Directional Ambient Tools

Hi,

Directional Ambient Tools has recently been released on the asset store.
It is a package to replace the flat single color ambient lighting with a much more flexible and vibrant multi directional ambient setup.
Using directional ambient lighting instead of flat ambient lighting gives you the ability to easily change the look and feel of your scenes, without adding multiple light sources.
Features:

• An easy to use editor, to quickly change ambient lighting setups.
• Faked specular highlights.
• Ambient Volumes, to apply different ambient light setups to various parts of your scene.

AssetStore: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#/content/5587

To get more information before you buy the package, have a look at the manual and this short demo/tutorial video.

 

Nice! Gonna try this out.

 

Cool stuff! Bookmarked!

 

I wondered why you'd use this over lightmaps and light probes, but of course not all games use static lighting and lightmaps have their downsides - this looks great!

 

Not only that, but this is also more flexible than lightprobes as you don't have to rebake everything and it works with Unity Free as well, which was my main goal.

 

mobile?

 

I have only tested it on Android but it worked there. And i don't see any reason why it should not work on iOS as well.

 

Hi guys,

just submitted a small update which fixes a few bugs and issues and it should be only quite soon. Here's the changes:

- Changes to the Directional Ambient Editor for better usability. (You might need to restart Unity for it to work properly)
- Added the option to reassign shaders in your scene (Window/Directional Ambient Helper), which fixes an issue regarding built-in shaders.
- Added the option to preview ambient lighting in your whole scene. (Window/Directional Ambient Helper)

If you already had Directional Ambient Tools in your project, you don't need to run the setup again.

 

Nice.

 

Can you add a link to this thead inside the description on asset store? Usually when i see an update in the store first thing i do is click on description to go to thread see what's new

 

Very nice Chickenlord

 

I knew i will add this on purchase list even before watching video

Only one question: How many ambient lights can you use in scene without loosing much performance, and does it work for example if they are positioned very far apart, like one on one edge of terrain and second on other edge of terrain?

 

I guess you're talking about a scenario where those two light setups are interpolated based on the position, right? If so, this is currently not possible, because lighting gets assigned per object. Therefor the whole terrain would get one single lighting. However it would be possible to add something that, for example, interpolates between two or four (more than four is unlikely) different setups for smooth looks. This would be a bit more complicated and heavier on the shader side, but i don't see a reason why it wouldn't work. At least the interpolation between two light setups works fine (already tested, but not added yet).

Edit: Oh and @ronan.thibaudau: Sure, will do it when i'm back at the dev machine

 

Oh nutsack. I just bought this but then saw the warning that it doesn't work with Substances. It's probably worth putting that in your first post! What exactly is the problem? Maybe I can work around it.

edit: Nevermind, the automatic switcher doesn't work, but manually assigning them does which I was going to do anyway.

 

It seems the individual intensity sliders don't work.

 

Are there plans to make the material switcher substance compatible in a future version?

 

They are actually compatible, its just that the tool provided to switch all your materials in your project doesn't convert substances. It's more of a Substance problem, because you don't get the access how Substances map to Unity's shaders (see: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/86414-Substance-answers-!/page20?p=1182301&viewfull=1#post1182301)

 

I had understood that perfectly (that it works but the switcher doesn't), i was still wondering if it would get fixed later on or not.
The link you gave doesn't seem to relate to the issue at all, it's refering to expected output names (substance vs shader), i assume the switcher just reuse the same names as before so i don't see the issue there?

 

@duke
The individual sliders seem to work fine for me. Are you using Unity 4 or 3.5?

@ronan.thibaudau
The issue is that when replacing the shader on substances it replaced all substance based materials with one single material. I haven't found a good reason for this behavior so far, so i can't tell you whether or not i'll be able to fix this.

 

I'm using 4. Is this set to go for 4.1?

 

I ran a diff over the 4.0.1 vs 4.1 shaders. The following have changed:

Code (csharp):

1. DefaultResources\Internal-PrePassCollectShadows.shader
2. DefaultResources\Internal-PrePassLighting.shader
3. DefaultResourcesExtra\Nature\TreeCreator\TreeCreatorBarkRendertex.shader

and the includes:

Code (csharp):

1. AutoLight.cginc
2. HLSLSupport.cginc

 

Are you planning on correcting known issues, such as:

Wrong ambient colors for modifed non bumpmapped shaders in Deferred Lighting
mode.

 

Thanks for the info. I'm working on update right now.

Yes, and i have found the reason for this already. However, currently a new bug appeared which makes using multiple volumes impossible with deferred lighting. I'll try to solve this as quickly as possible, but it is rather complicated, so it will take some time.

Other than that i'm also working on new methods to make multiple ambient volumes way easier to use.

Edit: Btw don't get me wrong, i know how to fix the deferred issue. It's just gonna be a complicated workaround.

 

Can you include a simple example to blend the ambient maps for a day and night scene over a time period?

 

Yes, i'll add it with the next update as well as some additional functions to make blending easier.

 

Hello I'm from Russia and badly understand English. I have to use a google translator. But even that did not help me understand this line from the manual:

2. Make sure you enter an unused Layer as Second Layer (default Layer is 31).

I do not understand any of the layers in question, and where they should be. I think it is for this reason that some objects disappear from the scene. Could you explain more? Thank you.

 

1.How do I get this to light Unity terrains correctly and then bake the lights into the lightmap..?

2.Also, when I run my game, my main camera does not render anything but terrain,all my other objects arent drawn why and how do I prevent this? I am recieving the following warning:

Attempting to render from a camera that is currently rendering. Create a copy of the camera (Camear.CopyFrom) if you wish to do this.
UnityEngine.Camera:Render()
AmbientManager:OnPostRender() (at Assets/DirectionalAmbient/Scripts/AmbientManager.cs:171)

I have only 1 camera in the scene with 1 attached ambient manager script.

EDIT: I removed the Ambient manager script from the main camera, the game seems to now render correctly and the objects and the ambient lights still work. How is that possible then?

 

looks very interresting, but what it give on a complete level ?

 

Just noticed this one has gone FREE !!
$50 worth for free! Go grab it guys!

 

Was this ever fixed? Wondering as i'd like to know before i start using this (bought it like, long long ago but put it on the side when i saw this).

Also does the CGing replacement break anything (except i guess default ambiant lights?), what are the tradeoffs? I see what i get but i seem to remember when i bought it that i was also losing something but i can't remember that.

 

Upon deleting the package from my project, custom shaders are now using black for ambient. Even after a new installation of Unity and reimporting my shaders. Even brand new custom ones insist on black ambient.

Figured it out. For those that are pulling their hair out, delete the unity.cginc file located in C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files (x86)\Unity\Editor\Data\CGIncludes. Restart Unity. Then, reimport your custom shaders in your project and your ambient should return to normal.

 

This is fantastic! I was doing my IBL by hand in photoshop.
It's far easier to do some artsy lighting than with 5's skybox.
What changes are required to make it work in 5?