Alloy Physical Shader Framework Version 3 For Unity 5

@OP3NGL That isn't something you implement for a generic shader set dude. There are far too many game-specific implementation factors. Otherwise it would have been deployed via a 'plug and play' system by Nvidia, instead of a 'here's a bunch of tools for you to build something'.

Plus, it's GPU-vendor specific. You can't reliably build a perf. window around its usage unless you have a commensurate system for AMD gpus. Lastly, it still has huge bugs in it. So yeah... we're not touching it.

 

Hey, do you find what was causing the issue? I am expireincing something similar, if speedtree is instansiated at runtime.

 

By the way, should we expect something new from you like "AlloyLoop" when unity 2018 and SRL will be released?

 

@MarkusGod I'm very excited to see what they do with SRL and other stuff

 

Yeah, the issue was the way normals are setup in SpeedTree. Due to the way Alloy handles translucency, the normal gets flipped based on the light direction. Since normals in SpeedTree are usually projected in a dome shape, Alloy flips them in a wrong direction, thus they will look dark.
What you can do is try and leave SpeedTree normals at their default (each leaf card having their own normals), and also disable rotating leaf cards in SpeedTree modeler. Also, you can try adjusting AO strength in Alloy shaders, since the default AO is way too dark. That should help you solve your issue.

 

Ok, i am finally figured out, Alloy flipping normals only when shader defines A_TWO_SIDED_SHADER keyword, so if we comment out this:

Code (CSharp):

1. #ifndef A_TWO_SIDED_SHADER
2.       #define A_TWO_SIDED_SHADER
3. #endif

In Assets\Alloy\Shaders\Feature\SpeedTree.cginc we get theese results


I am not sure if the lighting is correct but it looks better than black backfaces.

 

Ok, I forgot about shadows and tangentNormals, so I forked alloy on GitHub and will publish "Not that bad fix" there.

 

**edit** figured it out mostly, some unneeded gamma to linear conversions

anyone have a version of the Alloy Substance Designer viewport shader that works with their latest 2017 releases? or know what to change within the Designer 6.0 viewport shader?

 

Is there a way to mass edit multiple Alloy Core Materials, I want to turn all the metallic sliders down?

 

you can write a simple editor script, that will iterate through array of materials and change thier property. (_Metal in your case)

https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Material.SetFloat.html

 

ok

 

@Don-Gray
You can also just select multiple materials and edit their common values in the inspector.

 

Hi, @n00body, yeah I thought so, must be because I'm using 2017.3.b10.
Instead of the option to edit, I get a message, "There's a problem with the inspector. Reselect the material to fix.".
If I have more than one Alloy material selected.
Will have to wait until this Unity version is officially supported, thanks!

 

@All
Sorry for the long delays. Day job has been super demanding of my time and energy lately. On the bright side, I've gotten a SUPER helpful crash course in Git.

@MarkusGod
Now that the code is out in the open, I can just ask you directly. Can you post the contents of the file "Alloy/Shaders/Definitions/SpeedTree.cginc"? If I recall correctly, I had to add a "aTwoSided(s);" to that to make it work correctly.

EDIT:
I finally added GitHub repos for the Alloy Substance Designer+Painter preview shaders. You can find them here:
https://github.com/Josh015

 

This is my fisrt shader editing experience, so i probably done tons of mistakes.
I have not changed anything in Defenitions/Speedtree, but to a someother files, https://github.com/markusgod/Alloy/commit/7ae92d4fa22d68f771f1ffb19eb6b5e5d92bf6d5. I'm pretty sure that should not be done in a such way, but it fixed problem for me(I guess).

 

Ok I just need to ask..
is Alloy either dead or dying?
I mean I want to make a really awesome new game. It may take me a couple years to finish.
Should I stop using Alloy? Can I trust it to still be stable and bugs fixed?
I can understand why rust won't develop it further, but will it still be maintained?

