[FREE] Introducing Amplify Occlusion 2 – Ground Truth Ambient Occlusion, up to 2X faster!

Hello,

Thank you for the heads-up, we'll look into it asap.

I'm not entirely sure what you're referring to, can you provide additional information/screenshots regarding the bright spots? A screenshot of your current PPS parameters, with DOF, could also help us identify possible issues.

We'll definitely look into providing additional controls.

Thanks!

 

Hi, here are screenshots of the issue (don't mind DoF being over the top here, it's just for the sake of demonstrating the issue):

This is how the HD Template looks with PP that has:
- only Amplify Occlusion enabled (with it's default values)
- only Depth of Field enabled (with Focus Distance set to 2, others values at default)
- with Amplify Occlusion + Depth of Field (black artifacts now visible)

Also, if you add Color Grading on PP, DoF issues get multiplied. For example if you take HD Template out of the box, disabling Color Grading on modest DoF values will make the black artifacts go away but they'll return if you go more aggressive on DoF.

Additionally here's a screenshot of what happens when you scale the viewport in editor with Amplify Occlusion enabled.

 

I also noticed that Amplify Occlusion gets applied on top of emissive materials as well, like in that HD template the Construction lights light bulbs get dimmed (more noticeable with stronger AO). This doesn't happen with PP stacks AO at all.

 

Hello,

Thank you for the heads-up!

We need to look into the scale issue. The artifacts seem to be specific to the order; you can make a small adjustment on AmplifyOcclusionPostProcessing.cs to resolve it, change PostProcessEvent.AfterStack to PostProcessEvent.BeforeStack on line 43.

I'm afraid that due to the way the PPS works we can't currently add it in deferred mode, which would allow for that type of behavior. Unity's own AO is hardcoded into the stack, which is not ideal for us to implement.

In other words, stay tuned as we're looking for possible improvements as HD SRP and the PPS matures.

Thank you for understanding.

 

Thanks for the great asset. I like it a lot

For me it crashes on IOS 8. Even though i am trying to support older players, i dont expect IOS 8 support, and It's absolutely no problem for me to detect the ios version and disable the option in the game , so no worries there. But I just wanted to check if this is a known issue?

BTW i am guessing its related to a unity metal shader bug with some compute (i think) shaders - for example my IrisFX shader also crashes on IOS 8 (and 9 actually) so i just disable it in the scene on those versions.

 

Thank you for the heads up, can you send us the crash log?

Thanks!

 

Just got this while it's on sale. First impressions look interesting. But when I play with the radius and thickness sliders in the editor they don't work correctly. They don't accurately show the values that they should be showing. For example if the radius is set to 0 there is still a lot of AO and the thickness does interesting stuff too pulling it past the slider limit from 0-1.

While doing that disable and enable the AO by deactivating the component and it will refresh to give the accurate results so you can compare the values. It seems to be having refresh issues while it's active and it's going from a grainy low quality effect to a smooth effect as I click around the scene or move the camera/mouse in editor mode.

I can send a video demonstration if you have trouble replicating this.

 

Thanks!

Please do, it might help us identify possible issues.

 

I sent you the details in a conversation. Just checking since you haven't responded to it.

 

I have an issue here, I have a transparent object and an opaque object in transparent queue and both produce these artifacts. On the right you see debug view so the rendering is fine, it must have something to do with composition.
Don't you just multiply the AO to the screen?

I use default forward rendering and it appears that this issue happens only in game view. I have the latest Amplify release (Nov 29). It seems to happen only if both HDR and MSAA are enabled.

 

Greetings,

Apologies for the delay, we're 1 man short this week.(flu season)

It does not seem like an issue, Temporal Filtering takes a few frames to update so if you're seeing it on the Game Window without Playing the occlusion effect is going to remain visible as seen in your example videos.

I'm afraid there's not much we can do on our side as this is a Unity specific situation. You can always disable Temporal Filtering while tweaking or adjust it during play.

We would be happy to help!

What's your current Unity version?

Can you share a small sample directly to support@amplify.pt?

Thanks!

 

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Hello everyone,

To anyone that might have missed it, we're happy to announce that Amplify Occlusion 2.0 now supports HD SRP via the Post Processing Stack.

