[RELEASED] Deckard Render - Cinematographic Renderer for Unity

Bug report: if I start a render from 0, it proceeds as expected.
If I start render from a later frame, (for example, 295 of 800) Deckard brings Unity out of Play mode into Edit mode (stops render process).
Windows 11, Unity 2021.3.24 HDRP. No timeline animation, just play mode. Safe render is on. 1080p Prores EXR.

 

Hi Oliver,

great Asset. One question: When moving the Deckard View tab to a bar Unity crashes. This happens when using unity HDRP DXR. Same problem in Unity 2021, 2022 and 2023.

Is there a fix? Thanks!

 

I will check on this. But it is likely a Unity Editor bug: so I doubt that there is anything that I can do about it

 

All I can see is that unity is constantly being blamed here. The animation package was never damaged during the timeline recording! I've been working with timeline & animation rigs for a decade, starting with Unity 2018 until the version today. Working for one of the biggest companies in the mobile sector. So I guess the guy was right and Mr. Olix4242 is just pretending to be right.

Deckard's idea is generally not bad, but it should have been implemented by Unity itself, as the plugin doesn't support any dynamic behavior on pretty much any 3rd party component. Grooming, Hair, RayFire, MagicCloth2 and other dynamic calculations. Meaning, if you can't bake it, you won't see it. In other words: That makes Deckard obsolete.

And yes, the update history shows that an update only comes if it gets somehow necessary, but not for 3rd party compatibility. And the last update is from 2021. The fact that this part is still being sold shows how arrogant the developer really is, because the money of the unknowing ones is still one, isn't it?

Next guy who spends the money on this one will definitely cry!

 

Let me be clear: there weren't any updates from 2021 for a simple reason: plugin should work, and it should work much better than it worked in 2021 as most of the issues that were on a Unity Engine side were resolved. I have personally worked with guys from Unity (and urging) on solving many of them.
Sorry, but I don't know how would you expect that I can solve the issues with third party plugins? It all goes into this question: does a certain plugin respect unity time on subframe level? If it doesn't that a change should be made to a code to make it consistent with Unity time behavior. If this doesn't happens, I am completely unable to solve the issues in third party plugins.

There is a big difference in unity recorder and Deckard. Deckard has to access subframe times, Timeline and Recorder doesn't. Recording in recorder style is simple task if timing is correct. Deckard does much more and it can fail if all systems doesn't behave correctly on a sub frame level. Deckard uses full set of hacks to overcome certain issues with unity itself. But it can't use those hacks for a third party plugins - and It's up on developers of those plugins to come with a solution. It's like blaming a road and traffic lights if a car doesn't stop on a red light and doesn't go when it's green.

 

So far I have nothing to say except a giant thank you, and a feeling of huge gratitude.

Please keep this working, especially in HDRP + Raytracing.

This is beyond words incredible. Anyone who doesnt think so just doesn't need it for their personal needs or is hitting issues that I'm not ... but what I can say is I'm rendering out to davinci resolve ... and wow, awesome job. Such a big difference ... you solved all the issues I was having trying to use Unity for this. I mean, I wish Unity had the modeling tools that UE5 did and quixel bridge built in ... but it has Deckard, which is its own awesomeness.

[Edit -- using with RealToon for anime, and just tested with Fluffy Grooming, and at least with the movement etc turned off it works great ... I havent tested anything with dynamic stuff, but I dont need it for this, so keeping it simple to WYSWYG]

 

FYI: HDRP Safe Mode gets out of sync with the timeline. Turning it on causes my 1220 frame render to "finish" in the 900s ... the deckard frame slowly stops matching up with the timeline frame ... turning it off keeps each deckard frame in sync with the timeline frame.

Also, checking "Render Timeline Range" causes another checkbox to appear with the same name "Render Timeline Range". Its supposed to be the checkbox for if the numbering of the images starts from zero or not ... I checked your editor code. I just renamed it on my end, but you should really fix that. Its minor, but very confusing, and I was about to build that functionality in to your code before I saw that's what the error was.

Additionally, the "SequenceFileName" says "Capture", but it doesn't actually get added to the file name ... it just says has an "img" prefix ... I havent tried changing it, or checking the code, but that looks like another bug. I'm sure I can fix it on my end, but ... why not polish the front end of this so there aren't silly errors like these? While the actual thing your product does is working great ... user workflow is still critical for larger projects. [Edit -- Ah, sequence file name isn't actually the file name, its the entire path of the file from the unity project directory. Not a bug ... just confusing name ]

Loving the renders, but it could use an update with some fixes ... I can't imagine I'm the only one who caught some stuff pretty quickly.

