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Assets [Unity Awards 2018 - BEST ARTISTIC TOOL Winner] Aura - Volumetric Lighting

Discussion in 'Works In Progress - Archive' started by raphick, Nov 16, 2016.

  1. Jussukka

    Jussukka

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    I did some further studies on it and we are rendering the game split in 2 cameras, with effects being overlaid on the second camera. this seems to cause the issue. When rendering on the first camera, everything renders as expected no clipping of the shadows. So it is not a issue in AURA script but a bug our own 2 camera pipeline is producing.
     
  2. Shizola

    Shizola

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    You should make an asset store thread now.

    I'll wait patiently for HD pipeline support :)
     
    raphick likes this.
  3. Kieckbert

    Kieckbert

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    @raphick: First of all – congrats and many, many thanks!
    Communities really benefit from such noble habitus.
    And how excited I was couting down the last days...:)

    By the way did anyone get Aura running on a Macbook (for WebGL)?
    Unfortunately the demo scenes display the objects with textures unshaded only.

    Update: Just noticed that I am not able to check the Aura(Script) attached to the MainCamera but instead I am shown this: Bildschirmfoto 2018-02-13 um 14.30.28.jpg
     
    Last edited: Feb 13, 2018
  4. Jesus

    Jesus

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    actually one thing I found was a script missing on the main camera in the directional light demo scene. What's supposed to be there?
     
  5. marcrem

    marcrem

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    Hi @raphick !

    Any idea how to fix this?


    I have a nice little haze going on, and when I get in my vehicle, it basically switches the camera parent to the car camera controller instead of being a child of the character controller. It doesn't change anything on the camera itself, so I'm wondering what makes Aura stop rendering??

    EDIT:
    If I simply disable the Aura main component and re-enable it, it just doesn't render the effect anymore.

    My enter-exit script doesn't even disable anything on the camera, but I had to test just disabling the main aura component and re-enabling it, and yeah.. it's not working after I do that.
     
    Last edited: Feb 13, 2018
  6. elbows

    elbows

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    It will only work on platforms that support compute shaders.

    On the mac this means you need to use Metal as the graphics API and turn Metal Editor support on. But I havent got it to work on metal yet, not really looked into the issues but I have seen some warnings in the console about too many thread groups for this platform. As with other assets I have seen this with in the past in regards compute shaders and metal (most of which the authors managed to fix in the end), the console messages only appeared sporadically and were not terribly helpful at pointing straight to the appropriate code, but next time I try I will try to provide some specific examples.

    WebGL doesnt support compute shaders, I seem to remember hearing about a compute shader extension for WebGL standard but I dont know whats happening with that, and if/when it does arrive, Unity will then have to extend Unity compute shader support to that platform.

    Anyway this is just my own limited knowledge and experience from trying Aura briefly.
     
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  7. raphick

    raphick

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    Cool! I am really happy that it works in one of the VR type. My pleasure!
    Happy to read this! That was one of my goal compared to the other solutions out there...
    Happy to hear that...
    ...and sorry about that. I really hope that you'll be able to fix that bug that Aura made visible :/
    My pleasure! I really hope it will give ideas to others
    The error you show is typically thrown when you did not leave the main compute shader compile (or I'd did not compile because not supported which might be the case as you're on a Mac)
    I'll have a look... But if you have Aura, there shouldn't be anything more interesting.
    Yes, I still have work to do on static objects managers and especially singletons in Execute in edit mode. This currently leads the script to stop functioning if disabled, and only allow one instance of Aura Main. Sorry about that this is a known limitation in wip.
    Thanks for your good answer/explanation :)
     
  8. Kieckbert

    Kieckbert

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    @elbows Thanks, I will give it a try with Metal. Compute Shaders seem to be under dev and might come with WebGL 2 ...still need some patience with that
     
    raphick likes this.
  9. marcrem

    marcrem

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    Cool. Do you have any possible cheat / workaround in the meantime? especially with objects that are not being deactivated..? is there a way to tell the main Aura component to "reset" it's process and start doing its rendering as if it just started again? I mean my code is not even turning Aura OFF, so it shouldn't be doing this?
     
    Last edited: Feb 13, 2018
  10. one_one

    one_one

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  11. wenzheng_unity

    wenzheng_unity

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    upload_2018-2-14_12-13-33.png

    what am i missing.

    i try aura on unity 2018 and 2017 both give me the same error
     
  12. MostHated

    MostHated

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    The light you are looking at probably didnt get to process yet because you have an issue with the camera. Which is why it says what it says on the thing you have selected. Look at the camera, it seems as if its missing a script.
     