Get it while you can at half price, sale ends on the 7th.

Amplify Occlusion - Asset Store Page

 

As long as it will work fine in game view thats ok.
Did you address the slider inconsistency?

 

What do you mean by slider inconsistency?

Thanks!

 

Is Amplify Occlusion 1 available somehow to new Amplify Occlusion 2 owners?

 

Not officially supported but I would be happy to send you the last 1.x version.

Send us your invoice to support@amplify.pt.

Thanks!

 

It looks like the last update has fixed some rendering artifacts on the PS4. It now renders without issue in both Forward and Deferred but the frame rate loss is still significant. In Deferred, it's about 2.5ms and in Forward it's over 5ms. Is this considered normal?

 

Thank you for letting us know, could you also provide a screenshot or further information on the settings that you're currently using on the AO component?

 

It's in the conversation-In video 1 called AO buttons. Keep moving the sliders up and down for radius and thickness and look to see what happens. You can enable and disable Amplify Occlusion to see the results of the slider become different when re-enabled. The video shows it in detail especially around the 10 second mark as I am sliding the value of thickness from 0 to full over and over and you can see the AO in my scene responding weird.

 

That's all due to the temporal filtering, as I mentioned previously, you're not seeing an accurate representation of the values you are tweaking.

I recommend testing it during play or without temporal filtering so that you can see a more accurate representation.

 

Hi, quick question now that SRP support is in place: have you ever benchmarked the 2.0 version against any consoles or laptops? We are working with Intel GPU unfortunately, so could really use some numbers to figure out if we could ever use this solution.

(I know the store page did say mid-range GPU = 1ms but that really isn't enough info to determine my case.)

 

Hey there, we don't have any SRP benchmarks to share at the moment but we can definitely prepare some of our work data soon.

 

​

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Seems like the SRP support will be shortlived joy for HDRP :/ see https://forum.unity.com/threads/new-post-processing-stack-pre-release.435581/page-20#post-3973252

I hope Unity will provide later on details on how to extend the PP V3 on upcoming HDRP but looking at the SebLagarde's comments, it probably means complete redesign anyway.

 

Intel HD is really not ideal for these type of AO, as you can in the stats below, the results are not the best when compared to a more recent GPU. You can improve it by disabling temporal filtering but it might not provide the quality you expect.

Intel Iris Graphics 5100 (with blur, temporal filtering, etc)
1080p, Deferred, Normals GBuffer, 12.8 ms
1080p, Forward, Normals None, 11.9 ms
720p, Deferred, Normals Gbuffer, 5.8 ms
720p, Forward, Normals None, 5.5 ms

GTX 970, BlackSmith, Camera (0,14,-50)
SampleCount: Low, Downsample, CacheAware, Radius 4, Blur3, Temporal
1080p Deferred, Normals GBuffer: 1.19 ms
1080p Forward, Normals None, 0.98 ms
3840x2160 Deferred, Normals GBuffer: 4.55 ms
3840x2160 Forward, Normals None: 4.23 ms

That's quite alright, SRP is still in heavy development; we'll be keeping an eye out for any related updates.

 

Just an FYI but the latest version of AO is causing weird graphics thread corruption and that gets worse with each time a new scene loads. Typically after the 2nd or 3rd load, the game hard crashes. I'm going to get with Sony to try and figure out how to get you details to debug.

 

Ambient Occlusion is not showing up on built apk. Playing on a Samsung Note 3.
Anything I need to do to set it up specifically?

One camera, amplify occlusion component added and lowest settings enabled. Works in editor on Windows machine.

 

Thank you for the heads-up, any chance of additional information or a test project?

What's your current Unity version?

Could be the OpenGL ES version, I would recommend removing 2.0 from your graphics API options as AO requires 3.0+. (Project Settings > Player > Other Settings - Rendering)

 

We're trying to get into QA at the moment so we're pretty busy but I'll try to make a test project as soon as I can. I'm currently using 2017.f3.f1. So what game did you all release on the PS4?

