[LEGACY] PIDI - Realistic PBR Skin + Eye Shader for Desktop, Mobile & Lightweight SRP!

Thank you for fast answer! I'm ok with blendshapes and gonna report back when my model finished with blendshape animations. Happy holidays!

 

This post is to inform all of you that, due to the holiday season, we will be taking a short break (to come back on January 7) and to wish you all a very happy holiday's season and an amazing 2019!

Irreverent Software

 

I hope you're having a good holiday. Since you have a few days left to return, i'll post some updates. I'll make a list, so you can reply when returned.

1. Wrinkle Blending
Wrinkle blending is broken in Blendshapes too unfortunately. I made a lot of test, tried 4k and 512px resolution maps(Even face region maps) but no luck. Interesting thing that it works well in editor mode but doesnt in runtime. I strongly suggest you to look at Blacksmith demo, they are also using similar way to blend normal maps and it works flawless. Even it blends AO maps with Normals @ 4K. https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/essentials/the-blacksmith-wrinkle-maps-39924

Since wrinkle maps were my main reason to buy this asset, its now a dead end until get fixed.

2. Self shadows on Translucency
The parts where object cast shadows on itself hasnt any translucency. It would be better if it suppress shadows on those parts, so it can gain translucency strenght where it needs to. For example those parts on Forward and Deferred settings:

https://i.ibb.co/CJKL5z7/image.png
https://i.ibb.co/8rRqXvJ/image.png

What i mean if it suppress it would better, i took few examples to show. Those are Alloy and Uber.

https://i.ibb.co/tYT2Qks/image.png
https://i.ibb.co/VM0y6jv/image.png

3. Eye Shader Tessallation
It would be great if we have one
https://i.ibb.co/B47x85Y/image.png

4. Besides my previous suggests over Overlay offset options, it would be better if we have Spec and normal map strenght sliders (or floats better).

5. Distant deactivation of Tessellation and Wrinkle blending. A must have

I hope i'm not pushing too much

 

Hi there,

Since there are many points to cover, a few fixes to send and some other aspects to cover in order to give you a full answer, I've opened a support ticket for you as a PM and I will be sending you information to it shortly

For everyone else :
A small patch fixing the wrinkles update rate in runtime has been prepared to be sent to the store, allowing you to control how often you want the wrinkles to update (once a frame, once every 10 frames, once a second, etc). as well as with some other improvements to translucency handling.

Hope this helps!

 

Version 1.3 is now available, with a small bug fix that made the wrinkles update only once a second in Play Mode. The update rate value has been exposed to be adjusted as you wish and adjusted for better results. A new iteration of the translucency algorithm has also been implemented.

Support for Unity versions older than 5.6 has been removed.

 

Hello, I just popped in to say, with all the great support you have given with the PDI - XFur Studio for desk top...

I felt totally comfortable now to buy Realistic PBR Skin + Eye Shader Reading through this fourm, if I am reading right ? There is also the idea of a Hair and Cloth shader ( with an upgrade / if you own either of the 2 assets ) This is a great idea and it would be very good I think to have all this with one developer, for a complete solution, for all kinds of humanoids and creatures

I do not know the Unity NDA as i am not a developer, but I think i remember last year people that were runners up also got a runner up icon they could put on their store front page ?

In any case Congratulations on being a runners up for PIDI - XFur Studio or if you will , a finalist of the Unity Awards 2018 for Best Artistic Tool!! This is even more reason to trust this developer will be around for a long time to come.

Great work, thank you for the great and very needed assets

 

Hi there,
Thank you very much for your continued support to our tools, I really appreciate it and I am very glad to hear the tools have been useful for your

Indeed there are plans for a hair and clothes shader which will be available later this year, but there is no ETA yet for it but there will be indeed a cross upgrade plan (own the hair/cloth shader and get the skin shader cheaper or own the skin shader and get the hair/cloth shader cheaper). About the runner up icon for the Unity Awards 2018 we haven't heard nor gotten any icons, but we are in the process of contacting Unity about this as we do want to let people know this when seeing XFur on the Asset Store. For now, there is just a notice in the product page. Thank you for your kind words, 2018 was truly a very good year for us

Have a great day, and again thanks for your support!

