ProFlares - Ultimate Lens Flares for Unity3D [RELEASED]

You'll have to add your own 2d occlusion test to ProFlareBatch.cs, using a 2d physics check (Physics2D.GetRayIntersection) that mirrors the existent 3d test. This is working well for me.

 

When i use Proflares in my game(Android) all the flare are shaking a little!
How can i stop them from shaking?
anyone knows that?

 

Hi,

Make sure that your cameras aren't moving after the flares are calculated. First check the script execution, and set ProFlares.cs and ProFlaresBatch.cs to be executed last.

David.

 

Thank you for your Support

 

I tried but it seems it doesn't have anything to do with execution order.
When camera starts to move, all flares will shake(vibrate).
I have "Camera Shake" and "Camera Path Animator" but I set all of these to execute before Proflares,as you said, but still nothing changed :|

 

proflares.com seems to be down so I can't check the documentation. Will the site be coming back up, or has it been shut down permanently?

 

Ok thats strange, ProFlares calculate relative camera positions in the lateUpdate function, so making sure the camera shake is in the Update function might do the trick.

Other potential problems might be that you moving the proflare batch setup, or the shake script is doing something unexpected. If you have a demo scene that I can replicate the problem I might be able to figure out the issue.

Thanks for the heads up, I didn't realise it was down. I think I'm going to have to change providers. I will try and get it up again as soon as possible. Apologies for the inconvenience.

David.

PS, the setup videos are on youtube if that helps. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5I4rAjOT0JvHLVb-G6dSxQ

 

Hi,

I bit the bullet and transferred the site over to square space. Here is the temporary URL until the DNS information sorts its self out.

https://pro-flares.squarespace.com

Apologies for the inconvenience

David.

 

Have you considered using CullingGroups to handle the flare occlusion culling?
I almost never hear people talking about them. I don't think many people know about them (I only recently discovered them myself). But procedurally rendered lens flares seems like the perfect application for CullingGroups, and it might help to make ProFlares' occlusion culling a little less expensive.
http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/CullingGroupAPI.html

We have been grappling with flare performance for a while on PS4. That's not to say ProFlares is unoptimized; it's just that we have next to no CPU headroom available. The PS4 is uniquely GPU-dependent, and ProFlares happens to use the CPU. Since CullingGroups are integrated with the engine and presumably do culling calculations in native code (possibly on a different thread as well), I have a hunch that it would help immensely.

 

Does it work with 5.4?

 

I'm having the same issue on the PS4. Did you manage to resolve this?

 

Hi, at first sorry my English. I just bought ProFlares and this asset looks so far a very good plug in for sandard scenes, but the VR setup is a bit confuse to me.

I trying configure Proflares to work with gear VR and seems it do not working right.

If I follow the attached instructions - the ProFlareBatch is create on top of hierarch instead of a child of LeftEyeAnchor. (Nothing happens with LeftEyeAnchor)

The ProFlareBatch created has CenterEyeAnchor as GameCamera and none as FlareCamera. (Is this right?).

The ProFlareBatch created is in front of OVR camera and the distance to OVR camera is controlled by Z Position.

This is diferent from the example attached that has ProFlareBatch as child of LeftEyeAnchor, but this setup do not work too.

How should be the exact setup and hierarch of each component, thinking my camera will move and the ProFlareBatch will need follow the camera?


Thank you for your attention.

 

Does anybody have test Proflares with SteamVR ?

 

Just purchased.. Using Unity 5.4 and none of the flares in the demo scenes are showing. Please help dont want to have wasted 80$

 

Best to contact @ProFlares via his support email and / or PM. Forum thread owners don't always get notifications of new posts in their threads.

Note, though, that Unity 5.4 hasn't been released yet, and it is expected many assets from the store won't work with it yet.

Try Unity 5.3.4, the latest official release.

 

I downgraded to 5.3 to check if it would work as well but no luck. The flares are all missing and are invisible. Im downgrading to 5.2 now to see if it helps, thanks!

 

So ... I decided to import ProFlares and run the demo to see what you were talking about, and I guess I gave you only partially good advice.

The materials for the trees and other objects in the scene are not really part of the ProFlares system. You can change the shaders used with those materials to standard Unity shaders if you're just wanting to run the demo.

To see and use the flare system, what you want to look at is the ProFlareSetup object in the demo scene, and you want to keep / use the ProFlareShader. The other two shaders with the word "demo" in them aren't needed and can be deleted from your project.