 

On 2018.3f2, with Amplify Occlusion 2.0.6, when 2D mode is enabled in the Scene tab, I get the following console warning spam:

[AmplifyOcclusion] Deferred Method requires a Deferred Shading path. Switching to Post Effect Method.
UnityEngine.Debug:LogWarning(Object)
AmplifyOcclusionBase:Update() (at Assets/AmplifyOcclusion/Plugins/AmplifyOcclusionBase.cs:551)

I can confirm that rendering path is set to Deferred in all Graphics Tiers, as well as all cameras are set to Deferred. Disabling 2D mode in the Scene tab stops the console spam, as well as setting the effect to Post Effect rather than Deferred. I'd like to use Deferred... can you look into the warnings please?

 

Looking forward to the sample. We're still working on it, it's called Decay of Logos.

Thanks for the heads-up, we'll look into it asap.

Happy holidays!

 

Thanks for your reply, Im considering moving to this asset but I would like to know if you have any data that shows the superior performance of AO2 over PPS AO.

Thanks

 

I really like Amplify products but this one is getting an uninstall to the bin. I do a lot of ArchVis contract work and am always looking to further improve Unity's shading (which means soft calibrated shadows and shade highlights...AO). I just purchased this yesterday and eager to give it a really great test. I always test a character model first because of some unique variables it does to Post Effects. So....Amplify Occlusion did not even pass the initial test.

I do all sorts of screen shots to customers while in scene view....with these....no way. I lose contracts.

Note: I do like 'some' of the shading it does but all the extras it does just looks really poor. I am comparing this to the absolutely rock solid and fast HBAO by Michael Jimenez as well. To be honest outside of the crappy 'Drop Shadow' I cannot really see any difference in Play Mode. The performance is also identical. I think I will stick with the proven champion => HBAO.

I gave no review for this yet and since I have been doing for a long time now I indeed have played with just about all the sliders that I could visually see things changing.

Perhaps you can enlighten me?

Here are the comparison pics (HD1080p).
Unity 2018.3.0.f2
Component Order on Main Camera
- Amplify Occlusion or HBAO
- Beautify
- Amplify FXAA

First pic shows seriously poor artifacts and flickering in Scene View.


This pic shows Amplify Occlusion GTAO (Left) to HBAO (Right) in Play Mode
*The only perceivable difference is the ugly drop shadow on Amplify Occlusion

 

Hello! Although we don't have any relevant comparison data to share, since the benchmarks we've ran in the past were done with an earlier version of the PPS, we have shared some updated stats in this post.

Hello, we're glad that you've been enjoying our products and we're terribly sorry that AO2 has been a bad experience so far. We hope that you can share a screenshot of the values being used or even a sample, if possible, so that we can try to isolate any issues and help you find the best settings for your project.

If you're willing to share a sample, you can do so through support@amplify.pt, and we'll get back to you as soon as possible.

Regarding the scene view artifacts, unfortunately these are expected since we're unable to have filtering in the scene view due to limitations of the technique being used. We use GTAO, not HBAO, and since both techniques are different situations and limitations such as this one can occur due to certain specific features.

Depending on the settings and assets being used, GTAO should provide much more accurate results than HBAO.
Please note that the Game view won't display accurate results without the 'Play Mode' being active, as it takes a few frames for the Temporal Filtering to act after you press Play.

We appreciate that you've reached out to us rather than just leaving a bad review, we always do our best and try to go one step beyond when it comes to offer support for our assets and we sincerely hope that we can help you make the best out of AO2.

 

Just use your default settings by installing. Does not matter what you do to the sliders it will not get rid of the ugly drop shadow until you drop the GTAO to 0....basically turning it off.

Well then....be honest about that RIGHT ON THE SALES PAGE. Your pictures and sales/marketing text says nothing about it. You are being dishonest about your product. Simple as that. So turn the feature off in Scene View (like HBAO has off by default) so that these artifacts are NOT present in screen shots to our (yours as well) customers. And if you can get rid of that ugly drop shadow since it is not supposed to be there in the first place...perhaps not likely because of the shading technique....but again...be honest about it.

So this is a $40 (my price) waste bin product. I am being honest about it right here.

 

Hey there,

Let's dial it back for a second before we start throwing accusations around. I think we can have a civil discussion here, if your not happy with the product you can contact sales@amplify.pt - no questions asked.

