[Released] SE Screen-Space Shadows

@hermie, It is my understanding that NGSS offers "- Contact Shadows (Screen Space Raymatched shadows)" which is the same as SE Screen-Space Shadows?

 

Ah, yes. I forgot about that feature. Yeah, I guess that that feature is a direct comparison item. Although, NGSS does indeed have the shadow system replacement, which is something SESSS doesn't have. My apologies.

 

Ok, thank you very much everybody! NGSS looks nice, but it's costly on FPS, that's why I was hoping SESSS was faster.

 

This chart from page one should give you an idea of how fast SESSS works. Keep in mind, this is for just the screen space shadows, which are mainly small detail shadows. Outside of the objects on screen, you'd still have Unity shadows running, casting shadows for larger objects like characters, buildings, and mountains, even if the objects are off-screen.

With NGSS, it replaces both the Unity shadows and it does the screen space shadows. My impression is that performance-wise it gives higher quality for the same cost as Unity shadows.

So in terms of pure screen space shadows I don't know which solution is faster, but SE's solution is slightly faster than Unity's standard AO - which was the old school solution for detail shadows - and SESSS is basically twice as fast as the AO when on high performance settings.

 

the shader gives me error when building 64bit stand alone.

 

I'm using SE Screen Space Shadows with 2018.1.x without any problems. However, the 2018.2 beta 10 doesn't work so well in that there's banding. This is a simple demo shot done whilst converting a large project to 2018.2:

I'm sure you're already aware of this. Is there an update in the works?

 

Maybe it's because in Unity 2018.2 mouse scroll does something with camera clip distance and can't be used to move faster in viewport - try to scroll in both directions for a while, in my case this shadow bug was eliminated by scrolling in one direction...

 

No, that does nothing to alleviate it. Nothing from the developer?

 

Can anyone comment on the support for this asset in the 2018 versions? I was about to buy it and then noticed this post, that has gone unanswered for 4 months. Is the asset still receiving support from the seller? Does it work in Unity 2018.*?

 

I'm having issues getting the asset store to load on my end so I can't confirm its functionality but I can tell you that in its current state it'll only work with the built-in render pipeline.

 

I'm using it in 2018.2 with built-in render pipeline without problem. I'm not sure about dev support though (I just tweeted to @sonicether about this thread).

 

seeing this work on .2 with building is a great relief, yet, considering the dates I'm about to move to 2018.3 as my project runs fine on the beta already, anyone can give it a spin on the beta and share if it works?

 

I could not hold my buy
In can confirm its working on 2018.1.14f1 I'll test the latest beta as soon as I can. Cheers.
Shame Sonic abandoned Unity, it was a bit deceiving to find him actively developing stuff for Minecraft and not giving a S*** about their customers on Unity, he was a very skilled dev :\

 

Does this work in VR single pass and single pass instanced?

 

I'm not 100% sure, but I think SE has left the Unity world and this is no longer supported.

You might want to check out NGSS, which is being actively developed and is nearing a 2.0 release.

 

TBH the attitude of the dev sucks. At least could have left clear he leaves and remove the assets or leave a not on the store assets.

 

This totally interests me, does it have a smooth gradient to black the closer it gets to the object? I want to use this as a replacement for AO!

 

Ouch

This is why he's not answering :/

I was looking for a way to have the shadows blend with other shadows instead of cumulating between them.
That is, some sort of "Darken" blending, but I haven't been able to pull it off atm :/

 

Not a word from the developer since at least July last year. That does it: this asset, whilst excellent when it worked, is clearly abandoned. I'm probably going to switch to NGSS.

 

1) totally abandoned, dev has left Unity for sure
2) asset still works on 2018.3

 

To bad I was really interested in this but if there is no reply then I'll skip!

 

Actually, it doesn't. See my previous post about banding.

 

I'm using it without issues, but dunno, may be there are situations where this aint working.

 

Wait so it doesn't mess the regular shadows and adds it on top but at the same intensity? That's still good enough though, I might buy if it just works, I only need it for screenshot purposes.

 

What I meant is that they stack up.
I switched to another project in the meantime, but if I remember correctly, if realtime shadows cast a 20% grey and the SSShadow another 20% grey, everything is fine until the realtime shadow goes over the Screen space one. So it gets 40% grey.

I believe tinkering with some LightXXX.inc files (Unity installation wide) you could get the proper darkening without stacking them up. Months ago I wasn't able to tweak the blending mode of the SSShadow to make it look good enough.
I was basically trying to do what Unity does with baked and realtime shadows.

In some cases, such as an arcade shooter, getting a "double" shadow could be tolerable. In other cases, the art director could just shoot you on a leg

...and then I got carried with the rollercoaster of changes. Hopefully we're going to have some stable enough Unity version to catch up with all of the assets without pulling our hair off (for me it's a bit too late tho, lol).
And when the rollercoaster stopped, LWRP popped up, definitely making a lot of publishers to just throw the sponge with their assets: too many cases to consider for assets that were created with (or worked only in) a narrower scope :/

 

in the swap of unity 4.x to 5.x a lot of assets died too

 

I think you should try screen space ray tracing. It's free somewhere on github it makes ao in the shadows if you're interested, looks really light on performance. Can't remember where I found it tow. (Uses standard pipeline and no RTX needed)

 

I wish this was still alive, the ceator should offer a way to explain to teach the user on how does it works so we can keep giving support.

 

If you want proper shadows in Unity you can try this: NextGenSoftShadows
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/vfx/shaders/next-gen-soft-shadows-137380

It also has SSshadows, I'm using it!

 

Hello sonicether,

is your code for this feature still available somewhere (paid or for free)? are you willing to send it to me via PM (i am happy to pay for that extra service) as i really would love to use it, it looks really good.

https://web.archive.org/web/20190617200725/https://www.sonicether.com/screenspaceshadows/

thanks!

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can anyone tell if what sonic ether did is basically the same as the simple concept of path tracing (max distance divided by step count) as in e.g. https://panoskarabelas.com/posts/screen_space_shadows/ ?

or did he do more special details, as his look very nice on his screenshots.

 

Hi, we worked on a cool shadow system which will later also get GI features like Lumen. It will be soon released and has also screen space shadows included for multi light sources and supports Builtin, HDRP and URP:
https://forum.unity.com/threads/ere...o-and-soft-shadows-hdrp-urp-built-in.1155401/