Thank you
--Joshua

 

Just thoughts:
If it really takes you several years to finish, you probably should place graphics in the last development positions. Since I think when and if unity 2018 comes with scriptable render loop most of the shader-based systems will depreciate and update for full unity srl support.

 

thank you

 

@jammer42777
Alloy isn't dead, but the updates will be a little slower. I just don't have the time or energy to dedicate to it like I used to, so I had to scale back a bit.

Also, sorry about the delayed response. I've been dealing with a nasty situation at work that has been sapping all my energy lately. Thankfully it was FINALLY resolved this week.

 

I'm excited how cool is the Alloy skin shader work. Literally, the best solution I ever try. But one thing does not work for me - Post Effect Ambient Occlusion. I try both new unity's post processing stack and Amplify AO - both gave me same weird artifacts when the camera is closer to object. Did anyone made it work? Any solution?

upd. As I understand AO doesn't work with Alloy skin in Deferred Mode. Only in forward mode compatibility...

 

@pigglet
We do have a deferred version of our skin shader, but it is less flexible. If you can live with that, then that version will work with deferred AO.

 

@n00body
Oh, I see! Thanks. I'll stick with the Forward mode than

 

Ok, forget about my previous issue. I need to add custom light map to my model but don't know If there is any slot for this purpose with alloy?

 

Is it possible to add second decal to the forward skin shader?

 

@ksam2
Sadly, no. We only support lightmaps through the official Unity channels.

@pigglet
Sorry. That doesn't really add much general value to the shader set.

ALL:
Sorry for the late replies. Works been a pain, and I've been sick. Alloy update incoming.

 

Alloy 4.3.0 for Unity 2017.3 is live on the Asset Store and Github.

This one got delayed as I originally wanted to convert the new "Standard Particle" shader to Alloy, but kept getting side-tracked. So I decided to get minimal Unity 2017.3 support out first, and push the new shaders to a later release.

Try it out and give us feedback. Thanks.

Changelog:
## 4.3.0
### Shaders
* Added Unity 2017.3 support.
* Moved "Legacy" and "Mods" into the "Alloy" folder as part of the transition to open-source.

### Integration
* Updated Substance Designer preview shader to version 2017.2.
* Updated Substance Painter preview shader to version 2017.3.

 

Can you please make Alloy skin shader compatible with wrinkle maps offered by unity?
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/39924

 

@ksam2: We are not doing further feature development for Alloy, as mentioned in the post when we open sourced it. It is simply in maintenance at this point.

 

I think there is still a bug with alloy translucency. It effects objects under roof too, for example inside a building you still get transparent on objects.

 

Hey there,

So i'm having some bugs once i put Alloy into my VR scene.The error i get is coming from my leap motion scripts. Particularly MinValue(0),telling me i need to add Attribute to it.This fixes it but FR drops from 90 to like 19.

Here's an example.

 

@ksam2
Can you post images highlighting the problem?

@ctfan
Okay, it looks like there's a name collision between MinValue in our code and theirs. I might need to namespace it on our end to fix it.

 

So i read through the old alloy thread but discussions stopped at a grey area. is there a solution for shortening load times when importing new alloy shaders? Some of the builds can take hours over here.

 

@xenius Does this mean that you won't modify Alloy to use the new Scriptable Render Pipelines?

 

@ctfan
That was actually a problem on Unity's end that they fixed WAY back in Unity 5.0. The compile times are practically imperceptible now.

@Corvwyn
I'm not ruling anything out, but I currently don't have a solid idea of how our shaders will plug into their new pipeline. I'll have to take a look at the API they expose for it.

 

Are there any good / bad news on this?
I think Alloy skin shader is the best one around but with this issue it's unusable, at least for me.
Sometimes characters look like glowing orange aliens. It's especially noticeable when I use a dynamic weather system such as Tenkoku.

