Introducing Amplify Texture - Massive Virtual Texturing for Unity Pro

Hello,

Apologies for the delayed reply, there seems to be something wrong with the notifications on this thread.

Absolutely, you can use high-resolution textures exported from Substance Painter.

No, after a texture is virtualized size is not a factor. You could very well use 8k, 16k, or even 32k, it could not impact performance more that using smaller sizes.

 

Hello,

We would be happy to help, thank you for getting in touch. We have recently corrected an issue that was causing some Virtual Textures to use the same index number, based on your description, it seems that you might be experiencing the same problem. We have a temporary solution but, for now, you will have to manually set a unique ID number for each Virtual Texture; hopefully we can automate this process in the near future. We recommend keeping them in low numbers (1 to 16), 16 maximum per-scene.



After setting the Unique ID, click on Force Update Material; it's shouldn't be necessary to rebuild the Virtual Texture. Be sure to pick up the latest version directly from our site.

Amplify Products - Download

Looking forward to your feedback.

Thanks!

 

Hi, is there any news on ps4 support?

 

Hello,

Thanks for asking but, unfortunately, it's still in development. We don't have any relevant updates that we can share at the moment but we will keep you posted.

Thanks!

 

I am currently playing around with the Amplify Texture 2 demo and am trying to make it work with a custom shader. By looking at the Layers section on the Virtual Texture asset, I understand that your plugin packs the information into D, S and N maps in only the ways available in one of the presets and it seems there is no way to create custom channel layouts. Can and should I use several separate Virtual Texture assets for texture properties on a given material to fake a custom Layer layout?

Furthermore, I have not found documentation to explain how the Shader Properties in the Layers section behave - how it chooses which channels from those properties to pack and how it interprets several property names separated by semicolons.

Your documentation on custom shaders is currently lacking and the "Shader Conversion Package" with two example shaders explain only part of it.

 

Hello,

Thank you for your interest, we really appreciate it!

The Virtual Texture Presets are currently fixed, we do intend to provide an option for Custom Layers in the near future. Please bare in mind that AT2 is currently in development, some features are not complete. At the moment, AT2 offers you Presets for Standard Metallic/Specular, Lux, Alloy and Skyshop.

It really depends on what you intend to create, please elaborate.

That's how AT2 knows which textures it needs to look for in your shaders, how it works exactly really depends on the Preset/shader used. Notice the Specular/Metallic Layer, we need to use _SpecGlossMap;_MetallicGlossMap in order to have the Preset work with both Standard Shader workflows.

That depends on what and where you feed your textures to AT2. For example, if you feed a full RGBA texture to the Occlusion Layer, AT2 will automatically store it appropriately in a single channel. The reverse is also true, if you supply a single channel texture to a Layer using RGB, such as the Specular Layer, it will store your texture in RGB. The channels listed in the Virtual Texture asset correspond to the actual stored channels, not the the texture channels that it will look for when virtualizing your data. Take the Height Layer for example - N.B, it stores its data in the Virtual Texture Normal Layer in the Blue Channel.

Please do elaborate on what you need to build, we would be more than happy to guide you through the process. We need to improve our shader conversion documentation asap, it's quite old since we support the creation of AT2 compatible shaders in our Shader Editor.

Building AT2 compatible shaders with Amplify Shader Editor is extremely flexible.



Looking forward to your reply!

 

Thank you for the quick reply.

I am looking for a virtual texturing solution for an isometric pre-rendered open world with 4k+ background tiles. In addition to Albedo, Normals, Emit and Specular, it uses maps for Height (absolute vertical position in world space packed into two 8bit PNG channels, used for occlusion calculations) and Shadows (three daytime light directions prerendered into three 8bit channels, to be unpacked and multiplied on top of Albedo).

So you can see, the setup is different from the run of the mill PBR shader and requires more and different maps/channels. I assume I can use Albedo RGBA and Specular RGBA layers of several VirtualTextures on one shader but I just wanted to confirm.

Just to clarify. How does it:
1. choose/mix the channels when assigning RGBA into N.B?
2. choose which two channels of an RGBA map to store into N.AG (on Unity 5 Normal Map Layer) if I would like to store two channels of arbitrary information in there?
A humble suggestion would be to use the Shader Property field to define channels as a swizzle. "_Texture.rg" for example.

All in all, a slightly more flexible Layers section would go a long way to supporting a wider variety of games. I am so glad you already support orthographic camera which often seems to go neglected.

Once again, thanks for the very quick reply, always a good confidence boost towards the purchase.

 

AT2 could definitely alleviate the texture load on your project. To be clear, you can use virtualized and non-virtualized textures on the same shader. AT2 currently offers 3 full RGBA layers that it handles via the aforementioned presets, enough for most PBR workflows but you might end up using a few additional standard textures. For clarity, Virtual Texture refers to the actual container that will store your Virtualized Textures.

