[RELEASED] Impostors - Runtime Optimization

Having tested the example scene, I realized that the load appears more with a large number of chunks. 4096 in example. Even if the camera is not pointed at objects.

Also, my scene does not have a Light Probe, but Calculate Light Probe works, not critical, but it would be nice to turn it off.

 

Got it.

Yes, these numbers are more truthful. ExecuteCommandBuffer is on the engine side, we have no control over it. It's the rendering process that draws objects into the impostor's texture. I doubt there is something I can do about it. Nevertheless, I have no excuse for why it takes so long in comparison to default rendering.

Ok, maybe it's hardware problem that causes impostors to not show... I got device with Mali GPU and can reproduce this problem.

This setting has no effect on performance. But I suggest using OnPreCull.

Yes, this definitely could be improved. Previously, I thought that 100 chunks wouldn't affect performance that much

 

4096 chunk?

It must be super cheap and shouldn't affect performance at all.

 

Objects. Highest setting in example scene.

A single boolean check would be even faster, but not critical.

It is strange that in the same project, example scene and my scene produce different imposter rendering results.
In my scene, the rendering is normal, but in the example scene, only a few nearby imposters are rendered.

In any case, faster chunk operations are needed now.
There are also wishes for rendering, but for now the FPS is more important.

 

Maybe the problem with MinAngleToStopLookAtCamera again?

Working on improving it right now

 

No, because of the angle disappear completely. So far I am using 180 and it works.
Perhaps the LOD Bias settings do not match in scenes or are calculated incorrectly on the phone itself. In the editor, everything works fine in all scenes.

My heavily loaded scene has 46-52 chunks.
Hope this helps.

 

hello,when i play example on windows platform it looks perfect! but when i switch to android platform, it looks some issues. my project is mobile vr, can you tell me how to fix it? is it alpha channel?

 

i run on my mobile vr device, and it became a big error, i can not see impostors. What's your setting on mobile vr?

 

It's strange...
I'm able to reproduce this issue.
As a quick fix please deselect the HDR option on ImpostorLODGroupsManager

If you are using a Built-In render pipeline for VR project, then you need to change Impostor Rendering Type to 'Immediately'.
Unfortunately, Built-in RP has some limitations

 

1. What's the difference with amplify impostors? (Which is shader based)
2. Does the URP shader graph allow custom lighting?

 

Amplify impostors are baked at edit time and each impostor uses big atlas to represent a single object from various sides.
Impostors - Runtime Optimization are created at runtime, and each impostor represents object from a specific side, which faces camera. Therefore whenever camera moves it requires to regenerate impostor texture.
Pros over amplify impostors:

• no need to create big and heavy texture atlases and inject them into build,
• creates impostors at runtime and could be used with procedurally generated objects,
• mobile and VR friendly

Cons:

• not suitable for fast-paced camera movement games(because of the need to regenerate impostors when camera moves)
• not suitable for close objects because of shader simplicity, which means no shadows, depth-write, and dynamic lighting.(but for distant objects it works great)

I'm not sure what it is. Can you link some examples?

 

Just purchased the asset and the performance is insane good job ! however on URP 11 there seems to be an issue with render textures rendering transparent , i even tried to manually change the format and it it is still rendering the entire quad .

Has anyone experienced this ?

# tried changing the background color to black an made sure the it is indeed transparent but indeed the texture is not rendering alpha

#disabeling the hdr bool solved the issue

 

I've just installed Unity 2021.2.0a16.2250.
It comes with URP 12 and everything works fine with and without HDR.
What specific version of Unity are you using?

 

Does it work on terrain trees? And has someone tried using it with hdrp?

 

No, terrain trees are entirely driven by unity's terrain system which cannot be expanded, unfortunately.

I've tried HDRP For now, I didn't find a way to run it on HDRP, unfortunately.

 

Hi.I have some questions.
Does every impostor's original gameobject need to add an LOD Group component even if they have only one mesh?
How to scale an impostor?(I tried scale "ObjectToBecomeImpostor" and subObject "Cube" the runtime result still not scaled)
How to make an impostor for a nested prefab?(The house in my scene is combined by small prototype prefabs like blocks and pillars, the house itself is not a single mesh).

 

Yes it's required, built-in LODGroup component is responsible for culling original renderers.

