Better fake AA for deferred lighting

I adapted NFAA(Normal Filter Antialiasing) for Unity 3.0.
I think it looks better than the included Edge Blur,which always ends up losing all the sharpness in the edges.
Compare the edges of the guns in the attached screen,to see how it smoothes out aliasing.(Left side is NFAA,right has no smoothing)

Unity 3.3 version available here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10887020/NFAA/NFAA.unitypackage

 

Hmm... that does look better! How big a performance hit is there?

 

I didn't register much of an effect on performance,but it probably takes about as much as default edge blur,possibly a little less as it has only one iteration.

I do subpixel offsets in the shader and it seems they are sometimes clamped to zero in Unity editor when window is not maximized.
So try it maximized or published,if it doesn't seem to work in Editor window.

 

Another comparison with no antialiasing,it actually emulates forward rendering antialiasing pretty well
One thing it cannot do though, is invent detail where there is none, so e.g. thin wires in the distance won't look as good as with MSAA.

 

Wow dude, this is pretty epic.

 

Outstanding work. I'll give it a try at work tomorrow.

 

Multivac that works great!!

I am using also color correction and when the CC filter is above the nfaa filter in the script stack the nfaa doesn't work ...
If I put the cc filter after the nfaa filter it works.

 

Is it based on this? : http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=580517

I was hoping someone would port that, you have my thanks.

 

yeah,its the same approach,I made some improvements though,I should probably post them in that thread.
the version posted in the thread doesn't really give good results,but with some better sampling patterns and subpixel offsets it works really well.

 

:-( Doesn´t seem to work with me. I only get a blue screen. Deactivating the Debug mode seems to turn the effect off(?), because I can´t see any difference. What exactly do you mean by "play around with the effect´s position in the stack" ?

 

Fog, remove all other post effects from the Camera to see if it works or not.

It does indeed seem that it doesn't like having the CC fillter above it or example.

 

Thanks, but I´m still having problems with the filter script. I´ve removed all ther effects from the camera, but if I look at the scene in "game-mode" I just see a blue screen.

If I compile the game and run it as "standalone" I can see the blue normal map, but that´s all.

My rig:

Windows 7 Pro, 64 bit
ATI Radeon 4800 Series

 

@fogGobbler: uncheck the "debug" checkbox from the script dialog.

 

Yeah, if I turn the debugmode off, I can see the image, but I don´t see any kind of "antialias"-effect. It looks exactly like the version without the effect.

 

Have you build the application?
It doesn't work pressing the play button. You have to build.

 

Thanks for your help, I finally got it working and it looks great .

 

Well, I got it running in my scene, but when I try it in the bootcamp project all I get is just a black screen. I´ve deactivated all other effects on the soldier cam and built the project.

Anybody else having problems?

 

The screen in bootcamp demo is black until you press escape,have you tried that?

 

thanks never thought of that....

 

So this is kind of a substitue for anti alising... So should we be setting the game to 4x AA and then using this or does it even matter if we use 16x, it would look really crisp on the edges.

 

Artimese I think where it would be most appropriate is where deferred lighting is used, which currently doesn't have AA support. Unity recommends using their included image effect to fake it. This is just a better implementation of that unique.

 

Artimese, this shader is for the deferred renderer where you can't have hardware AA, thus the shader.

 

Why not put this package in wiki?
http://www.unifycommunity.com/wiki/index.php?title=Shaders

 

Oh i see, this would make so much more sense if i knew what deferred renderer ment

 

Thanks for porting the NFAA.
I made changes for it to run on Unity 2.6.1.
Also removed the debug function in the shader which decreased the arithmetic count enough to run on shader model 2.
Great work multivac.

 

Its great that you found it useful, but why use it on 2.6 though?
I think built-in antialiasing is always cheaper and has higher quality.

 

I created a deferred renderer in 2.6.1 using position reconstruction from depth.
I've previously toyed with AA using various techniques - from Stalker, Tabula rasa to 3D max's simple cubic filter.
I'm gonna stick w NFAA for now until I get around to really studying its potential against previous filters.

 

Damn, you all way's blow my mind, loved the Chromatic aberration, and love this, awesome! :3

 

Nice! Can you post a UnityR3 version of your modified shader?

 

Thanks very much.
This work is being great usefull.

 

OMG ! Thanks so much, multivac

 

Thanks for sharing the plugin, but unfortunately it didn't work for my game. (isometric with low FOV 9.5°)

Does this plugin do micro sampling like traditional AA, Or is it a fancy edge blurring ? (in which case I guess it won't work for me)

 

chai, check if u have multiple cameras running. I know if i have multiple cameras, lots of camera image effects get broken if a hud camera is running and both are on deferred rendering. I fixed my god rays and this AA by having the hud camera use vertex lit instead of deferred.. while the main camera uses deferred

 

cheers Kurylo3d - but my problem is caused by the camera's unique low FOV and high distance I believe.
MSAA seems the only option for me if I go deferred.

 

Thank you multivac. It works perfect!

 

Could someone re-upload please? The link is broken

 

I can't use it on windows?
When i a attach the script on the camera it says that my platform is not supported..

 

I'm using it on Windows, works here. Perhaps the error message relates to what your target player setting is, did you check that?

 

It seems that the 3.2 update broke this shader and script.
multivac is there any chance to fix this?

 

If you have Pro there's a new image effect that replaces this.

 

I seem to be blind...which one? can´t find it :-(

 

It's called Luminance Edge Blur: http://unity3d.com/support/documentation/Components/script-LuminanceEdgeBlurEffect.html

 

Ah ok.
Thanks.

 

This is great!

Thanks a ton for this!

-Mike

 

Is this working in 3.2 for everyone?

I'm getting a log out put saying - "The shader Hidden/EdgeDetectNormalsHQ (UnityEngine.Shader) on effect Camera (NormalFilterAA) is not part of the Unity 3.2 effects suite anymore. For best performance and quality, please ensure you are using the latest Standard Assets Image Effects (Pro only) package"

 

Have another error Unity 3.3:

 

I suggest everyone use the Luminance Edge Blur that Unity included.
It is essentially the same thing that I wrote, only with some changed variable names,optimization and added comments. Even the sampling pattern is the same one that I came up with.
Plus my package actually replaces the Unity's one if I import it, they probably use the same internal asset, just renamed.
But both I and the original creator released it for free so its okay I guess. No need for a shiny new name though Unity, its still NFAA.

 

Imho, luminance edge blur is terrible, your shader was 30x better and you should definetly re-write one for 3.3, it was really amazing

 

Hi, I'm looking for the Luminance edge blur effect?

Is it the Component > Image effect > blur


because I have nothing that says luminance edge blur

Thank you

h20

 

Are you using Pro? Version 3.2 or later?