Amplify Impostors - Next Generation Billboards

Good morning ,

I am using Unity 2020.3 - URP. I'm trying to optimize the scene to the maximum and I'm using a mixed global illumination (Shadwomask).

As you can see in the image, my maximum shadow distance is small and of course when I zoom out the impostor is losing the shadow. Is there any way to keep the shadow of the tree without increasing the maximum distance.

I hope I have explained myself.

Best regards and thanks.

 

@Amplify_Support Viewing this thread's history, so many of us have been waiting for URP 12.x and VR support for Imposters, and there have been zero updates to the asset for the entirety of 2022.

Would you please be so kind as to confirm plainly that Amplify Imposters is no longer in active development and we should seek out alternate solutions?

 

We apologize for the inconvenience but we don't have an ETA for this. If this is a blocker for you, by all means, please request a refund via support@amplify.pt and look into other options.

First up is the ASE SRP update, Impostors will follow after.

 

Impostors should work as regular meshes, you can try to adjust the shadow parameters on the impostor material.

 

Hi, the impostor's material parameters only work if it is affected by the Max Distance, as I show you in the first image.

I would like to know if there is a way to keep the shadows baked when I lower the Max Distance of the shadows.

In the second image I show you how when I lower the Max Distance the shadows of the trees are totally lost.

Best regards and thanks!

 

Can anyone give me advice.
I'm trying to make single impostors from a couple mesh renderers.
Is that possible or will amplify always choose one and ignore the others?

 

Hi,

May I ask what's expected in the ASE SRP update?

 

I have always used Amplify Impostors with prefabs containing multiple meshes and it worked well. You can disable objects before generating the impostor and it wont be in it.

 

Ok ty. I stopped focusing on multiple objects.
Turns out Amplify didn't like 3 things in my case...

1. The shader I was using. (I kept getting black, empty texture results).

Solution I switched to standard shader during baking.

2. Being in a prefab was causing trouble. At the same time,
3. The existing LOD group was preventing some internal update I suppose.

Solution. Break the prefab. Delete the existing LOD group. Let amplify create a new transform with LOD when I bake. Finally, drag and overwrite old prefab.

 

No, light can't be baked in impostors. Are you saying that the shadow distance is not working on the impostor compared to its mesh? If so it might be some kind of issue, I'd appreciate if you could send a sample to support@amplify.pt. (impostor and mesh set in a scene)

If trees are baked that's not going to work very well.

It's possible to bake multiple meshes, does depend on how you have this setup. What do you see on the Mesh References on the AI component? (a screenshot of your object hierarchy could help)
Do you use custom shaders on those models?

You mean AI update? No ETA at the moment, ASE is coming soon.

Ok, following up on this.

1. Yes, custom shaders can be a problem.
2. This shouldn't be a problem but it depends on what you're baking. (check Mesh Reference list on component)
3. Shouldn't be required, but we can't know for sure without seeing what you're working with.

 

I don't need to generate a full 360 view is there a way to only generate a degree?

 

Hello,
I can not get this to work with voxel models.
I guess there may be something wrong with the normal extension.
Also don't exactly know how to get the unlit shader to work with the imposter.
I hope I can get some help.

 

Sorry, 360 is the only available mode. You can use HemiOctahedron impostors.
https://wiki.amplify.pt/index.php?title=Unity_Products:Amplify_Impostors/Manual#Impostor_Types

Hello!
It only work with Mesh Renderers.

 

I think it is not the voxel model problem, it can not work with a model that using unlit/texture shader. Need help.

 

If it has a mesh renderer and a compatible shader it should work, try using a default unity material.

 

Thanks for your reply.
It has a mesh renderer and it's using the default unity unlit/texture shader. But it doesn't work with the imposter.

 

hi there.
dont remember im i asked or not, but.. how i can use Hue Variation in amplify material? i see that its works but every time i move camera its start to change color, so its imposible to use it ingame mode, only if i want to make a screenshot =)
how i can "freeze" or fix color variation?

 

This must be a bug. I'm now in the process of making a long overdue update to Amplify Impostors. I'll be sure to test this out. In the meantime, if you want me to look at the project and fix the problem more quickly, feel free to send a repro sample to support@amplify.pt

 

my project 100g+, but no need to have it. it happens in clean project.
hdrp 2019.4.38f1, AI 0.9.7.013, HDRP 7.7.1
imported like described in manual.

 

OK. I'll keep you posted on this thread as soon as I get some answers.

 

When I import Amplify Impostors into my Built-in pipeline VR project it seems to run an Import on every single texture map. That worries me a lot. What is it doing, and why? I have to be careful of RAM and GPU memory, and my target device requires certain specific texture compression. Why does Impostors cause an import on every texture map?

