[BEST ARTISTIC TOOL - UNITY AWARDS 2019] Aura 2 - Volumetric Lighting & Fog

Aura 2 - Volumetric Lighting & Fog
is now available on the Asset Store

Get it here : http://u3d.as/1qBF

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About Aura 2

Spoiler

Aura 2 is a volumetric lighting/fog solution for Unity.

Aura 2 simulates the illumination of the micro-particles that are present in the environment but too small to be visible to the eye/camera.

Features :
▶ All types of light supported
▸ Full shadows support (1/2/4 directional cascade(s), spot, point)
▸ Cookie support
▶ Volumes injection (Global, Planar, Box, Sphere, Cylinder, Cone) with :
▸ Density injection
▸ Scattering injection
▸ Light injection
▶ Ambience Presets for 1-click kickstart
▶ Improved quality
▶ Multiple Cameras support
▶ Light Probes support
▶ Stereo / VR support
▶ Realtime preview in editor
▶ Toolbox with shortcuts
▶ Realtime Quality switch
▶ Fast Import Time
▶ Compatible with :
▸ Gaia from Procedural Worlds
▸ Amplify Shader Editor from Amplify Creations
▸ Bolt - Visual Scripting from Ludiq
▶ Opaque/Transparent geometry support
▶ Particles illumination, fog and density
▶ Works in Forward/Deferred
▶ Works in LDR/HDR
▶ Works in Gamma/Linear
▶ Texture2D and Texture2D support
▶ Dynamic 4D noise support
▶ Fully commented API

 

Hi there!
Seems great, but Aura 1 seems great too and there are other solutions out there too, so it's really complicated to know which one is the best for each case aside from purchasing and testing them all.
What about performance? Can this run on mobile or Nintendo Switch at reasonable speeds?
Could you do a demo in order for us to test the performance?
Also, could you elaborate on the differences between Aura 1 and 2?
Does it still take ages to compile like Aura1?
Is it any faster at runtime?
Thanks

 

Congratulations!

I'll be buying as soon as I get home from work. Thanks for the great offer that was Aura, really helped my project. now, I'm glad to support your launch. Good luck. It looks amazing.

 

Hi! I use aura 1 and notice the ambient light (the setting in the main component )will make the scene view little darker.

How about Aura 2?

 

Hey,
Loved Aura 1 but had to ditch it due to all the well known issues, but as soon as I saw the "transparency support" feature, along with pretty much everything else, I purchased it right away!
However it appears the fade (transparency as well) settings in the default shader still has the same issue I had with Aura 1.
I tried to look at the shaders included with Aura 2, the settings, and the documentation, but couldn't find anything, am I missing something?
Attaching a screenshot to this post.


Thanks!

 

Congrats on the release!

 

Aura is froxel based solution？

 

How long will the launch price be available and what will be the regular price?
What other integrations are planned? I'd need Enviro, R.A.M., L.V.E. and Lux Water

 

Hi! Thank you.
Aura 1 will be soon deprecated and removed from the store, as there will not be any support anymore. I will not go into details because I don't want to discredit my fellow publishers as they do a great job as well. Aura is the only solution on the store that uses the most modern technique for volumetrics. It is more flexible, more complete, can easily add features and is oriented towards the future as it is scalable in terms of quality/performances. Other solutions seem to have reached some limits, some of them not even being supported anymore.
Performances are good. Metrics are complicated but compared to Aura 1 they seem to be around 30% better for the same quality. Mobile and switch are not supported but unlike Aura 1, Aura 2 has already unofficially proved to be portable on other platforms than DX11/PC (with bits of work), unlike Aura 1. More will be coming.
I'll indeed prep a demo build.
It's a deep topic to cover. Compared to Aura 1, the visual quality has taken a huge step higher, the mathematics have been redone and the technical design rethought. Aura 2 is much more stable and reliable than Aura 1 which appears to be poorly reliable for builds. Aura 2 now supports a lot of features like Multicam, VR, unordered deactivation/activation, realtime preview, fixed bugs etc...
Aura 2 compiles in about 7 seconds, no need to take a shower, cook diner and tidy the whole house while waiting anymore

Thank you very much! I appreciate!

