Introducing Amplify Texture - Massive Virtual Texturing for Unity Pro

Wow --- didn't realize that this can be achieved with AT. Now it's on my wishlist -- and now I need to double-check, is this already working fully smoothly without hiccups on current-gen (don't care about last-gen) mobile (Android and iOS), or is that only planned for later?

 

I am interested but the price is steep for indie
perhaps you can consider this. i am not saying below $100 but in th $200 range is acceptable

 

Holy manoly, now I checked it, it IS crazy steep for some texture streaming! Yeah not gonna happen then, gotta leave this one to the Pro's I guess.

 

I think it's pretty reasonable. It's not exactly "some texture streaming" but a piece of sweet artist heaven similar to id Tech 5, and must've been pretty complicated to implement.

Not exactly something necessarily used in a project like a small niche mobile game, yes, but I don't think the license is prohibitively expensive.

 

OK, fair enough. You actually convinced me.. was just the initial shock after being used to other pricing for the other Amplify products! But yeah, used to sell much simpler software for way more (possible in some highly-annoying, non-gaming markets), so I agree getting paid neatly for neat work is the least a group of talented devs should expect

Will have to see how my hobbyist funds are coming along, watchin this space.

 

@metaleap
Mobile support will be available in Amplify Texture 2 but not in the first private development build.

@mrbdrm
It might be a bit higher than usual but do consider the full feature list.


Thank you for all the comments. As a reminder, if needed, Amplify Texture (1 2) also supports instancing.

 

"I think it's pretty reasonable. It's not exactly "some texture streaming" but a piece of sweet artist heaven"

hahaha Yes I agree..

Because of Amply Texture, I'm now able to make the type of games I've always wanted. I would value this a lot more than what they have priced it at, a lot more!

 

Any chance of this working in Web Player ?

 

Unfortunately it’s not currently possible to use Amplify Texture with the web player. In the future, if the Web Player capabilities change we will surely explore the possibility.

 

Hey guys I really love you tech, I started evaluating it for my projects and it seems to work like a charm. I have a couple of questions though. I'm looking at using Amplify on some projects that need to manage lots a separate images. Think of it as an image viewer wit hthousands of images. Amplify creates a mega texture from it and in the application you can navigate around a scene,n viewing each image on a floating panel.
Anyway, I was able to easily prototype that by creating a scene with lots of quads, each with its material and texture. Using Amplify let's me bake all of that in a single virtual texture, and than to reduce draw calls at runtime, i replace my hundreds of materials with a single one, recompute the uvs on quad meshes with the _VTPackingTransform data.

However, what would really help would be to have access to the packing info, in some kind of dictionary that stores the _VTPackingTransform info for each source texture name. That would greatly facilitate the dynamic creation of geometry.

Is this possible?

Ideally, I would want to be able to create a virtual texture from a set of textures without even having to have geometry/materials associated to them

 

Thanks for the great feedback, first and foremost. We're glad you find it useful!

There's really nothing preventing us from exposing the packing info, if you find a use for it. However, we've halted AT1 development and are focusing instead on AT2 and it'll be a while before a public release. We'll make sure this info is on the public API for the first AT2 development build we'll be releasing to pre-order customers over the coming weeks. I hope this helps.

 

Hello everyone,

We have finally launched our automated payment and delivery service, combined with automated downloads for product updates. After your purchase, you no longer have to wait for a build to be delivered.

Our system will ensure that the latest full build will always be made available through a temporary download link. After the link expires, or a new product update is released, you’ll be able to update your product simply by providing one of your product keys in the download page, in order to unlock your downloads.

We’ll be sending out Product Keys to all existing customers. Please contact us if you haven’t received your keys before 23rd of December 2013.

Amplify Creations Products Page

For more information, check out our brand new Download Page


Your invoice/purchase ID is personal and should not be shared with unauthorised personnel, keep it safe at all times. If you experience any technical issues with the automated system contact us directly at support@amplify.pt.

 

Hi mobile çalışır mı ? en güzel oyunlar

 

Hi,
I'm trying to make a shader "amplifyable" . I downloaded the shader conversion pack to see how it is done. My problem is that the shader is written in cg so I have a vert+frag shader. The example from the conversion pack shows only how to change a surface shader. Is there a example how to change a cg shader?

 

Feel free to post the shader here and I'll reply with a full conversion, if you want. Hopefully, it'll help others understand how to do it.

You are free to use Amplify Texture on any type of shader, btw. You can even sample the virtual texture inside vertex or geometry shaders.

 

Well the shader is from the SpaceGraphicsToolkit so I can't post it here

 

The shader conversion should be almost exactly the same, except you apply the changes on the pixel/fragment shader instead of the surface shader. You just need to feed the right input (texture coordinates) and get the right output (diffuse color and normal).