 

Can you confirm if it's modifying the import settings of the textures on that platform?

I'm just loading up the project, at the moment, to get acquainted with the code and start working on the updates. However, from a quick search around the code, I'm not seeing anywhere that could be causing batch reimports. Impostors are only baked and texture import settings modified when Bake Impostor is pressed.

 

Thanks for your response. I have some feedback:

I just uninstalled Amplify Impostors. My time to load the project (2020.3.40f1) from Unity Hub decreased from 2:40 to 0:20. So something is going on.

The log file "Assets\Log\AssetImportWorker0-prev.log" may contain clues. It is long, and I'm not intimately familiar with it. However, it says that AssetImportParameters are different (indicating the need for a re-import?) with the following line, after which it does a lot of "Received Import Request." work:

AssetImportParameters requested are different than current active one (requested -> active):
custom:graphics/normal-map-encoding: 01000000000000000000000000000000 -> 02000000000000000000000000000000

Here is a longer excerpt.

=============================
Worker process is ready to serve import requests
Shader 'Oculus/OVRMRCameraFrameLit': fallback shader 'Alpha-Diffuse' not found
Launched and connected shader compiler UnityShaderCompiler.exe after 0.04 seconds
Refreshing native plugins compatible for Editor in 1.80 ms, found 6 plugins.
<... snip...>
Received Prepare
<... snip...>
Platform modules already initialized, skipping
Switching build target platform(19) subTarget(0) extendedPlatform(0) -> platform(13) subTarget(524294) extendedPlatform(0)
Shader 'Oculus/OVRMRCameraFrameLit': fallback shader 'Alpha-Diffuse' not found
<... snip...>
Refreshing native plugins compatible for Editor in 1.82 ms, found 6 plugins.
Preloading 1 native plugins for Editor in 0.08 ms.
Unloading 2829 Unused Serialized files (Serialized files now loaded: 0)
<... snip...>
AssetImportParameters requested are different than current active one (requested -> active):
custom:framework-win-MediaFoundation: 216162199b28c13a410421893ffa2e32 ->
custom:video-decoder-ogg-theora: a1e56fd34408186e4bbccfd4996cb3dc ->
custom:container-muxer-webm: aa71ff27fc2769a1b78a27578f13a17b ->
custom:container-demuxer-webm: 4f35f7cbe854078d1ac9338744f61a02 ->
custom:container-demuxer-ogg: 62fdf1f143b41e24485cea50d1cbac27 ->
custom:video-encoder-webm-vp8: eb34c28f22e8b96e1ab97ce403110664 ->
custom:video-codec-MediaFoundation-h265: 746d11721c4dcdbdad8f713fa42b33f4 ->
custom:video-decoder-webm-vp8: 9c59270c3fd7afecdb556c50c9e8de78 ->
custom:graphics/normal-map-encoding: 01000000000000000000000000000000 -> 02000000000000000000000000000000

========================================================================
Received Import Request.
Time since last request: 118.877887 seconds.
path: Assets/AmplifyImpostors/Examples/Assets/Textures/prop_barrel_01_a.png
artifactKey: Guid(59b3ff16914d514459bb451015521dfe) Importer(815301076,1909f56bfc062723c751e8b465ee728b)
Start importing Assets/AmplifyImpostors/Examples/Assets/Textures/prop_barrel_01_a.png using Guid(59b3ff16914d514459bb451015521dfe) Importer(815301076,1909f56bfc062723c751e8b465ee728b) -> (artifact id: '923e88e173ceeb379a52761eb8d69971') in 0.060170 seconds
========================================================================
Received Import Request.
Time since last request: 0.000245 seconds.
path: Assets/AmplifyImpostors/Examples/Assets/Textures/prop_barrel_01_m.png
artifactKey: Guid(7f1493c796ce4494cb3cca9fea5b6d4c) Importer(815301076,1909f56bfc062723c751e8b465ee728b)
Start importing Assets/AmplifyImpostors/Examples/Assets/Textures/prop_barrel_01_m.png using Guid(7f1493c796ce4494cb3cca9fea5b6d4c) Importer(815301076,1909f56bfc062723c751e8b465ee728b) -> (artifact id: 'c722be8f57b25bc8af5222cbb9b969c1') in 0.017180 seconds
========================================================================

Be aware, though, that even though the first few are AmplifyImpostors related, many other graphics objects are also processed.

 

Hello,
It has a mesh renderer and it's using the default unity unlit/texture shader. But it doesn't work with the imposter.

 

Hello, when will amplify imposter support urp12+? I really wanna use it in my project.