It's not especially Aura 1's fault, it's the physically correct behaviour that does that. It will still happen in Aura 2 if you take the same approach. To avoid this problem, set the density to a veeery low value (like in real life, about 0.005) and the lights to very high strength.

Hi! thanks for your compliments. This looks great. Actually Aura 2 is designed to support/be able to apply on transparent materials BUT due to the nature of transparent objects (totally decoupled from the scene and rendered after everything), the shaders will need to be edited to apply the Aura effect like explained in the doc. The problem using Unity's provided shaders is that they are not editable and I cannot inject code in it. That's the reason I provide a first iteration of a surface shader. I will be pressuring Unity to find a more elegant and transparent solution. The ultimate one being that they natively support Aura in their shaders (let's not dream I think).
The documentation will indeed be updated.

Yes it is! The only one on the Asset Store!

Prices will range from 47 to 67, special sales not taken in account.
I am taking contacts to expand and guarantee support of Aura 2 to those great assets out there.

 

Could you elaborate on what would be needed to make it compatible with Android and Nintendo Switch?
Or is it just that Aura2 hasn't been tested for those?
By the way, is the full source code included with Aura2?

 

It hasn't been tested for those indeed. Aura 2 works for example on PS4, but the directional shadow system needs to be adapted.
Yes code is included so you can fit your needs.

 

Just bought it. Cant wait to play around with it in VR (htc vive). Any recommended settings or tips for vr to make it as fast as possible? Also any plans for Enviro integration?

 

Hi! So I bought it yesterday for some Fulldome format usage since Multi-cam is supported. I tried making it work with one of the sample scenes and the AT-Bristol Dome Tools (https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/62664) and it seems like the point light is duplicated 5 times, causing a lot of disrepancies.

I tried on another "cam rig" with 5 cameras + 1 orthographic camera and it worked well except for a slight "boxing" issue where you can see lines where the cameras are stitched. (I'm unsure if it's a cam rig issue or Aura but I bet it's more on the camrig's side.)

Another thing : I noticed that multi-object editing is disabled. Is there a specific reason why?

 

If anyone who has purchased this could test it on macOS (metal) and/or linux I would love to hear if it works before purchasing. Thanks!

 

Hi, I wanted to ask if Aura 2 supports emissive surfaces or plans to do that?

Edit: I would also like to ask (to be 100% sure) does it work in standart rendering pipeline? And will it be supported in future?

Btw amazing asset, it realy shocked me when I saw it for the first time!

 

Just bought Aura 2, getting impressive results with just a few minutes in!
Been holding my breath since early February announcement, glad it have been released now!

Congratulations!

I have a few questions after playing around with it.

- It seems like some volume disappears/culled after some distance, is there a way to control these settings? (I need some of the lights to be visible at a long distance for important visual cues)
- Will there be LWRP/HDRP Support?
- Any roadmap on what's to come in the future?

Thank you!

 

Thank you. There are some fellows already playing in VR with 10ish lights and working like a charme at solid 90 fps. As always avoid unecessarily small aura objects and have good use of the existing ones.

Wow I honestly cannot tell about this kind of particular issues. Should be individually investigated.
I had to disable multi edition on some components because unity weirdly assigned the same values to all selected objects even if i did change it. Gotta be fixed of course

I do have ideas for supporting emissive materials but it's a long shot.
Aura 2 works with the builtin render pipeline yes that's actually one of its strength
Thank you for your compliments

Thanks for your nice words!
You can set a further distance in the Quality Settings on the Camera but it will distribute the quality along depth in consequence. I advice setting a bigger depth resolution if you do so.
There will eventually be SRP/LWRP/HRDP support. When they will be ok...
No official roadmap yet but there is already a list of planned features in the description on the store

 

A few questions on compatibility, I don't want to break my project.

