[RELEASED] Candela SSRR V2 Advanced Screen Space PBS Reflections for Unity 5

@LIVENDA
I have some questions to help me improve Alloy integration with Candela:
1.) When you use Unity's G-Buffer, are you using the AO channel to occlude the SSRR contribution?
2.) If yes, are you modifying the AO in any way before using it, or are you using it as is?

I ask because I am looking at a modification to our shaders to make them cheaper and to automatically apply our specular occlusion term to any shaders that read from the gbuffer. So it would automatically work with Candela without any modifications.

 

@LIVENDA - Any idea on this issue we are running into? I am using RTP, arguably one of the most popular terrain shaders out there, with Terrain textures from Gametextures.com, ManufacturaK and Nobiax and they are all presenting issues with Candela. It's really important we get this issue sorted out soon or we need to drop this product and move on with something else and assume this product doesn't have any sort of support.

 

Hey Michael, It has been 3 weeks since the last communication we've received from you, promising a solution within a few days. We are working towards a deadline now only a month away, yet despite us trying all channels of communications months in advance of our needs, we have not received even any kind of progress report. Without an impending solution, we will be forced to drop your plugin from our game and seek a refund.

We hate to air these issues on the public forum - we understand development stresses and delays, but we need a more professional level of communication from your company regarding the platform and render path solutions your product promises.

 

Hi Everyone,

We apologize for the lack of communication as we had a tragic death in the family two weeks ago. We are trying to get back on track asap and start providing further information regarding all our projects including new updates for current products such as Candela SSRR. Thanks again,

With kind regards,
Michael

Livenda

 

Seriously... what is going on here? We are on 7+ weeks of total radio silence other than the post above.

Someone's gotta break the ice after Livenda's last post. Condolences. Sincerely.

But we all have to get back to work eventually. We paid for a product and support.

 

SSRR seems to be broken in 5.3 - I'm assuming because of the shader changes listed in the upgrade guide here http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/upgrade-guide-oct-10-2015.358197/

@LIVENDA are we likely to see a fix for this issue? At the moment SSRR is completely unusable for me in 5.3.

 

Livenda answer your community please.
I'm sick and tired of you, it is just impossible to work with your asset. How many month will we wait to get what you promise ?
You don't care about your customers, you just take the money an then anounce a new awesome project and take the money again. But at the end you never release completly what you announced).
Spectra GI, Unreal Reflection, Nephilim DX11 Ocean & Water Engine. All lot of project I'm sure you will never release. And if you do I won't buy them, because your support is the worst I ever see on the Asset store. So stop with your excuses, You have take people for idiots long enough.

Now release your asset and show us your not just a crook.

For 5.3 support : Candela do not support Unity 5.3, the question is :
How many months will take to update to the new version (if I look at your history, it will be long) ?


It seams that soon in your language means between 3 and 6 years.
Nephilim DX11 Ocean must be release soon; (it written in your website), candela Ibl too and once again...nothing.

 

@sebastien.barry instate of keeping posting here guys report him to the asset store team as long you don't report him he will not answering you and will not update the asset

 

@sebastien.barry Tottaly agree with you! This company is crap! Don't buy anything from this guy.

 

Uhm, did anyone get a refund, by the way?
I can't use this asset since it's not working with my setup at all, and while I have been e-mailing with Livenda for three months (!) now ("we are looking at it now and should have an answer in the next day or so"), they are ignoring me completely now.
I'm not even angry any more (more like, resigned), but I don't like to be taken for a fool, and I'd really like to just forget this whole thing.

I've read the thread which discouraged buying anything from Livenda, as they are known for this behaviour, but I bought it anyway, thinking of giving them a chance, so I'm at fault too, I guess.

Oh, well, refund is probably not going to happen, since the developer has to agree with it. /sigh

 

I think if there are enough people wanting a refund because of this fraud, the guys from unity can build up some pressure on Livenda for sure, or come up with another solution so that the ones that fell for this scam are at peace.

On the other hand, Livenda has not logged into the unity forums for around 2 weeks.

