to the depth buffer, it gets blurred as much as the background object behind it. Both scenarios result in incorrect depth of field.

I think using cutout can avoid that. So I guess the question is, do the portions of the object that are fully transparent due to cutout write to the depth buffer or not? If using Depth of Field, will background objects visible through the cutout be blurred correctly?

Cheers

 

All cutout shaders affect the depth buffer because they're drawn in the opaque pass, and the bits that are cut out do not affect the depth buffer.

 

Is there a way to add blur to the glass shader to simulate frosted glass effect?
Thanks in advance

 

Here is my attempt to create frosted glass... had to get clever with textures to make this work. . The trick with this using a noise map... and you have to make a detail map with a lot of tiling... and from far away it looks frosted.

EDIT: Also tweaking the alpha values to a half way point helps sell the effect. Hope this helps you.

 

Hi,

I am running into a little issue with the Core shader / MapPacker

A picture is worth a thousand words...



On the right : the model with the prototype shader on it.
On the left : The model with the core shader, using the mappacked *_alloyPM.

I made the mappack with the exact same textures. As you can see the roughness turns overkill on the left. Same for the AO.

What am I doing wrong ?

 

@Feydwin
I can tell that you are using an older version of Unity and Alloy. Is there a specific reason that you haven't upgraded to the latest of both? I ask because we completely rewrote the packer's code for Alloy 3.2.6 to address a lot of issues.

 

Alright , I ll update.
As for the reason why I did not update : " If it is working, don't f8c* with it".
I was using Alloy mostly for VFX ( dissolve, hologram effects, ect ). Now that I am done with prototyping, started my first real model + texture, so I never ran into that issue before.

Edit : 3.2.6 --> fixed it. Thank you.

 

Thanks for the tip, I'll have a look at it. But it seems very opaque to me, it's possible to have transparency?

 

There is transparency on that glass... I just used a heavily tiled noise texture... and tweaked the alpha value to fake it

 

I'm trying to use the Transition shader to go from fully opaque to nothing. I'm only using the Main Texture properties. I have set the alpha in the Tint of the Secondary Textures to 0, set the Rendering Mode to Cutout, and with any non-zero Alpha Cutoff, it transitions from opaque to nothing as the Transition Properties Cutoff is adjusted.

However, even with the smallest possible Alpha Cutoff of 0.001, which is good enough to cutout the Secondary texture completely, I am getting pixels in the Main Texture that are getting cutout as well, which is not desired. I could simply set Alpha Cutoff to 0 just as the Transition Cutoff also reaches zero to get around it, but it just seems like an extra step.

Is this the correct way to transition from fully opaque to fully transparent with the Transition shader?

 

@ripridehi
Why don't you just use our Dissolve effect on a Core shader? That will probably solve your problem and make the shader much more efficient.

 

Yup, that works, thanks.

 

UPDATE:
Do not upgrade to Unity 5.2 just yet. The update makes some breaking changes that require us to push out an Alloy update.

Stay tuned.

 

Not having alloy (yet) I just bought
Alloy Detail Texture Mega Pack
and I am loving it

My Question:
Is this also usable without alloy? (till i get around to buy alloy )
Alloy FX Mask Texture Mega Pack

 

Yes, you can use the textures in the FX Mask Texture pack for darn near anything

 

How do I access and modify properties on an Alloy material from a code? Are there any examples anywhere?

For example, how do get access to the Dissolve Cutoff value to animate a dissolve?

 

Ok, just stumbled across this post near the bottom of this page after googling "alloy getfloat":
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/alloy-physical-shader-framework-version-3-for-unity-5.305178/page-5

If you click on the gear dropdown menu in the top right of the material inspector, there is a section called Imported Object with a list of all the property names. You then access the property from code like this:
myMaterial.GetFloat("_DissolveCutoff");

 

How goes the 5.2 update?

 

@punk I'm going to try to get it pushed out today. I've fallen super sick, so I've been sleeping away the past couple days.

 

No rush mate I was just curious, i hope you feel better soon

 

Hi Everyone,

Just wanted to let you know that Alloy 3.2.7 for (Unity 5.2 ONLY) will be available on the store this evening. This is a minor release to accommodate the new Deferred Reflection Probes.

As for what's next, we actually have a more major release, Alloy 3.3, aaaalmost ready, but decided to push this point release so as not to keep those of you already jumping to 5.2 (you brave souls..) waiting.

With Unite coming up next week we'll have some sweet announcements, awesome pics of whats to come, as well as a sneak peak on another product we're working on (that those of you who follow my twitter might have seen).

