Amplify Impostors - Next Generation Billboards

Some dark spots on the result, other parts look fine. But if I remove diffusion map, the tree lost some volume and light.

 

If I adjust the diffusion map in PS, I don't have a clue how to do it, a little adjust can make a big difference

 

I'm using The Vegetation Engine Foliage Shaders before conversion, by the way.

 

Hello there!

What do you mean by "auto-generated diffusion"?

There's actually a known Amplify Impostors issue that we're still in the process of working out that can cause baked differences due to incorrectly baked Custom Diffusion data.

Apologies for the inconvenience if that's what you're experiencing, we hope to find a workaround for this in the future.

The impostors map?

HDRP project conversion?

 

Yes, I'm using Impostor in HDRP environment, and I'm referring to the baked "Diffusion Features" map by Impostor which in my opinion is influencing the subsurface effect? So I may just need some information about this map for what it does which each channel so that I can adjust it in other plugin or softwares..

 

To be more specific, what I'm saying is that there's an issue on our side, the HDRP Diffusion data is not properly baked, hence the visual differences. In this case, it's best to wait for an official fix.

 

Waiting for your good news~

 

i think Texture array can be a very optimal method , while it can gives far more better quality than 8K texture if you got array of 2k * 256 . the 8k Atalas can take up to 80 MB for 512x512 icon , an array of [2k size * 256 images] the file size of optimized array can go up to 250 mb.

IMO using texture array can provide a better quality with almost identical performance.


Edit :

i think instead of calculating the Icon Rect and it's postition , the shader gives away only the index of the array.
the changes to the shader algorithm will only be placed at indexing phase

 

Hi, after upgrading to Unity 2020.2.1 on Mac OctahedronImpostorHDRP shader throws these errors:

Shader error in 'Hidden/Amplify Impostors/Octahedron Impostor HDRP': 'LightLoop': cannot convert output parameter from 'struct LightLoopOutput' to 'float3' at line 2124 (on metal)

Shader error in 'GPUInstancer/Hidden/Amplify Impostors/Octahedron Impostor HDRP': 'LightLoop': cannot convert output parameter from 'struct LightLoopOutput' to 'float3' at line 2146 (on metal)

Also on line 384 on the same shader GetDecalSurfaceData is complained for not having 2 parameters on metal.

Any idea how to fix?

 

We appreciate your feedback, thanks for elaborating.

Apologies for the inconvenience, please hold until we launch our HDRP 10.x update for impostors; it's coming soon, we're working on it as we speak.

 

hi,
I'm trying using impostor for my tree using URP. I only get impostor completely white...

the _albedoalfa also is white

while the original tree is


I tried different configurations but the result is always the same
any ideas?

thanks Sandro

 

Hello there, this is usually caused by the shader used. What's your current setup on that Tree?

 

actually I tried with several trees and the result is the same.
The trees I tested has different Shaders: some tree come from my old projects where I used Tree Creator with standard render pipeline.
Changing to URP I bought Lux URP essential that has tree creator shaders porting for URP.
Then I purchased impostor in order to create some decent LODs and billboards for these trees.
Other trees that I tested (but really I don't need impostor for them since they have good enough LODs) are made using MTree with its own URP shaders.

Lux shaders : Tree Creator Leaves Optimized render queue 2450 + Tree Creator Bark Optimized render queue 2000
MTree shaders: Leafs URP render queue 2000 + Bark URP render queue 2000

the actual setup of impostor I used is the default for URP then I also tried to create my own setup changing the run time shader but nothing changed
The backing shader is BakingURP with legacy pipeline
But I have also tried other pipelines

With the same configuration of impostor object with URP lit shader of Unity work perfectly.

Do you need any other info?

Thanks,
Sandro

 

Allow me to elaborate:
-The object that you intend to bake must use a compatible shader such as the Unity's Default URP Lit shader. We don't support Lux or Mtree shaders out of the box, hence my mention of the link in my previous message. http://wiki.amplify.pt/index.php?ti...ify_Impostors/Manual#Technical_Considerations

"the actual setup of impostor I used is the default for URP then I also tried to create my own setup changing the run time shader but nothing changed
The backing shader is BakingURP with legacy pipeline
But I have also tried other pipelines"

What exactly are you referring to here?


Try this, pick a single renderer for your project, create a new Unity object like a cube or a sphere; if that bakes correctly, we can take it from there; otherwise there's something not quite right in your project.

 

On a side note, our HDRP 10.x update is now available via the Asset Store.

 

Hi, i'd like to suggest two improvements:
- expose the specular intensity in the shader/material to enable artists to match the specularity accurate to the previous LOD level.
- include an option to create and render shadows only, so that reduced mesh LODs can benefit from the draw call savings.

 

Hello,

Thank you for your suggestions, I'll pass it on to the devs.

