Horizon Based Ambient Occlusion - HBAO image effect

HBAO does not rely on PPV2. It should work along with it.

 

Yes it can depend on your settings. Is your 3D objects scale correct ?

 

I understand ur not getting it on ur end but its not like im sitting here lying... Instead of trying to make it seem like its my fault maybe just try to help?

Ill try to profile the GPU, you could have just suggested that instead of writing it like ur talking to an idiot. I might not know as much as you about this stuff.

 

Seriously ?
Are you kidding me ?

Are you expecting me to learn you how to profile ?

 

It appears this asset is currently not compatible with MSAA enabled under URP.

It creates a white outline around any contrasting pixels, mainly the borders of differently colored objects. I have Depth Textures enabled but as someone else said, it appears that MSAA is doing an earlier pass that messes with this HBAO.

 

Ofc not, thats not what I said, I said you could have suggested that I try it. Jesus man relax, its ur product. Plus there is little point in me profiling the issue when it goes away if I disable your product, nothing else fixes it. You havent once asked me to send you any material that might help you debug.

Gotta say, this is the first time I've had a negative experience with an asset creator, ur asset is really cool but you are not very pleasant. I'll just move on.

 

Was that offending to you?

I never meant to offend, I'm really sorry you took it like that...

Am I saying that you're lying? no.
Am I treating you like an idiot ? no.
Am I giving you clues? yes.

I haven't asked because I know you are GPU bound, that's all. HBAO has a cost on GPU, and in your case enabling HBAO consume more GPU time and then CPU is awaiting GPU to finish.

Well, no offense taken.

 

@jimmikaelkael Have you had a look at the depth pass available in URP 10 yet? I remember you had mentioned you could get a speed boost when that was ready. Unity’s new AO is quite disappointing, btw.

 

Has anyone used this on mobile yet? How is the performance?

And does it work on WebGL?

 

Can this give me similar results to something like a Ground Truth-based Ambient Occlusion? I would want to have a bigger range for big details and smaller range for the finest details, would be nice if it has good thickness two. I'm looking to achieve something close to this:

 

Hi again!

I'm writting this time because our console is showing +999 warnings. As far as I'm aware everything compiles correctly (I'm not the team programmer though), in fact, visually it seems to be working fine (we're getting the shadows we want).

If anyone could help us out would be great!

Thanks in advance.

 

Hi,

Is it possible to exclude this effect from certain objects or layers? For example, I would like to have this effect on my environment, but not on my characters.

Thanks!

 

Hi,

Sorry if I've missed it somewhere but how do I get this working with the PPv2 stack? I'm unable to find it in the overrides.

 

I will need to check it.

I still do not recommend it on mobile. Standard pipeline version works fine on Standard and HDRP pipeline. In URP currently all post-processes are disabled on GLES by the pipeline code.

No you won't get this. HBAO is not raytraced AO.

It seems HBAO shader does not compile... You should select the HBAO.shader file and check what the inspector says.

No, I'm sorry but this is not possible, HBAO is a screenspace image effect.

In Standard pipeline, HBAO does not rely on PP stack to work, it is standalone. You need to attach the effect to your camera, I suggest you to read the documentation.

 

We did what you suggested and the inspector doesn't say anything. It seems there are 2 different HBAO.shader... Is this suposed to be like that?

Thanks again!

 

Hmmm, sometimes after updating asset it can happen... Try to delete the asset completely and reimport.

 

Hi this looks impressive, can it do better than the built-in AO in HDRP, which does this:?!

 

I am trying to make it work with URP and when adding the HBAO to the Post-Process-Volume and hitting Apply Preset I can see a warning: "The effect is disabled by default, you need to override intensity value in order to enable HBAO."

How can I do this?

 

You need to expand HBAO settings in your post process volume, go to the intensity slider, enable it then adjust intensity slider to something like 1 or whatever you like.

 

We deleted it and re imported and everything works fine now!

Thank you!

 

We get the following message, if we enable VR (via XRLoader, e.g. the new VR system), Anti Aliasing, forward mode, Legancy Render Pipeline:

Code (CSharp):

1. A multisampled texture being bound to a non-multisampled sampler. Disabling in order to avoid undefined behavior. Please use Texture2DMS in the shader.

Stereo Rendering mode is set to Multi Pass. If VR or antialiasing is disabled, HBAO works as expected. HBAO and antialisaing works without VR.