  13. wenzheng_unity

    wenzheng_unity

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    upload_2018-2-14_12-47-57.png

    is the orginal scene file downloaded from github
     
  14. marcrem

    marcrem

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    the missing script is Aura light and aura main component lol.

    something went wrong when you imported Aura I guess....
     
  15. Jesus

    Jesus

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    One of the hidden gems that isn't mentioned is the 3d texture generator, I don't think it was mentioned previously but since it can use 3d textures it's nice to have an auto-slicing tool that you feed with a (minimum 16x256) 2D texture. It then creates a new Texture3d Asset you plug in.

    Now, onto some feature requests, or info on how to do / script: can the next version have extinction parameters / coefficients for RGB be separate? This is something that can really give volumes a real sense of presence; very few things scatter red green and blue at the same rate. In fact, how much could be separated into individual RGB values instead of a single float?

    Likewise, will there be support for area lights? They can sorta be faked with spot lights at the moment, and I have a hunch we'll be seeing them come into the light (so to speak) throughout the 2018 cycle.
     
  16. Jussukka

    Jussukka

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    Actually, we found out that the shadows disappear from the fog also when we add a point light to the scene (even though that point light does not have an aura script applied. So it may have something to do with the 2017.3 compatibility issue. Waiting to see if your update helps! We are doing screen space reflecting transparency using 2 cameras and would love to keep that in. All screen space post processes are challenged by our process :D even simple stuff like built in motion blur & taa
     
  17. Jesus

    Jesus

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    To further this point, the pic below was created using a fog plane (which is really just an infinitely large box) and some lights.

    Again, I cannot stress enough the quality of life things like the fade/transitions for fog lights, etc, they make everything so much easier. Even if the light transmittance are then 'orthagonal' to a degree, it's well within the range of 'close enough'.

    Obviously you're never going to get close just be using one light of blue colour (I challenge you to try), but if you could handle extinction on a per-channel basis it could be faster.

    Aura_water_completely_safe.png

    One very weird thing I've found, and I'm not sure it's related to aura, is that the CPU time changes between ~3ms and ~12ms, it's 4 times faster when the camera's moving than when it's standing still. No idea if this is aura related or not (more testing) but if anyone else notices it speak up. 2017.3 is what I'm using.
     
  18. zelmund

    zelmund

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    make 2 cameras and set them separatedt to each eye. for each camera will be own effect.
    will it work like that?
     
  19. raphick

    raphick

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    You could try to reparent your camera when you get in/out of your car instead of using another one.
    You don't disable the Aura component but your disable the camera game object which is the same.

    I don't know this might come from a compilation error. Anyway it is local to you computer. It has worked so far for 7.5k persons.

    Thanks! I intend to make this tool even more complete.

    IDK I already wondered about it and will do again ;)

    I wish but I still haven't have looked at it.

    Pretty sure it's not related :)

    Unfortunately it's not that easy, :/ especially as Aura doesn't support multi instances atm
     
  20. raphick

    raphick

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    2018-02-20 11_21_09-Unity 2018.1.0b7 (64bit) - Point Light Example.png

    Aura update :

    Version 1.0.1
    • Fixed Point Lights’ shadows on Unity versions > 2017.2

    Now Aura successfully works on all Unity version from 2017.2 :)
     
  21. marcrem

    marcrem

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    Actually, I am reparenting my camera right now, not disabling it or changing camera. That's why I'm finding it weird. I think the fact that my camera is being repositionned might cause the problem, or maybe it's the field of view that's changing.

    EDIT:
    I tried setting the field of view to the same value on my car camera controller AND character camera (two scripts affecting the same camera depending on the state of the player (is driving or not)), didn't fix it.
     
    Last edited: Feb 20, 2018
  22. raphick

    raphick

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    mmmh this might need some more investigating because indeed it should work... :/
     
  23. marcrem

    marcrem

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    Well I'm both sorry and happy to tell you it was my mistake!

    My enter/exit script was parenting the camera to the car's camera before enabling this GameObject. so I was indeed disabling and enabling the camera, during one frame.

    My bad. I should've dug deeper before coming here, but you kinda helped me find the source of the problem :)

    Cheers.
     
  24. raphick

    raphick

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    Glad it works for you now! :) Share the good stuf!
     
  25. MostHated

    MostHated

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  26. Jesus

    Jesus

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    I don't know if this is the correct update procedure, but I just copy-pasted the new aura folder over the existing one, over-wrote everything, and it seems to work OK so far.
     
  27. raphick

    raphick

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    Aura is very self contained and just takes what's available by Unity's lighting system so there should be no problem I think.

    Hum... yes OK :)
    The very best procedure would be to delete then reimport the newest Aura actually because there might be more complex changes.
     