 

Hello,
I see this asset and im love it, but before purchase i need to know i can use this shader on mobile phone and what can i do. Can you post some pictures from mobile skin shader?

Thanks

 

Hi there!

Thank you very much for your interest in our tools

This skin shader works just fine on mobile devices and, depending on the kind of mobiles you are targeting, you may even be able to use the lower quality ( no tessellation ) PC variants on a mobile phone as long as it supports OpenGLES 3 / Metal.

If not, these are some pictures comparing the shaders under the same lighting conditions and using the same texture sets :



Mobile OpenGLES 2, High quality




Mobile OpenGELS 2, Low quality



Desktop, High quality (Tessellation, higher quality skin surface. Pixel Shader 5.0 required )



Desktop, low quality ( No tessellation, usable on OpenGLES3 / Metal high end mobile devices )

Which are the differences between PC and the two mobile versions?

• Both mobile versions do not support wrinkle maps nor normalmaps, since they are oriented towards low end mobile devices. If your mobile device is powerful enough to work with normalmaps it is powerful enough to use the desktop low quality shader ( which is basically Mobile+normalmaps / Mobile + Wrinkle maps ).
• None of the mobile only shaders support real translucency. They use a basic light scattering simulation instead
• The high quality mobile shader uses high quality specular and skin data maps to simulate the irregular surface of the skin and add extra layers of detail ( which compensate the lack of normalmaps ) as well as full pixel lighting. It also supports overlay textures through the same Skin Component script included in the tool. The low quality mobile shader uses vertex lights only and no skin data maps

I hope this helps. If you still want a video sample of the shaders ( as you commented on your email ) I might be able to render something and showcase the differences that way as well, though I hope this screenshots serve as a direct comparison

Have a great day!

 

New Update coming before the end of March with the following new features :

- Adjustable translucency color in Forward mode
- Translucency support on mobile ( can be disabled )
- Improved Subsurface Warp
- Low quality version of the Eye Shader ( No translucency )

 

Hello there. First of all thank you so much for making this asset. I really appreciate this.

I was looking for wrinklemap solution in unity..I am coming from ue4 where I can use unlimited number of normalmaps for wrinkles. Not just using regions but separate normal maps for each wrinkle is possible. Is this doable in unity? For example browup blendshape will trigger browup nomal map and brow down blendshape will trigger its own normal maps. I want to do this because it is sometimes hard to just use portions of face area to make wrinkles for certain expressions..I need to use wherever area in the face for that particular expression.

I guess for VR having just one secondary normal/wrinklemap would help with performance. But for cinematic movie rendering with unity, I dont need high fps rate but need to have more functional wrinklemap system.

I will purchase your asset and try some and show you. Can you please guve me your email?.

Thanks again!!

 

Hi there,

Thank you very much for your interest in our tools

Unfortunately, this system is not designed to support that kind of functionality and it is designed mostly with regions in mind and a secondary wrinkles normal map. While it would be possible to add a very high number of normalmaps for using texture arrays and create dynamic transitions between them using a tension map (which I suppose is closer to what UE4 does ) this has not been the intention of this asset since it has been designed to ensure maximum compatibility with a wide array of hardware rather than limit it to DX11 / OpenGL 4. In short, while doable in Unity, it is not unfortunately the way our asset works.

You can PM me here on the forums or write us to our support email (support at irreverent-software.com ) if you want to get more information about the shader, and we will be happy to help and tell you more about it

Have a great weekend and again, thank you very much for your interest in our assets!

 

I totally understand, since the goal is to optimize the wrinklemap to various platforms. Will make use of the regions and see how things go and will post some samples.

where is the documentation btw? I can't find it anywhere.

thanks again/

 

Hi there,

We are about to be off for the weekend now, but before we go :

if you have imported the asset already, the documentation should be located in the same folder as the rest of the assets. It is called "PIDI - PBR Skin Shader Manual" and it comes in pdf format. We've also sent a copy of this manual to your email. Hope this helps, and that you have a great weekend!

 

This is an important notice :
We will be away from our main workplace during the rest of May and the first weeks of June, which means that our replies to support requests might be slower than usual. Please be patient, as we will keep doing everything we can to reply to them all.

