[RELEASED] Dynamic Decals

@Llockham-Industries if you think about instancing you need mark asset as Dx11+ ))) but yes, its can solve your problem with decals, actualy you can dont generate meshes for dx11 an use gpu mesh generation with compute buffers. But its give not huge benefits against instancing. Only memory maybe.

 

@gamers2000 - What are the other items you want to avoid projection on? and how are you using decals? Could you simply reduce the "thickness" of your decals projection bounds so that they avoid contact with most of the moving objects? Things like projectiles for example, should not need to be masked. Regardless I'll look into a solution for batching masks, probably leaning towards Unity's dynamic batching / custom batching right now.

@mf_andreich - The asset could still work on all versions, batching and atlassing would be limited to DX11+ though, unfortunately. I do plan to keep atlassing and instancing as decoupled from the core system as possible though, just a cleaner design. You've given me a lot of ideas, and being able to bake vector4's into UV channels is incredible .

 

@Llockham-Industries can you explain more detail your problem with combining decals in one mesh? I think that I dont understand it... as you can see my english not good enough)

 

Okay, I have a diagram, behold my artistic skills.


Figure 1 demonstrates the layout of the scenario, with 2 projections and there bounds (red and blue). The black line being the wall they're projecting onto, and the black circle being a camera, with it's frustum.

Figure 2 demonstrates what happens when they are rendered as separate instances, red first then blue, or vice versa. This is the desired outcome.

Figure 3 demonstrates what happens when we combine the meshes. Each pixel is rendered once, and the nearest part of the mesh is rendered. So as the Blue part of the combined mesh is closer, it is rendered instead of the red part of the mesh behind it, and as it's not hitting the wall it is clipped, so nothing is drawn. This occludes the red part of the mesh that also needs to be drawn to draw the red decal properly.

I hope this helps, appreciate that your trying to help too, nice to have people to talk to about this stuff .

 

@Llockham-Industries, why you think that meshes will be culled? Its right only if you write into z-buffer in your shaders, but if you dont engine must draw all triangles as expected or I'm wrong?

 

Okay this is definitely going to need testing, I think your right, I hope your right .

 

With two static batched cubes (which draws in one dc) and transparent shader all work fine. Yes its need to be tested. And yes for DX11 use instancing much better option. I think you can create some abstraction for batching and create two implementation, for modern cards and others.

 

@mf_andreich - sounds like a plan! Thanks for the suggestion.

 

No problem. =)

 

Hi, I just bought this asset but already have some problems

Your support email address bounces: support@llockhamindustustries.com

You included Cinematic Image Effects by accident in the package:
Assets/Cinematic Image Effects/UnityProject/Assets/Standard Assets/Effects/Bloom/Bloom.cs(56,14): error CS0246: The type or namespace name `Min' could not be found. Are you missing an assembly reference?

Assets/Cinematic Image Effects/UnityProject/Assets/Standard Assets/Effects/Bloom/Bloom.cs(109,34): error CS0103: The name `ImageEffectHelper' does not exist in the current context

Assets/Cinematic Image Effects/UnityProject/Assets/Standard Assets/Effects/Bloom/Bloom.cs(144,18): error CS0103: The name `ImageEffectHelper' does not exist in the current context

And a question: How do I get the decals to move with my skinned mesh, for blood on clothing effects?

 

Apologies, I left the bloom component I was testing with in the base demo scene, so the asset up-loader must have included the component, but none of its dependencies, email me and I'll send you a quick download with the fix. I'll upload a hot-fix to the asset-store ASAP, thanks .

The system projects to skinned meshes in world space, not UV-space, so it'll be tricky to achieve decals moving with skinned meshes, but not impossible. You may be able to get away with parenting your decals to the bones of your skinned mesh, allowing them to move with it. This would work well in relatively flat areas, but around highly derformable areas, like shoulders, or elbows, you would have to select one of the bones to move with, so It could look a little strange.

The only solution I know built in UV-space is UVPaint. Such systems would only ever be useful for printing decals that need to move with skinned characters to skinned characters, so I don't think there's a huge demand for them, and there are a ton of more important things I need to do with this system before I can think of building a UV-space system for this package.

 

FYI there's a typo in the support email address above:
support@llockhamindustustries.com

Should be
support@llockhamindustries.com

 

Hi

I have a question: For a strategy game I use a hex map from the Honey Framework. The terrain height (for hills and mountains) is created by this Framework from a texture inside the shader. However you can raycast the actual height from unity to place objects on the map.

Now I want to highlight the currently selected unit with a white circle around the unit base (like in Civ6). For this I tried to use the build in projectors from unity (grid projector for example). However it does only work for flat terrain. On mountains and hills the projected sprite is "below" the additional hight of the terrain.

I'm not a shader expert, but I guess the projector shader from unity does not get the additional adapted vertices from the terrain shader as input.