If you still have trouble just post a similar shader here, or maybe ask permission from the author. We're really short on time (trying to get AT2 out ASAP) so it's important to us that the time we spend helping you may also be used to help others. We hope you understand.

 

@Diogo

Will Amplify Texture be returning to the Asset Store? I can see Motion and Color, but Texture seems to be missing.

 

Hi,

Amplify Texture 1 will not return to the Asset Store.

For Amplify Texture 2 all options are on the table but for now it’s available exclusively for early adopters who acquire it through our website.

We recently made available an automated Download/Update system for all our products, check it out:

Download Update System

Amplify Texture 1 Product Page

 

Thank you. Will be keeping an eye out then

 

Hi,
I bought the pre-order Amplify Textures 2 from your website, but not seeing access to version 2.
Should it be available to me? I have 1.5.14.

Thanks.

 

Hi Don,

It's not available just yet. We're working hard right now to get a developer version on the hands of pre-order customers before the end of the month.

 

Cool, thanks!

 

We created a new thread showcasing the development of Amplify Texture 2

​

Visit the new thread for more information.

 

I don't understand how it works, video tutorials like Color3 ones will help a lot. Without good tutorials Is hard to believe much users are going to buy it.

Please, don't misunderstand. I think Is a amazing tool and really want to put my hands on it and buy a license but I need see tutorials first.

 

ratonmalo I'm one of those people that complains a lot about assets being sold not having video tutorials, but Amplify Texture is way too simple and easy to use and therefore doesn't need a video tutorial.

All you have to do is follow their instructions:

1: Import Package Amplify Texture
2: drag AT manager from prefabs folder into hierarchy
3: In the Project panel click the create button and click Virtual texture
4: select the AT manager in the hierarchy and drag the Virtual texture into the asset slot
5: drag your scene camera into the camera slot.

All done.. now all you have to do is select the object in the scene you want amplify to do it's magic to and change the shader to Amplify's shader.

Amplify Texture supplies many Unity default shaders and you can easily modify custom shaders to work with AT, they have instructions on how to do it. Also they are very helpful if you have any troubles.

word on the street is that Amplify Texture 2 will work with Alloy shaders, although this is word on the street

Oh by the way I don't work for AT, I just know how awesome it is!!

 

Thanks for the quick AT1 tutorial, MoHoe! You rock

We completely understand. Our plan is to release a lot more videos, including AT2 tutorials and workflow. The thing is, right now, we are still improving the workflow and it'll work differently from AT1. It's not ready yet, however, and that's why we're not showing it off.

The kind of workflow issues and bottlenecks we'll be improving are as follows:

• VTs will now search materials in specified folders, instead of relying on the inadequate scene/project context settings. This is important in order to support multiple VTs per scene in the most seamless way possible.
• VT builds will move to the background so you can keep editing materials and scene
• VT changes will accumulate instead of triggering immediate build and triggered only upon user command or continually in the background

And many more. Not all will be deployed at once on developer builds, but we'll get there until the official launch.

In the meantime, the Pre-Orders will stay open until the official Launch which we are planning for March. By then, we'll be releasing a lot more information and, hopefully, address some of your concerns.

 

Hi,
I'm very interested in the Mobile capabilities of Amplify 2. Will the new version will work on IOS the same way as on Windows or is there some difference?

 

Not all layers will be available for the mobile version, for performance reasons. But we'll try to push for diffuse and normal as an optimized baseline.

 

When will Amplify Texture 2 be available?

 

Amplify Texture 2 will be available to the public before June but early adopters will have private access to development builds up until the date.

Visit our product page for more information: Amplify Texture 2

Amplify Texture 2 - Development Showcase Thread

 

Does Amplify texture 2 support liner space lighting?

I don't completely understand the UV tiling talked about in the AT2 demo.

How is this better than texture atlasing?

Thanks

 

Yes. Both linear and gamma. AT1 already did too.

This type of tiling is meant to get around any per-texture size limitations. However, it requires tools that support it. In Mari, for example, you could theoretically paint an entire level using multiple tiles then just import the whole thing into Unity and it'll be one continuous material and one draw call.

It's atlasing at a much larger scale and implicit to a certain degree, meaning you don't have to do it yourself. The tools will handle it for you.

Virtual texturing itself is a sort of implicit atlasing method with a bunch of other features.

 

I don't know much about Mari(although it looks interesting). I'm using a Zbrush/Blender/Xnormal workflow. I see that zbrush can do this but I'm not a real fan of zbrush's normal map baking.

Would it be possible to bake my maps a part at a time as usual and then adjust the uvs into uv tiles and tell AT2 what textures use for each uv tile manually?

does uv tiling add to texture lookups in the shaders?