We clearly have very different views of what being dishonest means, and I understand your frustration given your assumption, but the scene preview is complementary and not a feature that will be listed anywhere; we NEVER list anything that's not supported unless it prevents a product from performing as described/intended.

There's no drop shadow, the effect is simply created differently with this technique. If you're not going to share your settings we can't replicate the same exact conditions on our side in order to best advise you. Based on your discourse, I assume your not interested in actually determining if there's a problem that we can improve upon but you could tweak your Radius and Thickness values in order to approximate it to your reference.

I suppose we could add an option to disable its scene view preview, that's the type of feedback we can actually use.

Once more, if you are not happy with the results, misinterpreted the asset store information, or simply don't like the GTAO technique, contact us via the sales email and we will work it out.

Treat us with the same respect we treat you and you can reach out to us at any time.

Thanks!

 

It is a 'Drop Shadow' or 'Haloing Effect' or 'Radial Shadowing Blur Effect' or 'GTAO Effect Anomaly'....or pick whatever you want to call it. It is there and visible and 100% Amplify Occlusion.

As for seeking a refund...I know how things work and getting one has issues. Like having to go around the Asset Store with personal info to get transfers. Not going there....even with Amplify being as large a developer as you/they are. I'll call it one of the other dozens of other products on the store I simply shrug my shoulders and say Oh Well. For me $40 is not that much money....as well I will not give you folks a review. Just calling it a wash off. I am okay with that. Let us call this a donation to your company to keep you folks producing great products.

As for treating you folks with respect...I am. I am giving your forum an honest view of your product and not going to give it a free pass. You folks have a lot of 5 stars on this product and I am not sure how? I am not going to detract from that because other than this AO2 product Amplify Creations has a stellar track record in my book. I have almost all of your products and use them.

As for AO2....if you can rid the Drop Shadowing...ere...let us call it Radial Blur Haloing Effect...I am on board. You would have another amazing product. For now though AO2 is not what you are selling. It is not this....
Quote: => "Amplify Occlusion 2.0 sets out to deliver a new industry standard for fast, high-quality Screen Space Ambient Occlusion in Unity."

If you folks want to leave it the way it is....then so be it. I personally think you should be honest about the Haloing effect being part of the GTAO effect and it is the way it is. Fair enough....this effect will not work for ArchVis and other Real Rendering requiring really good shadowing with no artifacts.

This is my last post on this...not going to argue about it.

Well....since your team is being too lazy to look at your default import settings for this issue. I'll take 50 minutes out of my time to do it for you. As well as show you what is happening in your post effect 'solution'. You can call an apple and orange but it is still an apple.

I set up the scene exactly the same....

So...your Default Import Settings and Add Component to the Camera.


Your Default Settings with Beautify and Amp FXAA disabled. Drop Shadowing is worse.


Your Default Settings but with Sampling to Very High. The Drop Shadowing is even worse.


Reducing Radial Bluring to try to remove the Drop Shadowing....almost gone but overall shading is also almost gone.


Reducing Intensity does what is expected and reduces over all shadowing...including removing the Drop Shadow

 

I've asked you once and I'll ask you one last time, be respectful and we can talk. You claim to to do so but on one hand call us dishonest, on the other "lazy" and accuse us of a "wash off". Let's take it down a notch, our support team has no obligation to take on your blatant abuse.

What you call "lazy", we call being thorough - requesting additional details is standard procedure for an exact replication of the reported problem. Only now do you tell us how you are using other post-processing solutions, did it not cross your mind that we would need to know that?

If you are not sure about our ratings, maybe take 5m to read the reviews to learn that our support team is one of the most dedicate you will find in this community.; of course a good and well maintained product also helps.

Now that we have that out of the way, let's get into the actual support part of this reply.

GTAO works differently from HBAO, the effect that you are referring to is unavoidable, so to speak, but can definitely be mitigated. It's also important to note that you can use more than 1 AO component, this is great if you want to apply different levels for high and low frequency AO. There's definitely room for improvement, this is by no means a stagnant product, we have at least 1 developer dedicated solely to this product that spends most of his time on R&D looking for possible improvements and optimizations.

Example with 2 AO components:


This method is far superior do HBAO but I understand if you are looking for something else, there's nothing wrong with that. A refund is pretty straightforward, all we need is your invoice number, but I think the results speak from themselves.

