[DEPRECATED] PIDI Planar Reflections 3 - Real-time reflections with LWRP+UniversalRP+Mobile support!

Hi there,

We suggest you to check the documentation in the section about movable reflective surfaces. It covers the best practices for reflections that need to move or rotate by using parenting. Regarding scaling, the reflections renderer does not take into account scaling since planar reflections are, by definition, rendered on an infinite plane. They can be casted into a limited space mesh through the reflections caster and said mesh can be scaled.

Also, if you sent us an email regarding compatibility with some third party tools (due to the fairly similar username) we have also replied to your email with more information. We hope this helps!

 

hi,
thanks for your reply
in you section you mention "creating a Reflections Renderer for each dynamic surface and then making it a child object of the Reflection Caster itself" - we´re instantiating a lot of objects at runtime, which need to be reflected.. this would mean we would need to add hundreds of objects as a child-object just to reflect everything at runtime, when the mirror-surface has been moved around? Or am I misundersting that?

 

Hi there,

We recommend you to ask us through our support email (support at irreverent-software dot com) since we will be able to provide you with more information there while keeping better track of the conversation.

But in short, reflective surfaces != reflected objects. A single reflection can reflect an unlimited number of objects. However, for each reflective surface (or mirror, if you wish) that needs to move / point in a different direction (thus a dynamic reflective surface), you would need to indeed create a parent-child system of a caster and its own reflector.

If you indeed need hundreds (or dozens) of mirrors visible at the same time, then any system of real-time reflections (besides maybe raytracing) might be way too demanding to be used in any interactive fashion.

We hope this helps!

 

hey thanks, actually we don´t need hundreds of Mirrors at runtime, but hundreds of other objects, which should get reflected with multiple mirrors (1-5 max)

 

I've got a setup I'm pretty happy with using the PIDI_PlanarReflections3_SimpleReflection Amplify function node. I'd like to incorporate the _ReflectionDepth texture, but it seems like the Amplify node doesn't cover that. Any chance I could get a nudge in the right direction? I'm using URP, not sure if that matters.

 

Hi there!

Unfortunately, due to limitations in the Universal Rendering Pipeline and the hooks to which we have access in it, Reflection depth is not accessible in any rendering setups besides the built-in pipeline as you can see in the comparisons table available in the online documentation (link in the description of the asset) and the local user manual included with the asset.

We hope this helps!

 

Ahhh bummer! Thanks for the reply anyway. These darn SRPs... smdh... If I were to switch to the built-in pipeline, would it be pretty straightforward to get the depth texture set up in Amplify?

 

Sure ! The amplify node included with the asset can be easily modified to output depth and use it in any way you see fit as follows :



And this is how you would use this modified function node to replicate the "depth fade" shaders included with the tool :



We will probably add a small update with this modification to the Amplify function node by next week so that the workflow is easier for all Amplify shader editor users.

If you need additional assistance with this setup please contact us to our email with your invoice / proof of purchase and any additional details and we will be happy to assist you

Have a great weekend!

 

Hello, does this work for HDRP 2020 LTS?

Would this be a good fit for a tile-based isometric-ish game's water tiles? Imagine X-Com 2, if one of their tiles was water.

Thanks!

 

Hi there,

Yes, our asset is compatible with HDRP in Unity 2019.4 LTS and 2020.3 LTS (usage in TECH releases is not recommended due to frequent bugs and compatibility breaking changes)

While the water shader itself should be developed by yourself using the reflection texture generated by our asset in any way you see fit (a few sub graphs for ShaderGraph are provided to make this process as simple as possible) and our asset has been used with both orthographic and perspective cameras, if you plan to use reflections in a very limited fashion or with a quite basic features you may want to give a look to the integrated planar reflection probes included by default with HDRP as they may be enough for your project.

If the integration with your shaders needs to be quite customizable or you need to fine tune performance in depth, then our asset should help you achieve that look (but again, the water shader itself should be developed by you as our asset only generates the reflection textures themselves and provides a wide variety of demo materials and shaders that are ready to use)

We hope this helps!