 

Does it happen if you only delete the Examples folder?

Does it work with Standard shader?

In progress. We'll be shipping it this month, along with URP 13 and 14.

 

Keep up the good and legendary work, thanks for the update.

 

hello, does this asset support runtime impostor creation?

 

Cheers!

I've just tested custom baking on my end using AmplifyImpostors/Examples/Scenes/CustomBaking and seems to be working. Can you send me what you have (a repro project) to support@amplify.pt so I can have a look and see what's going on?

Unfortunately, no.

 

This month is almost over
Any hopes for tomorrow or the day after?

 

I'm having an issue with AI,

In our open-world game all our textures (except for terrain textures) support Texture Streaming, however, when enabled on the impostors, they won't load higher than the "Max Level Reduction", so they are all looking like blobs.

No matter how high we set the Mip Map Priority, they stay being blobs. As if Unity won't take into account how big they are being rendered onscreen and update the mipmap accordingly. Any thoughts?

 

I too am very excited to try it out! (URP 12).

Hopefully it comes soon

 

Hi everyone, unfortunately my family and I have dealing with sickness for the past week and a half and, unfortunately, nowadays, we had no one else to pick up the work.

Work is now back on track and the next update - w/ bug fixes and URP/HDRP 10x 12x 14x support - is now aimed for December instead. Sorry about the inconvenience and thank you for your patience.

 

Hello, will this update add support to URP 13x too?

 

Best wishes for your health.

 

Yes. 12x and 13x will be in the first update, but 14x will have to wait for the second update.

Thank you!

 

Hi ! I hope your health is getting better. Question regarding the URP version, not to show but to bake - it seems that whenever I do, I get Unity to crash - using TVE presets. It works fine on Windows. Is there any xmas miracle that will happen in the next update to fix this too ?

Thanks !

 

Hope your family's health continues to improve. This winter seems to be starting off tough for many of us.

Will this tool have an option to write the meta information for the bake to Unity's BillboardAsset file? I suppose I could write a script to do it, but just wondered. Their reference to this class is here. It seems it might be advantageous to do this for terrain detail brushes, but not sure if it's even worth the effort.

Also, I've made a bamboo tree model that is very thin and tall. It has some width at the top where there it gets a bit wider do to more branches and trees. I'm wondering if there is a special mapping for objects like this where the basic shape is non-standard. Seems to me that otherwise, there would be a lot of wasted space in the texture map if the columns and rows are similar. Also, if it makes sense to have multiple billboard lods? That is LOD0, and perhaps LOD1 and LOD2 for two different versions of the billboard sets?

I am new to your system and only have watched tutorials, so, apologies in advance if my questions have been solved elsewhere.

Thank you,
Mike

 

With December being over, any update on the ETA?

 

Hi @AmplifyCreations I hope you are well.

Will the upcoming release work with the TVE Amplify module immediately? Or will BOXOPHOBIC, need to update their asset to be compatible?

EDIT: Looks like the URP version is available on the Amplify website. Happy Days!! I am going to download and check it out.

 

Very exciting! It's cool that the Amplify site has it, I was not aware of this option, but I will wait for the Asset Store release since the Amplify site has no TLS cert.

EDIT: I checked again and they do have a cert, it's just that the base link posted above doesn't auto-redirect to the HTTPS site.

 

Quick heads up : I had to create ASMDEFs in the editor folder for the build process to work on this new version.

 

I'm having this same issue with URP 12, with the latest update from the Amplify site. I imported the shaders from the "URP Shaders 12x" package.

The barrel in the Barrel URP demo is invisible, as is an Impostor I baked in my own scene.

Any ideas?

 

Oh I thought this meant I had to rebuild impostors, haven't tried yet. But all my impostors are not showing as well. I can see the mesh works by looking at the outline, but it doesn't render anything

 

Yes it's the same here. I've tested in a fresh project, same URP version (using 2021.3.14f1 with URP 12.1.8), and it works in the fresh project, but for some reason does not work in my existing URP project. Not seeing any errors however.

Screenshot is how it appears in my existing project.

 

Have you had any luck getting this working on your existing project?

 

Just replying to myself...
Seems the issue is with deferred rendering as it works perfectly when I set my URP asset to use forward rendering.
Unfortunately, I need to use deferred :/

 

I haven't tried anything - I was thinking of importing a baked impostor from the template project and seeing if it would render, but I want to script the generation of these impostors so I haven't bothered trying.

I am also using Deferred. URP templates use Forward by default. I was thinking of this but I had also read that generation of Impostors requires Deferred, so I just assumed they would render there.

Great find though, maybe the Amplify guy can fix the issue.