[DEPRECATED] PIDI - XFur Studio. Please follow the link inside to XFur Studio 2, our new version

Okay, XFur 2 will be a new asset or a version of this one? If its a new asset will there be an upgrade from v1.x to v2 with discount price and do I have to redo everything with v2 that I've already made with v1.x?

 

XFur Studio 2 will be a new product (called XFur Studio 2 - Standard Edition) with a discounted price of around 50% off for current users of XFur Studio (and probably more at launch), but we have no more details on this at the moment since we are still on the middle of development and figuring out how we will roll out the update.

We are currently developing a comprehensive auto-patching tool which should be able to handle the change to version 2 and upgrade all settings from v1 to v2 so there should be no need to re-do anything besides some minor changes to the materials (due to XFur 1 not having some of the new features) and, of course, setting up the brand new features as you wish. Our goal is to ensure that what worked in v1 keeps working on v2 and only using new features requires extra work from you.

Versions 1.8 and 1.9 of XFur Studio will also start adding some internal handles for this auto-upgrade tool to ensure the process is even easier.

Again, there are no ETA yet for XFur Studio 2 so whether you should buy already or not depends entirely on if you need a fur solution already or not, but since we know that some users have been using XFur Studio 1 for over a year ensuring a painless transition and as little work from our users part is very high on our list of priorities, right there with all the new features we are developing

Hope this helps!

 

Version 1.8 of XFur will be sent for approval tomorrow to target a Friday-Monday (July 26-29) approval.

It includes the following updates :

XFur Studio 2 related changes :

- Internal API reworking to allow an easier transition to XFur 2.
- Scripting define symbos have been added to allow for the upgrade to XFur 2 to be more seamless.
- A few functions are being updated to better match those of XFur2, which will allow us to make the transition easier. The original variants will stay but will slowly be deprecated during the XFur 2 cycle. If you do not plan to upgrade to XFur 2, you can keep using their current forms without any worries. A full upgrade guide will be made available with the release of XFur 2 and again, the deprecation process for the current form of some of these functions will not be sudden.

New features :

- Manual and automatic bone detection for physics simulation are now available. Manual definition of physics-enabled bones requires re-building of the mesh data. Changing the mode between automatic and manual also requires you to re-build the mesh data.
- Additional parameters for randomization are exposed.


Improvements and fixes :

- Solved a bug on skinned meshes without bone weights
- Solved grooming bug which prevented the fur grooming from accurately reacting to bone rotation
- Improved performance on the update-materials call
- Updated and expanded documentation

Changes :

- Unity versions lower than 2017.4 are no longer supported.


Upcoming changes for version 1.85-1.9 (coming on late August)

- Performance fixes and UI fixes to the editor.
- Improvements to the API
- Improvements to the FX module
- Improved documentation

 

Version 1.8 has been sent for approval and should be available for download in a couple days. We hope it will help you all

 

Version 1.8 is now available. Please remember some features are right now on Beta (especially the manual definition of bones) so please, backup your work!

Have a great day and a nice weekend !

 

Version 1.82 has just been published. It is a small patch that fixes a bug that prevented materials from being swapped on Unity versions prior to Unity 2018.1 (due to the way Unity handled MaterialPropertyBlocks before)

Hope it helps!

 

Hello, Im trying to work with XFur Pro and in a single character it is duplicating my draw batches from 1000 draws to 2000 in my scene.

• I do use Deferred Rendering
• The char is low poly
• And Im also using LOD

The thing is that I do have multiple lights on the character that casts shadows. Is there a way to improve the performance while keeping my lights and pixel light count?
What about making the fur do not cast shadows? is that possible and will it improve performance?

Let me know for any advise. Thank you.

btw, when setting up the fur I couldnt figure out how to make it thin so I increased the Fur UV Scale to like 30, is that fine?

 

Hi there,

About the thickness of the fur maybe switching to different XFur Noise maps will help but indeed setting the Fur UV scale to higher values may produce the results you want as well without impacting the performance.

Now, about the performance and lighting / shadows :

Depending on your scene setup there might be different reasons behind such a spike but indeed shadow casting and complex lighting may be the issue at hand.