An impostor can be set to "Shadows Only" in the Mesh Renderer component, just as any other model, and you could also attempt to use a simpler Bake Preset or Custom Bake/Runtime shader.(advanced topic, requires some shader dev knowladge)

 

Hello, are there any updates to the development of animation within Imposters or a dev diary that covers Amplify asset progress? Not that I am trying to rush or demand anything but this is one of those features I'm very excited for and could very much use in my project.

 

Hey there!

We've had some good and some bad developments on that; it's at a sort of standstill at the moment, we're rethinking our approach there. To be more specific, our first attempts at this somewhat worked but not without technical problems which make it less than ideal for commercial use.

 

Hello! Is it possible to bake the impostor in runtime or is that feature not added yet?

 

Hello, not yet.

 

Thanks. And is there an approximate date of when that feature will be?

 

Afraid not, we're still experimenting.

 

Ok, I hope you will find a way to do it sooner rather than later.

Keep it up, you guys are doing a great job.

 

Thanks, we appreciate it!

Hope so too!

 

Hi, I have a couple of gbs worth of impostor textures in my project now and want to optimize their import settings a bit, if possible. Any best practices or recommendations on this regarding mip maps or compression etc? Anything that could potentially break them? Thanks!

 

Hey there!

Compress them as you would regular textures, it's encouraged that you do so.

We are not aware of any known issues related to this.

 

Hi Ricard, Hope you can help me;

I have used amplify imposters in other projects with success, but am currently having trouble identifying performance issues using imposters - that is, my application runs better WITHOUT amplify imposters.... And I'm currently testing with just 5 unique imposters.

Platform: Android OpenGL 3
Unity: 2019.6.6f
Testing on device: Samsung Galaxy S10e.
Standard (legacy) Render Pipeline

Getting less than 30 frames with just ~45 imposter instances of the 5 unique types.

I turned off LOD animation fading, in case it was a drawcall issue.

Profiler shows >80% waitForSignal, so its rendering that's the issue.

Drawcalls (frame grabbed on device) is around 40, with setpass at around 30.
I'm only around 20-35k triangles, depending on how far I am from the objects I'm testing with.

I do have realtime shadows on, but everything works fine with over 1 million triangles (when I spawn multiple of the same game objects and aren't using imposters).

It seems like when everything is "imposterised" the performance is fine, and I can push the instance count to >5x what i can when just a single of them are lod0 - yet when no imposters are shown, and I'm so close that all objects in view are lod0, performance is good again. So its the inbetween lod0 and lod1 (imposters) that's causing the issue.

Can you point me in a direction of debugging? Is it simply the imposter (HemiOctahedron) shader that is too heavy when combined with realtime shadows for mobile platforms?
Again, only using 5 imposters with 2k textures.

EDIT: Tried without Realtime shadows - no gains in performance.

 

Hey, happy to help.

-What do you mean by "It seems like when everything is "imposterised" the performance is fine"?
-What's the shader type used on the original assets?
-Please show us a screenshot of how you're using it.

If the original asset is less complex than the impostor, there would be a noticeable hit on performance, especially on mobile devices. In any case, based on your description, it could be something else.

 

- When the object is far away and it's only rendering the imposters (lod1).

- I used the SpeedTree8 shader.

This is what I'm testing with:


Wireframe View:


End Goal to be completely impostered;

The way I'm doing it is I'm making imposters for individual plants/flowers/grass bundle.

The original assets are definitely more complex I would say;
The heaviest grass-type, used 23 times, is 3k verts, while the least heavy used 20 times is 630 verts.

I can have 3 instances of the end product (shown above) with no imposters (0.5 million verts in 96 batches) and it runs above 30 fps on the Samsung S10e, but if I try running the test with just the grass (no flowers and other foliage) using imposters I get the performance hiccups, and can barely run one instance.

 

Thank you for the additional details, we appreciate it.

That's odd, if it runs well with just the impostors I'm not really sure if the problem is entirely on our end. Grass is not a great candidate for impostors but I'm not sure what could be happening there.

Is the vegetation static batched?

I would recommend checking your profiler and frame debugger while transitioning from LOD 1 to 0 and see what's happening.

We'd be happy to test a project sample(simplified project, just that scene and assets); feel to forward it to support@amplify.pt.

 

As fate had it, my s10e had an update to Android 11 overnight, which forced me to update unity (to 2020.2) to get AR Foundation working again with the newest gradle version. Somewhere along that upgrade the imposters started "performing" normally again. Sooooo, like anything Unity related, praying and black magic always solves it

 

I have Amplify Impostors included in my project but as of now I am not even using it yet.

When I build and run my project I get the following compiler errors.

When I open Visual Studio and compile the project it compiles just fine with no errors.

The Console after build and run says the following.