Does Aura2 work with weather assets (I use weather maker)?
Does Aura2 work with billboard trees?
Does Aura2 work well with Vegetation Studio?

 

Hey, I remember when I injected AURA 1 into my project it took an enormous time to compile the shader variants. In fact so long that I simply stopped waiting, canceled the task and deleted the project. Does AURA 2 come with the same problem? Can anyone of the early buyers tell me how long they waited after they added the package?


Yeah one more thing, I saw dust moths effect in screenshots, that usually is a sepate shader on the store are they included in AURA 2? I am talking about small glowing circles flying in fog volumes.

 

Seven seconds...
Se.. ven... se... conds!


Edit : As you understood, Aura 2 now imports as fast as lightning

 

Does this work with Enviro, Unity's post processing stack and 2018.3? If so instant purchase.

 

I too would like to know compatibility with other assets before I buy. The video looks awesome.

Weather maker?
Vegetation studio?

 

Hi there...Beautiful asset so far (I'm still in the honeymoon phase) and I love playing with it in editor. Problem is, I'm getting a null reference error that is causing the build to fail if I build and run on Windows....it looks like it is Aura2API.SceneviewToolbox.ComputeRects() (line 545 of SceneViewToolbox.cs). Not a deal breaker for me since I don't have to deliver a build any time soon, but wanted to check if there is a feature I should disable to avoid this, and also to report the issue if you haven't seen it.

Cheers!

 

Hello. I just want ask, if there is any water asset or shadder working with Aura right now. Like Aquas for example.

I just wonder if you can't avoid this error by putting this line into "#if UNITY_EDITOR" platform depended compilation.​

 

Superb ! But how do i make it work with 2 cameras ? When changing the camera it gets deactivated.

 

Good news! I took the liberty of installing Aura 2 on my Mac running under Metal. Everything seems to work okay, although the scene window seems a little cranky about displaying the preview correctly. (Oddly enough, if you hit play, it seems to kick things in motion.)

 

Hi,

I must say, good job on the release. I was slightly bitter to see the asset going to V2 dropping all planned features for V1 and what you wrote for V1 on how you believe it should be free and why. Thought about a money grabber at first with V2.

Boy I was wrong. The quality of V2 on all aspects of it (the lighting of course but the tools, documentation, api etc.). You nailed it and it clearly worth way more than the actual price. The time you spent on creating Aura 2 must be impressive and so is the result. Again: congratulation

 

Thank you everyone for all your nice words about Aura 2!
I will answer all of them in a couple of hours.

In the meantime I have submitted the second update of Aura 2.

Cheers!

 

Anyone else finding the preset really strong? I.E all but sunny day completely blanket the scene in varying colours of thick fog so are unusable as is.

I have got some nice results scaling down everything but I'm wondering if this is specific to my project.

Aura works great with vegetation studio and unistorm for weather.

I'm also getting a few quirks with the effect switching on/off when going to full screen in play mode but small issues aside the overall results and effects are fantastic and well worth the update. Looking forward to the future dev and getting under the hood a little more.

 

Demo?
Please. PLEASE. I need the same answer as dsilverthorn above. How is this going to work with a weather asset? I want to use Azure Sky. It's my favorite Unity asset next to Playmaker.

Andy said it works with vegetation studio so that answers my other question.

Like Azure Sky just uses a directional light. I can use that directional light to control the direction of the god rays, right? (Can you tell I'm a Playmaker dev and 3D artist, not a programmer? Look at me trying to talk with the big people, lol.)

Oh oh oh also (this is why a demo is critical it answers questions) in the video there is a toolbox and you're dropping magic into the scene. I need my magic to happen according to time of day and to just move with the light source. Open world with weather, not designated unmoving light sources. I just. Want. Rays. Like that. For my trees. Is it going to move with my time of day weathery light source?

Can I change the presets at run time so the light is stunning warm colored in the morning and cooler later or do I just disable and enable a different instance of the light? I can change a lot about the color of the light right?


I WANT TO BUY THIS BUT I'M SCARED.