Shell shaders like XFur rely on making multiple passes to generate fur. This means that a 24 samples shader will make at the very least 24 drawcalls. If it is affected by 4 pixel lights in Forward and all of them are casting shadows this can quickly jump up to 80-100 drawcalls.

There are not many ways to avoid this, since it all depends again on what you are trying to achieve.

I suggest that, if possible, you duplicate your lighting setup and make sure that the duplicated lights affect ONLY one specific layer (let's say a "FUR OBJECTS" layer) and that you place the fur objects in that specific layer. Make sure all other lights ignore the "Fur Objects" layer.

That way, you will have two lighting systems with exactly the same settings but affecting two sets of objects independently and you could, in this way, turn off real-time shadows for the "Fur Objects" layer.

This solution might seem complicated but Deferred limits greatly your control over shadow casting and receiving so this may be a good workaround.

In any case, we ask you to please get in touch with us through our support email with your invoice number, unity version and as many details as you can give about the issue so we can take a look into it and give you more detailed advice since that is not as easy to do here in the forum.

We hope this helps and that you have a great day!

 

This is just a small announcement.

Just like we are doing with XFur Mobile, we are going to release soon an important update for XFur Studio with a better, easier to use UI which will make a heavy emphasis on fast interactions, integrated help and usability.

As part of this update, a fully fledged online documentation page and several video tutorials will also be released soon, within the next few weeks. This is, as soon as the update to XFur Studio v1.9 is published since the documentation and tutorials will be designed for the new UI.

However, we want to ensure our long time users that this new UI will not require you to re-learn anything, and that all of you who have been using and creating incredible content with XFur will feel right at home with the new UI and, eventually, with XFur Studio 2.

We will also keep updating the internal API to match the XFur Studio 2 style and ensure that those of you who upgrade have an easy time migrating to the newer version.

We are very excited to share with you all the news about our assets as we prepare our 2020 lineup, which has already started with PIDI 2D Reflections 2.

We hope that this next step in the development of XFur and all our tools, as well as all the new features we've prepared after carefully listening to your feedback and suggestions will be very helpful to your projects.

We really look forward to seeing what amazing things you will keep creating with our assets in 2019 and 2020!

 

Hello, I have Xfur in some meshes in a prefab, whenever I save the prefab I get the following errors in the console:

NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object

XFurStudio.XFur_System.OnDisable () (at Assets/PIDI Game Development Framework/PIDI - XFur System/XFur Studio Source/XFur_System.cs:351)

UnityEngine.GUIUtility:ProcessEvent(Int32, IntPtr)

I hope you can help me with this

 

Hi there,
We invite you to please reach us through our official support channels since this forum is not the perfect place for a long back and forth that may require us to send or request additional information.

Judging by the error, it will not produce any problems at runtime and it is just an undesired behavior inside the Editor due to the new way that Prefabs are handled, since XFur is trying to remove some assets from memory but these assets are disposed before XFur can clean them while in Prefab mode.

This will be patched out soon, but unfortunately, due to the Asset Store team being on vacations from today and until August 23, this patch will be delayed until the end of the month.

For the time being, you can keep using XFur without worries but in any case we again recommend you to reach us through email to support at irreverent-software dot com

Have a great day!.

 

Version 1.9 of XFur Studio has been delayed slightly since, due to their vacation time, the Asset Store team will not be able to review any new updates until August 23. Due to this, the update will be released near the end of the month.

We will have more information soon!

 

Coming very soon, XFur Studio v1.9 :



Improved UI, more control over every module, several features have been polished, bugs fixed, we have clearer and more meaningful feedback in each control and setting, integrated help & support links and information....



Online documentation, improved offline documentation, more robust and understandable API....and much more !

We are working hard on this release as well as on the whole XFur Studio 2....we hope they will be a great help to all of you.

Remember that due to the vacations of the Asset Store team version 1.9 will be slightly delayed, possibly till the end of August. However, we will send it for approval this week and hopefully it will be in your hands, ready to try and use very soon.

Have a great week!

 

XFur Studio version 1.9 will be sent for approval on Wednesday. Among other changes and in order to expand the amount of projects that can use XFur Studio (as well as to try to reduce the impact on older projects that for any reason cannot upgrade to newer Unity versions) XFur Studio 1.9 will also mark the return of support, at least until XFur Studio 2 rolls out, for Unity 5.6 and 2017.1

We hope this helps and that this will be good news for those projects that could not and still cannot upgrade

Have a great week!

