Alloy Physical Shader Framework Version 3 For Unity 5

@KRGraphics looking cool
I took a little inspiration from what @n00body said (thanks) and did a little local lighting work
seems to be heading in the right direction again

 

That is lovely. Hey, Frank.

 

I also noticed that Alloy skin behaves realistically in a room where the sunlight is outside and the character is inside... it is going to look very flat (until Unity 5.5 drops and we can capture the environment at full range.). The skin is reflecting the light just not as strongly unless the reflection intensity is cranked up.

 

@zmaxz
I'm a little confused. Our SpeedTree shader already supports Unity's built-in LOD crossfade, so why do you need this custom solution?

 

Sorry!!
I know how to do ,
Thanks

 

Hello there!
So, it's me again.

Good news: transmission colour works
The problem I had with the transmission colour being white (or whatever the light colour was), was my mistake, as I setup the thickness map wrongly (I only used a placeholder).

Bad news: update is still wrong
What happens?
The scattering seams to be off, and the normal blurring appears to be extremly high. After moving the slider in the camera effect (using the deferred skin shader), it updates and is alright again.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B9__fAK_9Q-XSWdsOHRBVUNyeDQ
^ Wrong behaviour
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B9__fAK_9Q-XUHpxRWl0SkNxd0k
^ After moving slider
I am using Unity 5.4, the deferred skin shader (I also added it in the grapics menu, and use the camera effect), and I use the alloy tool to combine my textures.
Maybe it's the combine tool that doesn't update sometimes?

When does this happen?
Sometimes after opening the project, or after exiting play mode

If you have an idea what could be causing this, I'd really appreciate it.

Best Regards,
Kristina Waldt

 

@KWaldt
We're about to push out an update that, among other things, causes the base color to tamp down the skin transmission effect. Can you wait until we push that out then download it yourself and retry your setup?

 

Sure, that sounds great--I'll try it out once it's out, and tell you if I'm still having troubles.
Thank you for the quick reply!

 

I think you should speak with RTP developer to make this asset compatible with RTP.

 

Oh, another question! Is it possibe to use multiple detail textures for a mesh? I'd like that for skin, since there are different types of pores in the different areas, but I'm not sure how to go on about this.
(IOr rather: how to do this in Alloy. If it's not implemented, is there a nice way to expand the current shaders that won't break when installing new updates? I'm currently also thinking of ways to integrate wrinkle maps.)

 

@KWaldt
Ironically, one of our customers requested that this month, so we just added a vertex color-weighted 3-4 detail normal Alloy Mods shader that will be part of this next update.

 

Perfect timing... I was looking to increase the detail on my models.

How are you making your transmission maps? Baking High res or handpainted? I usually get REALLY good results through baking (I use a 3D mesh of a skull underneath the high poly so the rays don't go all the way through)

 

If you have access to ZBrush, you can also sculpt in those skin details (make sure you sculpt them in stronger than normal since the skin shader will soften those details)

 

@KRGraphics
Hi!

My transmission map is fine now--I baked it in Substance Painter. I didn't use a skull this time, so I had to fix it manually afterwards, but I thought about it. Glad to hear that it actually works!
I only had issues because I didn't use one at all at the beginning since it wasn't fixed yet.

And yes, I sculpted in skin details too. However, there's a limit to how fine these details can be simply because of texture resolution, and detail maps have the added effect of making the texture feel less blurry. The CryEngine had a nice example image for that--though I believe you already know that.

Thank you for trying to help me--if you ever want to talk about pores or the likes, feel free to drop me a note.

Have a nice day!
- Kristina

 

Sweet @KWaldt I actually do have a microbump texture that I use on all of my characters, which was made in Substance Designer. I think I added it in this thread months ago.

As for the skull, it doesn't have to be an actual skull model. You can just model a deformed sphere with the impression of a skull... just model it in such a way that it fills most of the head volume. Most of your transmission map should be a dark grey except for places like the ears, nose, lips, and cheeks to a degree. I'll try and do a demo of this set up in Knald.

 

Hello, is there a demo scene available with the deferred decals? I interested in the cracked portions shown in the picture and how they look as you move around.

 

Slight update to everyone. We're attending Unite this year, so slight delay on the Alloy update.

@maxaud
Yes, you can download our samples pack by going to the menu "Window/Alloy/Samples". The "Hallway" demo has examples of our deferred decal shaders in action.

 

It's a shame Alloy doesn't work with RTP (heavily specular on the terrains).

 

@Crossway
As I have stated before, we are already investigating a solution to the issue with RTP. Repeatedly bringing it up is not going to expedite the process. When we have an update, we will tell you.

 

I'm pretty sure you said there's not much we can do about RTP, since it doesn't use Unity's standard BRDF. As for those other assets,

 

@Crossway
There's not much Alloy can do, but we are looking to see if RTP can be patched to work with Alloy.

