Amplify Impostors - Next Generation Billboards

Hey, very interesting asset. I was wondering if your Impostors can work together with Ambient Occlusion?

 

Can it be used as LOD levels for moving objects like ships or other vehicles?
Can it work with Vegetation Studio ( https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/terrain/vegetation-studio-103389 ) ?

 

We'll see what we can do but it might be that the package is going to need a few tweaks. We're going to add additional options for custom baking, stay tuned.

Yes, our own Amplify Occlusion works great.

Works great with moving objects!

We haven't had the chance to test it extensively with Vegetation Studio but some of our users seem to be using it with our Impostor tool.

 

Can it be used to create imposters for non-geometry based objects? I want to use it to for clouds, rendered by Terragen.

Example:

 

I don't believe so, impostors are Alpha Cutout.

Perhaps with an alternative type of clouds.

 

Hello everyone!

We just released 2 tutorials to get you started. We're going to do a longer developer walktrough soon as we're adding a new workflow options and changing a few UI elements.

Good things coming, stay tuned!

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Amplify Impostors - Asset Store - Amplify Products
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Hello there - just purchased the asset, as it looked great on the store page and videos. After importing to my project and running on a few models, the results are somewhat underwhelming. I'm hoping there is something wrong, because as it stands there is not much impostering going on.

I've tested in Unity 2018.2.1f1 (64-bit) and Unity 2018.2.2f1 (64-bit), with a few different models -- after baking the imposter, the result looks not much like the original model and kind of body pops between frames as you move around. Screenshots attached of one model before and after.



Edit: I've also sent you a video so you can see what it looks like. I'm running in a Linear space project with SteamVR setup in case that's a factor, using Standard Unity shaders.

 

It might not be your only problem, but you should keep in mind that impostors are not made to be used on such a low distance, they should be further away to look natural.

 

Hello,

Impostors are meant to be used at a certain distance, it can be a bit trickier for large objects when up close.

In your specific case, you are using the Octahedron impostor which breaks down at close distances. For high-resolution impostors, I recommend trying the Spherical impostor type.

Be sure to check the videos I posted above

I'll get back to your PM with additional information.

Correct, and as mentioned above, Octahedron impostors breakdown at close distances.

Thanks!

 

Thanks guys - I understand they are not supposed to be used up close. I've tried messing with all settings today and cannot get decent results on larger, complex models. With smaller models it can actually work quite effectively it seems.

So for my project, the asset could still be useful for smaller models perhaps, however I really purchased it to save FPS on the larger models. Seems like you have to be really far away to use the impostors effectively, whereas I kind of expected they'd look OK at a middle-long distance too.

EDIT:
Ricardo: I'll send you one of the models via conversation, to see what kind of result you guys can get. Thanks!

 

Pretty cool asset I would like to know 2 things:

First, I would like to know if this asset works well with trees created with the Unity Tree Creator system.
And second thing, does this asset rotation works in world space or local space? I want to know what happens if you rotate the impostor game object in any of its axis, the impostor is going to rotate as expected too? Thanks.

 

Thank you for sharing the model!

For your particular case(large horizontal object, locomotive) I would recommend using the Spherical impostor type so that you can define a higher number of horizontal frames but it really depends on how you'll view your models in the game.

If it's more along the lines of an RTS, I would recommend using the HemiOctahedron as it allows for up to 2x the blending precision.

In any case, we completely understand if you are not satisfied with the tool; we're still in beta, there's still quite a lot of room for quality improvements.

We currently don't support Unity Tree Creator shaders, perhaps at a later stage as we're currently working to improve custom shader uses.

Impostors rotate just as any other asset, check it out here:

Thanks!

 

Very interesting! Does it work with reflection Probe and GI?

 

Works great with probes!

Do you mean realtime or baked? Unfortunately, impostors do not currently support baked lighting.

Thanks!

 

I just purchased,and try build and test TreeForest for android platform.it's not very fast, and it's deferred rendering,even I set Graphics all to forward.
On mobile devices, you must run in forward or forward+ something.

But Impostor is an good idea on mobile to render some big remote thing by billboard.

 

Hello,

Impostors work both in Deferred and Forward, can you elaborate?

Thanks!

EDIT
We just saw your sample, the actual camera is set to Deferred.

 

I tried it and it works rather well (I am waiting for HDRP to test it further), but does it really make any sense to use the same custom mesh from all sides?

Edit: nevermind, it seems to create a shape built additionally from all angles.

 

Happy to hear it!

Correct, it's a mesh for all angles which greatly reduces overdraw.

 

Will you be supporting forward shaders anytime soon? I just realized something like Toony Colors 2 won't work with the impostors currently.

 

We're expanding our custom shader use cases, stay tuned as we're preparing a critical update.

Apologies for not elaborating further at this time, we're still actively working on it.

Thanks!

 

Amplify Imposters does not appear to be compatible with UBER shader.
Specifically I'm using UBER - Specular Setup/POM Extrusion Map.

The imposter doesn't show up at all.

 

Hello, Amplify Impostors should be compatible with UBER shader, we'll run some additional tests on our side and will get back to you as soon as we have any news regarding this, apologies for the inconvenience.

 

This might be outside the scope of this package, but is there any way or any plans for hlods? Just curious about batching entire forests into one imposter when viewed from very far away

 

+1 for hlods

 

Hello everyone! Took a while but it's a big one. Our new release finally adds custom baking support and more advance custom impostor shaders so supporting more exotic shaders and packages should be easier. If you interested in it I highly recommend you to read this wiki page and check the new sample we provide.