Assets\AmplifyImpostors\Plugins\Scripts\AmplifyImpostor.cs(1933,12): error CS0103: The name 'm_HDversion' does not exist in the current context

Assets\AmplifyImpostors\Plugins\Scripts\AmplifyImpostor.cs(1933,27): error CS0103: The name 'AISRPVersions' does not exist in the current context

each one of those errors prints twice.

Again, if I go into Visual studio the project compiles without any errors.

 

Greetings, hope we can help.

-What AI version are you using?(Windows > Amplify Impostors > About)
-Unity version
-SRP and version if any

Anything else in the console?

 

Oh yeah Sorry.

Amplify Impostors v.9.7r6
Windows 10
Unity 2020.1.5f1
HDRP 8.2


The only other error is

UnityEditor.BuildPlayerWindow+BuildMethodException: 5 errors
at UnityEditor.BuildPlayerWindow+DefaultBuildMethods.BuildPlayer (UnityEditor.BuildPlayerOptions options) [0x0027c] in <6d0b5326886a4f0e8ed4ea356b37330b>:0
at UnityEditor.BuildPlayerWindow.CallBuildMethods (System.Boolean askForBuildLocation, UnityEditor.BuildOptions defaultBuildOptions) [0x00080] in <6d0b5326886a4f0e8ed4ea356b37330b>:0
UnityEditor.BuildPlayerWindow:BuildPlayerAndRun()

 

Thanks for the details! And the target plaform?

Please try updating your AI version, we recently corrected a build issue, could be related.

http://amplify.pt/download

 

Standalone Window is my target platform.

I'll get the latest version you mentioned and try again and let you know either way.

Thanks for the help.

 

I can't download it from your website. I enter my order number from my account and it doesn't work.

I purchased the Shader and Impostor bundle if that helps.

Nevermind. I got it. Since it was a bundle, Unity gave me two invoices I found the correct one.
:-0

 

Cool, good to hear it!

 

Okay, good news and bad news.

The bad news: Still doesn't compile with Build and Run.

The Good News: None of the errors appear to be related to AI.

So the latest version seemed to work. Thanks for the help.

Can't wait to use this.

 

Let us know if it persists, we'd be happy to test a small project sample if the issue is present with AI.

 

Hi there. First of all, thank you for a great asset! It gives our trees volume when seen from above, compared to the traditional cross mesh billboard.

I am having some trouble with SSS on our trees when baking after upgrading to HDRP 10 and I am hoping you can help.

Here is a screenshot of the difference between now (using Unity 2020.2.3, HDRP 10.2) and the last time I baked an impostor (which was Unity 2020.1.x, HDRP 8.x I believe):


The tree to the right (using the older version) looks fine, whereas the one on the left, using the newer version looks wrong (leaves are much too green). I have noticed that the Diffusion & Features texture is missing from the new version, which probably has something to do with it.

Amplify Impostors 0.9.7r7
Unity 2020.2.3f1
HDRP 10.2.2.
Tree shaders are TheVegetationEngine 2.1.0 (converted from NatureManufacture).

Hope you can help!

Best regards,
Michael

 

Greetings,

Our apologies for the inconvenience, as mentioned on our product page, this is a known issue currently in progress; unfortunately, we still don't have a fix for this problem.

The only alternative is to not bake SSS materials but instead use the standard HDRP material.

Side note; be sure to update AI to the latest version via our Website.

 

Oh, sorry. I missed that one. Good to know you are working on it!

 

Here is an example of an imposter system for animated characters, back in 2013.

You think it would be possible to do the same in either Unity or Unreal?

 

Hello!

This is an issue I've had several times in the past. Every time I update to a new version of Unity and a new version of HDRP, and therefore a new version of Amplify Impostors, all my impostors break and I have to redo them. Is there a reason for this and hopefully a way to fix it?

 

There are many techniques that work with animated sprites, however this is not the same type of impostor our package provides. If you're looking for a simple solution, I recommend looking into something like this: https://www.sidefx.com/tutorials/game-tools-imposter-textures/

A rebake may be necessary, which version where you using and which version did you upgrade to?

 

Wow, this is a really cool asset.

I've been reading through some issues and I think you've addressed this (probably 100x's) already so forgive the redundancy.

However, I did notice that my imposter colors are substaintially lighter than the original model. I am assuming it is a diffuse color/HDRP issue.

Other than that, the imposters look really good at a distance in my project. I'm using it on rather large objects and it is still generating satisfactory results, awesome. It's super easy to use, super awesome. It plays well with other assets, super mega awesome of awesomeness. Worth the money.

HDRP project
Unity 2020.1.5f
AI .9.7r7
The original object used the HDRP/Lit shader

 

Hi,

When "Dynamic Impostors" coming?

 

Thanks, hope it serves you well!

Can you show us your original Lit Material? (screenshot of the inspector)
And a comparison of model and impostor.

Hello, no ETA at the moment.