Graphics PIDI : Advanced Skin Shader 2

HDRP support is now available in the Standard Edition!

 

Many thanks, when you add the micro skin

Thanks =D, when you add a dynamic micro skin let me know, ll love to buy it as add on or in the standard tool ^^

 

Version 2.3 of PIDI : Advanced Skin Shader 2 is coming out very soon and it has plenty of improvements and big updates :

• HDRP and URP variants of the shader updated to version 7.21 on Unity 2019.3 and above
• HDRP port has now been marked as stable
• HDRP now supports CPU based region map mixing to allow for any number of wrinkle maps
• URP now supports CPU based region map mixing to allow for any number of wrinkle maps

With this latest update we achieve core feature parity between all three main rendering pipelines (Built-in, Universal RP and HDRP).




We are also working hard on expanding the integrated tattoos / decals system to allow for more control and texture mixing while reducing its actual cost within the shader as well as on porting the stylized skin shaders over to HDRP and URP.

Later this year, we will also be working on some early implementations of micro-detail distortion for the skin, but this is still in an early stage so we will talk more about it when we have more news to share

We hope these will be great news for you!

Version 2.3 will be available between the end of this week and Wednesday, March 18

 

So I bought this to try making human avatars look more realistic...
Do you have suggestions for how to integrate this with UMA (default) avatars?

https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/characters/uma-2-unity-multipurpose-avatar-35611

 

Hi there,

We would ask you to please try to reach us out on our support email with additional details of what you want to achieve.

You can use most of the features of our shader with any model just like you would with any other Unity material (we recommend using the newly added "Basic" shaders) but in order to use more advanced features such as dynamic wrinkles and accurate translucency it is necessary that you have some knowledge about modelling / texturing since you will need to generate the additional normal maps and other textures needed by the asset, or use a third party tool to generate them (we do not know if UMA generates wrinkle maps by default).

If your character is semi-procedural or fully procedural you will not be able to use the GPU tension maps since they require you to patch the geometry of your character. You will need to use the CPU tension maps instead.

We hope this general tips help you get started, but please again reach out through our support email with your invoice number and we will try our best to assist you in more detail. Furthermore, an UMA specific guide for basic integration is being currently written for our online documentation and should be up before the end of this month.

Again, we hope this helps and thank you for choosing our product. Have a great day!

 

I just want to get skin shaders to work on the default (UMA) Unity Multipurpose Avatars. I assume that this is a common request since a lot of Unity devs use UMA. Could you please take a look at UMA to see how your asset integrates?

 

I'm sorry, did I understand right that now PIDI have skin shaders that could be used with a regular shader approach (instead of controlling shader with scripts)?

 

Hi there,

As of a few versions ago, PIDI Advanced Skin Shader 2 (Standard Edition) includes a small shader variant that does not require the script. It has the following restrictions :

• Does not work on deferred (requires script, uses functionality not included in Unity by default)
• Does not work with skin decals / tattoos (requires script to control advanced blending and mixing of decals)
• Does not work with wrinkle maps (requires script, uses functionality not available in Unity by default)
• Standard Pipeline only (Universal RP, HDRP and mobile variants are coming in the next update)

The script is still the main way of using this asset and all its features with the simple variant being recommended for simpler projects / materials where the more advanced features of the asset are not required.

As of next week, the small basic shader will also be included in the Lite Edition and its SRP / Mobile addons.

Furthermore, a second variant of this "Simple" shader with standard names (to ensure compatibility with UMA) will be added in an update between the end of April and the first days of May (depends entirely on approval times of the Asset Store which, right now, are slightly slower than usual)

In our roadmap we want to add basic tattoos/decals support to this simple variant through a custom inspector in the material itself, and we expect this to be available in late May.

We hope this helps!

 

Oh, thanks for such a detailed response! Since I'm not interested in wrinkles & decals but interested in your custom PBR skin shading with HDRP support my asset of choice should be a Lite Edition after an update + HDRP addon, am I understand correctly?

If you please, I have a couple more questions regarding the small shader variant.
1) do you use a dual-lobe specular in your shading model or just a simple one layer spec?
2) is it possible to use a coating specular layer over the default brdf model?
3) do you use a mask to define sss or only to define translucency? Is translucency/backscatter separated from the sss?
4) I saw a shader editor nodes on screenshots. Will you share a graph of HDRP shader, so it will be possible to tweak it with adding my own nodes or you'll provide only compiled shader?

 

We'll try to reply to your questions as best as we can :

1) Our shader for HDRP uses the Lit variant for HDRP with a dual lobe specular in its latest iteration (coming in early May). It is made with ShaderGraph and fully editable.
2) Using a coating specular is not recommended since it can interfere with the other specularity passes of the shader
3) We use a mask only for translucency and backscatter. Again, these are based on the Lit variant of the HDRP shader so they behave following the standard SSS + translucency model implemented in HDRP through a custom diffusion profile and some tweaks in the graph itself.

