Amplify Impostors - Next Generation Billboards

That sounds like it, I'm also using deferred.

 

Alright guys, good news!

 

Thanks, I'd have no idea about these things if you guys weren't posting links lol. I look forward to testing it out!

 

I got this update and tried it, I can now see my impostors! YAY!

 

Hi Everyone,

I've been having trouble keeping track of all support channels. I'll do my best to reply to some of these questions as soon as I can. Note that I've been trying to focus as much time as I can on development in order to catch up on the backlog.

In the meantime, please direct any urgent bug reports to our support email ( support@amplify.pt ) and for tips, tricks or even basic functionality questions please hop on our community Discord ( https://discord.gg/vGvDU6Q3WR ).

Thank you.

 

Baking sadly crashes on Apple Silicon; am I the only one with this issue ?
@AmplifyCreations just sent you an e-mail regarding this issue.

Thank you !

 

can occluders be created at run time? I prefer to see occluders as a "caching system", and use the last baked billboard until the change in angle of the camera is significant enough to justify another baking. Is this technique possible?

 

Quite the lovely asset. Importing it worked without a hazzle and after following your guide on your Wiki, it was quite easy to generate the first few imposters.

However, to integrate it into our project properly, we would need to use Shader Graph shaders as the bake shader. There is, however, no guide on that or any explanation on what the requirements are for a ShaderGraph shader so your baking script can read the outputs.
Will there be any information coming soon about it? Or can anyone write the info in here?

 

Hi,
I would like to ask if there is any possible way to run the baking process by script?
I need to bake hundreds of objects so it would be very unpleasant to do it one by one.

 

Can't add the baking script to the object, anyone had the same problem?
No matter if reimport the whole thing, it never works, the shader part is fully functional.

 

Works like a charm for me

 

I'd love it if something like this could be implemented in the future for a more up close impostor shader!
https://www.landontownsend.com/sing...ourney-to-make-a-high-quality-imposter-shader

 

totally bug for me, it crash when I press "bake impostor" unity 2021.3.2

 

Hi, I am enjoying experimenting with Amplify Impostors so thanks for upgrading it to the latest URP versions, it's working really nicely! I'm posting because unfortunately there are rendering issues when used with Volumetric Light Beam. White dots appear where the impostor and HD beam overlap in screen space - the beam does not need to hit the impostor. So if the impostor is far away and you look through the beam, the same effect occurs.

Any ideas what could cause this?

I also posted in the Volumetric Light Beam forum, I'm not sure which side this is on. It would be great if these two assets could function together.

https://forum.unity.com/threads/vol...bile-vr-and-webgl.499367/page-14#post-8910379 (for any users with the same problem to hopefully keep track of both talks).

URP, 2021.3.20f1, Volumetric Light Beam 2.0.1, Amplify Impostors 0.9.8.3.

 

Hello
My name is David just joining the ASE staff this week to help with support.
I am going thru a backlog in the support for Impostors now.

I wonder can you try changing the Unity settings about depth priming to see if its related.

 

Hi David, thanks for your suggestion.

I tested and found that Forward rendering without Depth Priming works correctly, and Depth Priming produces the issue.

Unfortunately my project requires Deferred at the moment. I hope to eventually try Forward+ once it supports VR, but it does not at the moment, and under Forward I also see strong gains from using Depth Priming.

I guess Deferred has a similar setting or feature that causes this. I have tried with and without the Depth Texture, but the problem always shows.

Great job narrowing it down.

EDIT: This issue is in flatscreen, I've not tested it in VR.

 

Hi, I have since talked with techsalad who makes Volumetric Light Beam and he noticed there are rendering issues with just the impostor, so I think it looks like an issue with the Amplify shader. I am aware that after the URP 12 update, there was another update to fix depth issues (Deferred URP 12 did not work at all prior to this update), so perhaps this is related?

I have attached some more screenshots.

For example, please see "AI_FWD_DP_SceneView.png" and "AI_FWD_DP_SceneView_1.png", where there are black artifacts over the impostor. This occurs often as the scene view is moved and then left alone. This occurs only in the scene view but seems to be a similar issue. Using Forward + Depth Priming.