 

XFur Studio 1.9 is now available, with its new UI, online documentation, support for Unity 5.6+ and improved performance !

We hope it will help you all with your projects. Have a great weekend !

 

I think its quite some time i looked into here.
Wanted to inform that my character is still kicking with your 1.1 Version of Xfur.
And also wantend to thank again IrrSoft for the support last time.

I'm not realy followed, if there was any performance improvemnts of just the shaders, since 1.1.

 

Hi there!

If you are indeed still using version 1.1 then I'm afraid I may not be able to list all the new features, improvements and fixes we have added during the last ~16 months. From the physics, the weather FX, grooming, the way that fur itself is handled, improved shaders, newer options...there have been improvements and tweaks over basically every single part of XFur so I would suggest that you try out the latest version so you can see it for yourself!

And of course if you need even better performance than what XFur Studio can do right now, you may also want to check XFur Mobile

Hope this helps!

 

Hi, does this asset support HDRP?

 

Hi there,

Unfortunately, no.
As stated in the store page, this asset is not compatible with any SRPs.

None of our tools support any unity feature that is not labelled as stable and,in the case of SRPs, they are quite limited at the moment in what you can do through shaders outside of the limits imposed by shadergraph.

Furthermore, seeing how long it took LWRP to go from being declared stable to actually being fully usable to actually stop having compatibility-breaking updates, we don't believe we will dedicate resources to hdrp any time soon, as it will still be a while before it becomes stable and then until we have all the elements needed within hdrp to even start considering an add on to support it without getting ourselves in a constant struggle with a feature that's not yet finished.

Thanks for your interest in our tool, I hope our explanation helps as well to understand the reason instead of being just a "sorry, but no" kind of answer

Have a great weekend!

 

Hi, thanks for the detailed explanation and I understand your position.
We can only hope Unity will employ more engineers soon so they can finish and release a stable HDRP version

 

An urgent patch has been issued to solve an important ui related bug when adding xfur to an object for the first time. This patch should be ready to download between tonight and Wednesday but feel free to contact us with your invoice number and we'll provide it directly to your email.

We hope this helps and apologies for any inconvenience. Have a great day!

 

Patch 1.9.1 for bug fixes will be released very soon. It includes the following fixes :

• Fur Profiles cannot be correctly exported / read. Fixed
• Fur shaders cannot correctly load the custom UI Skin if updating from an older XFur release without first deleting the older UISkin. Fixed
• GUILayout elements present errors in newer Unity releases when using XFur_System for the first time on an object. Fixed

This patch should go live shortly, either tomorrow or on early Wednesday judging by the usual Asset Store approval times. if you need the fix immediately please contact us with your invoice number and the files will be provided to you through email.

We hope this helps!

 

Patch 1.9.1 has just been released with important bug fixes. If you are using version 1.9 it is heavily recommended to update as soon as possible.

We hope it helps!

 

Version 1.9.2 is now available with the following changes :

- Fixed a bug that prevented the snow and other fx from working when the lod module was active
- XFur is automatically re-initialized when objects are restarted, deactivated and reactivated or spawned, ensuring that effects from the fx module are not lost if the game object is disabled and later re-enabled (for example when using object pooling)

We hope this helps, have a great weekend!

 

When will this asset be Universal Render Pipeline ready?
I want to buy this asset but I am using Universal Render Pipeline and High Definition Render Pipeline for my project.

Believe it or not, I am using both URP (Universal) and HDRP together and they work just fine.

Is it worth it to buy it or should I wait?
My entire game is Furry related and relies on a Fur shader.

I'm between the asset Hair Designer and a fully featured asset like this to update to URP and HDRP and the idea of fur profiles and such is a big win for me.

Any estimation on at least URP?

 

Hi there,

Unfortunately, my answer will be more vague than what you may want to hear.

XFur studio is a shell shader that relies on multi pass rendering, something that is impossible on URP and not supported yet by shadergraph on HDRP. URP is available only on 2019.3 (Beta) and HDRP has not been yet marked as production ready the way LWRP (now Universal) was, as it was still in preview as recently as Unity 2019.1, and trying to support in-development features of Unity has already proven at the very least unwise on our own experience.