Once I changed the demo materials to use the standard Unity shaders and deleted the two "demo" shaders (at least one of which was throwing an error, IIRC), I was able to run the demos with no trouble on Unity 5.3.4. The flares were there.

EDIT: Oh wait, there was also a script error I had to fix, and it might come up for you. If you see a complaint in your console about "EventType does not contain a definition blah blah," what you need to to is modify each location in the scripts the console tells you about with "UnityEngine.EventType" instead of just "EventType." There were about a half dozen of these.

 

So I downgraded, Upgraded. made new projects etc. Pro Flares works in all my new projects but I cant seem to get it to work with my project that I need it in. Basically I tried changing the ProFlares Textured Flare Shader and Im pretty sure that is the problem, in other projects I am able to change that shader and still SEE the flare texture somehow, but in this one Im pretty sure its the texture for some reason I make a new material apply the texture and still cant see it. And for some reason all these are black https://gyazo.com/428042a39c5247caafe60aeeab09af33

 

Beats me. Have you been able to get in touch with David, the ProFlares dev?

 

Here is the source of my issues: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/co...ng-as-huge-mix-of-numbers-and-letters.403041/

 

Oh, that sounds like a serialization error. Go to Project Settings > Editor > Asset Serialization and switch the mode to Mixed. Then you probably have to reimport ProFlares.

 

I was using collab, it forced it to text only, I think I love you haha thanks for the help my man!

 

No problem. Everybody needs a helping hand at some point.

 

I am having the same shaking problem when I publish a project with flares to Android Gear VR.
In editor all seems ok, no shaking - this problem is only in the published android version.
Looks like the flares are calculated in a lower frame rate them the rest of the scene. (In the initial Android VR setup I changed the frame rate to 60 fps.)
I a Playmaker user and do not understand code.
Any help will be welcome.

 

Hi, I have this problem with UFPS and Proflares.
When I pass by the first person to the third person, the "center point of the flares" is not updated and can not get the occlusion back to the player model.




How do I fix?

 

It looks like UFPS is enabling a different camera for the 3rd person camera. You need to swap the proflarebatch game camera at the same time you change to the 3rd person camera.

Hope this helps.

David

 

No, the camera is the same, only shifted.

 

Hello there.

Thinking to buy this as well. But I have a question before.
Does it actually support occluding on clothed meshes? I mean the native Unity 5 flare system requires colliders, which are very static and does not suit to skinned meshes or clothed meshes. So will ProFlares work in this case?

Thanks in advance

 

Hi,

Has anyone gotten ProFlares to work with the HTC Vive? I'm having issues getting them to render at all.

I'm working with Unity 5.4.0.
The steps I took to get to this point:
1. Clicked "Create Setup"
2. Dragged a Mega Atlas into the ProFlareBatch component
3. Dragged in a Mega Flare

At this point, I have things working as intended as shown by the image below.
http://i.imgur.com/NmRM4bK.png

4. Next, I Dragged in the Camera Rig prefab from the SteamVR folder
5. Enabled "Virtual Reality Supported" in the Player Settings

At this point, there is no lens flare on screen when I enter Game mode (press play). I looked all around me. No flare.
http://i.imgur.com/irZSPiR.png

I've tried plugging "Camera (Head)" and "Camera (Eye)" into the "Game Camera" property on the ProFlareBatch component. I've even plugged them into "Flare Camera." I've tried all sorts of combinations but nothing worked normally. Sometimes I'd see the flare, but it would be in the wrong spot or it would move strangely as I move the Vive headset's camera around.

In addition, I know that there is a "VR" option in the ProFlareBatch's Mode property, but the Flares STILL don't show up properly if at all.

Anyone happen to work with ProFlares on the Vive and get it working??

Thanks.

 

in Unity 5.5 , none of the flares are showing too .

Please help ~!!

 

Really hope David will still update this asset, we really can't loose this pure gem !!!

 

Hi Guys,

I can confirm that ProFlares does work correctly in 5.5. And all of its core functions are still working fine the only thing isn't working is multi-scene editing as this wasn't part of unity when ProFlares was developed.

I spoke to wdmct directly, didn't realise that he had also posted here. His problem was linked to an issue that for an unknown reason unity scrambles the data sorted in the atlases something to do with Binary serialisation in the settings. This started happening when people were moving projects from unity 4 to 5. It's a solvable problem when it happens.