Changing impostor at runtime is not a cheap operation.
After changing scale(or other transformation) it's required to recalculate rendering instruction.
Here is what you need to do:

Code (CSharp):

1.         private void OnChanged(ImpostorLODGroup impostorLODGroup)
2.         {
3.             impostorLODGroup.GetComponent<LODGroup>().RecalculateBounds();
4.             impostorLODGroup.RecalculateBounds();
5.             impostorLODGroup.Cache();
6.             impostorLODGroup.UpdateSettings();
7.         }

Maybe I don't understand you correctly, but in theory house's impostor should not contain interior.
To include/exclude renderers from impostor you can select ImpostorLOD and change renderers just like in LODGroup component:

 

HI, here's some gameplay footage of a game I'm developing ( https://youtu.be/To5X7Ncw-x0 ) do you think that Impostors could work in this environment? I read the description in the asset store, but I am not sure about it. I posted this becuase I read on the description to ask to you if one isn't sure if Impostors would work well in a game; if it's a problem I can delete this post.
Thanks, bye.

 

It should be ok assuming character flying speed will be the same as in the video. With higher speed comes higher performance drop.

 

Thanks!

 

Hello, I am new to this asset and just starting my experiment.
How can I combine between LOC group and Impostors?
For example I will use LOD0, LOD1 from original, and wants to replace LOD3 and LOD4 with impostor?

When I added the Impostor LOD Group, seems like it remove all LOD and only keep original?
Or did I misunderstand ?

Thanks..

 

Ahhh yes, now I see that it looks kinda counterintuitive.

Original object

means that at this range LODGroup is in control over the object.
Just run an example scene and inspect the object, you will see, that LODGroup and ImpostorLODGroup work in conjunction.
Before scene run:

In Playmode

This is how it may look:

Where 'Impostor 0' and 'Impostor 1' are previous 'LOD 3' and 'LOD 4'

 

Aaah.... .... now I got it ! ... thanks for the explanation... will explore more on it !

 

• Sorry about my explanation, the house doesn't contain interior, it's just build with nested prefabs (for example walls are made by bricks) the house's outside surface maybe contains hundreds base prefabs. I wonder the performance under this structure because it's not easy to add all the meshes in inspector when they are nested prefabs.

• Sometimes after I call "Setup Imposter(s)", I think the length of "Impostor 0" is extruded from 100%.

 

hey i've just followed the manual and first run my URP project errors out with

NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
Impostors.URP.UniversalRenderPipelineProxy.ScheduleImpostorTextureRendering (UnityEngine.Rendering.CommandBuffer commandBuffer) (at Assets/Impostors/Runtime/URP/UniversalRenderPipelineProxy.cs:42)
Impostors.Managers.ImpostorableObjectsManager.UpdateImpostorTextures () (at Assets/Impostors/Runtime/Managers/ImpostorableObjectsManager.cs:499)
Impostors.Managers.ImpostorableObjectsManager.UpdateImpostorSystem () (at Assets/Impostors/Runtime/Managers/ImpostorableObjectsManager.cs:354)
Impostors.Managers.ImpostorableObjectsManager.OnPreCullCallback (UnityEngine.Camera cam) (at Assets/Impostors/Runtime/Managers/ImpostorableObjectsManager.cs:404)
Impostors.RenderPipelineProxy.RenderPipelineProxyBase.OnPreCullCalled (UnityEngine.Camera camera) (at Assets/Impostors/Runtime/RenderPipelineProxy/RenderPipelineProxyBase.cs:21)

any idea?

 

ok got it I've added the imposterer renderer. now my new issue is the background of the impostors are not clear, but light gray; although the alpha is set to 0

 

Try to open RenderTextureObjectPool and replace

Code (CSharp):

1. RenderTextureFormat = renderTextureFormat

with

Code (CSharp):

1. RenderTextureFormat = RenderTextureFormat.ARGB4444

 

actually disabling HDR worked and was mentioned in a post above
thanks

 

does it work with terrain trees?

 

There is no built-in functionality to fill LODs with renderers. You can write your own script that automatically sets renderers to the impostor's LOD. There is a property called

ImpostorLODGroup.LODs

that you can use to specify renderers at edit-time.
For runtime LOD changes you need to use

ImpostorLODGroup.SetLODsAndCache()

.
Please note that the first LOD represents the original object and must be empty.

Also, I have to warn you that these wall blocks won't use GPU instancing

Thanks for the report, I will look into this.

 

Yes, that's a known issue. Sorry for the inconvenience.
The next update will fix this

 

Out of the box it doesn't. But you could replace terrain trees with plain game objects with additional code.
Here you can find an example of how to convert terrain trees into game objects:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/18eqvgw5vgmVt4g2X0TETMhgY5qHOIUT3/view?usp=sharing

 

I got this asset in the bundle, since it does not work with the terrain trees I am thinking what would be nice way to use this tool in my top down RPG, anyone have any ideas?

