Better fake AA for deferred lighting

Pro 3.3

 

Did you import the "Image Effects (Pro Only) package?

 

yes

 

You should have an image effect called "Edge Blur (Luminance)" (Component > Image Effects > Edge Blur (Luminance)). If you don't, re-import the standard asset package. If that doesn't work, re-start Unity. If that doesn't work, I'm stumped.

 

thank you bigkahuna all is well.

Small questiom: How come in Unity if i have a 3dsmax 2009 file he finds it but my max 2011 files don't work.

Thanx

 

No idea. Try posting a new thread so a fellow Max user might see it.

 

i'm in deferred lighting

I'm using directionnal lights and spot lights.

How come for the spot lights I can't get any soft shadows?

thanx

 

The official one really sucks.
I tried every possible setting.
Watched the edges carefully in black and white I managed to find what I consider the best setting: 15 for depth sensitivity and 1.2 or so for normal sensitivity.

A single pixel line or at max two pixels, more is useless: it will blur ugly.
Edge detect spread at 0.5 or 1, not more.

Filter radius is not working under 0.75, no matter how high you raise the iterations.
This looks like a problem with the precision of the blur effect.

The iterations parameter is too heavy: raising it over 3 will heavily blur all the edges and make your scene dreamy. This is because you can't calibrate the blur radius parameter precisely.

IMHO the blur filter should be executed by a far smaller amount with a higher number of iterations.

But I have also an idea to make this filter work, if someone is interested in it just pm me.

 

Unity needs to just simply re write or fix deferred rendering, or even BETTER is that if deferred did NOT exist, really in unity 2.x you could use point light and shadows in forward and basically in any settings, deferred is really a crap addon... (no offence to UT) but they should really listen to the consumers, which is us, and im sure i speak for a lot of others that say they want the regular settings back...

-shadows are TERRIBLE
-no AA
-luminance edge barely helps
-possibilty of increased DCs

The video I saw of deferred rendering when U3 came out was great, nothing compared to what we have right now...

Megmaltese, if you end up making this filter work, lemme know, it will really help a lot. I kind of gave up with deferred rendering, ill see what happens.

 

Well I don't agree with your opinion on deferred: deferred rendering is definitely a great pipeline for artists.
It allows them to create great suggestive environments by leaving them great freedom on lighting.
I honestly prefer to have the freedom to create great looking environments by placing how many lights I want than to have AA, even if at the moment I feel the impact.

For the rest:
- shadows are surely not the best, they could be easily better
- AA in deferred... well I consider it non-existing at the moment
- luminance edge is a pastiche of no use, for the reasons I explained up above: there's no way to put it at really good use... it will blur too much in the wrong places and nothing in important places.

I will not make the filter.
I know the basis of programming and I programmed some stuff years ago but I left this task and I have no wish to go deep into shader language at all.
But because I know the theory of engine and shaders and all I can say I have an idea that I think could be good to create some decent AA on deferred rendering.

The idea is an addition to the actual filter. Nothing really incredible, just another full screen filter to apply before the blur effect but it must be tested.
So, if someone has still any wish to go for some solution on this, just drop me a line and I'll try to explain what is this additional filter I'm thinking of.

 

Possibly... I guess pixel lights does definetly look better in deferred, and knowing that its not possible (from my knowledge) that AA cannot be included with deferred, I think all UT needs to do is just fix the shadows (if its possible) and it would be perfect. Playing around with the edge blur isn't too bad, but still doesn't beat 16x multi

 

Having MSAA with Defferred rendering is a bit tricky and difficult to achieve on DX9. Only few litle engines currently supports MSAA with DX9 and defferred rendering. The one that i know is CryEngine3, not even Unreal Engine supports MSAA on DX9 (only DX11 version of UE). Infact, Unreal Engine do not support any defferred renderer on DX9, it's by default fordward rendering but they can still achieve to get tons of "fake dynamic" lights in a scene tanks to their pre-computed lighting system (using light grids and fancy interpolations between those). A similar pre-computed lightsing system that we'll see in Unity with lights probes.