Do you have an idea how to correct this?

 

Will there be any improvements for curved surfaces in URP?

My main issue is my characters have sharp edges on round organic surfaces... It looks really weird.





It comes up in all kinds of weird ways, i've mitigated this a bit with some settings, but it's quite disappointing.

Mitigated settings

 

Hi, I'm not much of a coder, but I wondered if it's possible for me modify the shade color and make it HDR? I would also like to able to be able to set minimum distance in addition to maximum. The reason for this is that I want the shaded areas to glow at a distance from the camera.

Also, how heavy would it be to use 2 AO scripts?

 

I'm sorry you were disappointed...
So, this is a current limitation of view normals computed from depth buffer when using low tesselated geometry. The bias slider can help you to mitigate this.

However, in URP 10.0.0 (Unity 2020.2) the issue will be solved as Unity is introducing view normals, I have the fixes already, and I'm pushing an update today.
Per pixel normals setting will have a new option: Camera, which is what you want.

 

Yep, hdr color and min disytance is possible. I don't recommend running 2 instances, will be twice the cost.

 

HBAO v3.3.1 has been submitted for review, changelog:

• Added support for upcoming URP 10.0.0 (support view normals)

Sorry to be so late about this issue, will investigate it and fix for the next release.

 

Sorry to bother you, but like I said I'm not much of a coder. Could you point to me where in your files I could find these things please? I think I should be able to manage the rest myself.

 

Well, I'm sorry but I completely have overlooked the "I'm not a coder" statement.
Unfortunately this is not a single line change, you will need to modify runtime and editor script, but HBAO shader as well.

Let me add this to the next release todo list, does it suit you ?

 

Yes that would be awesome. Sorry to be a bother. Thank you.

 

Thank you for your support! We are using the legency build in renderer, no URP. The screen looks also only gray, e.g. only the AO is visible when VR is enabled. We checked for multi/single instance rendering on the camera, both did not work. Do you think that the above fix, will also fix our issues?

 

Sadly, no... The above fix is for fixing a bug in URP 10 and also use introduced view normals, it won't fix your problem.
Thank you for the details about the issue.

 

Do you have an idea why this happens, do you have the same issue with VR?

 

No I don't have the same issue, last time I checked at least.
This error reminds me something yeah, I think my conditional checks in HBAO.cs aren't detecting you are doing single pass instancing.

 

Okay, I'll check and come back here if I find something. Thank you for the Tipp.

 

Hm i see, fair enough then, hopefully moving to Unity 2020 will be fairly painless in the future.

Also another question, if I wanted to change the SSAO quality by code what would i need to do to acess the volume? I'm still learning URP stuff and it seems different than what I originally did in standard pipeline.

 

You can take a look at "Horizon Based Ambient Occlusion/SRP/URP/Demo/Runtime/HBAOControl.cs" script for an example.

You need to get a reference to your VolumeProfile, then you can for example do:

Code (csharp):

1.  
2. HBAO hbao;
3. volumeProfile.TryGet(out hbao);
4.  
5. if (hbao != null)
6. {
7.     hbao.EnableHBAO(true);   // enable/disable HBAO
8.     hbao.SetAoRadius(1.2f);  // change radius
9.     hbao.SetIntensity(0.8f); // change intensity
10.     ...
11.     hbao.SetQuality(HBAO.Quality.Low); // change quality
12.     ...
13.     hbao.ApplyPreset(HBAO.Preset.FastPerformance); // or apply a preset
14. }
15.  

Don't hesitate to take a look at "Horizon Based Ambient Occlusion/SRP/URP/Runtime/HBAO.cs" script to see what's exposed, there's are a lot of methods available to control HBAO easily.