So I wonder if it would work with this asset instead?
Any guesses about it or any hint I need to check, before buying the asset?

Best regards

Edit:
I have also another question: Is it possible to assign such a decal object on another gameobject which moves over the map (a unit?)

 

@Netbandit I don't have the asset to test, so I cannot say for certain, but as long as the honey-hex framework shaders render to the depthbuffer (Can't see why they wouldn't) then decals should project onto it correctly.

Unity's in-built projectors attempt to render every object they touch with a custom projector material, so the tessellation in the original material won't be applied.
Decals are instead rendered separately afterwards, on top of whats already been rendered, using the depth buffer written to by the honey-hex shader to determine where to render the decal.

I can't guarantee it will work, but I see no reason it shouldn't. Try it, if it doesn't, grab a refund.

Also, Decals are just like any other gameObject, if you want them to move with a unit, just parent them to the unit .

 

Thanks for this very detailed answer. Another question that comes up: When I attach the decal object to the unit and since the unit is standing at the terrain, could it happen that the decal is shown on the unit mesh or can I ignore it?

 

@Netbandit - You can add a mask component to the Unit's renderer, which will add it into a mask layer, then tell the decal to ignore the mask layer the unit is on, so it will project onto everything other than the unit.

 

Wow this was a fast reply, thanks
So I can tell the decal to ignore a certain layer? In this case it is very easy, since the terrain is on a different layer than the unit, thus just ignoring the unit layer should do the job also without mask component, right?

 

@Netbandit - Mask layers are seperate from Unitys Physics/Rendering layers for a whole heap of reasons you can find further back in this thread, so unfortunately you'll still need to use mask components to draw renderers into the mask layers.

 

@Llockham-Industries
Thanks for your replies, it really helped a lot. I also found a description of the masking feature on your webpage and I think this will work. So I will buy your asset soon

Another question regarding performance: On your webpage you wrote, performance of those decals is very good, since only decals that are currently visible by the camera are drawn, right?
I wonder, if I can use the decals also for adding other types of markers to my map, like border lines, path highlighter or several features on the map. But then I will get thousands of decals on the whole map with several hundred decals currently visible...
How would this affect the performance?
How to improve the performance. For example borderlines could be merged to a single mesh, also path highlighter could be merged to a single "line"-mesh and so on... would this improve performance?

 

You could definitely use the system for borders etc, but that feels like something that would be better suited to, like you said, custom meshes that could be combined into a single draw-call.

You already know where the borders are, so you know all the details of the terrain and thus the mesh, and you could literally use a flat color shader without textures.

Using decals for borders would require either a lot of separate decals, which would have a reasonably high draw-call count, or 1 giant decal with a lot of overdraw and a very high resolution dynamically generated texture. neither are ideal, though a lot of separate decals wouldn't be the worst solution.

Using decals for the path seems more appropriate, as the terrain would be far less predictable and much harder to generate. You would also need far less.

 

Thanks for this hint. You are right borders are not as dynamic as units, thus they can easily rendered into the terrain texture at shader level to save draw calls.

For path lines, it might be harder. First I thought it would be possible to use decals that are not a simple box, but a line mesh, to project the line on the terrain. But when I played around with the decal example from unity, I noticed that this will not work. So the only idea is to prepare small parts of the line and combine them at runtime with different decals.
Or do you have another idea, how I can render a line on top of the terrain?

 

Decals are projected as boxes, but you could easily stretch them into lines by scaling them on a single axis. So you could just use a flat color and no texture, then scale the decal into a line as long and as thin as you like. This way you only need a single decal per line segment. If you want curved lines you'll need more decals, but I'm assuming your going Civ style, and thus only 1 decal per path and 1 draw-call per path, and close to no overdraw.

 

I assume this should work for Android Open GL 2.0 and 3.0?
and IOS?
If so I will buy now.

 

Thanks for your hint.

 

@recon0303 - It should work on every playform unity supports, shaders compile for every rendering platform and support every shader model. Every platform I've managed to test works without issue..

 

I figured it did, but I always like to make sure, so people don't say why didn't you ask me, before you bought... Seen this with assets in the past, so just something I like to ask, you never know.

ANYWAYS bought Thanks. Looking forward to using.

 

I've just purchased this asset and unfortunately I didn't realize it was not compatible with forward rendering or VR, and I'm having this issue with the "scan lines" as well. Is there an ETA on that update? It's currently not usable due to the artifacts.

 

@wilgieseler - The scan lines should only be in the editor, they shouldn't appear in the actual game with the clipping planes you have set for that camera. It's still usable, but obviously far from perfect. This is still my priority, and I'm confident I have the right solution, I'm just struggling to find time between my other job to finish it. I believe I could do it in a few days, but being reasonable and applying a bit of scope management, give me a month. If anything changes I'll let you know.

