Horizon Based Ambient Occlusion - HBAO image effect

Hi, I actually am noticing the same issue with LitAO. I have one "main camera" in my scene, and another one that's going to a render texture. For the RT camera the AO is broken and offset from the actual objects as seen in the pic below. I'm not using any custom shaders, just URP, and normal mode is totally fine as well.
Is there anything to fix this issue?

 

Which URP version is it?
Because I've seen this in 2021.2 changelog:

• Universal: Fixed base camera to keep render texture in sync with camera stacks. (1288105)

Not sure it's related however, does it happens with Unity's SSAO renderer feature?

 

Thanks so much for the quick reply!
URP v11. I'm using 2021.1.28 because 2.x isn't compatible with some of my other plugins sadly.
I don't believe it's happening with Unity's SSAO. Both cameras have different renderers both with the HBAO feature on it.
Then both cameras are using the same volume in the scene with the actual HBAO effect on it.

 

Thank you very much for feedback!
I was asking for Unity's SSAO because when doing LitAO, HBAO is being applied to objects by the pipeline itself. On normal mode the compositing is done by HBAO renderer's feature. So that would be a good thing to check against builtin SSAO.

 

Just gave it a test, and it actually is happening with Unity's as well. And that's only on the renderer targeting the RenderTexture camera.
What's weird is it seems to not happen 100% of the time. I can like toggle the mode on and off and it will sometimes fix itself. very strange.

 

Thanks for feedback, yeah I'm not surprised. On next week I might try to reproduce it on newer version, in any case it should be reported to Unity

 

Hi,there. I've just updated my project from 2020.3(URP10) to 2021.2(URP12).
I have re-imported the package with the urp package inside it.
I got some errors when I try to enable the new Temporal Filter feature for URP.
And it just turn into black with the litAO mode, and ghosting heavily with the normal mode.

 

Strange, temporal filtering works fine on 2021.2 and URP here. Please try to remove render feature and delete the asset completely, then update to latest and deploy embedded URP package.

 

Thank you!
I deleted the asset completely, then re-imported the asset with the URP package as well.
Now the errors are gone and temporal filtering seems work fine with normal mode. But LitAO still get all black when the temporal filtering enabled.
I'm using forward now. Is that necessary to use deferred to enable LitAO with temporal filtering?

 

Hello, I'm currently trying to use HBAO 3.4.7 on a VR project but I am having some trouble.

It looks like I can't get the script to work with the SRP in Single Pass Instanced rendering.
Multi pass works though but it's not ideal.

Any idea what might be going on?

 

No, it should normally work with forward as well.

Do you have color bleeding enabled? I'm asking because actually color bleeding can be enabled along with LitAO but it won't work (I should make sure color bleeding is disabled in this case, will be fixed on next release), and when you toggle temporal filtering on the screen turns black.

Do you have opaque texture enabled? normally this issue has been fixed but earlier there was a black screen bug when opaque texture was enabled.

 

Which SRP pipeline?

 

Yes，the color bleeding is enabled. Opaque texture is also enabled.

 

So, the problem is that color bleeding can't be used along with LitAO. This is not a limitation and will never changes: when you inject AO into the pipeline, it's expecting an AO value and nothing else.
Like I said the issue is that HBAO let you do that while it should not.

 

I find in editor if the Scene view is hidden behind, these errors will always bump. And after let the scene view be in front, the errors stop bumping and the temporal view start to work normally. As these errors contiually bumping, the ghosting is severely noticeable. And when things come back on the rails, the ghosting is in a quite acceptable level. And it do make the lowest quality magically looks great.

 

I've disabled the color bleeding in this case. This issue has nothing to do with the LitAO/Color bleeding problem you've mentioned.
And it also leads to the temporal filtering can't work in a build.
The Unity version is 2021.2.7f1.

 

Does it happen only when playing?
Could you please show an example of the layout that triggers the problem?

 

When the game stopped,the errors bumps again. Disable TF or set scene view in front will stop it.

 

Thanks for feedback, I will try to reproduce.

What happens in the build? black screen, no AO?

 

Unexpected heavy ghost as the screenshots showed.

 

Sorry, I meant the built-in render pipeline (not URP or HDRP)

 

Ok, thanks for feedback! I will investigate.

I haven't been able to reproduce, would you mind trying to do a repro project from your current one? You can remove all assets I think the issue will remain even with primitives in a simple scene.

 

I got that. These errors come with I checked the "Native RenderPass" in the Universal Render Data. Uncheck it will get rid of them and get normal quality effects.
I'm not really clear about what this option does. I checked it just to take a chance for the problem above.

 

Oh nice. Glad you fixed it.
For native render pass see this post: https://forum.unity.com/threads/wha...ative-renderpass-and-xr.1141285/#post-7660738
I've just done the search myself
It seems to have limitations actually.

 

Hi there,

I'm testing this on Unity 2021.2.5 using HDRP 12.1.2 and I can't seem to get it to work. The HDRP demo scene simply doesn't apply any AO.



There are no errors.

 

For me it kind of works, you need to enable "Custom Postprocess" for your Camera in HDRP default settings (next to the things which are listed in the docs regarding HDRP setup). But I get lots of ghosting, and often the AO effect is shifted from the original image, especially if I change the screen size. SO it works sometimes, but very unstable.

 

I just double checked and I do have it enabled. No luck getting it to work though.