 

Starting next week and during the next couple of weeks (until around June 10) we have some important personal matters to attend, which means that support requests may be replied to at a slightly slower pace than usual.

However, we will soon be back with some quite exciting announcements about Planar Reflections
Thanks for your patience!

 

Planar Reflections 4 (coming soon, ETA June 2021)




Planar Reflections 3 (current release)




It's been almost 2 full years since the release of PIDI Planar Reflections 3. Many Unity versions have come and gone, new technologies and rendering pipelines have been declared as stable and the time has come for a brand new version of PIDI Planar Reflections to be released.

The upgrade to Planar Reflections 4 will be free for anyone who bought Planar Reflections 3 within 60 days before the release. For everyone else, a small maintenance fee will be charged for the upgrade ($10 USD) to ensure continued support and updates through the next cycle of Unity releases. For users of the Lite edition we will have more information about upgrading when we are back, since there are a few changes to how the different editions will work (we believe it is a change that will benefit most of our users)

Planar Reflections 4 contains some small new features at release but internally it has massive improvements to performance and resource management in all pipelines and devices. The update process is right now quite simple and updating the sample scenes from version 3 to version 4 takes less than a minute, but we are researching all possible ways to automate it as much as possible and reduce it to a single click per-scene.

Remember we will be back on June 10, and that during the next couple of weeks we will be away, which means support will be slower than usual. We apologize in advance for any inconveniences this may cause.

Have a great week, we will be back with more news for you very soon !

 

Congratulations on the new version!
How did you achieve such performance gain?
Do you support custom sky/color now?

 

Thanks!

We did a good deal of rewrites on the internal code, optimizing every single area we could (which includes faster blur and depth passes) we also improved the way the reflection itself is rendered, which gives more control over the whole process (at least internally). The comparison we just shared is not using every optimization feature in version 4.0.0 however, so it might be possible to get a few dozen more FPS out of it. If you don't mind slightly choppy reflections (that is, if you manually lower their framerate to 30 or 60 FPS) you can easily reach >550 FPS in some of our sample scenes :

Similar scene, even more blur passes, reflections capped at 30 FPS :



The current release (3.8.x) already supports having the reflection render either a custom solid color or the default skybox assigned to the scene (the same one as the main camera, by default) as their backgrounds.

We are exploring ways to add support for custom skyboxes on top of this in version 4.0.0, so this will most likely be one of the new features at release

We will be porting all of the new improvements and testing them extensively on URP and HDRP, as well as research ways to implement a depth pass and a better blur pass on both pipelines, but so far everything is going well towards a June release.

All the tests were done in a Laptop with a GTX 1060, Core i7 7700 HQ ("balanced" energy plan, graphics card in battery mode), Unity 2019.4.0 (which will be the minimum Unity version supported ) in case this info is useful

 

Thanks for your extensive reply!
It's always interesting to read about the development process.
I'll be waiting for the release to upgrade and integrate this into my project. I'm qurious to see how it works on the high-end GPUs like the 20xx and 30xx Nvidia series. And I hope you'll succeed with the HDRP port

 

When PIDI 4 comes out, will we still have an opportunity to purchase PIDI 3? Or if PIDI 3 is going to be pulled, will we have a few days notice beforehand?

I have PIDI 2 and never upgraded, because I'm using the standard pipeline.

 

Hi there,

PIDI Planar Reflections 4 will still be fully compatible with the Standard Pipeline (and will actually have considerable performance boosts in the Standard / Legacy pipeline compared to version 3).

While there will be a small warning window before pulling version 3 out of the store, users of version 2 will also be able to upgrade to version 4 directly at a reduced price just like we did for users of version 1 upgrading to version 3, so no worries there.

In this case, the upgrade price will be 20 USD instead of 10 USD ( which is exactly the same price as upgrading from version 2 to version 3) so, if you haven't upgraded yet, you may wish to wait until version 4 is released so that you can upgrade directly to the latest release and take advantage of (as well as adjust your workflow to) the new features of this new iteration of the tool. The price will be exactly the same, the Standard pipeline will still be fully supported from Unity 2019.4 onwards and you will get all the latest updates and patches for the asset.

