Pre-Integrated Skin Shader - announcements and feedback

Transmission is the better version of a depth map.
You can try to simply use the Knald transmission map as the Depth-Thickness map in Pre-Integrated Skin Shader, but it's not really good.
Pre-Integrated Skin Shader would have to be updated to allow Transmission maps.
Unfortunately this asset seems dead, the author doesn't reply here.

 

He last posted in march, 2017, that's not *that* long ago...

 

I've switched to Lux Plus. It has an amazing skin shader with detail map. I'm glad I switched over instead of waiting ages for any update here and feel left alone. Also, Lux Plus supports Transmission Maps right away. )))

 

yeah it's pretty dead by now

 

Yeah, I will move on to Lux too soon I guess.

 

You need to use Lux Pro to get translucency if that's important to you.

 

As much as I love this shader... it works quite well, the lack of updates (and honestly overcomplication from version 1) has kept me away from using it. Once Amplify Shader Editor has the ability to create skin shaders directly in the graph, I won't have to worry about updates any more.

 

Any chance for PS4 support?

 

Do you have a Light Probe Proxy Volume setup on the character, with the skin mesh's renderer light probe override set to the LPPV? and that you have a light probe group in your scene that has the indirect illumination baked into it? that's the only way you get indirect illumination on skinned objects

 

There's no support because I don't have access to console dev kits. That being said it may actually work. Some time ago a user contributed patches so it at least compiled at some point, but I haven't heard anything since.

Could you please show the settings of the renderer component on the character?
Does switching the Light Probes setting between "Off" and "Blend probes" change anything?
Also please try changing "Environment Intensity" under specular to 1. Does the difference in overall brightness lessen compared to Standard Shader?

Note that the shader doesn't currently support proxy volumes. It actually uses simple per object probes even if you set "Use Proxy Volumes".

 

Environment Intensity should be kept at 1 for physical correct lighting. I'd change the default, but it would break the compatibility with existing materials.

If switching light probes to off results in brighter object then it's indeed strange. I'll need more information to pinpoint the issue. Do you use linear rendering?
Having a minimal scene that reproduces the issue in a clean project would be best.

p.s.: I see you've plugged the diffuse texture in different slots that are meant for different purposes. You most likely want to keep skin mask unplugged in your case, it serves the purpose to disable skin shading where you don't want it. The "depth" texture is a special texture you need to bake. You may want to unplug it as well in the mean time, until you have one ready.

 

Yeah I forgot about that. I had actually modified the shader to use the proxy volumes and to have it contribute to the specular a bit too, even though that might not be 100% physically correct, it does help ground the characters in their scene and create a little more appealing result.

 

Hi there!

I'd like to include some RPG style character customization features in my game such as choosing skin tone. Adjusting the Tint Color parameter inside this shader seems to work well enough but some characters are going to have various patterns on their skin that I would like to independently control. Is there some way I can use this shader to implement that kind of functionality?

Even though this shader comes with full source code, I don't know enough about shaders at the moment to try and set this up myself but maybe this feature has already been discussed and I could try my hand with some guidance.

Thanks!

 

No you can't

You could if you had enough knowledge about shader, in this case I inject a new texture and use the channels as mask (the pattern) that I would assign a color (using a multiply) then blend with the diffuse and eventually the skin mask (to prevent the SSS). And I would also add a variable for selection as I would probably use the texture as an atlas. Now not sure if there would be too much data, so I would selectively remove some of the features I don't need.

 

This shader can give pretty good results, but taking it to VR is a suicide. It doesn't seem to matter what size your textures are (want from 4k all the way to 32X32 pixels, left rgb and normal maps to 1024px), ditched most of the layers from the shader and got laggy results (with or without GPU instancing). Just out of curiosity, switched back to 4k maps, changed to Unity default shader and boom! supersmooth. Some optimization needed, I hope the author will look into this.

 

... Texture size has little impact on performance in general as long as you have the GPU memory to hold it. What matters is how many lights you have affecting the object and how many polys the object is.

This is a fairly complex shader, so it's a lot more important to manage your polycount and light/shadow passes.

 

Hi! I load the demo scene and see this, can someone help me fix it? @@

 

I recently picked up this shader asset and it looks amazing! I'm really loving the results.

I'm working with a character that uses a shell mesh, which is like a slight offset of the base mesh, to add additional effects to the skin dynamically such as battle wounds and scarring.

Your skin shader looks amazing, but unfortunately I can get it to work with my current project because of the transparency requirement i.e.) the overlapping elements need to be transparent.

Would it be possible to get a variant of your skin shader made up that supports transparency? Either in the albedo alpha or a single texture channel on it's own works for me.