Thanks again.

 

Yes, you can use your software of choice, there are no limitations. The only requirement is that the actual tiles abide to common naming conventions. As long as the UV’s have the correct offset and the textures the appropriate tile ID (X,Y) it will work great.

Amplify Texture 2 treats collections of tiles as 1 single texture, no additional overhead.

I would recommend that you check out some tutorials regarding Multi-Tile UV workflows.

Multi-Tile UV’s Tutorials and Info:

Digital Tutors - Maya

Maya to Mudbox - Video - Text

Zbrush MultiMap Exporter (Supports Mudbox, Zbrush, UDIM and custom naming conventions)

3ds Max Quick Overview

Modo and MARI

There is a lot of information online depending on the software you use.

Let me know if you have any additional questions.

 

I'm also interested.

 

Thank you for your interest in Amplify Texture 2, as mentioned above it will be released before June.

Early adopters already have access to the first development build and we will be sending out updates in the upcoming weeks.

 

Hello!
I've tried to get the trial to work, but having some major issues!
Namely when I create a virtual texture I get the following error:

System.DllNotFoundException: AmplifyTextureNativeEditor
at (wrapper managed-to-native) AmplifyTexture.FreeImageW:GetFIFFromFilename (string)
at AmplifyTexture.AssetMonitor.CheckImageSupport (System.String path, AmplifyTexture.FREE_IMAGE_FORMAT fif) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
at AmplifyTexture.AssetMonitorCache+<>c__DisplayClass1.<UpdateDB>b__0 (System.String c) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
at System.Linq.Enumerable+<CreateWhereIterator>c__Iterator1D`1[System.String].MoveNext () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
at System.Collections.Generic.List`1[System.String].AddEnumerable (IEnumerable`1 enumerable) [0x0001a] in /Users/builduser/buildslave/monoAndRuntimeClassLibs/build/mcs/class/corlib/System.Collections.Generic/List.cs:128
at System.Collections.Generic.List`1[System.String]..ctor (IEnumerable`1 collection) [0x00025] in /Users/builduser/buildslave/monoAndRuntimeClassLibs/build/mcs/class/corlib/System.Collections.Generic/List.cs:65
at System.Linq.Enumerable.ToArray[String] (IEnumerable`1 source) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
at AmplifyTexture.AssetMonitorCache.UpdateDB () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
at AmplifyTexture.AssetMonitorCache.Start () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
at AmplifyTexture.AssetMonitor.Start () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
at AmplifyTexture.InternalEditor.Start () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
at AmplifyTexture.InternalEditor.CheckInstance () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
at AmplifyTexture.AssetEditor..cctor () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
UnityEditor.EditorAssemblies:SetLoadedEditorAssemblies(Assembly[])



This seems to prevent the texture from building up based on the stuff in the current scene. While I can build it based on the full project, that doesn't seem like a good solution...

Any ideas/suggestions for this?

Best Regards
Bjorn

 

Hi Bjorn,

Do you, by any chance, have a Plugins/x86 folder?

Also, are you running on Mac or Windows? Unity 4.3.4?

Cheers

 

We are working on a HoloStage (or 3 screen cave essentially) and considering the use of MiddleVR. They list compatibility issues with post-processing. In the old thread "requires full-screen pot-processing effects" was noted. Is that still true in this version and if so do you have an opinion about how a Unity project would look that spans across more than one monitor while using Amplify Texture? Stereo 3d will be in play. Support page about it: http://www.imin-vr.com/kb/vr-compliant-post-processing-effects-in-unity/
Thanks

 

Thank you for your interest in our product.

Amplify Texture is not a post-processing effect and should work with VR, and any number of views, without issues. We've actually used it ourselves on a few VR projects (stereo) so far.

Please feel free to give it a try. Let me know if you encounter any issues.

 

Hm, wouldn't using this amplify (pun intended) file size for end users of a game?, I don't think any player would be pleased with downloading several hundred gigabytes worth of texture files to play the game.

 

Hi SVGK,

Quite the opposite, actually.

We provide efficient variable bit-rate compression to achieve compression ratios much higher than those using regular block-based texture compression. If you convert a scene to AT, as is, your texture savings will most likely start at around 50%. Not to mention zero loading times for textures and other benefits.

Cheers

 

Wait, so does this work by streaming textures from the build files during gameplay?, are there any performance penalties?, and I suppose this means the textures could all be doubled (at least, based on what you said about savings starting at 50%) but the ZIP or whatever build file the end user downloads will be the same size as originally, is that correct?.

 

Yes. They'll be streamed from the build files / disk.