 

Updated Unity and URP and the HBAO package and it stopped working

Code (CSharp):

1. You can only call cameraColorTarget inside the scope of a ScriptableRenderPass. Otherwise the pipeline camera target texture might have not been created or might have already been disposed.
2. UnityEngine.Rendering.Universal.ScriptableRenderer:get_cameraColorTarget ()
3.  
4. HBAORendererFeature/HBAORenderPass:Setup (UnityEngine.Shader,UnityEngine.Rendering.Universal.ScriptableRenderer,UnityEngine.Rendering.Universal.RenderingData) (at Assets/Horizon Based Ambient Occlusion/SRP/URP/Runtime/HBAORendererFeature.cs:433)
5.  
6. HBAORendererFeature:AddRenderPasses (UnityEngine.Rendering.Universal.ScriptableRenderer,UnityEngine.Rendering.Universal.RenderingData&) (at Assets/Horizon Based Ambient Occlusion/SRP/URP/Runtime/HBAORendererFeature.cs:917)
7. UnityEngine.GUIUtility:ProcessEvent (int,intptr,bool&)

It's further commented here (nothing to do with the asset): https://forum.unity.com/threads/custom-renderer-features-broken-on-10-0-0-preview-26.980541/

 

I'm sorry it's actually quite unclear that just update HBAO asset is not sufficient. URP version of HBAO being embedded as a unity package inside the asset, you also need to unpack URP.unitypackage again after you proceeded to package update.
HBAO will work correctly after that, sorry for the lack of informations.

 

Ah, seems so obvious now, I should have known better. That totally worked.
Thanks a lot.

 

In VR single pass render mode under URP, the screen is doubled if we increase the AO intensity above 0.

 

I'm really sorry for the inconvenience, actually HBAO has no support for VR in Universal Render Pipeline.
It will be supported end 2020.

 

Hi I saw your comment and wanted to say if you are using Windows 7 there is a major issue where having Aero disabled causes massive performance drops and also the GFX wait for present issue. I recommend that you enable Aero and see if it solves that issue also what GPU are you using because that Performance drop from 200 to 60 is of importance to me and if you are using a very old card it's understandable but I need to know.

 

I am considering purchasing this asset because I need an Accurate AO solution.
1.How much better is this than the current built in HD Pipeline AO?
2.One of the issues I have with the HD AO is on certain angles the AO is not accurate at all does this happen with HBAO?
3.I don't think the HD Pipeline AO has Gbuffer support but I'm not sure does this properly utilize the GBuffer for better AO?

 

1. I'd say it is better, I don't like Unity's implementation of GTAO but I guess I'm biased anyway.
2. I'm not sure what you're talking about. If that lack of accuracy comes from depth buffer or view normals, yeah HBAO might do the same... Hard to tell as I never have really compared the two.
3. HD pipeline has it, HBAO uses it as well. The main benefit if that it comes with higher precision.

 

Trying this in HDRP but run into issues with 2020.1.12
- *fixed with depth change* Firstly in deferred it draws a kind of smudged copy of the AO in the background where the camera-background-color is - (edit: bit less so if clear g-buffer, none if enable bounce at 1!?)
- *Unity issues with MSAA/order* In forward it does not work? (not got it to)
- *Possible unity bug in editor* If I switch volumes at runtime (say from one with HBAO to one without) or or toggle things I get an error in editor console:
RTHandle.Initialize should only be called once before allocating any Render Texture. This may be caused by an unreleased RTHandle resource.
UnityEngine.GUIUtilityrocessEvent(Int32, IntPtr, Boolean&)

 

I just bought the asset, but I cant get it to work. In The Demo Scene there just is no ambient occlusion.
Im using Untiy 2019.4 and URP 7.5.1
I imported the Unitypackage in the SRP Folder.
I also tried addingHBAO Render Feature to my pipeline, but there's also nothing happening.
Am I missing something?

Edit:
It seems to be working now. I dont know What I changed, but yeah, looks really good so far

 

Can you remember anything you did that made it work? Doesn't seem to work on mine, even the demo. Using Unity 2019.4 and URP 7.5.1 as well. Thanks.

 

Are you using forwards and MSAA? That is an issue in HDRP, maybe URP also

 

Hello. What about Unity's URP beta SSAO ? What about performance ? Difference

 

The HBAO quality and accuracy is a lot better than any other asset even the HDRP one. However it's more expensive unless you run it on lowest which performs the same as the SSAO in Unity.
But even on the lowest settings the AO looks amazing and I run a screen larger than HD so it's all good. Also when enabling multi bounce you get a kind of fake GI which is awesome!

Here you can see the difference in AO of both with the first being HBAO with multi bounce and the second being HDRP built in AO. You can clearly see that the HDRP one is missing the outer edges completely and it just doesn't look right. Unity doesn't have performant real time GI anymore so I use HBAO along with some exposure settings to simulate full fake GI and it looks awesome no need for other effects. Look at the first images circle and the right wall edge they glow white which is sexy!