 

We too requested support multiple times from Livenda a couple months ago(via email and here), heard back once that they would get back to me, never did get back to me. Also had major performance issues with the asset so can't use it.

 

I don't think you should be asking them about 5.3 compatibility.. it's not out yet. If they could predict the future then it would be fine to ask this question.

 

5.3 has been in Beta and Release Candidate for awhile, so I think they're referring to that as most plugin developers use the betas to prepare their plugins ahead of time to plan for a smooth transition between versions. @n00body As a plugin developer yourself, is this correct in assuming this?

 

I think its probably wise people ask for a refund if no support from Livenda, or wait for Unity's implementation / use a different asset with a track record for great developer relations.

Edited for clarity

 

where should we ask for refund ? the dev is mute recently

 

From The Author. But you can contact ( support@unity3d.com ) if the author is unavailable for a period of time to try and get hold of him. Unity only steps in if the author is unreachable. Note: refunds still need to be approved by the author. Unity can not issue refunds.

Edited for clarity

 

@Ben BearFish
Yes. Especially now that Unity is being much more aggressive with breaking changes to make necessary improvements. It is more important than ever to keep up with the betas to maintain compatibility and take advantage of the latest features.

But do keep in mind that plugin devs are only human. I can only keep up with Alloy development because I treat it like a second job, despite making little money off sales.

 

I don't think anyone is seriously blaming Livenda for not updating their stuff within some days or even weeks after release. Most people here are more frustrated by the fact that the support for their product has been dead for months, that promises were made but not held, requests for refunds were completely ignored and other stuff like this.

I think the whole situation (from the customers AND the developers point of view) is rather sad.

 

Ditto... when we offer to lend our time and dev kits to help them overcome compile problems with features they promise in the store and in documentation and they assure us they will have a solution in a day or two... and then don't communicate with anyone anywhere for 8 weeks, there is a problem.

It's confusing, too, because their website does not convey the sense that Livenda may just be a guy in a garage who is overwhelmed. It looks like a professional operation that is in motion. Thus we expect professionalism in the way they support their product and interact with their customers.

They haven't even logged onto the forums over the last 2 weeks.

 

Hi Everyone,

First :
As we have mentioned we had a very tragic event recently (death in the family) which effected our operation tremendously! We apologize again for the delay in the response in the forum. We are now back at work full steam.

Second:
Lack of updates? Blame Unity and here is why.
With 5.3 Unity has decided to drop support for Pre-compiled shaders!! (http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/upgrade-guide-oct-10-2015.358197/)

This is a major blow for Asset Developers and Unity has not provided any other alternative means of protecting proprietary shader code. Especially after an asset has already been published!

Candela SSRR has been available more then two years with thousands of customers cannot be updated to version 5.3 as it's core shader is pre-compiled and has proprietary code (we have also licensed Candela SSRR with full source-code access independently to many other game developers for Xbox/PS4 and this is UNFAIR to them to say the least), now we get the blame from customers for not providing support due to lack of updates! Candela SSRR works just fine with 5.3 with no modification, it breaks for others due to this decision by Unity.



We also have another product which we have announced ( http://www.livenda.com/ctaa.html ) CTAA- Cinematic Temporal Anti-Aliasing which has been in development for more then a year and has proprietary (patent pending) code, this decision effectively kills our ability to provide this for general sales at the Asset Store. This decision does not make business sense and limits the ability and incentive for serious development.

We are talking with Unity to how best resolve this issue, we have suggested to them to at least provide the developer to pre-compile for a specific version of Unity so then perhaps we can include multiple variants of the shader for each major release and for specific platforms.

In the mean while Please rest-assured as we are hoping to get this sorted out asap.

If you are using Unity version below 5.3 (as we officially support final released versions of unity only, for exactly the reasons mentioned above) and have support question, please contact support (at) livenda.com and we will be happy to help you asap as we are now back to normal working schedule.

It will be of GREAT help if any customer can contact Unity regarding their decision to stop-support for pre-compiled shaders.

Cheers,
Michael Hartjen
CEO
Livenda Labs

 

Thing is I don't see the problem with source code. Source isn't a big deal. Have you got something that's worth more than the entire Unreal Engine 4? Last I checked source is available for that too.