 

Good morning, guys.

I know you are looking to depreciate the Legacy eye shader soon, but I would not pull the plug on it. Here are several reasons why, aside from the fact that I have spent a lot of time making the eyes look as natural as possible and don't want to change all of the eyes on my characters. This is the most PERFECT eye I will ever be able to get using Alloy

And in case you can't read my chicken scratch, here is what I am talking about...

• The AO map in the packed texture prevents that unwanted rim that you see on the new Deferred Eye. I tuned it in way that I dimmed the reflections in the back of the eyes.
• The eyeball toning especially with HDR lighting adds to the natural feel of the eye. This is more artistic taste, and after tinkering with the textures, this is as natural as I will get it.
• The sclera can already be controlled. Just make a good eye base texture and it will already look natural.
• Without an AO map, you will get that nasty rim, that should not be there. And you will be constantly fightng the eye roughness. If you look at real eyes, you will never see this kind of reflective intensity.
• I have a custom specular texture that adds to the feel of the eye.
• On the new deferred eye, you will have to carefully tweak the scattering of the iris to retain as much of the texture as possible. On the Legacy Deferred, you don't have to do any of this...

So in my humble opinion as an experienced character artist, the eye on the left is the most natural you will ever get... and I am not hating on the new eye or anything, it is just that if you depreciate and remove the legacy eye, it will actually hurt me productively...

 

Alloy support in Amplify Shader
Good news everyone! Since Amplify Shader generates Standard Unity surface shaders, they are compatible with Alloy's Injection Header system. This means you can use all of Alloy's lighting features (area lights, colored cookies, falloff, etc.) as well as our material model (Specular occlusion, Direct and Indirect BRDFs, etc).

To set it up, simply do the following:

1. In the Project tab, navigate to the "Alloy/Shaders/Unity" folder.
2. Right click on one of the files inside the folder and select "Show in explorer" (or Finder on OSX).
3. In the window, select all the "*.cginc" files, and copy them.
4. Close the window and click back into the Unity editor.
5. In the Project tab, navigate to the folder containing a compatible Unity surface shader.
6. Right click on the shader and select "Show in explorer" (or Finder on OSX.
7. Paste the headers in the same folder as the shader.
8. Close the window, click back into the Unity editor, and wait for the shader to automatically recompile.

Alloy Physical Shader Framework Shaders - Product Page
Amplify Shader Editor - Product Page

Have fun!

 

Groovy. Now I can add detail maps like crazy

 

I do not own the asset, am I still able to view this sample?

 

@maxaud
The sample pack is free, but all the materials will be broken if you don't have Alloy.

 

Yeah, I don't have alloy. I'm considering purchasing it but would like to see some sample video or gameplay of the decal functionality, most specifically the alpha cutout or the cracked holes in the the demo screenshot. If it fits my needs I will most likely purchase.

 

Good morning guys... is there a non SpeedTree version of the Alloy tree shaders? I rediscovered the Tree Editor in Unity and now I may not have to even touch SpeedTree...

 

Hey guys, just wondering if there's an easy way to remove keywords from the shaders I don't use, just to tidy up a project I'm working on. thanks.

 

Yea, I would like to see such solution too. I got Alloy since few months and the only solution which I found is to create new material and put textures on it then put it on object. Unity is keeping references to old keywords and I have no other solution for that right now, still it's really time consuming to do so, if anyone has better solution or clue, please share it with us.

 

I usually just delete the shaders that I will not be using...

 

@Killersan @davidjfranco I wrote this tool a while back which maybe helpful
https://bitbucket.org/ArtIsDarkGames/shader-keywords-tool-unity3d

it finds all the keywords project wide and then finds all the materials with redundant keywords, which you can then remove automatically. I wrote it originally when migrating to Alloy, so I could clean out all my shaders/keywords, which would have been difficult cos I had around 3000 materials in my project

anyway instructions are in there, it my be of some use to someone

 

Sorry for the delays guys. It's been a VERY stressful and demoralizing few days here.

@maxaud
Sadly no, we don't have videos of them in action. They are like the deferred decals in Star citizen in that you make meshes for them rather than relying on projection.

@KRGraphics
Not in the current build, but they are in 3.4.5 which we're trying to get out the door.

@davidjfranco @Killersan
Keywords are stored at the material level, and most of our shaders only turn on a keyword when you add a tab. Deleting or modifying the shaders really won't help.

 

I'm not familiar with Star Citizen so I went and looked it up and have a good idea how the decals work but still not alpha cutout decals. Does this allow one to create a hole essentially in a object/mesh that the decal is applied to?

 

As a dev who uses multiple robust shader packages and instantiates everything in their levels at run time, a tool like this can be a huge help and is just the thing I'm looking for! Thanks for sharing!