 

Pinging you for the above bugs in case you aren't notified.

 

Erm, another bug (that I'm working around, but annoying). I have no idea why, but deckard has started skipping to frame 24 in my project, even for older scenes that I haven't touched since they worked properly. The resume from frame is 0, and Render Timeline Range is unchecked, and even if I check it, its all set to 0. And again, I haven't touched those scenes or cameras since they last worked fine.

The workaround I'm using is to shift everything up 24 frames to get it to render image 0 starting from the correct place ... but any idea why this is happening? I have it set to 24 frames per second ... havent changed this ... tried playing with it but couldnt figure out what it was consistently doing, so not sure if thats linked or a red herring.

Anyway ... still loving the renders ... not loving the annoying bugs I'm finding. Any chance you can update this to just fix this stuff? Its marring what should be a perfect product here.

[Edit -- FYI, 2023 HDRP, also, I'm using a top of the line 6k alienware from this year for this stuff ... so its not my machine]

 

this feature have been implemented yet?

 

@olix4242
If there is no unity editor Deckard Render can work?
I mean rendering video from a game.exe file

 

Following the actions of the developer you won't see any updates ever again, except release fixes. Which only points out to sell the thing as it is. I once read an interesting line somewhere "Art ist business! Learn business!" This kind of attitude & knowledge seems to be missing here. I bought Deckard, tested it several times, and it's not suitable for any production that plans an serious outcome. And even if he plans to update some bugs, it is 2023 and the last update was two years ago. That's the business part that so many don't understand. Addons in a game engine are supposed to work each next week, and not in years.

 

I hear. To be fair, I _am_ using it, and its doing what I need it to do well. I'm one person doing cartoons in Davinci Resolve, so I dont need it to be much fancier than this ... the quality is still better than anything else I get from Unity. To be honest, its probably _the sole reason_ I'm using Unity over UE5 right now, just because I refuse to produce jaggies, and this gets rid of them beautiful, even with toon shaded outlines.

I get that he is _not_ being paid anymore for this, and I wouldn't want to do free work to help other people either. If this were an external program he would be charging X per month, because its a unity asset store plugin, he gets one payment and then has to keep up with _someone elses code changes_ for years. That's not a viable business strategy, and a large part of why I never released quite a few packages I put together myself in the end. One payment, and then 20 years of upkeep? It doesn't make financial sense. Any other normal product, if you don't make a change, than basically nothing changes ... its stable ... releasing here is not.

However, it would be nice if the (probably) 10 minutes of fixes that this stuff would be required by him would just be fixed and pushed, so it would feel more polished. The only real "what on earth" moment was my 24 frame bug, and even that I cant be positive isnt due to other add ons I installed afterwards ... I own a lot.

Ultimately, the only way it probably makes sense for him financially is to (after fixing any outstanding bugs) just charge a monthly fee to keep up with future releases. I'd be more than willing to spend 10 bucks a month on supporting this if it would mean he could make progress on it in a real way ... I'd be really sad to see this get deprecated someday, since its helping me so much as it is.

 

Hello,

Please address the above bugs. I have confirmed that it is skipping to frame 24 in a multiple projects ... I had to change an existing timeline to push everything forward to frame 24 in two projects so far. Why is this? It starts off fine but that eventually breaks.

Also other bugs I posted above.

I'm all for not doing extra work on this, I get it as per above, but please address fixing the bugs I have reported so far. Thanks!

 

Unfortunately, this bug bothers me: it is broken across unity versions. To explain, Deckard Render uses a hack to skip one second ahead of time, to let unity tol 'warm up". So it works until certain unity version: when unity implemented a same correction by themselves into a Timeline recorder (on my request to compensate for this warmups). But this correction is then applied in some versions, and skipped in some other. So now we don't even have a consistent behavior. Also, check this: if you are using multiple timelines, be sure that you assign into Deckard a timeline that you are actually using.
p. s. When reporting issues, please be sure to include a Unity version - so that I can keep a track.

 

Business is what it is: In my case, since Midjourney started and Covid ended, Deckard is selling 30 - 100x less. This means that if things go well, I sell 1 copy of it in one month. Once I pay publishing fees and taxes, I get around 10$ each month. That is 120$ a year. Sorry, but in this moment in time, investing any time into search for bugs isn't a business for me. I'm just hoping that, for example, a next New Years sale will bring enough saless, for me to be able to make some updates. I have a new version of Deckard ready, but I have a problem that it changes a way how to manage it, as it is now tightly connected to timeline workflow: I have to make a documentation for it (not so easy). And I have to test it before release.