Users of version 3, once removed from the store, will continue to receive technical support for another 2 months but no further patches nor bug fixes, just as we've done with each new major release in the last 4 years.

We hope this helps!

EDIT : Please be aware that there was a quite big change in workflows between versions 2 and 3 of the asset with the introduction of reflection renderers and casters, and the same workflow remains in place for version 4.

You can check the documentation of version 3 here to get an idea of the changes you can expect.

 

Hi IrrSoft !
I know that you do not support Alpha or DXR in Unity but I have questions:
- is there any plans to support DXR?
- how I can deal with this problem when I setup mirror and view of this mirror comes after while (like 5-20 sec) probably DXR system or maybe bug?

PIDI is right now the only solution for DXR reflection surfaces but lately I have this big lag issue....

 

Hi there,

Since DXR is right now in experimental state, we do not have plans to support it officially yet, unfortunately. However, we will get some new raytracing capable devices soon, which should help us with some initial tests and improvements (though most of this will happen during the PIDI Planar Reflections 4.x cycle in the second half of the year and 2022)

As soon as we upgrade our devices, we will look into this however.

We hope this helps!

 

IrrSoft Thanks!
As you know in DXR right now is no solution for mirrors. PIDI works well but problem is with huge lag reflection view when I move camera...is like 5-15 sec. I did not test in animation on actual Unity Alpha yet. I remember that over half year ago it was good solution and works well in DXR but since last updates of Unity Alpha it gets huge lags.

 

We are back, and as such the updates and news will resume as well.

We are currently working on the new major version of PIDI Planar Reflections, version 4.0.0 which should be ready within the next few weeks. It is a big update and is packed with many improvements and new features as well as some important changes to its different editions, to better match Unity's own future now that SRPs are a reality and widely used among developers.

While we expect to have more news next week, here is a small peek of what you can expect from PIDI Planar Reflections 4.

Improvements :

• Huge performance boost in the Legacy (previously Standard) Rendering Pipeline
• Slight performance boost in Universal and High Definition Rendering Pipelines
• Better (and much faster) depth pass in the Legacy pipeline
• Better blur pass (higher quality and performance) on all rendering pipelines
• Improved shader samples in all rendering pipelines

New :

• Fast blur option available in all rendering pipelines
• Support for depth pass in Universal RP, depth pass is in active research for HD RP
• Custom per-reflection LOD bias control, for extra performance
• Easier control over shadows and other parameters on a per-reflection basis
• New multi-purpose, easy to use nodes for shader graph and Amplify Shader Editor

Changes & Experimental :

• * Water shader for HDRP
• * AR compatible shaders (In research, may arrive after initial release)
• Chroma keyed shaders for Universal RP and High Definition RP
• Each rendering pipeline has its own methods and functions, for an easier update and development experience

Changes to the different Editions :

Up till now, there have been three main editions of PIDI Planar Reflections : Lite (15 USD), Standard (40 USD) and Team (300).
The focus was to ensure that developers could get, based on their budget, an edition of the tool that suited best their team sizes and project scopes. However, due to Unity's move towards SRPs being the default and standard method for creating games and the high level of adoption of these renderers by many users we have decided to distribute version 4.0 of Planar Reflections in a way that better suits these purposes.

Because of this, we have settled in the following release pattern :

• Universal RP Edition : All the features compatible with the Universal RP, and capable of working only in this specific pipeline. 35 USD for new users, 10 USD for Planar Reflections 3.x Standard users, 20 USD for Planar Reflections 3.x Lite users.
• High Definition RP Edition : All the features compatible with the High Definition RP, and capable of working only in this specific pipeline. 35 USD for new users, 10 USD for Planar Reflections 3.x Standard users, 20 USD for Planar Reflections 3.x Lite users.
• Ultimate Edition : All the features, all rendering pipelines. Designed for people still using the Legacy RP and who may switch to a new SRP during the course of development. 45 USD for new users, 10 USD for Planar Reflections 3.x Standard users, 30 USD for Planar Reflections 3.x Lite users.

The update to any of these editions for users of PIDI Planar Reflections 2.x will be 20 USD. For users of PIDI Planar Reflections 1.x the update will be 30 USD.