We tried to look into porting the shader to those pipelines but the features are simply not there yet. The same problem has happened with most if not all of our tools. For some, we could port smaller or less featured variants of them. In the case of XFur Studio, a port is simply not possible at the time since Unity has not made sure yet that either pipeline has the same level of features and maturity as the Built in renderer has. They may be easier to use or produce better graphics "by default" for the end user but internally, in their APIs and in the way ShaderGraph works, they are not on par yet nor it looks like they will be in the near future.

Supporting URP in the current release and with the current way our fur shader works would require us to rebuild XFur entirely around the many limitations of URP, which is not a task we can take lightly.

Because of this and the extremely small amount of users actually working on SRP pipelines for long term projects at this time we do not have any plans to support them in the current release. We may support URP/HDRP with XFur Studio 2 through separate paid add ons or integrated in the base tool if the SRP user base becomes large enough, but this will depend entirely on if we can find an alternative way to render fur on them while keeping the toolset unified and with the best performance we can achieve, so we do not have any estimated timeline for supporting any SRP at the moment unfortunately, we can only assure that we do intend to support URP at some point in 2020.

Thank you for asking and for your interest on this tool, and apologies if my answer sounds basically like a "we do not know yet". I hope our explanation gives a bit more insight as to why we have not talked nor included SRP in any of our roadmaps yet, while also making clear that we haven't given up on it either

Have a great day!

 

It can be done with RendererFeatures and RenderObjects, so impossible is a bit of a strong term to use. It cannot be done using just a material.

 

Thanks for your comment. That is exactly what we meant, we just didn't feel the need to make such distinction. URP has many differences to the Bult-in renderer and many shortcomings feature-wise, thus porting XFur Studio is not possible without major changes and a complete restructuring of its internal workflow and, as we also explained, due to the very small fraction of users actually using SRP for long term projects it is not in our best interest to basically re-build XFur Studio from the ground up just for a partial SRP compatibility port. As it stands, and as we explained in our previous comments, there are no plans for a SRP port any time soon, at least not until after XFur Studio 2 comes out. Any compatibility we develop with URP will be a solution dedicated to work within its limits but also to take advantage of its benefits, and most surely sold separately as an add on to cover the development costs until the user base of SRP pipelines is large enough for it to be included as a "default" option.

Again, thanks for your comment

 

Do you think it is worth purchasing XFur Studio 1.9? Or should I wait until 2.0? Would there be any lack of support with 1.9 once 2.0 is out for a while if I do purchase it now instead of 2.0? Thanks.

 

Hi there,

XFur Studio 2 will still take a good while to release (we are targeting a late Q4 2019 - mid Q1 2020 release) since it will be a major upgrade with plenty of differences to XFur Studio 1. Because of this, the requirements and functionality will be different as well, meaning that platforms and features that can work with XFur Studio easily right now may not be compatible with XFur Studio 2 and vice verse

There will be clear upgrade paths for all users of XFur Studio 1 as well as many different discounts and offers to ensure that all users of XFur Studio 1 can upgrade easily, however after XFur Studio 2 is out XFur 1.9 will no longer receive any updates nor support since maintaining and supporting 2 completely different versions of the asset would put more stress both in work, time and expenses over our team than we could realistically handle.

Having said that, we recommend that you buy XFur Studio 1.9 if you need it for your current projects since, in the end, it will allow you to start working already and the price of buying XFur Studio 1.9 + upgrade price to XFur Studio 2 might not be too different than buying XFur Studio 2 directly if you are an individual (XFur Studio 2 will have a higher price) and you would get to keep and use both versions of the asset, each one with their own advantages.

In short :

• XFur Studio 1.9 will still receive support for several months, at the very least until the release of XFur Studio 2 which will not happen until (most likely) early 2020.
• XFur Studio 1.9 will be compatible and work without troubles on Unity 5.6, 2017, 2018 and 2019 on multiple platforms, including some VR devices and top of the line mobile devices. XFur Studio 2 on the other hand will be, while still scalable, targeted towards higher end devices and Unity 2018+. Support for lower end devices will not come until later in 2020.
  