During this week however, we will be unable to reply to any support requests after Wednesday (May 15) and won't be able to resume the support service until next Monday / Tuesday (May 20-21). We apologize for any inconveniences this causes.

Thanks for reading!

 

Hi. This is an really nice ShaderSystem.

I have some problems in understanding the normal format you use.

Are this Tangent, Object and World space normals.
From looking to the channels or rgb they look different and match to none of them.

My models from Blender i like to integrate have all tangent space normals. How can i get them in the PIDI PBR Skin Shader “ format“?

 

Hi there,

As explained in the documentation, the normalmaps used are a mix of two tangent space normalmaps (the same you would use for any other unity standard shader) combined into a single texture. One is the standard normalmap the other the wrinkle map. That combined normal map should be imported as a default texture (not a normalmap) and set it's color mode to linear (not sRGB).


You can also use only one standard normal map, just make sure to import it as default texture with linear color mode. This should work well for you since all our own models and 3D assets are made with blender as well

Hope it helps!

 

Hi,

thanks for explanation.
I saw the Normal RGRG combine part in the docu.
But it did not get that this are TangentSpace ones.

I plan to use your Framework in our Forward Rendering, 8xMSAA (for Hairs and car detail) and
TAA for the rest (specAA).
Thats our default for heavy car detail rendering and hq quality driver.
The blue marked areas are "trailing behind" or "swimming" (1 or 2mm) during up/down animation oft the mesh.
when TAA is enabled. CTAA and Unity Post Processing Stack TAA.
Probably because there are no motion vectors generated from the wrinkle map part?

Do you have an trick to avoid this.

 

Hi there,

I suggest you to please open a PM conversation or even better send us an email for your support request, as it will allow us to handle it in a more efficient manner and request all the information we need without having to post it all in this thread. We will look into the issue and try to see if there is a solution once you open the support request and we get the additional information we need.

As far as TAA goes, we have always seen some jittering when using it alongside normalmaps, even on Unity's own standard shader especially when the details are small so I doubt this is specific of our tool and believe that instead it has to do more with some limtations in the TAA implementation and how it handles small details. There is no integrated solution for this, but we will take a closer look at the issue to see if there are ways we can solve it. Again, we encourage you to please contact us to our email or through a PM to provide us with the additional information so we can start looking into your support request.

I hope this helps!

 

This is a small update to let you know that due to the summer vacations we will be away from work from June 30 to July 22.

During this period, our support service will be unavailable except for a few news updates here on the forums.

We apologize for any inconveniences this may cause, but as soon as we are back we will be fast to reply to all your emails and support requests

Have a great day!

 

A new update for this asset will be released in late July - Mid August with improved support for Unity 2019 and LWRP. It will also mark the end of our support for Unity 5 and any version lower than Unity 2017.4

We will have many more updates and news about this soon, as well as about the upcoming version 2.0 and the new Lite edition of our PBR Skin shader, designed for users with a more limited budget and who may not need the whole set of features that this package offers. For now, the update to version 1.9 is under works and being prepared to be sent for approval after we are back to work (July 22).

Have a great summer !

 

Update to version 1.8 will be released this week, as it will be sent for approval later this week.

It includes a few optimization improvements, better support for Unity 2019 as well as an updated LWRP shader collection.


As a heads up, we are completely revamping the wrinkles system for version 2 of this asset to make it much, much easier to use.

This unfortunately will mean that the wrinkle system will not be cross compatible between versions 1 and 2 but we are confident that this is a necessary tradeoff, since the quality, performance and, most importantly, ease of use achieved in version 2 is much higher. The current way of handling wrinkles may still be supported on version 2, but this is still up in the air as we want to encourage people to use the newer setup. Since it should take just a few seconds to set up we expect it to be an easy transition.

The current way of handling wrinkles may still be supported on the initial release of version 2, but this is still up in the air as we want to encourage people to use the newer setup. Since it should take just a few seconds to set up we expect it to be an easy transition.

We are also improving our demo assets for version 2 and making the workflow slightly closer to Unity standard PBR shaders.

Soon after the release of 1.8 we will start talking about the upcoming version 2 release, the different editions, the new features included with the package and the improvements we've made to the whole system. We are sure they will be very helpful for all your projects

 

Version 1.8 has just been approved. We hope it will help you all

Have a great weekend!