Additionally, we will still have the Team Edition which will also be compatible with all rendering pipelines and will have a price of 350 USD. This version is designed for teams where several people require access to the tool and buying multiple seats may not be convenient or too expensive ( a larger team ).

Any copy of PIDI Planar Reflections 3.x bought within 60 days of the release of version 4.x will receive a fully free upgrade to the Ultimate Edition of version 4.x.

We hope to continue having you as users of our products and that you will find all the improvements and new features we are adding useful in all your projects, as we keep doing our best to ensure that PIDI Planar Reflections remains the most trusted solution for real-time reflections in Unity.

See you next week!

 

We are currently finishing testing on the brand new version of our reflections tool and we want to showcase one of its new features that has to do with optimization, and that is per-reflection LOD management.

On all rendering pipelines you can now control the LOD bias and maximum LOD level used on each and every reflection :



This ensures that for scenes with a lot of geometric complexity and detail your mirrors and floors can use lower poly versions of every model than the main game camera does.

Shadows can also be controlled on every reflection independently, to ensure that performance is as high as possible even under the most demanding situations



Alongside some other internal improvements to CPU usage, PIDI Planar Reflections 4 is the fastest version yet. .

Besides this we have a brand new UI that adapts neatly to both light and dark editors :







Remember that all users of PIDI Planar Reflection 3 that have bought the asset within 60 days of the release of version 4 will receive the upgrade for free, while all other users of v 3.x will pay only a 10 USD upgrade fee.

Have a great week!

 

Another new feature we have talked about is depth-pass approximation for Universal RP. This depth-pass will be available on version 4.0 at launch, allowing for higher quality effects and a lot of additional control over how the reflections look in your scenes.

Here you can see a small screenshot of a material that debugs this depth pass to make it fully visible.

 

Have you found a way to add this to HDRP as well? Or is it not really doable at the moment?

 

At the moment, we are making some extensive tests to find a way to implement it. In theory, our method should work for both HDRP and URP but since there are some core differences between the way each pipeline handles depth it still requires some work. What we can say is that we are actively working on it and hopefully we will have some positive results by next week

 

I suspect there's something wrong going on when we use low light intensities and/or low exposure values in HDRP.

If I set the Directional Light Intensity to something like 1000 lux and scene exposure value to 5, then I start to get this colour banding:

Spoiler: Example 1

If I set the smoothness multiplier to something like 2, then it goes even further:

Spoiler: Example 2

If I use extremely low directional light intensity and negative exposure values then reflections in the demo scene are completely gone (except specular):

Spoiler: Example 3

I use completely baked lighting and -7 exposure in my project. And in this case, as soon as I use almost any smoothness influence value the whole reflection explodes in bright banded colours. I suspect it should be somehow corrected by the colour exposure node, because the native planar reflection is completely okay with my scene and exposure, so they are not the problem.

Not a big issue though, I'll come up with some fix in SG myself, but maybe this is something worth looking into. BTW, why do you use the "Maximum" node with a 0.01 value for the smoothness input in your graph?

UPD: fixed for my project by multiplying the PIDI output with the inverse exposure of the current frame node.

 

There's still also a big difference in exposure between the current PIDI reflection:

Spoiler: PIDI

And Unity's:

Spoiler: Unity

The bigger difference is, though, in roughness, when the "rough reflections" are activated in the Unity's planar reflection:

Spoiler: Rough Reflection (Exposure ste to 5 for illustrative purposes)

There are nice rough "haloes" around bright objects and dark objects are deformed by the roughness areas. This makes reflection look realistic. PIDI really lacks this effect, so I wanted to ask if it is something that will be addressed in the next release?

As far as I understand, Unity do this in the compute shader.

 

Hi there,

Regarding the exposure and brightness of the reflection we are making some adjustments to the whole process of displaying reflections in the demo materials for HDRP, however, our asset is not intended as a full on replacement for Unity's own planar reflections (especially since Unity's implementation is more deeply integrated as part of the pipeline and has no need to be compatible with the other two rendering systems, as ours does). Our system's goal is geared towards flexibility and customization, which we provide by allowing the users to access the reflection and its properties easily.