 

It's not as black and white as you suggest, the simple answer is No, not possible. So why doesn't Unity provide full source access? Besides this decision is up to the individual developer. It is an extremely bad business decision for other developers who already have products on the asset store.

You said ' Source isn't a big deal ' - The thing is, source code is 'every thing'

 

@LIVENDA I do not understand with-holding source code. In fact I generally do not buy assets with no source code, sometimes you need to make modifications, or integrate it with an existing framework, etc

And obfuscating the code, there's no need, just makes stuff unusable after a point

 

I think that would make sense if your products were aimed at company's like Capcom and EA, but you are selling to indie developers

And also the source code for all unity's effects is available

 

Yeah but its not a valid reason to not communicate with us.

 

@LIVENDA
So on top of obfuscating your product's source, you're also trying to bring software patents into the mix? That really leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Especially when it comes to shaders and post-effects, seeings how those technologies have thrived from the games industry being very open about how they've implemented all their most impressive effects.

 

This is specially more important for small indie authors, there is no economics of scale. Also, 99% of the sourcecode is included with Candela. The raytracer should not be modified anyway.

Please read the first paragraph in our post.

 

I agree however this depends on the product greatly. There is a big difference between explaining / outlining the 'gist' of a method then the actual implementation which works. btw, I am talking about future products not Candela to make it clear. CTAA for example took us more then a year of development (The time it took to develop is also irrelevant btw) to make it work with Unity, and there are some crucial make or brake elements/ algorithms which are patent pending (This is actually not relevant for Unity when it is released). It really depends on the product. CTAA is a novel method for Temporal Anti aliasing, from what we gather there are three other methods by UE, Cryengine and nVidia.

Regarding Candela with Unity 5.3 when released
It will work just fine. The current version will not work as it is made for Unity 5.2 official release.

Cheers,
Michael

 

I actually have a product this week that's shipping with Candela and it does have lots of modifications, 2.1 was much easier to do this than 2.0 so thanks although what if I want to modify the raytracer? I'm not sure you can make such an assumption.

Here's my problem with no the source code, I could technically write my own plugins and sometimes I do when time allows - most of the technical know how for various effects is online these days, I could write my own 3d raytracing software and get all the physic's math online if I we're so inclined (although I might be there a while lol).

Thing is If someone else has already done it why bother? no point re-inventing the wheel plus I save money and time (and lets face it we are all poor indies) you benefit and the community benefits, but if you disappear like so many other authors have and a new version of unity breaks your code, I can't use your products anymore

I can tell you now if CTAA does not have source code, I won't be buying it and I won't be the only one, economics of scale aside, seems to me you could be doing yourself out of potential sales

Sorry for bringing up CTAA on a Candela thread, but you did mention it

 

Well Unity's supplying their own free to use SSR and antialiasing soon - with source. It is up to Livenda to decide to not support 5.3 or obfuscate the code into a lumpy mess.

 

Yes but Livenda promise offscreen reflection in 2.2, Unity SSR won't support this awesome feature.

 

Hello!

Just an update from me--I got the refund I asked for, and the developer was very fast and polite about it.
All in all, while the problem I had seemed hard to solve (forward shaders in deferred rendering), Candela is still a solid and professional product, and if V2.2 will be able to implement off-screen reflections, it's going to be simply amazing, and Unitys SSR solution probably won't be able to hold against it.

Now, I wish you all success and fun working on your projects--the customers using Candela, and Livenda with Candela and their coming products!

Best Regards,
Kristina Waldt

 

Pretty sure it will via sampling probes in deferred.

 

So who should we blame for your shaders not working with PS4? since ver 2.0? and even after multiple emails asking for support, and promises this will be resolved within a few days, months after the fact and there is complete radio silence, and then you re-surface on the forum, blaming everyone else and taking no responsibility, nor responding to our emails.

 

Update:

Candela V2.2 is being finalized to be submitted to the Asset Store by next week.

Notable Updates/ Changes/ New Features

• Full Compatibility with the upcoming Unity 5.3 , This should resolve other issues with consoles as now the SOURCE CODE can be compiled on each platform such as PS4/ Xbox etc!