Edit: Jeez I got so caught up in business and desires that I totally forgot to mention: DID YOU SERIOUSLY JUST RICK ROLL US? I cackled so loud I woke up the dog in the other room.

 

Hi, did aura 2 can achieved such a volumetric fog/cloud like this?



Object shadow can project on volumetric fog/cloud planner.

 

Maybe it's just scaling issue? Aura 1 is working with own units

While I am not Aura author, as far as I understand techniques Aura is using, this is not possible in aura.

 

Oh I see, thank for information.

 

How can I make Aura 2 work with Envirosky? I currently get double the fog.

 

Here's a question...

Can Aura 2 be made to work or fake a light shaft when there is no real hole or opening for the light shaft to come through?

In other words, I download a room 3D model. The model has windows but they are fake windows, that is, they are just textures of a window, there is no real "hole" or "opening" like in your cave demo, for a light shaft to go through......

Is there a way to use layers or something, to fake it? And create light shafts, without having a real hole in the wall?

 

HI - Aura 2 looks great and I've purchased it.
I realise you're not supporting HDRP yet, but I was optimistic and tried anyway (lol). I thought I'd give a little feedback and hope you can at add support soon/ish)

Unity 2018.3.0f2 + HDRP - Aura 2 doesn't seem to work
Also I suddenly get objects which can me moved or rotated in the scene (but they can be moved via the inspector). Scaling works fine (!?). When closing/opening the project, the object can be manipulated as usual.

If possible I'm hoping you will be able to make Aura 2 compatible with Vegetation Studio Pro and Enviro...

Any ETA on HDRP (maybe one unity version with a specific hdrp version you could get to work?)

Asset looks great in Standard 3D btw - I'm looking forward to trying it out when HDRP gets locked down.

 

After switching to Aura 2 editor became very very laggy (scene is quite big but was working fine with aura 1), now it gives like 1-2 fps in editor - works fine in player. Tried turning off aura preview ect but without help. I have a feeling it can be caused by extra aura UI visible in the scene
(Unity 2018.3.0f2)

EDIT: Aura gizmos were causing the lag.

 

You can do this prefabs from things like particle effects which would be a more efficient solution. And the answer is liekly no. Go to the asset store, type "volumetric light beam" and set the price to 0. There are about 4 results that might work for your situation!

 

Hi. I just bought this and tested it out on the htc vive. It looks good although I'm having a couple of issues. The first is whenever I walk behind a large object the screen still has a volumetric lighting fog effect when facing the sun, which looks very unnatural (see attached). It's like the shadows aren't being accounted for. I do have shadows checked in the settings.

Also, everything is being effected by Aura except for my water. Maybe because it's a transparent shader? Is there some special setting I'm not seeing for transparent shadows?

I'm using single pass rendering, forward lighting, and one directional light.

Thanks!

 

Hello everybody! Thank you so much for all your nice comments and love about Aura 2 and your help to improve and make it an awesome product

General note regarding compatibility of specific assets and transparent shaders/objects.
Aura 2 fundamentally handles most rendering situations and also provides technical solutions to support custom/specific transparent assets (doc, ASE nodes).
For those least technical among us, not everything can be compatible out of hands, especially at launch, with Aura 2 as I cannot inject aura 2 inside the Unity system. That's annoying but there are solutions.
You can always ask the publisher of your favorite incompatible assets to contact me if you want them to support Aura 2. I'll be gladly working with them! :-D
Or you all guys can just contact Unity to bring a native solution to support Aura 2 on native shaders. Who knows
55000 requests might trigger something.

Hi! I have had people working Enviro along Aura and aura 2 for a long time. It works with post processing stack although I'd recommend setting Aura 2 before it. 2018.3 is supported yes

Vegetation Studio is apparently compatible. I don't know about weather maker. I'll try to contact them to make sure they'll be compatible with aura2.

Can you give me more console details? This shouldn't happen as the toolbox is stripped from builds.

None are currently compatible with Aura 2 right now, shaders still need to be modified.

Fixed! ;-)

Awesome! Can you PM so I can follow this up!