 

Hi, I put together a scene with one of the trees from the "Low Poly Wind" asset by Nicrom which uses a custom shader for rendering the tree with wind effects. The AO works great on all of my own assets but on this third party tree it seems their shader is having a strange interaction with the AO. I am seeing the AO show up on the tree as can be seen in the below picture. I am using URP and Unity 2021.2.8f1. I am using Forward rendering and specifically this happens when HBAO is in Normal mode but when in Lit AO mode this does not happen. I was just curious if you had any insight as to what might cause this?



Also no rush on this I put together my own tree/wind shader in shader graph and HBAO works great with it!

 

Managed to get it working. Had to add the effect to Custom Post Process Orders.

 

I introduced this issue in 3.4.8. Please update to 3.4.9 and issue will be solved, I'm sorry for the inconvenience.

This prerequisite for HDRP is clearly detailed in the documentation.

This low poly tree custom shader is not implementing required passes properly. It should have a DepthOnly as well as a DepthNormals pass. Author should read this page (https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/c...iversal@11.0/manual/upgrade-guide-10-0-x.html) in order to implement shader properly for SSAO.

 

To everyone, a bug in HDRP is currently preventing custom post processes injected at early stage into the pipeline to work properly with DRS/DLSS. Please vote this issue in order to speedup the fix:
https://issuetracker.unity3d.com/is...sion-when-both-at-active-drs-plus-custom-pass

 

Hey, thx for info. The shifting is gone with latest version, but the ghosting is still there. It's always present, but becomes much worse as soon as I change the size of the Scene view or in Game view. Then it's pretty severe.

 

Hi,
I would like to know if HBAO will work on AMD CPUs just as well as on Nvidia GPUs.
I know there is no visual difference, but HDAO is more native for AMD.

Thanks

 

@jimmikaelkael are you able to reproduce this issue in HDRP? Do you need more info?

 

No, I can't reproduce. Could you send me a repro project?

 

I'll check what I can do. Just tried in vanilla HDRP and was not able to reproduce; the project where I see the issue is several hundreds of GB big, so no chance I can send it. Will try to find out what's the conflicting settings I am using causing the issue.

 

So far I was not able to find the conflicting setting; however I get some stacktrace, which I will post later. What's basically happening is that the AO effect somehow works, but everything gets colored in a orange tone, and I see heavy ghosting, which increases over time, first only in the distance, later everywhere.
The stacktrace :

Spoiler: Stacktrace

RTHandle.Initialize should only be called once before allocating any Render Texture. This may be caused by an unreleased RTHandle resource.
Unreleased RTHandles:
HBAO_AO
HBAO_Temp
HBAO_Temp2
HBAO_AO
HBAO_Temp
HBAO_Temp2

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0x000002197c0a2ebb (Mono JIT Code) [RTHandles.cs:278] UnityEngine.Rendering.RTHandles:Initialize (int,int)
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@jimmikaelkael
I am now able to reproduce both issues in HDRP basic template. The ghosting is very easy to reproduce, it depends on the far clipping distance of the camera; e.g. 100 already leads to lots of ghosting.
The reason for the color change I have not figure out yet, but I have an example project which I could send to you, if you tell me how. It's the basic template with changed HDRP assets, and simplified a bit. It clearly shows a change of color tone as soon as intensity of HBAO is bigger than zero. In my own project the change is even more dramatic, leading to a complete recoloring of the scene.

 

You should not be using a far clip plane that is less than AO max distance. Please adjust HBAO max distance to 100 as well and issue will be fixed.

 

Ah, great, this fixes the ghosting, thanks. Still the "recoloring" of scene remains, making everything brighter. Is there another setting which might cause this?

 

@jimmikaelkael would you still be interested in a repo project for this?

 

Yes you can send, I'll check when I'll have time.

 

Did send it to the mail address from publisher info.

 

When I use HBAO in URP ,it shows Ghost like TAA ghost.How to solve it?
comes with a custom CopyDepth Render Feature

 

Tried to upgrade Unity project to latest LTS: 2019.4.9 -> 2019.4.36 (URP 7.7.1)
I'm now getting the entire alpha pass ignoring the Zbuffer and drawing on top - but it draws correctly if I disable HBAO. Frame debugger shows that HBAO is not writing to Z, any idea how it could be breaking the depth for the subsequent alpha pass? Either something changed in Unity to break it (but that's a lot of changelogs or binary chopping to do), or I have missed something in repairing the URP pipeline after the upgrade. There's no issues reported in the console, sadly.
Would like to fix it because HBAO is by far the best AO I've tried...

 

This shouldn't happen, HBAO never writes/clear depth. Could you send a repro project?

 

Made a fresh project but could not repro the issue, so I'm double-checking my URP and PostFX setup...

 

Just updated to the latest version of HBAO. It seems the entire effect is inverted?


I see no differences in our scene and the demo scene. We're using 2020.3.16f1 and URP 10.6.0. We must be doing something wrong but I cant figure it out. I already removed the entire package and reimported - cleared/recreated all volumes, etc.

I can get it ' right' by enabling Per Pixel Normals as long as it is not set to Camera. This was working before and I don't have to override this in the demo scene either.

 

You're not doing something wrong, Normals buffer is broken until URP12. Please switch per pixel normals in HBAO settings to Reconstruct4x and it will fix the issue (or you can upgrade URP but I guess this is actually not an option for your project).

 

Thanks for the quick reply - appreciate it.