Impostors above, real objects below

We also took the time to review some UI/UX elements and fix a bunch of other issues you have been reporting, please keep them coming . Some comments and critics about the new UI and preset system is welcome.

Amplify Impostors 0.9.0 - Asset Store - Amplify Products

• Improvements:
  • Added support for Custom Map Baking when generating impostors with both a custom bake shader and a custom runtime shader
  • Added "Baking Presets" that allows per output customization, each output can be overridden and has the following fields:
    • File output toggle
    • Name Suffix
    • Texture relative Scale
    • Texture color space
    • Texture channels
    • Texture import compression quality
    • File save format (PNG and TGA)
  • New sample with custom baking in which the final impostors share the dynamic colors from the original object
  • Added TGA saving file format which greatly reduces saving time when baking (only uncompressed format for now so keep in mind disk space)
  • Various others smaller improvements to speed up the baking and saving times
  • ASE impostor node now allows the use of custom maps
  • Added progress bar when baking
  • Mesh billboard editor tool now doesn't automatically updates the image and instead displays a update button, this should prevent some UI hangs when editing some fields
  • Added metallic template and metallic workflow option to impostor node for custom impostor rendering
• Fixes:
  • Fixed errors when baking an object with a corrupt mesh
  • Fixed issue where on first bake renderers would fail to automatically set if there was only one LOD
  • Fixed issue with a built-in shader value not being set properly when baking (should fix parallax UBER shader baking)
  • Some small UI and default options fixes
  • Baker no longer forces a rename on the impostor object or texture files

 

Yes, we do have plans for it, but I can't promise anything until I try it, the nature of impostor might be tricky to make HLODs work so that's why its not on our roadmad. What I can promise is that we'll look into it in the future.

 

Hello!

I try to recreate my custom light shader using the new Bake Shader template.
How should I deal with different output?

 

Hey there, we would be happy to help!

Depends on what you mean, can you elaborate?

Thanks!

 

May I ask why unity 5.6 is not supported? It would be instabuy for me otherwise. Can I, say, prepare the impostor in 2017 and then import it to 5.6 may be? And does in need any runtime scripts or is it just the simple mesh + shader?

 

I create a simple Celshading for the example.


First, the node "Light attenuation" display a Waning. It seem I need to add manually the "Shadow caster pass", but how?
And as the Normal map, Base map and Metallic/Specular map is in the same "nodes tree", will it work?

 

Hello,

Apologies for the inconvenience but there's currently no way to use it in 5.6 even if it's baked in 2017.

Thank you for understanding.

 

Can you provide a sample of what you intend to bake so that we can best analyze your case? For private file delivery, feel free to PM me directly or to contact us via support@amplify.pt

Thanks!

 

Hi guys, what is the news on using skinned characters with the Imposter plugin. I am really interested in using this for reducing graphical bottlenecks with rendering large crowds of actors in our game.

 

Apologies for the inconvenience, skinned mesh support is not available yet but we're working on it.

Check back with us soon!

 

Is it possible to manually modify the runtime impostor shaders, as in "directly tinker with .shader files"? Or are they in ASE-only format?

I have a lot of CGincludes with functions that are shared among the whole shader suite of the project, so the ability to reuse them in the fragment part of runtime impostor shader is much needed. Buying Amplify Shader Editor seems a bit of an overkill for a single shader in the project, not to mention the work to add all the custom nodes.

 

thank you, I doubt you can give me a timeline for when we can see this feature released?

 

You can definitely tinker with the shaders if you are comfortable with that, the editor does simplify the process.

No exact availability date but I would guess that it could be around 1-2 months, possibly sooner.

 

Thanks!

And one more question: would it be possible to release a gif or a video with the tree impostors with the camera orbiting around them? In the current video in the scene with trees, the camera moves forward, but an orbit around the tree impostors would be much more demonstrative.

 

We don't have anything fancy set up at the moment but here's one of the trees included in the demo.



LOD 0 - Mesh
LOD 1 - Impostor
Type - Hemi-Octahedron

 

Thank you again, this is very helpful!

 

Is there a different package for hdrp beta or is it just not out yet?

 

No problem!

Not available yet, should be the same package when it comes out.

 

On the fence for buying this so I watched all videos available but still have some small questions. Are the following cases supported?
- 1 mesh with multiple materials applied
- 1 gameobject with all submeshes with their own material

 

Hey there,

Both cases should work great but if you have any concerns feel free to contact us directly at support@amplify.pt with a specific asset sample for further testing on our side.

Feedback and test cases are extremely important to us, especially during the BETA period.

Thanks!

 

i have a question... can impostor trees react to windzone?

 

I'm afraid not but with realtime impostors you'll be able to render dynamic tree impostors; it will be available soon.

 

Do you know or does anyone know if this works on the Oculus Go? This seems exactly what mobile hardware needs to push more convincing environments all the way around.

 

Should work, it's VR friendly, be sure to let us know if you run into any issues.

Thanks!

 

@Amplify_Ricardo I want the spherical impostor to only face the camera on the Y axis, similar to SpeedTree. Is this possible? If so, how is it done?

Cheers

 

@Amplify_Ricardo Also, any chance of smooth blending between spherical impostors, check this time stamp.

I believe he modified the SpeedTree shader slightly for smooth blending ,the result is super nice..