Also, if using Deferred and disabling the SRP Batcher, the rendering breaks completely. Please see "AI_Deferred_NoSRPBatch.png".

 

correct it is possibly related.
i already tracked out each change for this in unity api from 10x all the way up thru 16x
In 12x unity had a change mid cycle that may have been missed

i bumped this issue to get fixed in next amplify editor update and also follow up to check/verify if related to impostors

 

Hi, thanks. I have noticed something further - the issue with the black dots over the impostor also occurs under Deferred when enabling the Decal render feature.
Technique: DBuffer
Surface Data: Albdeo Normal MAOS

Unity recently fixed a bug related to Deferred + DBuffer decals, where objects would render black. I guess this is a bit different to the Unity bug since it also occurs in Forward with Depth Priming. Perhaps it was the Unity shaders that were fixed, I'm not sure exactly.

For Deferred + DBuffer Decals, in the scene view I can toggle the Decals feature on and off to produce the two attached screenshots.

EDIT: I am using your documented shader clip frames feature to reduce clipping at the edges of impostors, I've not yet tested without this.

 

I believe this issue is tracking already.
I will get back to you within the next day as i will update the progress.

 

All Imposter reports are now moved and tracking in the main list:
https://github.com/AmplifyCreations/AmplifyShaderEditor-Feedback/issues

for the first item see
https://github.com/AmplifyCreations/AmplifyShaderEditor-Feedback/issues/170

for the black dots with decals i opened a new ticket to insure it gets addressed
Yes, Unity has changed a lot with URP decals as we been working on this update in the editor also

see
https://github.com/AmplifyCreations/AmplifyShaderEditor-Feedback/issues/179

 

Hi, I was wondering does the imposter baking work at runtime? If you have multiple assets that you wish to create an imposter of in game, would that work?

Will the shader the plugin uses run on a mobile device??

 

Would be great if the run-time aspect works, not sure if its a thing yet with an API, so that when you have changed to buildings for example being destroyed you can change their state, otherwise at distance it will be as if nothing had happened.

 

Hi, any idea when this may get fixed?

 

@Amplify_David
Hi, now I am in a very difficult situation.
I want to burn an impsotor with only the meshrenderer of "rock_a01_lod0", but the mesh selection does not appear in the Reference field. Why is this?
Unity is 2021.3.14.

 

Hello guys, i am trying to bake imposter where i use Hemi Octahedron and TVE Objects Hemi Octahedron Bake and the output diffuse result is white, can somebody help me?

 

Hello, everyone!
A Brief Progress Update 05/10/2023

Amplify Shader Editor
v1.9.1.6 is about to release with several bug fixes, details will follow in release notes.

Amplify Shader Pack
v2.0.0 is about to release with multiple new samples and updated for 10x12x14x

Amplify Impostors
This will follow shortly after the above amplify Editor update, however we target before end of this month.

I have received multiple emails and bug reports for Impostors. I will be following up over the next few days to verify with you message received.

I am sorry we had a very large backlog for impostor issues and if you do not receive a reply by end of this week, please draw my attention by bumping me again.

My goal is to verify all reports received get checked by QA into this coming update.

Thank You,
David

 

I would love to see the depth bug fixed. I am very excited for this release!

 

Hello, I see that it comes with URP 12+ integration, I am using a custom URP to be able to use ASW with Meta Quest.

The question is, can I use this asset with my custom URP, or will the whole project change me?

It is true that I can not import the URPs that come with the asset, does it work in that case with ASW? Greetings and thank you all for your help.

 

Hey, i have same problem, have you solved it?

 

Hello,

Yesterday, I bought Amplify Imposter, from where should should I download ImpostersURP in the above image?

 

I have a question: how well do these imposters cope with multiple cameras rendering from the same scene ? Eg, will it handle Tilt-5's multiple player set up where you can have up to 4 people viewing the game on the same computer from different directions. Will these impostors billboard correctly to each player's camera, or only to the main camera and look wonky to the other player cameras ? Can I set which camera they billboard to, or is it only ever the main camera ?

 

I see its not officialy supported for mobile VR but what about PC VR?

 

This includes HDRP 12 support for Amplify Impostors?