• OFF-SCREEN Reflections Now Supported (Still Experimental however it is working well enough for production now in Deferred mode)

• Extra Option to use Mip-Map Convolution if you wish, this is faster on some platforms, however can cause slight shimmer (90% of the time it is not noticeable), but it's fast. Also, the target hardware must be able to support RT MipMaps.

• Updated Specular Togsvik performance

V2.2 being submitted by next week!

Current Unity probes are extremely slow to update in realtime, also they are very limited in many respects such as lack of rotation (almost impossible to place probes correctly ), only box AABB etc.

I am sorry for the delay due to the reason we have mentioned, the PS4 issue should be fixed with the new update as it can now be compiled to any specific platform as the source is included. This I think also caused issues for other when they like to use it on platforms other then the common PC/ Mac .

Cheers,
Michael
Livenda Labs

 

Nice! now you have my attention..

you should really clear all that bad rep around your product,
some of your demos look like they were taken in UE4,
so supporting unity with this kind of graphics is taking it to all another level

also looking forward for SpectraGI, looked awesome on youtube even before PBS
would be a shame if it won't be released

 

I'm really interested to see the new features. Will we be able to get a download link by contacting you with our purchase info, like before?

 

Certainly! We can send you a download link when we are ready to submit early next week, at least you should have it without waiting for the Asset Store.

Cheers,
Michael

 

Hi, this asset is exactly what I needed!

But, I can't seem to get the Layer Mask nor the Occlusion Layers to work. From what I understand from the manual the Layer Mask will exlude a layer, and the Culling Mask option chooses layers to be included, correct?
What layer does the layer mask exlude? The TransparentFX layer?
In the Culling Mask layer i've tried all the options, nothing changes in the reflection, it always reflects everything.

Let's say I create a Cube and I need it excluded from the reflection, what steps do I take?

Thanks in advance

 

I bought Candela a while ago and started using it at 2.1 and was very impressed. It has matured a lot. I read the whole thread to get up to date on 5.3 support. Very glad Livenda has persevered to figure out the challenges of screen space reflection and reached a breakthrough with off-screen reflections in Candela 2.2. Up till now, SSR systems looked good for interior scenes with everything resting on the ground and I hope 2.2 can accurately reflect floating objects smoothly. It's good that Unity is trying to add SSR to Unity to keep up with Unreal but 5.3 SSR has a lot of artifacts with anything off of the ground. 2.2 with off-screen reflections looks gorgeous in the CTAA trailer. CTAA and SSRR look like two key missing parts of the photo-realistic graphics pipeline, and I appreciate how much work Michael put into these. It is hard for people with deadlines to wait for R&D-like timescales of development, but the results look like they were worth waiting for.

 

So are you ready to submit and can we ask for our pre-asset store update?

 

I'm considering picking up the UBER Standard Shader Ultra asset. https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/39959
Does anyone know if Candela and UBER play well together? (UBER is based off the standard shader, so I'd guess it would, but just wondering if anyone knows first hand)

 

It does, and it looks pretty amazing - especially with dynamic rain/wetness.

 

Thanks!

 

I believe "early next week" has passed quite some time ago.

 

I have this error. I am using 5.2 I have no plans to upgrade to 5.3:


Shader error in 'CandelaSSRR/PBS/Bumped Specular PBS SSR': Too many math instructions for SM2.0 (66 needed, max is 64). Try #pragma target 3.0 at line 174 (on d3d11_9x)

Compiling Fragment program with SPOT FOG_LINEAR
Platform defines: UNITY_NO_SCREENSPACE_SHADOWS UNITY_NO_LINEAR_COLORSPACE

 

Hi,

We have now submitted V2.2, if you don't like to wait please e-mail us with your invoice number and we can provide a direct download link.

This is fixed with 2.2, should be available on the asset store in a few days together with a few other great new additions.

Cheers,
Michael

 

@LIVENDA thank for keeping support on Candella.
may i ask about your IBL plugin in development some news?

 

I don't like to wait and have send my invoice number! Hope to get it soon! Thanks!