You could virtualize:
Albedo (_MainTex required) - RGBA
Specular - I'm assuming that it's full RGBA

At this point you have 1 full RGBA layer left.
Normals - Takes 2 channels
Height - Takes 1 channel

The only channel left at this point is the Occlusion channel, perhaps for the Emission channel?

The problem now becomes the 3 channel Shadow texture, there's no room left in the Virtual Texture. Depending on your workflow you could possibly store it in the Specular Layer (RGBA) and use non-virtualized Specular textures.

Unfortunately, not a the moment, the Materials are associated to specific Virtual Textures.(Search Folders)

1. As I mentioned, that depends on what and where you feed your textures to AT2. If you feed a full RGBA texture to the Occlusion Layer, AT2 will automatically store it appropriately in a single channel. The reverse is also true. All you need to make sure is that your shader is using the correct Properties set in your Virtual Texture, I strongly recommend examining the shaders included in the AT2 package, and the shaders attached to this post.

Here's an example with Albedo, Specular, Normals, Height and Occlusion made with the Amplify Shader Editor.

​

Just the Albedo and Normals.

​

2. This is a very specific case, the blue channel of your Normal is discarded because you know for a fact the length of the normal vector is 1, it's always positive. As result your Packed Normal stored in the virtual texture layer N.AG, and you'll be left with two channels left for Occlusion N.B and Height.R.

3. I'll pass it on to the developers but it might be an issue if you are using different types of shaders for different types of assets stored in the same Virtual Texture. I should also point out that the full version includes source code, you can customize as necessary.

Let me know if you have any followup questions, we would would be happy to elaborate.

Thanks!

 

I'm unable to send you direct messages for some reason. Can you contact me directly at support@amplify.pt? Your project looks very interesting, we would be more than happy to help you make the most of AT2.

Thanks!

 

Thank you, you have been very helpful and I'm getting to know the system the more I play around with the demo. So far it's looking like it works very well for our pre-rendered top-down open worlds. We can make do with 12 cache channels but I'd prefer to do it without the acrobatics to fit our project into PBR presets. Just noticed you have Customizable Virtual Texture Presets coming "very soon" and that is the one last piece missing.

I'll shoot you an e-mail with some further questions.

 

No problem, always happy to help. I understand what you mean, custom Virtual Texture Layers would be the ideal solution. Unfortunately, AT2 is currently in development, changes made to that particular system will no doubt affect some of or design decisions; not necessarily in a bad way, we just need to workout a few things later on so that we can ensure that it performs to our standards.

Our editor can definitely help juggle channels around. The shader bellow uses 2 blended full RGBA textures, 1 stored in the Albedo Layer and the other in the Specular Layer. What defines where the texture will be stored in the Virtual Texture is the Virtual Texture Node and the Property used.

​

Note that although they are stored in different Virtual Texture layers, they are both used in the Albedo input.

 

Hello,
I've seen that a couple of years ago 2d sprites were not supported, and I was wondering if anything changed about that.
We are working with very high res 2d sprite sheets, and having a way to use such an approach would be a lifesaver (as many times already Amplify Shader Editor saved us already).

 

Hello!

Unfortunately, we do not support 2D Sprites on Amplify Texture 2, apologies for the inconvenience.

We're glad that ASE has proven useful on your project, thank you for the kind words!

 

How do I get it? I don't see it for sale on the asset store or on your website.

 

I'm particularly interested in console support. Any time frame for that?

 

Thank you for your interest, we really appreciate it. Unfortunately, we have actually suspended public licensing as we further development in order to meet goals set forth to early adopters. Due to our small team size we are unable to take on new users or custom development requests at this time.

We currently can't offer you an official availability date but we'll keep you posted on any related developments.

Our apologies for the inconvenience.

 

I never had problems downloading from your website.
Reading you're not selling the product anymore I thought it would be wise to download the latest version but my product key was not working anymore.
I just sent you an email.
Thanks!

 

Thank you for getting in touch, it's great to hear from you!
Apologies for any misunderstanding, we only suspended AT2 licensing for new users in order to meet all early adopter goals, it does not affect your ability to use or access AT2.

Try pasting the key without spaces, be sure to contact us directly support@amplify.pt if the problem persists, thanks!

 

Hello Where I can buy your product? Even Early access, i saw in first post that You have preorder option. We really would to test it as we make quite big game with photogrammetry this is something for us. We really need it on actuall progress of our game development, later will be harder to implement it, We would to use Amplify Texture instead of Granite, because your system supports more number of platform. I hope you could send us even watermark version, or early access version, Cause if we wont test it now we probablye will be forced to use other systems like granite.

Thank you for your work

 

Hello,

Thank you for your interest, we really appreciate it. Unfortunately, as mentioned above, we have actually suspended public licensing as we further development in order to meet goals set forth to early adopters. Due to our small team size we are unable to take on new users or custom development requests at this time.

Apologies for the inconvenience.

Thanks!

PS:We need to update our thread main post.

 

Any approximate date of when you start sell? If not we have to start work on granite instead of Amplify Texture

 

Hey there, thank you for your interest!