So, while we cannot make any promises about the rough reflections and other more advanced HDRP features being supported (nor other Unity's reflection features being replicated) we are indeed working on improving HDRP reflections in general for version 4.x.

Thanks for your comments!

 

No problem
Though, can you please elaborate a bit on what's needed for them and what is it you lack in terms of integration that stops you from fully implementing rough reflections? I'm just trying to find out if I can do something on my side to match this rough look. It seems that all the data (reflection output, blurred reflection and material roughness) is there, just some clever math is needed to combine everything. But maybe I'm missing something and it's not doable unless you're a Unity dev.

 

At the moment, the main reason we are not implementing these features is that our asset is still focused on bringing the same core features to all pipelines first, so HDRP (or URP) specific features are pushed a little bit further down the development roadmap. This is the main reason we didn't give a hard "no" as an answer but left it a bit more open., we are actively researching these features and looking for ways to implement them, if possible across all pipelines.

Rough reflections as well as many other improvements in HDRP are things we are considering but, at the moment at least and especially with the development of all the core cross pipeline features, it is not something that we have an ETA for.

We hope this helps !

 

A small patch fixing some issues with the way Material Property Blocks were being assigned has been released.

Have a great week!

 

So, I did a little research on how rough reflections work. It turns out, the reflection has to be blurred with different intensities like a mip-map chain but better quality-wise to cover all variety of roughness values that may be encountered. So my problem was that the reflection system provides a single gaussian-blurred texture with a fixed blur intensity even if it is a separate pass:

Spoiler: Default Blur

So I wrote a custom node that utilizes fast Gaussian blur at intermediate MIP levels (adopting an idea from a GLSL ShaderToy example), and blurs the incoming texture to whatever intensity is needed.

Spoiler: My Attempt

Spoiler: My Attempt

Don't pay attention to the difference in exposure, I'm still working on it.
So, just wanted to showcase my approach. Really glad that it works. Performance impact on my hardware is close to none and it's a bit faster than the default blur.

Thanks!

 

@IrrSoft Can I know when is the expected date for the release of version 4?

 

Hi there,

Since we are still finishing up some details and Unity has informed us as publishers that all new releases of assets will take longer than usual (around one month or so) we cannot give a precise release date, but we expect it to be ready and available by mid-late August or in early September at the latest.

We hope this helps!

 

Is it possible to get access to a beta version or something sooner?
I hoped for the june/july release

 

Hi there,

Unfortunately, we have no plans for Beta releases at the moment, sorry. We were targeting a July release but unfortunately, due mostly to delays in Unity's approval times, it will take longer than expected. However, we will use said delay to do more extensive testing in all pipelines and improve performance / quality in both HDRP and URP as well as to greatly improve the documentation so that version 4.0.0, once it is ready, has a much higher quality. And in the meantime, version 3.x is still a completely functional and fully featured tool that will continue to work without issues on all current LTS releases

We hope this helps!

 

PIDI Planar Reflections 3 Standard Edition is part of the Smash Hit Summer Sale, week 4!

You can add amazing reflections to all your fantasy (and non fantasy ) worlds in all rendering pipelines and even on mobile devices with our tool, now with a 50% off.

On top of that, any new user that buys it now will get a free upgrade to version 4.x as soon as available, since they will be covered by the 60 days grace period we mentioned on this post.

Have a great week!

 

FWIW, I went ahead and picked this up at the end of June, thinking 4 was going to be coming out in late July.

 

Hi there,

While we understand this could be disappointing, rest assured that we will take some measures to ensure that the upgrade process is fair for everyone. However, we also expected a late July release since until a few weeks ago every submission to Unity was resolved within 5-10 days. It was until very recently that they officially confirmed that new assets will take around a month to be approved. Again, we will do our best to ensure upgrades are fair, but this situation has been outside of our control.

 

@IrrSoft Does it mean that if we buy this now it's confirmed that we will be getting the new version 4 although it might be more than the 60 days grace period from our purchase date (since you mention that it's out of your control to get the new version up in asset store)?