Thank you for your nice message and compliments Aura 2 in the current state has taken me 2.5years

Yes presets are strong in order to be well visible like in a forest. They need tweaking of course. I can easily refine them according to your feedbacks (and I knew I'd had to).
The problems with playmode in editor comes from the preview which is still in improvement.

Yes I'll make runtime demos when I have a little more time.
Aura 2 relies on the lights themselve so yes changing the light's orientation will change the rays direction as well.
You can apply the presets at runtime yes via AuraPreset.ApplyPreset(Presets preset). The change will be immediate though, no lerp nor weight yet. This is planned for an update.
Rick is never gonna let us down!

Aura 2 is not a cloud simulation system (mainly because of the need of selfshadowing) although it can still achieve very good results alike

I am not sure but you'd need to be able to disable the fog from it. Best I can tell is to ask the dev of envirosky.

Yes there is! You can create a Aura Volume from the toolbox, select the Inject Light so the volume will be filled with fake light. You can apply a 2D/3D texture mask on that volume if you need to refine the borders of the shafts

There are no direct plans on HDRP (it is not even close to be usable for production) as 98 percents of users are not willing to use it now and the rest has only tried...
Gizmos freeze issue is on the work
Vegetation Studio and Enviro reportedly work with Aura 2.

Can you try modifying the depth bias towards 0 to test?
Yes transparent shaders need to be modified to support Aura 2 as mentionned, please have a look in the doc so know how.
Transparent shadows are just fake s**t using dithered shadowmaps. Still scratching my head to have them work correctly.

 

Hey there! So I picked up Aura 2 and am testing it, but I'm getting a really weird ghosting / afterimage going on that wasn't in Aura 1, or at least wasn't noticeable. It happens using both the default direct light, and if I add any volumes.

 

It looks nice paused though:

 

Is the manual available to read somewhere? Curious what kind of performance/how many ms this takes (ball park).

 

That's beautiful. This is a combinaison of temporal reprojection, occlusion culling and lower fps.
You can influence in three ways : reduce the temporal reprojection, disable occlusion culling or get higher fps by reducing the inherent quality settings.

Yes there is a documentation file in the package. Regarding performance/ms, this is an awkward question as those are directly depending on the machine you're running on. All i can says is that for a volumetric lighting solution, I think Aura 2 performs very well and people around are satisfied with the performances as well.

 

I am getting very slow performance in VR, single pass, deferred rendering, dx11, using default preset, in empty scene on 1070ti 9ms in AuraCamera.OnRenderImage() 8.981ms
Aura 2 : Compute accumulated contributions 7.9 ms

is it possible to optimize it? whats a good setting to tune down without make it look ugly?
let me know if you need more information.

Thanks

 

Hi,
We used your Aura 2 from Unity Asset Store and used with Enviro Skybox(also from Asset Store) and Unity Postprocessing Kit.

Currently we faced some issues with using your Aura 2 asset.

1. We are making a Third person shooter game which requires to switch between two cameras from main camera (position at character's shoulder) to scope camera at aiming. (Like PUBG and other Third person shooter game allows players to use scopes)
We added Aura 2 Camera script on both camera.
The problem we faced was that after we switched camera back from scope camera, there was no Aura 2 screen effect on the main camera, unless with turn Aura 2 Camera Component off and on again manually.

2.Second question is about building the games.
We faced belowing errors while building with Aura 2.
We added Aura light script to one only direct light used by Enviro and removed all other related scripts on that direct light.
We didn't change any settings on Aura Script Component or Aura Editor.



Could you please give us any suggestions to solve these problems?

 

The uploaded picture is down and the same email sent to the support email address was blocked cause of spam..Could you please provide another support email address so we can send you the screen shot or errors?

 

That is a lot compared to the other feedbacks. Try reducing the resolution.

Sure ping me on the discord channel

 

I personally like being able to look through a manual before purchase, lets me see what the workflow will be, or any possible problems I might encounter.

 

Supposedly, using two cameras, was supported in Aura 2.