 

Same. As far as I've been told it's impossible to work around this issue because of limitations. I know Uber and Pre-integrated skin does cast shadows but as far as shadows and translucency is concerned, you're going to have to compromise, because you'll need to turn down your shadow bias anyway, which is going to result in ugly, inaccurate/incomplete shadows. I've tried to find a work around this issue using every skin shader available out there and unfortunately they all pretty much have these issue.

 

@Hexer_ @Abuthar
Okay, I have a workaround until I can make a more proper control. Basically, on the "Alloy Effects Manager" component in the "Skin Scattering" section there is a property called "Absorption". It specifies the amount of color absorption for transmission as a function of thickness. If you crank all the values up to something like -100, it will effectively disable transmission on our skin shader.

 

@ctfan
Sorry about the long delay. I finally got some time to work on it and patch in a possible fix. Go to this URL, download a zip file, and overwrite the contents of your Alloy directory with its contents:
https://github.com/Josh015/Alloy/tree/unity-2017-3

 

Is the documentation going to be made available? I just stumbled on this and it looks really useful. But with no documentation and no examples (they are depreciated), I'm a bit lost.

Edit: I finally found the documentation. The plugin in Unity, and the listing, and the first post all go to https://alloy.rustltd.com/documentation which is a dead link, But I found from the sites announcement the documentation is now at http://www.alloy.rustltd.com/docs/

 

Hello, can someone give me a hint? I was watching the crash course and it mentioned I need to change the built-in shader for deferred rendering to the alloy one. this changes the way lights behave, they become more realistic but dimmer. can I skip this part and just use the core shader or is it required?

 

@ceebeee
Well that's embarrassing. I updated our GitHub code so that the menus now point to the correct URLs where applicable. This will be available in the store the next time we push a new package.

@LunaTrap
In deferred mode, you're stuck with our lighting and material model for all deferred materials. The only way you can mix and match is if you use the forward renderer only.

 

Thanks, but wait, I'm using a deferred decal system I got at the assets store, does that mean I can't use this system with Alloy?

 

@LunaTrap
I specifically tried to use the same G-Buffer layout as Unity so that our lighting code would work in that case. Though I admit I've never officially tested such integration, so YMMV.

If you have any problems, please let me know.

 

Clicking on the alloy core shader I've noticed a couple of errors listed in inspector window.
Unity version 2017.3.0f3

Spoiler: LIST OF ERRORS

Shader error in 'Alloy/Core': failed to open source file: 'Assets/Alloy/Shaders/Definition/Core.cginc' at line 214 (on d3d11)

Compiling Vertex program with DIRECTIONAL LIGHTPROBE_SH _EMISSION EFFECT_BUMP
Platform defines: UNITY_ENABLE_REFLECTION_BUFFERS UNITY_USE_DITHER_MASK_FOR_ALPHABLENDED_SHADOWS UNITY_PBS_USE_BRDF1 UNITY_SPECCUBE_BOX_PROJECTION UNITY_SPECCUBE_BLENDING UNITY_ENABLE_DETAIL_NORMALMAP SHADER_API_DESKTOP UNITY_LIGHT_PROBE_PROXY_VOLUME UNITY_LIGHTMAP_FULL_HDR



Shader error in 'Alloy/Core': failed to open source file: 'Assets/Alloy/Shaders/Definition/Core.cginc' at line 351 (on d3d11)

Compiling Vertex program with _EMISSION
Platform defines: UNITY_ENABLE_REFLECTION_BUFFERS UNITY_USE_DITHER_MASK_FOR_ALPHABLENDED_SHADOWS UNITY_PBS_USE_BRDF1 UNITY_SPECCUBE_BOX_PROJECTION UNITY_SPECCUBE_BLENDING UNITY_ENABLE_DETAIL_NORMALMAP SHADER_API_DESKTOP UNITY_LIGHT_PROBE_PROXY_VOLUME UNITY_LIGHTMAP_FULL_HDR