• XFur Studio 2 will be more expensive and will introduce a different licensing system for teams, since it will use a per-seat license just like all our other products for the 2020 line. Team licenses will be more expensive. XFur Studio 1.9 does not have this restriction.

XFur Studio 1.9 is a highly polished asset, easy to use and very thoroughly documented. Less than 3% of our users have required support that went beyond what the documentation explained and in most cases it was very much project specific, so even when version 2 is out we believe XFur Studio 1.9 will keep working without issues for 99% of our users. Due to its architecture and the way we have implemented compatibility with Unity 2019.2 and 2019.3 we expect it to keep working with 2019.4 (LTS) and the first iterations of Unity 2020 as well, unless Unity does any major changes to their systems.

In short, we do recommend you to get XFur 1.9 if your project already needs a fur solution since we are confident it will not let you down, whether you decide to upgrade to 2.0 next year or not. How worth it is depends, just like with any tool, in how soon and how much do you need the features that the tool provides

Have a great day!

 

A new patch for XFur Studio will be available very soon, within the next two weeks. It will add some internal performance improvements as well as a better internal resources management to the whole package.

We hope this will be helpful !

 

Hi- installed the latest Xfur update- and now the components look like this:



I cannot access or edit the database, because it is hidden behind the material editor, even though it is expanded.

Please advise ASAP.

 

Hi there,

this seems like an error with the custom guiskin we use for the UI not being correctly detected by the component. We have fixed this in the next update (which will be sent for approval tomorrow morning so should be available pretty soon) but in the meantime deleting the GUIskin asset inside the Editor folder included with the tool from your project and re-importing it should solve the issue.

If the GUIskin has been imported correctly, it should display these tags :



We hope this helps. If you need assistance with this, please contact us to our support email with your invoice number and we will get back to you to help you set up this guiskin.

 

Update to version 1.9.5 has been sent for approval, with a first fix to the error some users have reported where the GUISkin is not correctly detected by our custom editor.

A second fix has also been included which should give a performance boost when adding / removing large numbers of characters with fur to a scene all at once.

We hope this helps !

 

Hello,

in Unity 2019.3.12f1 (error started around Unity 2019.3.5f1)
and
XFUR Version1.9.5
there is still an UI Bug.



It s not possible to extend the XFUR System UI.

 

Hi there,

We ask you to please contact us to our support email with your invoice number as we will be able to provide more help there. We also ask you to test if you can open the UI with the provided demos or if this behavior is affecting all models with XFur attached.

If possible, send us a copy of your scene and model to test that the error is not related to the model itself.

Please be aware that Unity 2019.3 is a BETA release and as such bugs are to be expected (especially if you are using the latest beta), and not always due to the asset itself.

EDIT : We just noticed that you said 2019.3.12f...so we believe you might have written that wrong since 2019.3 latest release (from November 14) was 2019.3.0b11, the only version with an "f" in it is 2019.2, which we also just tested and it is working without issues. Please perform a clean re-install of XFur and test it on an empty project as we believe the error might be related to either your project settings, a corrupted file within it or your model. Please also contact us to our support email so we can provide more information.

 

We just tested the XFur Studio package (latest version) with a clean install in one of our own models (also clean install) on Unity 2019.3.0 and it worked without any issues :



We recommend you to try a clean install (delete Xfur from your project and then re-install it) to see if it helps, since some references might have gone missing. But please, try to contact us through our support email as we will be able to provide more help there.

 

Version 1.9.5 has just been released with the following improvements :

- Fixed a bug where the GUISkin we use was not properly detected (if you detect any issues please delete the provided GUISkin already in your project and re-download it)

- Improved performance when adding / removing large numbers of fur-enabled objects to a scene.

 

Unfortunately, it does not.

Followed your directions vis a vis the GUIskin, with no result.

Any further assistance with this would be GREATLY appreciated.

 

Hi there,

Please contact us to our support email with more information, including the exact XFur Studio version you are using, the exact Unity version you are using and screenshots of your model, material used and settings used within the material as well as your invoice number. We have not been able to reproduce this error in any of our setups after performing a clean install of the asset on Unity 2017, 2017.4, 2018, 2018.2, 2018.4, 2019.1, 2019.2 nor 2019.3 so we will need you to contact us directly in order to be able to get more information about the issue, reproduce it and or guide you towards the fix.