 

Well light probes are a direct consequence of the lightmapping stuff... they should have been implemented together IMHO.

But apart that, Artimese, could you post your parameters for edge blur? You say it's not better than 16xAA but for what I achieved it's not better even than 4xAA...

 

Uhm i noticed that other image effects will destroy the look of edge blur such as contract and a few others. Clear your camera of all image effects and add on the edge blur. Then put the parameters to: Offset = 0.5 | Radius = 35. Im sure theres a better combination but i have not tried others, its about 4-6x depending on what slope the edge of a mesh is. I also noticed the further your away from a mesh with a texture, the more depth the normals will show, therefore blurrying the looks of it. If you find anythign better than this combination let me know

 

Those settings look way too blurry to my eye. I'm using offset scale @ 0.2 and blur radius @ 14 which seems to be the highest I can set those and still get a crisp looking image. I have to say, though, that it doesn't look as clean as I remember we had with 2.6. Not saying it's bad, just not as good (to my eye at least).

 

I'm using : Offset scale = 0.1 and blur radius 35.
But to me, it blurs only a little bit and if get over 0.1, it starts to sharpen the edges instead of blurring.

 

@tatoforever - Good eye. I tried both our settings and had to blow up a still to see it, but I think I like your settings better than mine!

 

I have ported the shader to Unity 3.3, the link in the first post is updated.
Mine is slightly more agressive in smoothing edges than Unity's and maybe a bit more accurate, because i don't use the vertex shader, but it pretty much comes down to taste and now you have both choices

 

@multivac - Excellent, I'll have to give it a try. Although the Standard Asset AA is better than nothing, it's still not as good as AA was in 2.6. I'm looking forward to seeing how much better yours is.

 

In 2.6 there wasn't deferred rendering system... that's why.
If you go for forward rendering, you will still have that full nice AA at 16x, but that is hardware stuff and can't be used on deferred rendering.

 

Nice one! I like the results with this, cheers!

 

I tried it but got an error.

 

me either...got error when imported to project. any update? i am using unity 3.3

 

Hmph, nothing under 0.5 offset scale works, it looks the same as 0.5 :S

 

I am using Unity 3.3 Pro, how to use that package? After import I got the error

Assets/Standard Assets/Image Effects (Pro Only)/NFAA.js(7,20): BCE0018: The name 'PostEffectBase' does not denote a valid type ('not found').

 

Did you import the Image Effects Pro asset?

 

The warning is gone after add the Image Effects Pro assets. But how to enable NFAA? I added the script to camera but not effect. Please help.

 

i have a error on importing this package

The name 'PostEffectsBase' does not denote a valid type ('not found').

 

Hey,

Awesome work - any tips on the sensitivity depth? How should I set it?

 

I've had great success with Diogo Teixeira's FXAA port:

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/97023-FXAA-Fast-Approximate-Anti-Aliasing

Note that to tweak it you need to edit the sources (it's tweaked at compile time for performance reasons).

 

What is this Edge Filter (Luminance) or Luminance Blur image effect everyone is talking about?
I've got Pro and when I try to import the Image Effects it tells me they're all imported, but there is still no effect resembling anything like those names. I got Unity 3.4.2

 

Hello

I have the same problem.

have anyone a soloution?

i got Unity 3.5.1f2

 

Hi guys, here come a solution :
i'm now in unity 4.0 and there is a script to put on the camera called "AntialiasingAsPostEffect"
there are 7 different script for deferred lightning.
Choose the FXAA1presetA and u have an amasing AA

have a good day

Sotec

EDIT : i'm in pro version, so i don't know if it is here under the free license, but i think i should .

 

Nope, it's pro only:

http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/Components/script-AntialiasingAsPostEffect.html