  28. Jussukka

    Jussukka

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    I am unable to get point light shadows working after the update. We are using NGSS for shadows. Both aura and NGSS are updated to their final versions. Any help?
     
  29. Jussukka

    Jussukka

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    Actually, after the update the god ray effect from directional lights disappeared as well :D Oh my. Any suggestions?
     
  30. raphick

    raphick

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    Nope :/ I don't know about solutions that bypass the Unity's lighting system... Have you tried without NGSS?
     
  31. MenchenFive

    MenchenFive

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    Does aura require movable/dynamic lights or can it also work with baked lightning? (even if through probes)
     
  32. raphick

    raphick

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    Aura sucks the data from the lights it is attached to. You can bake the lights if you want but you'll still have to leave them in you scene (real time or mixed but not baked because there will be not shadows then). Aura doesn't support probes (for now?).
     
  33. Jussukka

    Jussukka

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    after fiddling around, directional lights are again working fine. In our game though, when a point light is introduged to the scene, the directional lights volumetrics lose all shadows. So the problems seems to be related to the point lights still. It happens regardless if we have point lights turned on in the aura settings or not. Man I really would love this to work! Aura looks so much better than the competition but naturally we need it to work with NGSS.
     
  34. raphick

    raphick

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    You can make exhaustive tests with the Sponza example scene, where it has directional + points.

    I am not going to support custom plugins, I'll stick with Unity pipeline. But still you can modify Aura to make it work as it is open source though :)
     
  35. Jussukka

    Jussukka

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    We'll fix it ourselves, thanks!
     
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  36. raphick

    raphick

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    Still feel free to keep me updated vie PM ;)
     
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  37. ceebeee

    ceebeee

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    It would be nice if you can also post your solution here, for the benefit of others using NGSS (like myself). I haven't looked into Aura extensively as of yet, as I'm focused on other areas at this time. But having NGSS and Aura play nice will be of great importance to me (and I'm sure others) down the road. :)

    (though I have to admit, I'm not seeing any issue with NGSS):


    Green foreground point light, the bright central directional, and background blue spotlight all seem fine and are casting shadows.
     
    Last edited: Feb 22, 2018
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  38. raphick

    raphick

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    Cool! Thanks for your answer! I was puzzled that it could become from Aura, I am relieved now.
     
  39. kepesh

    kepesh

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    I have a transparent glass shader that I made in shader forge that seems to be drawing on top of this plugin. Like the render-order is off somehow. Have you experienced anything like this?

    Thanks
     
  40. raphick

    raphick

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    Yes this is normal, real the Starting guide.pdf ;)
     
  41. joshcamas

    joshcamas

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    Hey I have a question!

    When I use this, it seems to make my sky either extremely bright, or when I disable the aura light on the directional light, it makes it sorta grey.

    Does this addon work with skies? I personally like my sky how it is, and was hoping I'd be able to sqeeze some volumetric effects without losing it. Or is losing the sky just part of the effect?

    By the way, this is an insanely good looking addon.

    Thanks!
    -Josh
     
  42. raphick

    raphick

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    Hi Josh! Thanks!
    No Aura does not interfere with the skybox but indeed, you should keep in mind that it makes the air "visible", so it's like putting something in front of your skybox...
    You'll have to take it into account and balance it...
    Or you can set the material of your skybox in the transparent queue so i'll be rendered after the postprocess pass of Aura...
     
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  43. Rich_A

    Rich_A

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    I wish I could give a more specific scenario, but I've noticed twice upon setting up a scene with lights, cameras and fog volumes, that after saving, exiting, and reloading the project/scene after a couple of days, things look completely different. Anyone else experiencing the same?

    Next time I finish arranging everything for a scene I'll build the project before exiting so I can compare directly.
     
  44. mykillk

    mykillk

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    Congratulations Raphick on the release of your most excellent asset. A great resource for the whole community!
     
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  45. raphick

    raphick

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    Thank you very much! it seems to be appreciated.

    Make sure the components are not disabled in your lights/volumes. In some cases they are loaded before the camera (when the camera is in another scene that is loaded after theirs for example) and then cannot register so they get disabled.
     
  46. Jesus

    Jesus

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    Is this on the asset store? I can't find any references to it when I search for it there?
     
  47. No, it's on github: https://github.com/raphael-ernaelsten/Aura
    Always read the first post of the forum threads here, those contain all of the relevant information around here.
     
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  48. raphick

    raphick

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    It is still pending for review for the Asset Store :)
     
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  49. raphick

    raphick

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  50. KarlGG

    KarlGG

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    And already someone read the instructions and did exactly the opposite and left a poor review based on the fact that it only works on the devices it says it works on.
     
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