 

It says no official support for VR. But has anyone tested and checked if this works on a Quest?

 

Can I make impostors with custom shaders with this?
I'd love to use this with a standard layered shader

 

Seems doesn't work anymore on the new 2022.3 LTS with URP 14. You click bake impostor and nothing happens, the mesh and material in the created asset are empty. Can't share details, cause there's nothing in the console, am I the only one facing that?

 

thank you for the report. we are working on the update to fix with the latest unity version now and will not be too long the updates will be pushed in asset store

 

What is the ETA on fixing AmplifyShaderEditor for M1 macs? I am still annoyed that I can't use the package I purchased months ago.

 

i am bumping the M1 to higher priority, i do see your rage and sorry for that.
We are also actively looking to hire more qualified devs to prevent this sort of delay from happening again in future.

 

May I know when dynamic Imposer can be supported？

 

please clarify terminology "dynamic" ?

 

'dynamic 'refers to the running state of Unity.

 

or dynamic, generating impostors at runtime, so if the state of an object has changed, for example a building that has been damaged, the impostor needs to reflect this at a distance.

 

Won't make a difference but M2 also crashes when baking. It's likely just all Apple Silicon that's broken?

 

Hello, i'm trying to bake impostors automatically in my terrain generator. Basically, i'm trying to recreate the bake function through code, so i can bake different generated structures (gameobjects with meshrenderers attached) without clicking the "Bake" button on each of the AmplifyImpostor components.

I tried to achieve this like this:

Code (CSharp):

1.  
2. var impostorGen = buildingGameObject.AddComponent<AmplifyImpostor>();
3. var folderPath = settings.workingFolderPath + "Impostors/" + rng.Next();
4. impostorGen.m_folderPath = folderPath;
5. impostorGen.CreateAssetFile();
6. impostorGen.GenerateAutomaticMesh(impostorGen.Data);
7.  

but this leads to the error:

ArgumentNullException: Value cannot be null.

Parameter name: obj

UnityEditor.PrefabUtility.GetCorrespondingObjectFromSource[TObject] (TObject componentOrGameObject) (at <11d97693183d4a6bb35c29ae7882c66b>:0)

AmplifyImpostors.ImpostorBakingTools.OpenFolderForImpostor (AmplifyImpostors.AmplifyImpostor instance) (at Assets/AmplifyImpostors/Plugins/Scripts/ImpostorBakingTools.cs:61)

AmplifyImpostors.AmplifyImpostor.CreateAssetFile (AmplifyImpostors.AmplifyImpostorAsset data) (at Assets/AmplifyImpostors/Plugins/Scripts/AmplifyImpostor.cs:866)

I figure that I need to setup the AmplifyImpostor component more, before the impostor can be baked.
Is that what i'm trying to achieve possible? If so, could you lead me to the right direction?

 

thank you.
see comments in reference link for your tracking.
Impostor - expose an API to trigger re-bake in existing Impostor · Issue #216 · AmplifyCreations/AmplifyShaderEditor-Feedback (github.com)

 

hello, we just pushed an update for Version 0.9.8.4
Amplify Impostors | Utilities Tools | Unity Asset Store
this update deals with many of the open issues in chat

Mac users we do not forget about you.
An update will follow next to deal with many special Mac bugs we have been tracking.
please keep any new reports coming

thank you

 

Latest release has VR/Quest support?

Anything special I need to do to make this work or is it automatic?

 

Amplify Impostors v0.9.8.4
Amplify Impostors | Utilities Tools | Unity Asset Store

Highlights
* Improved support for URP/HDRP 10x 12x 14x
* Updated samples across all SRPs
* Added support for Unity 2023 and URP/HDRP 15x
* Added support for Quest/VR
Fixes
* Fixed URP/Lit detail inputs not baking properly on all URP versions
* Fixed black pixels when DBuffer is active
* Fixed OUTPUT_SH4 errors on URP 15x
* Fixed light layers broken in HDRP 15x
* Fixed DepthNormals depth offset patch in SRP 14+
Changes
* Added AI_SKIP_ALPHA_CLIP to skip forced alpha test
* Added LOD crossfade support to URP 10x and 12x