[RELEASED] Decalicious – Deferred Decal System

Also, thanks for info on the terrain workaround!

You could probably work around this by modifying MicroSplat's internal source shader files rather than the generated shaders. From memory they're included as text files. I've tweaked them before, but don't remember their names and am not at my computer.

 

Hi, I'm having some troubles with getting the decals to work.

• Deferred rendering
• Subtractive GI
• One Mixed light in my scene (Sun source)

Basically after having baked the lightmaps onto my scene, the decals only show up if I tag my Mixed directional light to Not Important rendering. This doesn't work for me since it goes against the purpose of subtractive GI (by labelling the light Not Important, it will shade objects per-vertex, meaning my dynamic objects can't cast proper shadows onto my static terrain meshes).

I'm using actual meshes here, not the unity terrain. I have a deferred camera rendering, and the decals show up if they are placed on an object that doesn't have lightmaps. So for instance, with the light tagged Important I can't see the decals on my meshes. But if I duplicate a mesh, then that newly-created mesh can receive decals because it doesn't have a lightmap

Any help would be very much appreciated, this is the final proof of tech I need in the project

 

Just confirming that changing the angle limit works perfectly. Thanks!

 

An 'exclude' would be an awesome option as well. Great work on this.

 

Hello,
Does decalicious asset allow the decal to be automatically updated if the mesh of the texture it is being overlaid on top of moves/deformed during run-time of a scene?
Thanks!

 

It'll behave kind of like a flashlight projecting the decal onto the mesh.So probably not in the way that you would want it to. This is a limitation of the deferred decal technique in general, not something that could be fixed. If you want things like damage decals on deforming characters, you need to look for other techniques.

 

I'm using CTS to render the terrain and the cts shaders don't have anything similar to what you said on step 4 and 5. Can't find anything related to emission or gbuffer in them. Any other ideas? Sadly my knowledge of shaders is almost zero.

Edit: I looked at the code a bit to see how and why it only limits to mesh renderers. It can only do mesh renderers because it needs access to a mesh, but you can't access the vertices of a terrain object. My question is, would it be possible to access the mesh of the terrain at runtime, using say the 'Terrain to Mesh' asset, and limit to the terrain that way?

 

Does this allow for projecting decals to specific Unity layers? Say, I have a decal I want only projected onto a few certain layers, and other decals that I only want on a different bunch of layers? I looked at the demo but it's pretty impossible to tell, from that.

Been looking for a replacement for the deprecated Dynamic Decals for months.

 

Hello. Does this asset work with unity HDRP?

 

Two weeks since I asked a question about this, no reply.

If pre-sale support is non-existent, what hope is there once I've paid?

 

I'm getting this error when using decalicious in conjunction with objects using 'calm water' shaders and their 'mirror reflection' script added to the objects.
------
MissingComponentException: There is no 'Camera' attached to the "m_waterDisc1200_ReflectionSceneCamera" game object, but a script is trying to access it.
You probably need to add a Camera to the game object "m_waterDisc1200_ReflectionSceneCamera". Or your script needs to check if the component is attached before using it.
ThreeEyedGames.DecaliciousRenderer.OnPreRender () (at Assets/DecaliciousUpload/Scripts/DecaliciousRenderer.cs:102)
UnityEngine.Camera:Render()
CalmWater.MirrorReflection:RenderReflectionFor(Camera, Camera) (at Assets/Calm Water/Scripts/MirrorReflection.cs:252)
CalmWater.MirrorReflection:RenderHelpCameras(Camera) (at Assets/Calm Water/Scripts/MirrorReflection.cs:138)
CalmWater.MirrorReflection:WaterTileBeingRendered(Transform, Camera) (at Assets/Calm Water/Scripts/MirrorReflection.cs:155)
CalmWater.MirrorReflection:OnWillRenderObject() (at Assets/Calm Water/Scripts/MirrorReflection.cs:166)
------

So this object "m_waterDisc1200_ReflectionSceneCamera" doesn't actually exist in the hierarchy. I believe its created at runtime(?) by the 'mirror reflection' script and used for reflections on the water surface.

Now i don't really care if the water actually reflects the decals, but this conflict is critical and not allowing the game to run. Is there anyway to kill this flag? or workaround the issue using layers?

 

attempting to bump the above,,, is there a way to stop decalicious from looking for this camera?

 

I don't think it does. You can set a decal to affect only a single mesh, or all meshes.

 

Hello. We have noticed that Decal.OnWillRenderObject() allocates about 4.6k memory every frame, which triggers the garbage collection quite often. Is that normal?

Using Unity 2019.2.1 with deferred rendering.