 

No problem

 

I am looking at the new updates, and I am not seeing much of a difference from the old Transmission Map... in the release it says

is that for all of the skin shader versions or just the deferred?

 

@maxaud
Sadly no. The decals can only alpha-blend a layer over the material attributes of the surface, and can't actually modify the surface itself. That is a limitation of all deferred decal systems.

@KRGraphics
We only updated the behavior of the main Alloy set for both forward and deferred. The Legacy skin shaders used a different approach to transmission, so they didn't need this fix.

 

Alloy 3.4.5 for Unity 5.4+ is live on the Store

Please try it out and let me know what you think. Cheers!

Changelog:
Version 3.4.5
=====================
Shaders:
- Added Unity terrain foliage shaders.
* Automatically applied when using Alloy "Terrain *" shaders.
- Changed "Skin" shaders so that the base color now affects transmission correctly.
- Changed most shaders so that LOD crossfade is disabled by default.
* Fixes the batching issue.
- Fixed area light specular highlight distortion in "Forward" Rendering Path.
- Fixed "Glass *" shaders' issue where a zero opacity would cause black voids in reflection probes.
- Fixed SpeedTree Two-Sided lighting.
- Fixed SpeedTree Geometry Type "Fronds" to show "Opacity Cutoff" control.

Features:
- Changed "Main Properties", "Secondary Properties", & "Oriented Properties" to add a "Specular Tint" parameter.
- Changed "Specular Tint" to be available in Roughness Source "Packed Map Alpha" mode as well.
- Fixed "Detail" and "Wetness" Mask Strength parameters to only affect the mask.
- Fixed "Rim Emission" faceting for Normals Source "Vertex Normals".

Injection Headers:
- Changed to be more consistent with the Unity version.
- Fixed issue where opacity was darkening materials in deferred mode.

Mods:
- Added "Core CrossFade" shader with LOD CrossFade support.
- Added "Skin VertexDetail" shaders with vertex color masking for 3-4 detail normal maps.
- Fixed "Curvature Test" shader.

Integration:
- Updated "Alloy Deferred Shading UBER" shader to support UBER 1.2.

 

I just updated to the latest version 3.4.5.
I tried following the instructions under "Required Actions.txt". Its says....



1.) Ensure that your project is saved and backed up.
2.) Go to the menu Window->Alloy->Material Migrator.
3.) After it finishes, hit Ctrl+S.
4.) Close and reopen Unity.

Material Migrator is not in the menu , under Alloy.

 

@kloogens
That's odd. Can you screenshot your menu for me?

 

@kloogens
Check your CHANGELOG file and tell me what version it says you have, because we renamed "Light Migration Tool" to "Light Converter" 2-3 versions ago.

 

3.4.5
I restarted Unity and nothing changed.

 

@kloogens
Try completely deleting the Alloy folder and then import Alloy again.

 

I found the problem, I'm a moron. Disregard... thanks for the quick reply.

 

Hey there!

Just dropping by to say that I updated Alloy, but still have the problem with the transmission. I thought that maybe it was other Image Effects causing the camera not to update correctly, but it still happens even if I deactivate them.
Everything's fine in play mode, but in the editor, I get this dark blurry mess, until I change some values in the camera. Sometimes, this only lasts for a second until it updates by itself, so it's really a weird bug.

Another question--is there a specular/gloss shader for Substance Painter?
I've used 3DCoat for texturing till now, but then noticed that it would be more comfy to have a more accurate preview right in the painting software. However, since skin is mostly defined by it's specular and gloss, I'm not quite sure how to setup the project. I decided on the specular/gloss template (and would invert the gloss map at the end), but the alloy shaders don't seem to support this. Did I overlook something?

Thank you for your time!
- KW

 

@KWaldt
Sorry about the delayed response. Okay, remind me again what the specific problem was with images. Take a snapshot of your material inspector settings and your camera inspector settings (specifically the Alloy Deferred Plus component). Paste an image of your transmission map as well.

As for your second question, no we don't support SpecGloss as an option. We've adopted MetalRough throughout our whole package. You could get support for that using our Amplify Shader integration, but that's the best I can offer.

 

Hi is Alloy 3 Physical Shader Framework a better choice for high-end graphics than UBER which is also on the Asset Store? If so then what makes it a better choice than UBER and the other shader solutions for Unity? I'm really want to buy Alloy 3 but I need to know ahead of time if it's worth the price.

 

Hi, my colleague just upgraded the Alloy 3 Physical Shader Framework, i must say its awesome
we initially use 3.4.0 b4 upgrading to 3.4.5. why the late update? we want to use wetness shader

Few things we have a problem, animated UV no longer works in editor, unity lighting we previously used now upgraded becomes dark, specular tint not working... normal maps not showing..why?