There is no HDRP Add on for Lite yet, and after some internal discussion it is not yet decided whether there will be an HDRP add on for Lite or not since the main selling points of the asset for a high end pipeline such as HDRP are its advanced features (wrinkles, decals) and the Lite Edition is targeted towards lower end graphics and smaller projects.

In short, HDRP for Lite is still up in the air as we decide whether a Lite edition really matches the results expected in a high end pipeline such as HDRP and whether enough users of the Lite edition have interest in HDRP (since right now most if not all of them are targeting Mobile, Standard and URP workflows)

We hope this helps

 

Yes, it helps a lot! Thank you! So, my asset of choice is "Advanced Skin Shader 2 - Standard Edition" then

 

Hello again! I just got the asset and I feel a little disappointed. I read once again your previous answers and now I see that formally you did warn me, but I still feel like a sales manager on a used car market tricked me. I thought my intention was very clear when I said "I'm not interested in wrinkles & decals but interested in your custom PBR skin shading with HDRP support". It would be honest to answer that you don't use custom skin shading in HDRP and just use the default unity's solution. But you said it's "based on the Lit variant... uses the Lit variant..." so I had a feeling that you add some custom solution to the lit shader... But you actually don't. You just sell me a default unity StackLit shader for $65. I understand that your main asset value is a complex solution for wrinkles and it's my own fault I was thinking about nonregular asset use and didn't clarify what you say precisely. So I can't blame anyone except myself to be so stupid for a second time. Just letting you know - random person from the internet (me) condemns your manner of doing business.

To add some value to this message except pathetic whining I have a small tech feedback:
1. Actually you don't use dual-lobe specular in HDRP shader
2. You use unity's StackLit shader which is not recommended by Unity's tech to use in-game (and was made mostly for visualization and demo purpose)
3. Specular color is doing something weird (setting it to full white result in adding a grey tone to albedo)
4. Scattering color is just a color multiplier to occlusion map
5. while occlusion level is a ruler to regulate the intensity of this scattering color, but not the occlusion strength itself

 

Hi there,

As I told you before, and as you can see from the many forum posts here and otherwise :

1) HDRP is a feature still being introduced which was in BETA in the release immediately before the latest update. It is still under development, as we iterate over what we've been working on for HDRP. HDRP was a pipeline declared "not ready for production" internally by Unity until very recently and up to this date its shader macros suffer considerable changes which slows down and limits what we can do for it outside of standard ShaderGraph use. Our implementation is very recent, subject to change and improvements as was the case during the first months of the URP variant we released.
2) See answer above.
4 and 5) We told you before that the scattering and its options are regulated through the diffusion profile like is standard in HDRP. There are the options you need.

We do not appreciate at all your insinuations about being tricked. You have been given ample warning both times about what the asset does, how it works, what its main purpose is etc. We have never refused to answer any of your questions nor limited you in any way in how many you can ask. Furthermore, we didn't give you any recommendations about which version of our asset to buy nor encouraged you in any way to buy our asset (thanks not in small part to the bad experience we had with you as a customer before), we simply limited ourselves to answer all your questions.

We are not responsible for user's "feelings" about what our assets do or how they should work, especially when we are always available to answer as many questions as needed from all our customers, always transparent and ready to answer precisely to any doubts in order to avoid cases where users do not read descriptions and are not capable (or willing) to understand what the asset they are buying is vs what they feel it should be and ensure that the users know fully well if they should buy our asset or go with a different option.

We did not sell you a 65 dollars default shader. You bought a complete skin shading solution for Mobile, VR, built in forward, built in deferred, for Universal RP and very recently HDRP which offers a very unique dynamic wrinkles system in all platforms. The HDRP graphs (in plural, since there are several variants for you to choose) are complex shader graphs with custom nodes in order to support dynamic wrinkles and other advanced features of the shader, with even more planned for the future.

You decided to ignore warnings and go with your feeling and on top of it only use the most recent addition to the system without any of the components that add value to it. If you buy an expensive car just because you feel it will make a great sofa despite multiple warnings about it being a car, you cannot go and complain that you got tricked into paying a hundred thousand dollars for "just a seat".

We have always been as helpful as possible with all our customers. Our business model is and has always been based around trying our best to ensure that the users receive a product that can be helpful to their projects. I cannot however just stay quiet when you decide to go after my team's work and our work ethics to try to justify a series of mistakes, carelessness and unwillingness to understand that were completely on you both times. Our business model has nothing to do with (and unfortunately no way to avoid) troublesome and / or careless customers.