As always, let me know if you run into any issues with 3.2.7 in 5.2. More next week

 

Never looked forward to vapourware so much..

 

Looking forward to playing with it

 

Hi Anton,

The new Deferred Reflection core shader fixed the Unity reflection probes resolution and smoothness/roughness bug? You share the same issue reported also by Wes (Allegorithmic)?

Thanks,

 

I'm interested in Alloy as we may buy it to switch from Lux as that has been abandoned. The main thing is that we want to get assets looking as close to 1:1 as Substance Painter/Marmoset. I understand that Alloy uses GGX which is great. Why is a custom shader provided for Painter and how do assets look in comparison to the default Painter shaders?

I made some comparisons here between those tools and Unity 5 Standard: http://www.polycount.com/forum/showpost.php?p=2351574&postcount=12

In a production environment we can't afford to have to tweak textures to look right in the engine. We're at a time now in the industry where everything will be automated. Getting art to look almost exactly as it does in Painter/Marmo out of the box would be a god send.

 

@tynew We provide a custom shader for Designer/Painter as there are a few subtle differences in our implementation. The most visually noticeable one is that we utilize the occlusion channel for a form for specular occlusion/inter-reflection as well (which ensures that when the occlusion channel goes to black, you don't still get bright spec highlights on that spot, even for intense analytic lights).

That being said, in terms of the brdf and roughness values, things will appear very VERY similar between Substance and Alloy (assuming you are using 256/512 probes, due to the way that the mipping/convolution in Unity is so resolution dependent).

 

I was noticing this too...and I had to lower the reflection probes a bit to accommodate this limiation. I ended up correcting the roughness map in Substance Painter to get it as close as possible to the visual quality... in my Alloy/SP/Unity workflow, I ditched the specular map completely (I left the Specular in the Material Packer at .08) and just used levels in SP to fix the issues.

Without Roughness Correction (It was too shiny for my taste)



With Roughness Correction






Special Note: Unless you are working with Skin, Hair, and Eyes, you will not need a specular map whatsoever unless it is specifically called for... example, for eyebrow hair and cavities in the skin.

 

So far 3.2.7 is working awesome in 5.2 thankyou

 

Hi there ! Can i make curve decals on static objects with alloy? I need behaviour like with deferred decals showed in yjat post http://blogs.unity3d.com/2015/02/06/extending-unity-5-rendering-pipeline-command-buffers/

 

Hey guys.. just wanted to stop in for a moment and give you guys props for the Alloy Mods Deferred Eye shader... it looks so realistic when you have the settings correct and a good HDR map... I am looking forward to see how you guys tackle deferred skin shading . I approve of this Eye Shader...

 

Is there a way to show back faces with these shaders? If not are there any plans for them?

 

@justtime
Alloy uses the the same G-buffer layout as Unity, so it should be possible to make deferred decals work with it.

@Misciagno
We don't do double-sided lighting for most of our materials. This decision was made to cut down the number of shaders in our set. The only exception is for "Transmission DoubleSided" shaders as those tend to have light spilling through when they are extremely thin.

If you really desperately need double-sided lit surfaces then take a look at the "Transmission DoubleSided" shader for an example of what flags to use and what passes to add to the shader to make it work.

 

You can also model the geometry with two sides... copy the poly faces, paste, and then flip

 

UPDATE: Hey Guys... I don't know if anyone here use Substance Painter, but aside from the fact that they are using importance sampling in their environment maps... I found that if you use a levels node in Substance Painter (or substance designer) you will get about dead on with the look of the roughness maps in Substance Painter, especially with metallic objects... setting the mid range to .4 brings it DEAD ON to the results from Substance Painter...

If you plan on using your own cubemaps or using reflection probes, doing this levels fix will help. This seems to affect metallic surfaces mostly...

 

This is likely due to the fact that, even for a fairly high resolution reflection probe, the first convolution mip down is significantly blurrier perceptually than the full-sharp top mip. This is due to the fact that it is both blurred AND half the resolution (and as such a quarter of the data).

The beauty of importance sampling (as SP/SD does) is that you get this wonderfully gradual range of blurring, which is referencing the same density of data, regardless of roughness.

Just be aware that re-leveling the way you are is basically trying to 'aim' certain values in your roughness map, to a specific mip of the reflection probe, to match what looks good for your given asset (and the range of roughness values that are most perceptible on it).