Unfortunately, we currently can't offer you an official availability date but we'll keep you posted on any related developments.

Our apologies for the inconvenience.

 

Hey there!

Amplify Texture looks really amazing and would be a great (and very necessary) tool for our project. Do you have any updates on the current status of the development?

Regards,
Ben

 

Hello, thank you for your interest!

We've recently introduced support for Xbox One and Android (beta), other consoles should follow soon but, unfortunately, we don't have an official availability date.

 

Just two small but important questions.

1. Does this asset support RTP ReliefTrrainPack shader? If no, will this feature be added anytime soon?
2. Can we integrate it into Unity's ShaderGraph tool? if yes, how?

 

Hello,

1. Depends on which features you require, AT2 requires custom shaders. Not to say you cannot build similar effects but, currently, we don't provide features similar to RTP.
2. As far as we know, it's not currently possibly but you can use it with Amplify Shader Editor.

Thanks!

 

Hello,

I'm highly interested in your asset, but I don't know if it it can do what I need.
Can the asset load large image file (png, or even better tif) at runtime via API? I need to load large orthographic images (e.g. 23000 x 14000 pixels) that I get in tif format. I need to apply this image as texture to a material. Do you provide any kind of (runtime!) API to do so?

Best regards

 

Hello,

Thank you for your interest, we really appreciate it.

Although AT2 is capable of handling large textures without common limitations, all texture data must be pre-processed in the editor.

Apologies for the inconvenience.

Thanks!

 

Is this available? I can't find it anywhere.

 

Hello, thank you for your interest!

Unfortunately, we've suspended public licensing as we further development in order to meet goals set forth to early adopters. We currently can't offer you an official availability date but we'll keep you posted on any related developments.

Our apologies for the inconvenience, please let us know if you have any further questions.

 

Well that sucks... I was looking at all your tools, and I always find them to be one of the best quality tools there are in the unity store. Is there no way to purchase your extension for full cost and agreeing to the limitations that you would need to bind your product to as it is still in development?

At the least any ETA on releasing it again?

 

Unfortunately, we don't have any official ETA's, and there's no way to purchase the asset at this time.

We'll be sure to update this post as soon as we have any updates to share with the community, thank you for understanding!

 

Hello, i purchased AT2 over a year ago and i actually have one big problem. I'm using Unity 2017.2.0f3.
I got an error virtualizing the tesselation maps and i dont know how to fix it.
Maybe you can help me. I attached a picture with the error. (In this picture i used the virtual layer occlusion, but i get the same error with the displacement layer and _DispTex or _HeightMap as property)
Thank you in advance

Greetings

 

Hello,

Thank you for getting in touch, we would be happy to help.

Please share the used shader and virtual texture parameters for further examination on our side. We're available via support@amplify.pt.

Thanks!

 

Hello Ricardo,

i send the shader and the virtual texture asset to your support mail adress.

Have a nice day

 

Hi,

I recently upgraded a project to Unity's HDRP and AT2 doesn't seem to be compatible. Are there plans to support the new SRPs in Unity?

Thanks

 

Hey there! Unfortunately, there are no current plans to support the new Scriptable Rendering Pipeline, apologies for the inconvenience.

 

Is this product still available for purchase? Amplify Texture's page on your website states that public licensing is suspended.

 

I'm afraid not, licensing has been suspended as we work to meet early adopter goals.

Apologies for the inconvenience.

 

Hi,

I just discovered this product, and it looks like something I would be very interested in. Is it currently back on sale? Or will it be at some point?

 

Hello,

Thank you for your interest but, unfortunately, we suspended all public licensing and we don't have any additional details in regards to future versions. AT2 is currently being maintained for existing early-adopters.

Thanks!

 

@PhoenixAdvanced As a side note, Unity acquired Graphine (who makes Granite virtual texturing) and Unity has ETA of 2020 (no specific dates) for official virtual texturing support with SRPs.

This on it's turn puts people wanting Virtual Texturing today in a bit of bad place because neither Amplify or Graphine has now VT for sale (Granite was pulled from sale on the acquisition and hasn't been updated since).

 

Yeah, it's a bit of a tricky situation, that's partially why we currently only support up to Unity 2018.3(legacy); it's not feasible to keep up or rework everything to function with SRP. The Unity option will be safer to use in the long run.

 

Thank you both for that information, it's a shame that AT2 is not currently available.

My project is not currently compatible with the HDRP, will Graphine be available for the Built-In render pipeline at any point?

If not, there doesn't seem to be any virtual texturing support for the build-in render pipeline, which could be an issue...

 

Based on the github's WIP branch, they are going to support both URP and HDRP. And taking into account that built-in has been in maintenance mode for a while, I seriously doubt they will add any new functionality to it.

You might be able to acquire paid Granite license manually from Unity, at least Graphine told me I could get extra licenses when I asked how this would go now that Unity owns them but they haven't updated this beyond Unity 2018.

 

That's good! Hopefully there will be some option available for the built in render pipeline at some stage.

Thanks for your reply!

 

Hope so too