 

Yes indeed. While we are quite confident the release will happen in less than 60 days, if for some reason it is delayed even further everyone who buys version 3.x during the sale will receive the upgrade to version 4 for free, since we will in that case extend the grace period. We will also do the same to cover the users that bought version 3 in the last weeks of June, so that this delays do not impact what was our original intention, that is, to offer a fair upgrade to most of our users.

We hope this helps !

 

Thanks a lot for your generosity! Another question (sorry, not intend to spam the thread), can this asset solve the flickering issue normally found when there is light (whether it's dynamic sky or other normal light)?

 

@IrrSoft Could you advise on above? Another question, does the reflection also work if I use other shader? example, if I use Microsplat puddle as terrain shader, can Pidi generate the reflection from the puddle?

 

Hi there,

I do not understand what you mean about the light flickering, nor where can you see that issue, nor how it is related to reflections. Maybe you can elaborate a little more so that we can give you an answer. Regarding custom shaders, the asset will work ONLY with custom shaders that have been properly modified to use the refelction texture that it generates. It will not be compatible with any third party assets out of the box, and you should probably contact the authors of said assets to see if they can assist you in modifying them to add compatibility with our asset.

Since microsplat is a terrain shader then it will most likely not be compatible with our asset without you doing some work on your part, since our asset is designed to work on mesh renderers and not with the terrain renderer, which works quite differently.

We suggest you to read the online documentation in full before your purchase so you can better understand how the asset works.

We hope this helps!

 

Thanks for your clarification. I'm quite new in Unity so there are many things that I still don't understand, so it's better to ask. I don't seem to explain clearly on my question, sorry for that. I saw this asset have water shader which I'm interested in. Previously I had water shader from other asset & it has flickering/ jittery issue at the edge of the water when there is light (& when post processing layer is on. I tried to adjust TAA value but still..). So I'm curious if this asset can solve it.

Ah.. too bad, I thought that both can work seamlessly.
Anyway, appreciate your explanation.

 

I've improved blur and added custom depth contact roughness. Here's my modified version of the PIDI reflection in HDRP:



Here's the comparison with HDRP rough planar reflection (which is on the left side):
https://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/juxt...html?uid=4b110c50-e8e9-11eb-abb7-b9a7ff2ee17c
Both are 1K resolution and material smoothness is ~85%.

Here's another angle and ~65% smoothness:
https://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/juxt...html?uid=24c1dba6-e8e9-11eb-abb7-b9a7ff2ee17c

Here's the difference between the reflection with custom depth roughness and without:

Without:


With:


P.S. haven't modified the asset itself. Everything is done through shader graph nodes.

 

Added contact normal distortion:




The difference can be seen here:
https://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/juxt...html?uid=9d4f7170-e996-11eb-abb7-b9a7ff2ee17c

@IrrSoft Are you okay with me posting this here?
I can stop if I'm polluting the thread to much
Just want to showcase what can be done with your asset and a bit of shader graph.

 

No problem!

We always like to see everything that our users are doing with our assets and how they keep pushing them in new and interesting directions within their projects, and it is quite exciting as we test new grounds on our own as well for version 4.x.

Thanks for sharing !

 

PIDI Planar Reflections has been included in the Smash Hit summer sale for another week! You can get it with a 50% off now and remember, anyone who purchases PIDI Planar Reflections 3.x during the sale will get a free upgrade to PIDI Planar Reflections 4.x as soon as it is released!

 

Hi!
I've upgraded to the latest 2021.2.0b4 and HDRP 12. The asset is working fine, though I know this version is not officially supported. The only bug I've found so far is that when you are in the editor mode, when you move around the scene, the reflection is not updated unless the camera or the reflection renderer is currently selected. If one of those is selected, then everything is fine. To "unfreeze" the reflection you need to select another object:

In the player everything is fine. So, seems like a minor bug. Maybe you can take a look if it is something that can be fixed quickly?

Also wanted to ask, just out of curiosity, why the reflection camera preview looks like the planar camera is looking along the Z axis instead of the Y axis? The same result I got when I was trying to render the depth from it with the custom pass in the previous unity version, so it's not a bug.