 

Hi, I am interested in your shader, to give my UMA models a different look. Is it compatible with UMA?

 

Hi there, and thank you very much for your interest in our tools !

Our shader is at its core a surface shader like any other, so it should work without any issues with UMA characters as long as they use Skinned Mesh Renderers or Mesh Renderers and normal Unity materials.

However, some advanced features such as the dynamic wrinkles and some of the maps required by this shader require that you have access to the model itself to bake and prepare the corresponding textures.

Edit : This means that if your character's facial features are procedural, for example, you will most likely not be able to use dynamic wrinkles since the normal maps used for wrinkles are generated (usually) within a modelling software from a carefully made sculpt / model.

Some level of knowledge and technical ability with modelling and texturing is also required to take full advantage of all the features this asset offers, otherwise your results will be more limited.

I hope this helps!

 

A small update :

Version 1.9 of this asset is coming soon. With it, we will bring much improved compatibility with Unity 2019.2, a brand new UI design and improved documentation. We will also add some new functions to make your workflow easier and faster.

This version will re-add support for Unity 2017.1 to ensure maximum compatibility with older projects which cannot, for any reason, be upgraded to newer Unity releases.

However, due to the Asset Store team being on vacation from August 15 to August 23 and unable to provide curation and approval to new updates and releases, this update will be delayed until the end of the month.

We hope this helps and that you all have an excellent day!

 

A small update :

The update for the Skin Shader to version 1.9 will be sent for approval to the Asset Store this weekend, which should make it available by the end of next week. We apologize for the slight delay but we will have something special to make up for it as we prepare for the upcoming version 2.0

Have a great day!

 

Version 1.9 is ready and will be sent for approval tomorrow night

Improvements :

• Brand new UI design, easier to understand and with helpful links to the online documentation.
• Improved translucency method for Forward rendering on the Standard Pipeline
• Added support for LWRP 6.9 in Unity 2019.2. This will be the last update for LWRP so do not expect this asset to work on 2019.3 with Universal RP. Compatibility with LWRP is limited to Unity 2019.1 and 2019.2 only
• Updated and rewritten sections of the offline documentation

Changes :

• Translucency color now behaves more accurately in all pipelines
• PBR shader variant has become the default one
• Unity 2017.1 is once again supported and we are currently testing on Unity 5.6 to try to include this version in the release as well

We hope this helps and that you all have a great weekend!

 

Is there any roadmap for 2.0?

 

Hi there,

We are currently very hard at work since we are releasing major updates to all our tools and assets so we are trying our best to manage how we do the releases.

While we do have an internal roadmap of features and releases for all assets, included the PBR Skin Shader, we are not ready yet to share most of it since we are still defining which features are ready for the first release and which ones may need to be pushed back to a future update.

What we can share is the following :

• The skin shader should be ready and sent to the Asset Store for approval before the end of September. At least that is what we are intending to do and with our current progress we are on our way to achieve it.
• The main feature we are working on right now is a full revamp of the wrinkles / expression maps system to allow users to set them up with just a click or two rather than the complex setup of version 1.
• Allowing the mix of bone poses and blendshapes for expression maps
• We are also working on several improvements to the mobile variants and on different editions of the tool to adapt to different team and project sizes as well as to developers that may only need the mobile version
• We are researching other rendering techniques for the skin as well as the possibility of true scattering on LWRP and Universal RP

Due to all these changes as well as our work on XFur Studio 2, Planar Reflections 3 and other assets which are all targeting releases within the next 2 months we have been trying to stay quiet until we have more solid information to share. We hope, however, that this helps!

 

Version 1.9 of PBR Skin & Eye Shader is available now on the Asset Store and, to celebrate this last update and prepare for version 2 we are throwing a 40% discount on the asset.

For a limited time, you can purchase PIDI PBR Skin and Eye Shader for only 20 USD instead of its normal 35 dollars price!