Please attach a copy of your model if the error happens ONLY with your own model since if that is the case the error will be most likely model-related.

Thanks

 

If anyone is still seeing the issue with the UI not being displayed properly, please ensure that the GUISkin included with XFur has been imported without any issues. It should be called "PIDI_EditorSkin_XFurStudio" inside the PIDI - XFur System/XFur Studio Source/Editor folder, it should have the tags "XFur" and "XFurGUI" applied to it and it should have a total of 5 custom styles.

If it doesn't match these conditions, it has not been imported correctly or it has not been updated in the proper way. Deleting XFur Studio from your project and re-importing it might fix it, or you may contact us with your invoice number to request this file directly in case your download has been corrupted and the file is not being imported in the appropriate manner.

EDIT : Also remember to check that you only have a single installation of XFur Studio in your project (this includes not having XFur Mobile installed in parallel within the same project).

 

XFur Studio is part of the Black Friday sale !

Get it now with a 50% OFF, for just 25 dollars!

 

The sale continues until December 12 as XFur Studio is now part of the Cyberweek sale. Get it now with a 50% OFF, at just 25 USD !

 

Notice : We want to take a moment to inform all of you that our team will be on holiday (and thus unable to reply to support requests) from December 12 until January 13. While we may still be active from time to time on the forums and we will not leave in full until December 20, we will not be able to solve requests as we will be mostly away from our main office.

As soon as we are back we expect to reply to all support requests within the first few days. Thanks for your understanding.

 

These are the last two days of discount for XFur Studio in the Cyberweek Sale!

All our users, including those who buy during this sale at 50% off, will benefit from a considerable discount when upgrading to XFur Studio 2 in Q1 2020 so right now is a great time to jump on board with this tool and see why hundreds of developers have trusted and used XFur Studio for their projects

We also want to inform you that another small patch to improve some workflows with Unity 2019 and the new prefab system will be released around the new year ( it may take a bit longer due to the Asset Store team's holidays break ).

Finally, before we head out to our own holidays break, we also want to thank you all for using and supporting our assets and work during all this year as well as for all the feedback, reviews, ideas and suggestions you have given us, since thanks to all of them we have been able to keep XFur Studio evolving and improving during 2018 and 2019.

We look forward to sharing with you what we have prepared for XFur Studio 2 and to see all the creative ways in which you continue to use it in your projects.

Again, thank you for your support, and very happy holidays!

 

This post is to remind you that we will be back in full force by next Monday (January 13), with a few small updates coming to XFur Studio in January as well as some initial announcements for XFur Studio 2.

Remember that buying XFur Studio 1 right now will grant you a very considerable discount when upgrading to XFur Studio 2, giving you the best value for your money

We hope this helps, and that you all have had a very happy holidays season!

 

To launch 2020, XFur Studio receives its first update to version 1.9.8 with a full internal re-work to make the asset much easier to work and much more compatible with the new Prefabs workflow introduced in Unity 2018.3

XFur Studio will receive a couple more updates to ensure the best compatibility with Unity 2019 in the following weeks, but we hope that this new release will be very helpful

Have a great day and we hope you are having a great start for this 2020!

 

Hi everyone !

We wanted to share with you a little sneak peek at XFur Studio 2 and some of its features. While this asset is still in active development with an ETA of late Q1 2020, we felt that you would appreciate seeing some of the new things you will be able to use in this version.

Remember that users of either XFur Studio (1.x) and XFur Mobile will receive a considerable discount when upgrading to XFur Studio 2. While there is not yet a definitive price tag for this asset, due to the many improvements, new features, additions and in most cases complete re-working of the features you can expect a price raise compared to both XFur Mobile and XFur Studio (1.x) so right now is a great time to get either current version of XFur Studio, start developing and getting familiar with the asset and get ready for the big upgrade later this quarter.

Have a great day !

 

You can now visit our WIP thread for XFur Studio 2 !

 

A small patch will be released at the end of next week with several performance updates and improvements as well as some internal changes to ensure a higher compatibility and easier upgrade path with XFur Studio 2.

We hope this will help !