 

Yeah, that happens in my project, too. A part of the garbage is that SortedDictionary is used to enable the render order for decals. And when iterating over this dictionary garbage is created (for GetEnumerator()). I'm not sure how to get rid of this.
Another part is that this SortedDictionary contains another Dictionary that holds all the decals that are rendered with a specific Material in this frame (the decals are in a HashSet). This Dictionary is cleared every frame. And therfore every frame, when a Decal is rendered it will put itself back into this structure and lead to generation of new HashSets and the expanding of these HashSets (if you have many Decals with the same material). New HashSets and expanding HashSets generates garbage.
I fixed this by not clearing the Dictionary in the SortedDictionary, but only the HashSet that contains the Decals that should be rendered in this frame. This way no new HashSet has to be created and it normally does not have to expand in size. But be carefull if you generate new decal Materials over time in your scene, because with this implementation the Dictionary would keep getting bigger and bigger if you don't clear it.
I did this by changing

Code (CSharp):

1. var decalEnum = _deferredDecals.GetEnumerator();
2.     while (decalEnum.MoveNext())
3.         decalEnum.Current.Value.Clear();

to

Code (CSharp):

1. if(_deferredDecals.Count > 0) {
2.     foreach (var decalType in _deferredDecals) {
3.         foreach (var decalSet in decalType.Value.Values)
4.             decalSet.Clear();
5.     }
6. }

in DecaliciousRenderer.cs.
(and the same thing for _unlitDecals)
This removed a huge part of garbage genration for me.

Greetings Manuel

 

So, is this project dead? Creator doesn't seem to respond to anything.

 

Seems that way for most assets on the store these days. I've spent a good amount of money in the past year or so and most of it has become deprecated.

 

I have found that

decalEnum.Dispose()

was never called after

GetEnumerator()

which actually causes a memory leak. I found no calling of

Dispose()

a single time in the code oO.

Also he does not preHash his shader properties which is quite ineffecient.

I have replaced all the strings where he sets shader properties

Code (CSharp):

1.         private static readonly int MASK_MULTIPLIER = Shader.PropertyToID("_MaskMultiplier");
2.         private static readonly int LIMIT_TO = Shader.PropertyToID("_LimitTo");
3.         private static readonly int UNITY_SH_AR = Shader.PropertyToID("unity_SHAr");
4.         private static readonly int UNITY_SH_AG = Shader.PropertyToID("unity_SHAg");
5.         private static readonly int UNITY_SH_AB = Shader.PropertyToID("unity_SHAb");
6.         private static readonly int UNITY_SH_BR = Shader.PropertyToID("unity_SHBr");
7.         private static readonly int UNITY_SH_BG = Shader.PropertyToID("unity_SHBg");
8.         private static readonly int UNITY_SH_BB = Shader.PropertyToID("unity_SHBb");
9.         private static readonly int UNITY_SHC = Shader.PropertyToID("unity_SHC");
10.  

 

This decal package is working great for me, however when i try to place decals on my R.A.M splines then they do not appear. I have tried changing the rendering order of the road surface material to be all kinds of numbers but no luck. I am wanting to use decals for road markings, arrows, lines etc. These decals work amazingly well on terrain and solid assits, but no luck with RAM splines. has anyone got any idea what is going on here?

 

Screenshots might help, also what is a RAM spline?

 

Here you can see my white line looking fine on the ground and the grass i have here. but where it crosses my road it is not appearing.

RAM splines are for roads and rivers.
https://assetstore.unity.com/packag...769921.1542159864&aid=1011lGkb&utm_source=aff

 

Hey this looks great! I wonder how it compares with Unreal Deferred decal system, I had a go at the demo but it looks a little dated and looked like the decals didn't blend together so well and instead kind of replaced the effect underneath/overlapping. I could be wrong. I'll check out the latest videos etc..any update to the demo?

 

Unfortunatley I cannot help here, don't use/own that plugin. I would talk to the guy doing the RAM river plugins what might cause this, as the guy doing this plugin doesn't seem to care anymore.

 

We have a few shaders that this asset isn't working on, mainly the Toon Colors Pro asset pack one at the moment. I'm wondering what do I need to adjust in the shader code to allow the decals to draw on them?

Edit: seems Toon Colors Pro only supports forward rendering so that explains that.

 

Awesome decal solution with projection. I have just one trouble, it does not work on the Microsplat terrain. I don't have the newest version, so I asking you, should it work on Microsplat terrain?

 

That depends on whether Microsplat uses a deferred shader. If so, Decalicious should work, but we can't guarantee compabitlity with all third party assets.

 

for what its worth in my WIP game I am using Microsplat and Decalicious together no problem

 

That's great news, thanks!

 

Thanks, it works with Microsplat!