Edit - 1.4 released, scan line issue fixed.

 

will this be updated for 5.6? I get alot of strange problems in 5.6.b9
https://gyazo.com/208b298fb83f9ce63d06e60354dc154e

I tried reading threw thsi post to find the problems im experiencing but idk if i see them but
when i change transparency of one decal it breaks the other decals or when i add more than one decal in the other decals mess up, or when i duplicate or delete decals in the editor it gets spammed in errors. Is it just not updated for 5.6 i assume? And if that is the problem, are you planning on fixing it for 5.6? It even mess's up my transparent decals from 2+ if i change the size of my 3Dgizmos lol. This is in runtime and in the editor with or without that one check box checked. Also in deferred rendering.

 

It actually seems to only happen on decals that have blend transparency on them with an albedo and normal map, the cutout transparency doesnt work on things with normals and the blend one produces the results of the gif

https://gyazo.com/2b8fd0d511c503e5e34076399e59d4be

it works if i use the only normal mode and not the full mode, is it just a combination of the texture and normal with transparency?

and control z makes all decals disappear and i get a bunch of errors saying there's missing references to them, i quick fix is turning them off then back on and it works again, which i jsut found out sometimes doesn't work and the only thing i can think of is deleting all decals and restarting. Am i just using this plugin to aggressively?
https://gyazo.com/023727eb98cf02324a71f3676b5332bf

 

@sniffle63 - This is definitely not intended behavior. Grabbing the latest 5.6 beta now, will release a hot-fix when I find the source of the problems. I'm definitely intending to have the system working in 5.6, as well as all future versions of Unity.

 

@Llockham-Industries very awesome! glad to hear it. Definitely the most professional decal system out

 

@Llockham-Industries Could you get in touch with me once you have the issue fixed? Maybe send me a version before its accepted to the asset store so i can use the product

 

I just found a very critical performance issue caused by Dynamic Decals. I got a scene that is featuring tons of objects but is running at good performance and only ~1000 draw calls due to batching, baked light and occlusion culling. When however a Decal is projected on some of this objects the batching or whatever is being killed irreversible and removing the decal does not bring it back. The draw calls skyrocket from 1000 to over 7000 draw calls in this scene.

Disabling the Decal did fix this issue but now I got no blood decals anymore

I'm Using Unity 5.5.0f3.

Could you look into this? I

 

@PatrickKa - I'll need more information, are you by chance masking 6000 objects? If so adding a decal would initialize the system, drawing the masks.. If not, is there any chance you could email me a copy of the project with as many assets removed as possible, whilst still maintaining the bug?

 

I'm not using any mask at all. I could try to create a test project because this project is way too big. Maybe just creating a simple scene and baking it would be enough. Then just drag a decal on it and see how it influences the draw calls.

 

I sent you a private message with a download link to a simple project and some instructions. I hope you can find the issue soon because this really is a critical issue.

 

@PatrickKa - The extra draw-calls are from shader replacement. Dynamic Decals currently requires the use of DepthTextureMode.DepthNormals in forward rendering. So it adds it to your cameras depthTextureMode (Once initialized). Currently your rendering both Depth & DepthNormals, what are you using Depth for? & could you use DepthNormals there instead? It would save you a fair amount of draw-calls.

@sniffle63 - Still working on tracking the source of the issue, It's a tricky one. I'll keep you updated and send you a copy through once I find it.

 

Where can I find the option to change this setting? But I feel like that might be way too much of a change for an already existing game yet again. Very sad story that it is so expensive when using baking.

 

It needs to be done via scripting here is a component that could do it for you -

Code (csharp):

1.  
2. using System.Collections;
3. using System.Collections.Generic;
4. using UnityEngine;
5.  
6. [RequireComponent(typeof(Camera))]
7. public class DepthTextureModeSet : MonoBehaviour {
8.  
9.     public DepthTextureMode depthTextureMode = DepthTextureMode.DepthNormals;
10.     private Camera cam;
11.  
12.     void OnEnable()
13.     {
14.         cam = GetComponent<Camera>();
15.         cam.depthTextureMode = depthTextureMode;
16.     }
17.  
18.     void Update()
19.     {
20.         if (cam.depthTextureMode != depthTextureMode)
21.         {
22.             Debug.LogWarning("Something is setting your depthTextureMode to something other than the specified. Some other system in your scene must be dependant on another depth texture mode.");
23.         }
24.     }
25. }
26.  

Add the above component to your camera, it should set the requested mode, and tell you if anything else in your scene is dependent on another Depth-texture-mode.

This is a requirement of Forward rendering, Deferred works without a depthTextureMode requirement. And a note.. This system doesn't work with baked lighting, it's a real-time screen-spaced solution, so you'll need at least an active directional light if you want to use PBR Decals, Unlit decals work regardless of lighting conditions.