 

No, there is not. And if it were, it would have a a custom (and not cheap) licence.

 

Oh okay, thats not a problem. As I mentioned above, I completely get that you're at the mercy of Unity code changes ... its probably a nightmare. Oh, and it happened in HDRP 2023 and 2022.3.10f1LTS.

Can you make note of this somewhere? I had no way of knowing what that was. You should at the very least update with some minor bug fixes like mentioned above (I'm looking at you "Render From Frame" double checkbox bug ... you have the wrong name on a checkbox which was really confusing). While you do that, just put that text on the deckard renderer component editor ... please dont make everyone waste time trying to figure it out.

Now I know, just skip 1 second if that happens. Not a problem.

 

IMO, if this isn't sustainable, make a new release with a paid subscription and start showing how to easily create some shows etc ... dont let this die. I'm one person making cartoons here and its making RealToon look great. Do what you have to ... you have a great product when its combined with Unity's ease of use.

 

Assetstore doesn't have any subscription model available. I'm thinking about two options: making a new version, and deprecating the old one. Or even going public on github under a CC licence and setting up donations profile.

 

Does this not work with LateUpdate? I have some custom timeline code that sets a model's bone rotations in LateUpdate (finger movement timeline stuff to easily do gestures). I use LateUpdate to have it applied after the animation on every frame. When I run the game it works great. I also see it coming up properly in the editor view of deckard. However, when I hit render animation ... every frame has the characters hands in the base pose from the animation ... completely ignoring my LateUpdate code.

I'm assuming that you are somehow rendering before that code runs? If so, I hate to say it, but I may not be able to keep using this, since I need to be able to write custom timeline stuff to automate what would otherwise be way too time consuming ...

If this is a bug, can you fix it? If its not a bug, can you fix it?

[Edit -- tested with Unity's recorder ... yours gives smoother outlines and just overall feels crisper. Really hoping you have an answer for this.]

 

Deckard works in late update. So you have to be sure that your code does it's things before deckard renders. You sould play with script times in Unity, and set your script to execute before deckard. Or modify deckard by adding your script to it.

 

Yay theres a solution. I was really bummed at losing this . I'll play around and thank you for the fast reply ... I'm doing a final render today on something and just switched off of deckard because of this ... now I dont have to (assuming I figure it out).

[Edit -- just adding my script the script order in the project settings and putting it before Deckard Renderer did not fix it. I still don't see my lateupdate changes in the renders ... only in your editor preview. I don't have time to fix this, so unfortunately I need to just use the regular Unity Recorder to get this project out today ... I'll post back if I find a way though, since I have a lot more coming, and hopefully I can inject what I need before you render in your code.

I'll just need to find the right spot ... if you know that off hand, it would save me some time, and I'd appreciate it.]

 

Hey,

So I moved away from Deckard because I don't think I can solve this unfortunately. Your renders are higher quality though, so if there's any way, please let me know.

I have custom code that moves the bones of my characters in late update, which has to happen AFTER the animation in the timeline occurs. From what I can tell, there's no way to cause this to happen from custom timeline code itself, but rather, I just have to have it in a LateUpdate on a component on the gameobject of my characters. I'm doing this to easily change where they look, their finger motions, etc. However, from what I can tell, Deckard does not use this when I render out to a sequence ... the editor view of deckard shows my lateupdate code just fine, but when I render, none of it shows up. I even tried calling that code directly from deckard's lateupdate function ... so it definitely gets called ... it just gets ignored.

Is there any way to cause Deckard to render something not triggered from the timeline and in a LateUpdate function? Or is there any other way to override Unity's animation and change the bone rotations from the timeline with custom code that Deckard will use?

Love your product and really wish I could use it moving forward ... any chance of getting this to work?

 

There might be more than one solution:
1) Use Unity Recorder to bake character animations into new animations before rendering with Deckard.
2) set an execution order of your script to be higher or lower than deckard. Depending on what are you doing, it might work or not.
3) try moving your script action to OnPreCull update.
You could also call your script from Deckard, by calling your script from deckard. Add a calling line after each
timeline.Evaluate();
in Deckard Render script (from SkinMotionBlur function)
I am assuming that you are calling your animations from Timeline.

 

Wow, so far so good. Thanks so much, I used #4. I have all my code that was in a late update extending one class so its easy enough to just find it all and loop through in those places after timeline.Evaluate(). Awesome, much better renders AND its faster than built in recorder, thanks again!

 

I’m happy that it worked for you. I might expose custom messages for custom scripts, so that this becomes more easy for activating any function.