To rebuild the flare atlas drag the JSON file onto the import slot. This recreates the elements in the atlas.
There is also a chance flares in the scene may have been corrupted. On each flare there is a JSON import/export option so you can export from the project before upgrading. All of the presets already have a JSON file in the ProFlares DIR.

David.

 

Hi David,
Tks for the feedback.
What about Steam VR support ? From my quick test, i havn't been able to get result.
Havn't look to Oculus setup, but, as far as i remember, Oculus rig has change since your original VR support and may not work too.
Some of you guys got a proper oculus setup ? ( or SteamVR ?)

 

A similar VR question. When building with Google VR. Proflares creates 2 cameras but then splits the already split cameras. I see documentation on Oculus support but wasn't sure if it also supports GVR, and if so how.

 

hi @ProFlares
does it works with unity 2017??

 

I think it's dead and depreciated. Amen.

 

and did you know some good asset to manage the flares like this?

 

I brought this asset 3 years ago. After some time I uncover a lot of issues for out project and others. I was bloomed from the nice little demo unfortunately. We managed the flares by a small script (near distance) and soft edge shader in the 3D environment and some in screen space like sun flares and SE Bloom on top.

I have no idea if there is another asset that does.

 

is this using full screen framebuffer ?

 

author please read this
https://developer.nvidia.com/gpugems/GPUGems3/gpugems3_ch23.html

 

So, it doesn't work anymore?
It is still selling and doesn't say that it's deprecated on the Unity store.

 

What would be the correct way to use a ProFlare as a Sun? that matches the directional light sun from the procedural skybox material.

 

THANK YOU for the 2019 update!!

 

Hi All,

Yes ProFlares has finally been updated, tested in 2017, 2018 and 2019 alpha. Also tested in the Standard, Lightweight and HD render pipelines.

A couple of new features too.

• A sun mode - this mimics a directional light. Once enabled position of the flare's transform is ignored, and its positions is calculated from its rotations. I found parenting to a directional light works well.
• Pixel occlusion - this one is a bit experimental, but allows you to avoid using physics colliders for flare occlusion. Implemented via a 1x1 render to texture. I wouldn't advise using this on more than one or two flares, as performance impact will probably vary with scene complexity.
• Occlusion speed - now control how long it takes for flares to disappear when occluded.
• Linear lighting support - change the shader over on your ProFlareBatch.

I do want to apologies for the shocking length of time this has taken. If you're still here thanks for sticking with me. Any problems please feel free to email me.

Cheers,
David.

 

Some waited so long, flares came back in fashion...

 

Wow, this is very great news! Thank you so much for the update!!

 

Thanks from my/our side as well for making the asset work on the scriptable renderpipeline as well.

But, one question concerning VR (on PC/Oculus Rift S, in our case):
It seems like the asset only does 2D flares creating a planar mesh for the flares to happen. Am I doing something wrong or is this a limitation based on how the calculation works here?
Happening on a 2D-plane is not what I'd call VR-ready, as the z-depth of the single flare elements from the camera perspective is important for the immersion.

Thanks,
Chris

 

Hi Chris,

ProFlares is built on a 2D plane system to create the lens flare so having volumetric style depth is out of scope. But there is a hidden setting that might be what you want.

I hid some of the legacy VR settings as I don't have access to the hardware to fully test them.

To access the you can either set them via script or uncomment line 67 of ProFlareBatchInspector.cs, //base.DrawDefaultInspector();

The settings are VR_Mode and VR_Depth, This then scales the elements that are offset from the source towards the user.

I wouldn't push them too far, I've found flares in VR are best kept subtle as they don't really happen in the eyes. But point flares on distant suns or things like street lights works well as an approximation for glare which would be difficult to get with pixel based effect.

Let me know if this helps at all, I'm open to any ideas you might have towards improving the VR flare experience.

David.

 

Hi David,

Thank you very much for the detailed overview and assistance. Sounds interesting, I will check it out.

In our current project, we've now a very simple setup (as you wrote, flares work best when keeping subtle), where it works on 2D for the moment (as it needed to be finished yesterday).

But I will look into your proposals in the next weeks and probably come back to you, if there are any questions

Thanks,
Chris

 

Do you plan on adding true area occlusion? Using a compute shader to sample to sample visibility for example.