 

Hello,

now I have an issue with the decal system. I want to limit the decal just for the terrain, but if I do so, the decal is not visible. I have unity 2018. It works on meshes, but not on the terrain. The Unity projection shader have a Layer mask that can be used to do such things. Maybe i miss something, is there a way to just limit the projection to the terrain?

 

Is there a way to limit what assets a decal will appear on? lets say i am using some decals on my terrain and I have a player walk through the decal projection box. I'd like a way to have it so that it does not appear on the player. Or in other instances it could be a decal on a player that might walk past a tree or a wall and the decal may project on the tree and wall if it's extending past the bounds of the player.

 

This decal system allows you to limit the decal to a GameObject, but you cannot limit it for just the terrain. The another decal system in the asset store supports limiting on the terrain, but the decal system works then only with layer. Using both decal system is maybe a good idea, I use both.

 

Hello guys, i am having an issue with loading a scene from an asset bundle in run time in the game, and the decalicious system just don't work for some reason.

I can see the decals all fine in the Unity Editor, and if i load this scene from the normal game (build) process it works fine.

Just don't seem to work with asset bundle.

Any tips ?

 

So you have a scene with a Decal in it. If you run that scene in Editor or include it in a build, everything's fine. If you put the scene + Decal material + textures in an asset bundle and load that at runtime, the decals don't show. Correct?

Are all the Decalicious scripts and shaders in your base game (not in the bundle)?

 

Hi,

I have just triangle image with transparent background, but in editor/game it has visible outlines, why?

Is there some settings I am missing to set?



Thanks in advance,
Jakub

 

Could you try setting your texture's wrap mode to clamp instead or repeat?

 

Thanks! It helped!
Jakub

 

Is there any chance to convert decals to meshes? Because when I bake lights it won't bake it to the decals (on the walls, floor etc.) and decals remain black with no light impact on it.

I'm using Bakery (https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/level-design/bakery-gpu-lightmapper-122218).

Thanks,
Jakub

 

Not baking to meshes is specifically the point of deferred decals. I'm afraid you have to use a different decal solution, with an altogether different approach for that.

Decalicious should work fine with default Unity lightmaps. I haven't used Bakery, so I'm not sure what it's doing and where it is storing its lighting info.

 

Hello!
Great plugin, but we are having a problem with it unfortunately.
The decals are not rendering at all on PS4 and XboxOne.
Could you please help us getting this to work? Is this a known issue?

The Unity version we are using is 2018.4.24f1.
It looks fine in the Editor, but when playing on console the decals don't render at all.

With kind regards,
Christoph Kreusche

 

Wrote you an e-mail, let's try to find a fix together

 

We're not seeing any lights being recieved. How can i debug this?

 

Using RenderDoc or Unity's Frame Debugger.

 

I have checked it with that, but i dont see anything out of the ordinary. I see that Decal.cs purposefully disables recieve shadows in the Awake, could that be it?

Can you test and confirm that lightmaps are indeed supported?

 

Sure. In the meantime, please let me know what you've tried so far and give some explanations regarding the screenshot you posted. What am I seeing?

 

I investigated a litte. Indeed, Decalicious has its share of problems with lightmaps. To get it working in the current version, two things need to be done:

• Comment out line 86 in DecaliciousDeferredDecal.shader, to avoid lightmaps being overwritten by (empty) light probes
• Set the Decal's Albedo blend mode to Multiply.

To explain: The Decal draws to Albedo and Emission buffer (which includes Reflection Probes, Light Probes and Light Maps in Unity) in the same pass and can only use the same blend mode for both, currently. Reflections come in later, so they are not a problem. Light Probes are samples by the Decal itself (if enabled). Lightmaps however are drawn to the same buffer, directly with the geometry in a 'forward' fashion, so I'm not allowed to overwrite them (which I currently do, mea culpa, unless the blend mode is set to Multiply).

Being forced to use the Multiply blend mode of course limits the appplicability of the Decals. If it doesn't work in your particular case, I'm happy to grant a refund or assist you in modifying the asset to work to your needs.

 

Thank you will check!

We already have some changes in place anyway, for our custom dont-render-decal-map using the deferred normal alpha. We have been using the plugin for a long time, and are just now experimenting with lightmaps.

 

That did do the trick, thank you kindly.

I did notice that multi-editing isnt supported for materials, the custom editor only sets properties for the first selected material. I made a quick local change to iterate through all the selected materials, otherwise changing the blending mode would have taken me hours on all materials.

 

Hello!
Do you plan to extend "LimitTo" function with adding exclusion by unity layers?

 

Hey snaksan, we don't plan to integrate this feature anytime soon. Unfortunately, there is pretty much 0 time for us to work on the asset these days.