Shader error in 'Alloy/Core': failed to open source file: 'Assets/Alloy/Shaders/Definition/Core.cginc' at line 323 (on d3d11)

Compiling Vertex program with LIGHTPROBE_SH _EMISSION UNITY_HDR_ON EFFECT_BUMP
Platform defines: UNITY_ENABLE_REFLECTION_BUFFERS UNITY_USE_DITHER_MASK_FOR_ALPHABLENDED_SHADOWS UNITY_PBS_USE_BRDF1 UNITY_SPECCUBE_BOX_PROJECTION UNITY_SPECCUBE_BLENDING UNITY_ENABLE_DETAIL_NORMALMAP SHADER_API_DESKTOP UNITY_LIGHT_PROBE_PROXY_VOLUME UNITY_LIGHTMAP_FULL_HDR

 

Hi,
The "Alloy Shaders Sample Pack" is not part of the latest Alloy unitypackage, the links to it leads to the "Unfortunately, Alloy Shaders Sample Pack is no longer available." message in this page:

https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/alloy-shaders-sample-pack-43687

Is it available somewhere else?

Regards.

 

I've got 2 questions... How do i make my own lookup textures for skin?? I've tried in photoshop but it never comes out right, even following the way the default one is made. Second, i'm not finding any documentation on AlloyEffectsManager>SkinSettings>AO Color Bleed. What does this do exactly? I haven't seen any changes when manipulating these values.

 

i got a question, is there a way to modify the core shader to support double sided? & add a check button if i want a double sided enable?

 

@Teosis
Questions:

1. What Alloy version?
2. Did you get it from the store or Github?
3. Did you do a full directory blowout before installing it?

@RigoCL
Unfortunately it is not available anymore, and we've even removed the menu link from the latest code on Github. That pack fell behind a long time ago and we just never had the time to update it.

@Abuthar
That LUT is actually from a script that came with a "Pre-Integrated SSS" article that generates it based on skin depth absorption values. We're actually misusing it since it is supposed to be based on N.L and curvature, but we're using N.L and translucency. It's not really that different than making any other kind of light warping texture, you just have regular lighting for the zero translucency and full scattering at max translucency, with values interpolated in-between.

@OP3NGL
If you want to add that, then I recommend making a copy of "Core.shader" and "Definitions/Core.cginc" to a new folder, patching the "#include" directives inside each file to the new folder, and changing the menu path.

Sorry for the delays all. Life's been super busy again.

 

Hello,

According to the asset store page, it has a support for unity 2017.1.3, but I just upgraded from 5.6.3 and Im getting this error when trying to build. Also I am not getting this error in unity 2017.3, but I want to use 2017.1 instead.

Code (CSharp):

1. Shader error in 'Alloy/Human/Hair/HighQuality TwoSided': invalid subscript 'pos' at Assets/Alloy/Shaders/Framework/Forward.cginc(574) (on d3d11)
2.  
3. Compiling Vertex program with DIRECTIONAL SHADOWS_SCREEN LIGHTMAP_SHADOW_MIXING SHADOWS_SHADOWMASK FOG_EXP2
4. Platform defines: UNITY_ENABLE_REFLECTION_BUFFERS UNITY_USE_DITHER_MASK_FOR_ALPHABLENDED_SHADOWS UNITY_PBS_USE_BRDF1 UNITY_SPECCUBE_BOX_PROJECTION UNITY_SPECCUBE_BLENDING UNITY_ENABLE_DETAIL_NORMALMAP SHADER_API_DESKTOP UNITY_LIGHT_PROBE_PROXY_VOLUME
5.  

The build is automatically stopped after getting this error.

EDIT : I updated the package from the asset store and Im no longer getting the error!

 

Please stop selling a package with a high price of 125$ and saying sorry life's been super busy!
If I was going to sell something 125$ I would establish a support team first.

It's been more than 6-7 months I'm asking for unity wrinkle map support on skin shader but no on care.