 

@sniffle63 - Check your inbox, found the source of the 5.6 beta issues. Hot-fix has been uploaded, more than happy to send you an advanced copy while the asset-store team mull it over.

 

@Llockham-Industries Any idea when VR support will be added? This looks perfect for my needs..

 

VR should work fine if your using Deferred rendering, if your using forward rendering though, wait until 1.4, a few weeks out.

 

Looks like a very nice asset!
I'll probably get it both for work and for spare time projects

Some questions:
1. I need to add an unlit decal to areas with minefields. I would prefer, if possible, that the trees do not get affected, only the ground. Is this possible with your layer system? (using unity terrain and terrain trees)
2. Are tiretracks in mud, snow etc. a good fit for your system?
3. When doing some experiments with the unity command buffer example I noticed those shaders get clipped away when camera comes too close to the rendering volume. Is this something you've managed to fix in your system?

Keep up the good work!

 

@Mikael-H
1. Unfortunately Unity's terrain & trees are unable to be masked, they use internal methods to render these objects.
2. If your terrain is flat, it would probably be easier to just generate a simple mesh in real-time, and scroll UV's over a tiling track texture. If your on a complex terrain though, it would be too expensive to do in real time, so this system would be a nice alternative. Decals are projected as cubes though, so you would probably have to make your tracks up out of multiple small decals if you wanted to generate them in real-time.
3. Decals are still visible when the camera penetrates the projection bounds. If your curious, the issue was that the shader in the Unity example was culling back faces, if you cull front-faces instead, when the camera penetrates the volume, you solve the issue.

 

I suspected as much, I was hoping you'd know some dark magic shader withcraft solution Not a dealbreaker! I'll just tell management that the projection on the trees is a feature, and a damn hard one to build at that! I think they maybe bought it...

I'm working on real world terrain so sometimes flat, somtimes not... I'll be happy with decals that can fade away if there are too many. Many small decals is sort of what I was envisioning. Right now we're using a trailrenderer to create tracks so I'm sure this will look better. If you think this could look good, maybe you could put this in one of you showcase videos?

Ahh, that simple Things don't always move fast at large companies (because reasons, many many reasons...) so this will help me remove artifacts while I wait for the purchase to go through the proper channels.

Thank you very much for taking the time to answer!
/Mike

 

Great work, I'm eager to buy this once VR forward rendering is supported!

 

Dynamic Decals 1.4 has just been submitted to the Asset Store Team, should be available within the next few days. 1.4 brings with it a host of improvements and fixes.

Edit - 1.4 is live!

Firstly the particle-collision printer has been added to allow decals to be printed based on particle collisions, perfect for blood particle effects, or to have sparks leave burn marks etc. This comes with a new demo scene to demonstrate its usage.

Support for VertExmotion has been introduced (Deferred). Shout out to the Thierry, the developer, for helping make that happen. If you haven't heard of VertExmotion, give it a look, definitely worth your time.

The most significant change to the system, is how it now handles forward rendering. The system now uses shader replacement to render high-precision normals and uses the depth texture mode provided by Unity to render our Depth. Previously normals where packed with the depth texture, which left both at very low precision creating artifacts. The new method gives us higher-precision depth and normals to work with, removing all artifacts previously found in forward rendering.

As a Depth texture is required to render shadows already, this solution comes at essentially no performance cost, unless your game is entirely shadow-less. If your game is shadow-less (eg. mobile, stylized etc.), you still have the option to turn off high precision depth-normals in the options, packing both in a single pass as before. This may produces some normal artifacts in decal reflections, but at mobile resolution/screen size they will be difficult, if not nigh on impossible to notice.

And as we can now use the high precision depth in our scene view, depth locking is no longer required, and has been removed from the system entirely.

This was the last major issue that prevented dynamic decals from being suitable for VR. Unfortunately, I don't have a VR-capable headset, so I'm unable to test for myself, but I see no reason now, why the system shouldn't run flawlessly on VR. If any of you lovely people have headsets, please, try it and give me as much feedback as you can.

Those of you waiting for this update, thanks for your patience.

 

How could I forget, thanks to all of you who helped in the lead up to 1.4, reporting bugs & giving critical feedback. One man operation here, there's only so much I can test, couldn't do this without your help.

Noteable mentions -
Tenebrous
Ж黎明守护者Ю (Daniel)
Trung Cao
Wilgieseler
Sniffle63
EP Games
Antonio
DevHouse

Keep the feedback coming, and if your making something awesome with the system, post some screenshots! Would love to see what the systems being used for.

 

Hi! excelent system, i'm using it a lot and it works really well.
I've a minor problem with decals not working on some shaders, for example, i'm using Winter suite shaders as ground for a snow scene and decals don't show over these surfaces.
Is anything on my side that i can do to test something?