Improvements :

• Brand new UI design, easier to understand and with helpful links to the online documentation.
• Improved translucency method for Forward rendering on the Standard Pipeline
• Added support for LWRP 6.9 in Unity 2019.2. This will be the last update for LWRP so do not expect this asset to work on 2019.3 with Universal RP. Compatibility with LWRP is limited to Unity 2019.1 and 2019.2 only
• Updated and rewritten sections of the offline documentation

Changes :

• Translucency color now behaves more accurately in all pipelines
• PBR shader variant has become the default one
• Unity 5.6, 2017.1, 2017.4, 2018.x, 2019.1 and 2019.2 are supported making this our most extensive release yet !

Have a great day!

 

Remember that getting PIDI PBR Skin + Eye Shader 1.9 will grant you a considerable discount when you upgrade to version 2 coming in ~October, so right now is the perfect time to grab your copy before the current sale finishes in September 21!

 

As we prepare to send the new version of our Skin Shader to the Asset Store (it may unfortunately be slightly delayed since just today we were informed of technical issues on the Asset Store side, which will cause delays in new release approvals and updates), we thought about sharing with all of you some early WIP screenshots showing the new algorithms we are using for subsurface scattering and translucency as well as some early tests of one of our new demo models (we are preparing a few models to show both the realistic and stylish workflows, but more on this will come later ) :



On the left, Unity's Standard Specular shader for comparison.







The new workflow we are preparing for version 2 has a huge emphasis on ease of use, performance and quality. As part of the general improvements we are working on we are also porting our custom lighting algorithms to LWRP and Universal RP to ensure that the results you achieve have the same quality regardless of which pipeline you choose.

Since we are aware that not every character will be a hyper-realistic style model we are also working on some variants of the skin shader that will give a more "cartoonish" vibe.

And most importantly, we are completely revamping the dynamic wrinkles system to ensure that setting up facial expressions and normal map transitions can be done within seconds and with just a few clicks.

We are looking forward to showing you more advanced tests as we move forward towards the release of version 2, and we will soon open a separate thread for this asset and to share there with you all the progress and new features we are preparing

Have a great day!

 

This is a small notice to let you know that a last round of updates for this version of our skin shader will be coming in the following weeks right before the release of version 2.0 (which will be sent for approval around this weekend).

Also to inform you that the sale has officially ended with the asset going back to its regular price

We hope you all have a great week!

 

The new "Work in Progress" thread for this asset has just been opened here


And we have released a brand new video showing some early tests for the new dynamic wrinkles + tension maps system :

Have a great weekend !

 

Version 2 will be sent for approval shortly, around the weekend. We have just finished the variant for LWRP / Universal RP with custom lighting, real translucency, scattering, dynamic wrinkles through tension maps and more !










You can read more information in the WIP thread here : https://forum.unity.com/threads/pidi-advanced-skin-shader-2.752072/

Very soon we will share with you the different editions and add ons developed for version 2, target prices and upgrade discounts as well as some guides explaining the differences between v1.x and v2.x so you can get your models ready for this new version if you plan to upgrade. Have a great day !

 

Version 2 of this asset is now on queue for approval, targeting a mid November release !

Every person who has bought a license for version 1 will receive a 40% discount when upgrading to version 2 which comes, at release, with support for :

• Real-time scattering and translucency with a custom lighting model on all platforms (mobile included) as well as in Forward, Deferred, LWRP and Universal RP
  
• CPU based region maps for dynamic wrinkles of high quality with that allows blending and mixing almost any number of wrinkle normal maps in real-time with ease
• GPU based tension maps that automatically calculate "wrinkled areas" with blazing performance, even on mobile devices
• Decal / Overlay textures to be used for tattoos, wounds, sweat and other effects with configurable PBR properties and blending
• Stylized skin variant (with more updates including a "Cartoony" style skin coming in Q1 2020)
• Many more features coming throughout 2020

Head to the WIP thread for the asset while it gets ready for release and learn more about everything you can expect from PIDI : Advanced Skin Shader 2!

 

In a few moments PIDI - PBR Skin + Eye Shader will be deprecated as we get ready to finally release version 2 !

Thank you very much for following the development of this tool, in a moment we will post a link to redirect you to the new forum thread.

Have a great day !

 

Version 2 of this asset has just been released and thus PBR Skin+Eye Shader is now officially deprecated.
You can find the brand new thread for the asset here or get it directly on the Asset Store right here

We thank all of you for trusting this product and we can't wait to see what you can do next with the much improved version 2

Have a great day !