We are sorry to hear you have that opinion of our way of working, and thankful that our hundreds of customers for this and our other assets over the past four years disagree.

To all other users or potential users that see this post, please remember to ask any doubts you have about this or any of our assets either here or in our support email, especially if you feel the use you will give the asset is not the one described as its main use case.

We are here to help orient you and point you towards the best solution. In certain occasions we have even pointed users to other assets or easier ways of implementing what they need to do instead of buying products from us since, once again, our main goal is to help users as much as it is to maintain our business. However, we need you to let us assist you by asking any doubts you have

 

The last time you bought our asset because again you had misread, misunderstood and wrongfully assumed what the asset did just to afterwards ask for a refund in quite an angry and public manner, we told you that you didn't fit the criteria of either Unity's nor our refunds policy but still gave it to you in good faith, and you said in your email, quote, "I'm sorry that all this situation happens. I'll promise to be more careful in the future"

This time, you have once again willfully ignored all warnings, descriptions and advice and once again came to attack and mischaracterize us publicly on the forums, despite admitting yourself that you were warned and that blame for this misunderstanding is, once again, on your side.

We are willing to offer you a last refund, despite it again not fulfilling any of the policies criteria, with the understanding that there will not be a third one and that we in Irreverent Software do not have interest in further dealings with you. We do not have any need nor interest in having to defend ourselves from your false claims and accusations every time you buy our assets (or after every update) without making any effort in reading or understanding what they do or how they work, or willfully ignoring all our answers in favor of what you think the asset should do.

Please, understand everyone, we DO NOT give refunds for assets that have been already downloaded nor because of unmatched expectations. All our assets behave as advertised in their store's description, so no refunds will be granted because of this. This is consistent with Unity's own refunds policy.

We are making an exception in this case in order to prevent further mischaracterizations, attacks and false claims from user @pigglet.

In the future, any such personal mischaracterizations and false claims either in the forums or reviews will not be given a refund but will instead be reported to Unity for their removal and any further action they deem appropriate.

Please, ask before you buy and get as much information about our assets (and any other assets) as you can before making a purchase, without making personal assumptions of what the assets are or do.

This is a simple action to take, it is in your best interest and we will always do our best to offer you a solution to your issues and needs, even if it means pointing you to other assets or methods rather than our own.

Have a great weekend everyone.

 

You're right. You have always been helpful and polite. While my behaviour was unacceptable and my accusations were completely not fair. I'm sorry about that. Please, accept my sincere apologies. You doing a great job and I will be happy to continue using PIDI skin. I also must state that this armed people in my doorstep totally don't force me to write that and I act of my own free will.

 

any news about micro skin? =] as i said ll love to buy this feature

 

Hi there,

Unfortunately, not many news yet. We have had a lot of work updating our tools for Unity 2020 as well as preparing for the launch of XFur Studio 2 and more updates to usability for PIDI Advanced Skin Shader 2 that are compatible with all pipelines. On top of this, the CoVID situation slowed down development of several of our products and forced us to rework some of our plans and adjust to the situation. However, this is still on our roadmap and we are still looking into ways to implement it, preferably in a way that is compatible with at the very least Built in and HDRP.

We hope this helps, and thanks for your comment !

 

Code (CSharp):

1. IndexOutOfRangeException: Index was outside the bounds of the array.
2. AdvancedSkin2.PIDI_AdvancedSkinShader.UpdateSkinMaterials () (at Assets/PIDI Game Development Framework/Advanced Skin Shader 2/Source/PIDI_AdvancedSkinShader.cs:563)
3. AdvancedSkin2.PIDI_AdvancedSkinShader.Update () (at Assets/PIDI Game Development Framework/Advanced Skin Shader 2/Source/PIDI_AdvancedSkinShader.cs:407)

Trying to get this working in HDRP in Unity 2020.3.2f1. It's throwing the above errors.

 

Hi there,

Please refer your support request to our support email, as this is the best and fastest way to get a solution

Also remember to include your invoice / proof of purchase with your request.

We hope this helps!

 

Sent it from your site.

 

Hello,

I'm interested in using this package in my HDRP project. I see the compatibility stops at 2020.3 LTS. I'm currently working in the 2021 LTS - are there notable issues when the shaders are used in HDRP 12, or is it just not currently officially supported?

Thank you!

 

Hi there,

Currently there are not any big issues when working with HDRP 12 (Unity 2021.3) but it is not officially supported. There are a few updates coming soon to give official support to Unity 2021.3 but for now you shouldn't experience any major problems with it.





We hope this helps, please reach out if you have any further questions before or after your purchase!