 

The author of this asset isn't active on the forums anymore(last activity January 21st), so I would assume that support is no longer being offered by him. You could however try contacting him via e-mail: assetstore@jagiello.it or on twitter: https://twitter.com/ciciocian
His twitter shows some activity every now and then, so I guess trying there would be your best bet.

 

Thanks for the info. I will try them another way I suppose.

 

Do you have a path to using this tool with MCS Morph3d?
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/characters/humanoids/mcs-female-45807
Looking for your suggestion. It would be really great if we could just use this tool with this asset.
thoughts?

 

It should work as well as any other shader, but you will have to create the extra texture maps (eg in xnormal/knald/blender/mudbox/substance painter/b2m/zbrush/etc). You'd just change, or duplicate and change, the MORPH3D/Content/M3DFemale/Figure/M3DFemale/Materials folder's material assets' shader type from the standard morph3d skin shader to the pre-integrated skin shader.

 

There was a problem rendering version 1.1 of uinty 2017, and I knew that Version 1.1.1 corrected the problem. How do I get it

 

Hi, I'm trying to add a bit of code to the vertex shader. As a toy example I added code to inflate the vertices along their normal directions in "pss_vert" which appears to be the vertex shader used by every pass. However, this causes issues in that it appears other passes don't have the vertex shader applied:

 

Tried getting a custom shadow caster implemented based on vertShadowCaster and fragShadowCaster and let me tell you, that was a nightmare. Including UnityStandardShadow.cginc causes everything to be defined twice among other endless issues.

 

I came across an open source asset that allows you to use dual quaternion skinning instead of the default linear interpolation built into Unity: https://bitbucket.org/mr_madcake/dual-quaternion-skinning-for-unity/overview. The result of the dual quaternion method are much better IMO.

I'm currently trying to get this to work the Pre-Integrated Skin asset. Unfortunately, my shader knowledge isn't the best and I cannot get it to work, even with your instructions (which seem simple enough but I guess I can't figure it out haha). The dual quaternion asset uses a vert shader. I've found what I believe is the right location to add it all. When I play from the editor though (as required for the dual quaternion asset), the mesh squishes down to a plane.

@cician (or anyone on this forum for that matter), would you be able to help me out with merging the two shaders?

 

the developer of DQ skining here

i've found a way to make these two shaders compatible through inserting several hooks into the pre-integrated skin shader that can be hidden behind an #ifdef when not needed

@cician, would you add these if i sent you the code?

 

Is this active?? It doesn't work in the last version.

And the links to both examples files and guide are broken.

 

@Vicsha If you have some time could you please describe the issues you're having and your setup? Like Unity version, platform and maybe a screenshot.

 

Cician, I was able to solve the problem of the shader not working. But not another problem, that is the difference between the color between the shadow areas of the character, typically warm because your shader effect, and the projected shadows from Unity, that will ignore the warm tone and will change sharply to a different tone.
This is more or less evident depending of lighting, but always present. I guess the problems could be disguised with smoother shadows or blending better.

Obviously when the standard shader is used the shadow and dark areas integrate

 

does it working with openGL ES 3.x and Vulkan on Android 5.1 and above?

 

?

 

You send the code? I'm very interested in this.

 

I have figured how to make your pre-integrated skin shader work with my DQ skinning (forum link). If you send me your code, I believe I can add hooks to make it work with my dq skinning, which can be toggled with an #ifdef.

I did it quite some time ago and both scripts probably changed a lot since, but the integration is most likely still possible. And you will be able to see what exactly is required for the integration by viewing diffs between the original version and my modified version of your script.

I must warn you, however, that I am quite busy at the time and I can't predict how long it will take for me to finish the integration.

 

@cician

How i can use Pre-Integrated Skin Shader for HDRP ?

 

Converting even a simple shader to HDRP is hard, nevermind one this complex. And there isn't really a need because HDRP comes with a very good skin shader that the pipeline is actually built to handle.

 

OK Thank you !

 

Hi, I took a liberty to modify the standard Skin shader, as I needed to have wounds to my characters. As a fast approach, I created a "Fade" float (0-1) and a secondary Diffuse map (_MaintexB). So the victim gets a hit, and the secondary diffuse map kicks in. This is NOT for any accurate hits. It simply fades between 2 textures.

o.Albedo = PSS_INPUTGAMMACORRECTION(((tex2D(_MainTex, uv).rgb) * _Color.rgb * (1-_Fade)) + (tex2D(_MainTexB, uv).rgb) * _Color.rgb * _Fade);


If you are looking for how to improve, this might be one path; Add this feature, for example, thinking of roasting a chicken, and add the feature to the other channels.