No, textures won't be doubled. They'll be halved. Typical on-disk DXT compression can give you 4:1 to 8:1 depending on settings. AT's on-disk texture compression can easily give you 16:1. If your build size is mostly textures, your AT build may easily end up with half the original size.

There are some performance penalties, mostly because;
- We need to know what pages to pull from disk (and it's all fully automatic)
- Material shaders have to be modified to support AT and they become slightly more complex.
- Streamed texture pages have to be decompressed
- We have to upload pieces of textures to the GPU very often at runtime

The benefits usually vastly outweigh the costs and we're constantly working to optimize the runtime. Additionally, we invite anyone to try our unlimited (albeit watermarked) trial version to freely evaluate if this plugin is ideal for their project.

 

I like the look of this, and I'll certainly buy this in the future, looks amazing.

I have a couple of questions regarding file sizes:

How high would a texture normally go or even need to go?, 4k is a lot, and I can't imagine going beyond 16k or even 8k on anything but a large structure, and even on game characters 4k may be enough.

When the larger, streamed textures are compressed, like say, 20k, 5 times the usual maximum, how big would they be compared to the normal size without using Amplify?.

Does the size of the texture have an effect on the performance hit from streaming and decompressing?.

How severe is the performance hit?, how bad do you think it would be with Unity 5 PBR?, which has things reacting to light in different ways and has more textures in each material.

The scene limit of 1 terabyte, does this mean that a scene bigger than 1000 units would end up looking bad?, because 1 texel per centimeter sounds very blurry and large, though I think I might be misunderstanding what you meant in the video.

That's it, and thanks for answering so quickly thus far.

 

Awesome, be sure to give it a go with our fully functional trial version: Download

That really depends on your workflow requirements, regardless of the texture size, like Diogo mentioned, you will benefit immensely from the virtualization technology. You could for example, pack similar groups into a single large texture, or use advanced methods such as multi-tile uv's, to name a few.

As a quick example, multi-tile uv’s would allow you to texture an entire building or even a character with a virtually unlimited amount of textures. Let’s say you used 20 4k textures, regardless of the number, the entire collection would be considered to be 1 single texture/draw call.

Compression ratios will vary depending on the textures, for more information check out the project page: Amplify Texture 1

AT1 & AT2 provide superior results when compared to standard DXT compression but the best way to see the advantages would be to try it out with your own data sets.

There is no performance hit caused by larger textures, when Amplify Texture streams a texture it does so directly from a pre-built virtual texture. In AT1 the virtual texture could go up to 512k x 512k pixels, the normal concept of texture size would not be a factor in performance since AT only streams the patches required in any given frame.

Amplify Texture 2 will support Physical Based Shaders. We have been working with the Alloy developers at RUST and we are about to release the third AT2 development build with full support. Alloy supports SkyShop based reflections, as a result, they are also compatible with AT2.

There is no inherent performance hit from using PBS with AT2. Do note that PBS alone will impact performance on older devices, with or without texture virtualization.

It really depends on the texel density used in the scene but 1 terabyte was the proposed limit back in Amplify Texture 1, not representative of the current iteration.

In Amplify Texture 2, not only can you use multiple virtual textures per-scene, each virtual texture may go up to 2M x 2M pixels. As a result, AT2 will end up supporting 64 Terapixel, of addressable texture space for a single camera, instead of the 4 Terapixel we mentioned earlier when it was first announced. That should be enough to map the entire Earth's surface at a density of roughly 3 meters per pixel.

I would like to invite you to check out Amplify Texture 2, the current version is far superior to AT1:

Amplify Texture 2 Product Page

Amplify Texture 2 - Unity Forum


A small note, when you pre-order AT2 you also receive AT1 for free and some cool discounts on our other products.

Let us know if you have any other questions.


All the best,

 

Sweet, though, about the 64 terapixels, I'm confused as to how big that is, enough to map the Earth surface at 3 pixels per meter, that would be about 300 pixels per centimeter for 5090 kilometers, and 1 pixel per centimeter at 15,270,000 kilometers.

Doesn't this mean now scenes can have 15 million terabytes of texture data? (probably uncompressed), I'm slightly skeptical that this is even possible.

 

Hi SVGK

Sorry about the late reply, I think your post got lost in the notifications.

That was a typo, promptly corrected in the post above.

Follow this thread instead, we will be posting an update very soon.

All the best,

 

Hello everyone! We are getting close to some new awesome Amplify Texture 2 updates, in the meantime we would like to invite you to check out the great work done at Clicked Inc. The Interactive Mars Navigation Installation is an older project but nonetheless a great use of Amplify Texture 1.

If you have not already check out the AT2 fully functional trial version: Download Page

Amplify Texture 2 - Unity Thread