You should not assume though, that given a range of assets, and the range of reflection probe resolutions, that this will have the exact same desirable effect. Reflection probes are _incredibly_ coarse from a range-representation standpoint compared to importance sampling. Its like comparing the dumb-interpolation of 6-8 unique values to 255 unique values. On noisy assets you probably won't notice it a ton, but if you have subtle and consistent roughness gradients, or really 'clean' smooth objects, you'll notice this.

Re-leveling only shifts things around, it doesn't solve any of the underlying problems. I've seen a number of people talk obsessively about re-levelling to match the Unity Standard Shader to SD/SP, not understanding that this is softly equivalent to trying to get a rasterizer to look like a raytracer. It's not going to happen. One is trying to get a _fundamentally_ different set of texture data, and a different way of sampling said data to match another. It will never 'match' perfectly, and even if you attain such a match for a given asset/asset group, it is likely a fragile one.

Personally, I don't bother trying to do anything special, and just tweak my look in Unity via map updates.

 

I decided to leave my textures as they are looking really good in painter... Until unity fixes their reflection probes.

 

Hello alloy guys,

first of all thanks for the amazing work behind your framework!

There is a thing that i can't understand about your PBR implementation. Reading some PBR theory, i've found that there are two workflow: metal/roughness and specular/glossiness (as the starndard unity shader implement).

I know that alloy adopts a metal/roughness workflow, so why is there also a specularity map/value? Am i missing something regarding PBR?

Thanks in advance, maybe my question could be stupid but this thing is driving me crazy

 

@supaworst
It's based on Disney's original implementation. Specularity is a normalized value for non-metal specular (ie. when Metallic is zero). Think of it like an ID for the material you want, with 0.5 being the internal default for most Metal/Rough implementations.

For a list of common values, please consult this chart:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bJMEAaUDCCBnKz9Z2pMrymfEYp5ffXqJcMCeoFEoiEA/edit?usp=sharing

 

Hi all

I have little problem right know with Emission Properties in Core shader, some kind is missing Intesity Gain for Emissivion. I have Unity 5.1.2 f1 and last version of Alloy that is 3.2.6 for this version of Unity. I unpacked Alloy3_2_6_ShadersAndEditorCore to project.
Pic:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/xnfjiy9ont8h4vr/Screenshot 2015-10-06 10.29.37.png?dl=0

Maybe I missing something or it some workaround for it?

Thanks for help, because like this emissivity is useless for my project.

 

@lukas.chrapek
We switched to Unity's native HDR color picker back in 5.1 because it has better features and is easier to control from scripts. The "Tint" property now stores an HDR color which you can edit directly. Also, the latest version of Alloy is meant for Unity 5.2 since they changed their APIs for reflection probes to make them deferred.

 

@n00body
Thank you for help , I see it now.
I fought that 3.2.6 is for 5.1.x and from 3.2.7 is for Unity 5.2.x , can I expect some issue on Unity 5.1.2 and Alloy shaders version 3.2.6?

 

@lukas.chrapek
3.2.6 was for 5.2, but had some bugs. 3.2.7 was meant to address those bugs. The big problem is that Unity changed several parts of their shader API, so I am surprised it even compiled in Unity 5.1.

 

@n00body
Our programmer is suprised too ... either way we plan switch to Unity 5.2 soon, so it should be everything ok, but right now in our project 3.2.6 version of Alloy shaders works ok with 5.1.2f1. Thanks

 

Hi all! I have a problem with map chanel packer while migrating my project from unity 5.1.2f1 to 5.2.1f1 and upgrading Alloy from 3.2.5 to 3.2.7. It's mentioned early here http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/al...ion-3-for-unity-5.305178/page-12#post-2247772

What I do:
1.Open 5.1.2f1 project in 5.2.1f1 editor
2. Create blank scene
3. Delete Alloy directory
4. Import 3.2.7 (Core and Editor and SM5)
5. Check that deferred shader is in place in Graphics menu
There is no any errors durning this process.

After that Material Map packer looks like this:

and all packed maps are broken((

This package fixed the problem http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/al...ion-3-for-unity-5.305178/page-12#post-2247935

Just reporting that this problem sometimes stil appears.

 

@asemenov
Thanks. Yeah, Unity's asset files are proving to be a little unstable and prone to corruption. We need to investigate why this keeps happening.

 

@xenius Do you know if there's been any updates or move towards supporting this in WebGL by Unity or you guys?

 

@Ben BearFish I know that linear support is on their internal roadmap, but they still haven't figured out its prioritization relative to other things. It was obvious at Unite that they are aware of the felt need tho.