Can you use this on projectiles? Maybe on people in top down RPG?

 

It could be adopted and completely replace terrain trees with impostors.

Impostors work only on static objects, for now.

 

Works perfectly in the editor, however in the android build impostors won’t appear if the objects are static batched. It works if they are not batched. I guess there’s an issue when generating the impostors on objects already batched, but this happens only on the actual build and not in the editor.

 

Thank you for the report. I'm sorry you faced this issue. Never thought static batching works differently on android...

Let me know if this is critical for your project right now

 

Hello @MUGIK

I have problem with example scene from your package - when the camera goes to the distance where "Impostor 0" LOD should kick-in than the example house just disappears (the same situation for the Game View and for the Scene View). I also don't see any spawned houses in any higher distance (Game View and Scene View). I am not sure what I should check and what options I should change to have it worked.

Unity 2020.3.9f1.459
Universal Render Pipeline

Here how it looks like in editor:





My Build Settings:



Quality Settings:



XR plugin settings:

 

...and the Player settings for Desktop:





...and for the Android:





HDR is unmarked on IMPOSTORS setting and the proper component is added to the Forward Renderer:



Any suggestions what more should I check?

 

I see you created the required render feature for impostors.
But just to make sure... Did you replace BuiltInRenderPipelineProxy with UniversalRenderPipelineProxy on ImpostorableObjectsManager?

 

Hi
I've just checked this issue and looks like Impostors won't work with static batched renderers.
The thing is that in editor static batching occurs after scene is fully loaded (after Awake but before Start) so there is a time when system can access original mesh.

But with builds it's different... Meshes are combined on the Build Player step. Docs.
So there is no way to access original meshes and to feed them to the Impostors system.

That's sad and there is nothing I can do, for now

 

Will this work alongside Curved World shader?

 

It resolved my problem Sorry for stupid question... apparently I missed that part of setup. Thank you for your help!

 

No.
First of all, each impostor is created for a specific camera angle, which would be incorrect with Curved World shader.

Secondly, Impostors package uses a custom shader for impostors rendering. To work with Curved World you would have to modify impostors shader as stated in Curved World documentation.

 

Hello there!

I use Unity 2021.1.6f1, URP 11.0.0, with all required packages.
I managed to setup example scene for the URP, but I have problems with adding new gameobjects with impostors, no matter in that scene or in a blank new. Steps:

- Create an empty GO (parent).
- Add a cube as a child (child).
- Add default LOD Group.
- Add child cube renderers to LODs (no matter how many LODs there are).
- Add Impostors LOD Group.

After the last step I get a NullReferenceException on validate.



However, if I remove Impostors LOD Group and add it through the Tools -> Impostors -> Setup Impostors, then everything works fine!
Also if I disable and then enable script, it works too.

What could be the problem? Also is it possible to see impostors in edit-view during the play mode?

 

Sorry, that's a bug. Thanks for pointing it out.

That's a preferred way to set up an impostor in edit-time.

Yes, in ImpostorableObjectsManager there is a setting called 'Debug Mode Enabled'. Enable it and you will see impostors in the scene view. This works only in play mode. Also, you can clear 'Debug Color' to see impostors without tinting.

 

No problem

Thanks, now I see that it's actually working with my prefabs Thanks for the great asset!

 

Hey there!

Impostors 0.9.5 just released on the Asset Store!

In this version:

• Fixed HDR causing gray impostor's background
• Improved editor workflow
• Added ability to set rendering layer for impostors
• Added in-editor dialogs to simplify impostors setup process

Upgrading to the new version shouldn't break existing objects, but please back up your projects just in case!

 

Will you actively pursue HDRP support in the future?

Love your work.
I also bought your previous product, and it also worked great - so I would love to be able to use this updated system with my HDRP projects.

 

I'd also love to! But I spent about a week last time trying to run Impostors with HDRP. I need some time to refresh and start all over again.
For now, I'm focusing on the 1.0.0 release and frequently requested features like impostors` shadows and dynamic object impostors.

 

I see. Actually in my main project I don’t use unity static batching at build time, I use static batch utility to batch meshes on awake, so I might be able to make it work.
The issue I’ve seen was in a small test project I made, were I was using standard batching during the build.

I will try using impostors and manual batching, and check if it works, thanks!