Amplify Occlusion 2 (GTAO) on the left, 1 on the right(HBAO based); high radius.



Adjusting the Radius, Quality, Thickness, and Bias, could help you achieve similar results.

 

Wow....just wow. You actually can like/sell this effect for HD Fidelity? In any case....refund email to your sales link has been sent. We can call this what it is.
Regards

 

You've completely lost me there.

In any case, we're always available to talk.

 

For any other user with questions regarding the issue above, feel free to post them as we will be happy to elaborate.

In the example above, the AO solution seems to be working as expected requiring simply further tweaking. In any case, the effect is calculated differently from HBAO.

- The main issue, so to speak, seems to be the AO Radius(Unity units) which could be too high for a 1x1 grid.(considering the size of the character)
-The PowerExp ensures that you can increase the overall occlusion effect if you find that it's less pronounced.
-You can get rid of AO on directly lit surfaces by using the deferred mode.
-Always test the AO effect with and without other Post-Effects in order to be sure there's no conflict, and be sure to let us know what you are using, and in what order, for a more accurate examination.

Thanks!

 

Hi, I'm testing the assets with VR in single pass, but i'm having weird artifacts, and the left and right eyes see different occlusion images, naturally this cause the unusability of the AO.
If I use the multi pass everything is working fine.
There is some parameters to tweak or to set to make the ambient occlusion work properly with single pass, or it's just impossible to use?
Thanks.

 

Hello!

We don't currently support Single Pass Instanced, can you confirm whether you're you using Single Pass or Single Pass Instanced?

 

Is there an ETA on Single Pass support?

 

Hello, no ETA on Single Pass Instanced support as that feature is still in Preview, so we're waiting for further developments on Unity's side as we haven't been able to get it to work without any issues on our side.

 

Hi,
we are not using single pass instanced, hust single pass.
the effect is unusable.
current settings is camera in deferred, and single pass.
if we set deferred and multipass everything works fine.
in single pass the occlusion cause weird effects.
adding the script by default values it shows up with a king of dark screen in front of all the screen (so not like an ambient occlusion, but like if there is a transparant courtains in front od the screen) that change intensity changing the camera orientation.
tweaking the parameters, and only with downsampling on, we can see a sort of ambient occlusion, but is really bad, and it differs from one eye to another.

 

Thank you for sharing additional details.

Could you please try using the following options and share a screenshot of the results with us:

- PerPixelNormals: None
- Downsample: Disabled
- CacheAware: Disabled
- Blur: Disabled
- Temporal: Disabled

Also, which VR solution are you using in your project?

 

Hi- cool asset, but I am getting a persistent cascading error:

[AmplifyOcclusion] Deferred Method requires a Deferred Shading path. Switching to Post Effect Method.
UnityEngine.Debug:LogWarning(Object)
AmplifyOcclusionBase:Update() (at Assets/AmplifyOcclusion/Plugins/AmplifyOcclusionBase.cs:551)

This occurs, even after I set a deferred shading path.

So- any help on figuring out what is going on, here?

Thanks in advance!

 

Hello, this is a harmless warning that should be fixed in an upcoming build, apologies for the inconvenience.

Could you please share your current settings, together with target platform, so that we can ensure that the fix addresses your particular case? Thanks!

 

Hi,
I have similar problem.. I am working on VR game and now I am trying to add your occlusion plugin to the project. I use deferred rendering path for my project and Single Pass rendering method (not Single Pass Instanced). I use SteamVR and Unity 2017.3.0f3

Your plugin works either if I set "Apply Method = PostEffect" or if I switch to Multi Pass rendering method.
If I use Single Pass and "Apply Method = Deferred" weird things happen. See attachments. I even tried disabling all the stuff you suggested above (PerPixelNormals, Downsample, CacheAware, Blur and Temporal) and it did not help.

Does that mean that Amplify Occlusion does not work with this setup? (Deferred rendering, Single Pass, Deferred apply method) Am I destined to use either MultiPass or PostEffect apply method? It is not a huge deal for me to use PostEffect, but I'd like to use deferred if possible due to better results imho.

Thanks for answer, help or advice,
Martin