[XFUR 3 OUT NOW] XFur Studio 2 - The most advanced fur for unity, in all platforms and all pipelines

XFur Studio 2 Ultimate Edition and XFur Studio 2 Team Edition are part of the Singles Day sale! If you are in China, Japan or the South East Asia region (Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, Vietnam) you can use the coupon code SINGLESDAY50OFF at checkout for a 50% off discount. This promotion will last until November 13 at midnight

Have a great week !

 

Version 2.1.1 is now available !

New Features :

• New per-FX parameters in the VFX module (smoothness, penetration / interaction with fur strands)

Fixes and Improvements :

• Improvements to snow and rain effects in the VFX module
• Fixed a bug when changing the assigned renderer and replacing it with one with less material slots
• Fur strands R and G modifier parameters leave Beta and move into a new stable "Advanced settings" mode.
• Fur Rim boost leaves Beta.
• Fixed a bug that prevented physics and VFX from working on some multi-material models

The mini tutorials for VFX and Physics modules have been slightly delayed as we had to work on several smaller fixes and the whole CoVID situation has imposed some changes to our work dynamic (again), but will hopefully be available near the end of the week!

 

We are currently finishing the Physics and VFX mini tutorials (which should be uploaded and available by Monday), and a small patch will be available for XFur next week adding support for the new penetration and smoothness properties in the VFX module for HDRP and Universal RP.

Have a great weekend !

 

Black friday any discount events, guys? I am about to receive my first month's salary.

 

Hi there,

First of all, thank you very much for your interest in our product !

Unfortunately, XFur Studio 2 is not part of the BoSS sale (which is this year's equivalent of the Black Friday sale). While we cannot disclose the dates and content of future sales, you may need to wait for the next sale events to see if XFur Studio 2 has any discounts.

We hope this helps and once again, thank you for your interest in our tool!

 

Haha, I would probably buy earlier.
I want to create a really nice bird feather for my character.

 

Hi again!

I am glad you explained the use you intend to give to our asset, so we can explain to you before you make any purchase what XFur Studio can and cannot do, as this might be very useful for the idea you have. XFur Studio 2 will most likely not work well for feathers. The toolset and the techniques used are designed for mostly uniformly distributed animal fur. This fur can look messy, curly, irregular, thick, thin, coarse, etc. but fur and feathers are 2 very different kinds of materials.

Feathers are usually well defined pieces with a distinctive shape. They also tend to react to wind in a very different way to fur, with a more "individualized" movement. XFur Studio 2 cannot (yet) give custom shapes to the fur strands, they all look like fur which can have a regular thickness over the strand or get thinner as it gets to the tips. A feather, with its thickest part in the middle portion and being closer to flat "flake" shape, is not something that can be replicated at the moment with XFur Studio 2.

We suggest you to see the videos and screenshots in the asset store and documentation as they will give you a good reference of the kinds of fur that you can achieve with the tool, but if you are trying to achieve a truly feathery look (as in, for example, the feather covered areas of Trico in the Last Guardian) then you will most likely not get there with XFur Studio 2, unfortunately.

We hope this helps, and that you have an excellent week!

 

The mini tutorials for VFX and Physics are up now !

 

The small patch adding support for the new VFX properties on HDRP and Universal RP is now available !

Happy weekend everyone !

 

IMPORTANT NOTICE :

From December 18, 2020 and until January 10, 2021 we will be on vacations for the Holidays season. We will return for the week from January 10 to January 15 and resume our work with your support requests, patches and updates. We hope that all of you have a nice holidays season and that 2021 is a good year, with some much needed joy for you and your loved ones.

Happy "Hollydays", everyone !

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XFur Studio 2 is available with a 50% off for the New Year sale, it is the last time in a good while that it will be on discount, so take this chance to get it at this very special price !

 

These are the last few days of the sale for XFur Studio 2. Remember that you can get it with a 50% off until January 7. This is also the last time XFur Studio 2 will be on sale for quite a while, so hurry up to catch this discount !

Happy holidays and a wonderful 2021 everyone !

 

Hello, I have a question before I purchase.
Are runtime scripts required for fur to display? I understand if physics aren't supported without them, but will generated/groomed fur still render statically with just the shader?
Also, has anyone tried the plugin with Unity 2018.4.20f1 (LTS)?

Thank you for your time!

 

Hi there,

XFur Studio 2 is not, as such, a simple Unity shader but a very complex system with simulations and advanced rendering management. As such, the runtime scripts are required for the fur to display and for all the features. You can see more about this in the documentation, as it is publicly available and linked in the asset's description.

The asset works with Unity 2018.4 LTS and above.

We hope this helps !

 

We are coming back from our break soon and with that we will go back to working into several updates for XFur Studio 2, including some improvements to performance, some improvements to the Curly fur rendering as well as some neat new features that will be released over the first half of 2021.

We also want to remind you that the New Year Sale will be over very soon, in only 2 days !

This is your last chance to get XFur Studio 2 at a discounted price for a good while, so remember to get it before midnight January 7 with a 50% off !

 

A small patch to improve the workflow and fix some minor issues with the Dynamic LOD module is being worked on, as well as some general improvements on the different XFur Studio shaders. This patch will be ready later next week!

 

Update to version 2.1.3 will be available in a few days with several changes and improvements.

Improvements & Fixes :

• Dynamic LOD module no longer needs the Auto-update materials flag to be enabled in order to work.
• Internal code for updating materials and rendering fur has been improved
• New function to set fur profile assets through code has been added : SetFurProfileAsset and SetFurProfileAssetExt. Their functionality is the same as the SetFurDataFull and SetFurData functions that already exist, but they take a FurProfile asset as argument instead of the actual fur data contained within the asset, which should make its use much easier.
• Improved compatibility with Unity 2020.x

Coming soon, throughout Q1 and early Q2 of 2021 will be several updates and improvements to the XFur Studio 2 designer UI, some improvements to the curly fur (including its upgrade to a stable feature), some brand new features for fur strands, grooming, improvements to the decal module, etc

Have a great week!

 

Update to version 2.1.3 is now available !

Improvements & Fixes :

• Dynamic LOD module no longer needs the Auto-update materials flag to be enabled in order to work.
• Internal code for updating materials and rendering fur has been improved
• New function to set fur profile assets through code has been added : SetFurProfileAsset and SetFurProfileAssetExt. Their functionality is the same as the SetFurDataFull and SetFurData functions that already exist, but they take a FurProfile asset as argument instead of the actual fur data contained within the asset, which should make its use much easier.
• Improved compatibility with Unity 2020.x

 

A complete rewriting of the grooming system for HDRP is in the works, and should be available before the end of the month. This new algorithm provides a much more consistent workflow, fixes a number of bugs and has better compatibility with newer HDRP releases. Currently, it is being tested in HDRP 7.3.x - > HDRP 7.5.x

While the only officially supported HDRP release will be the one shipped with the latest Unity LTS release (2019.4.x) we are already working on support for an eventual 2020.x LTS release as well.

We hope this will be great news, we will post more when the update is released

 

Version 2.1.5 is now available, with a full re-write for grooming in HDRP 7.x for Unity 2019.4.x LTS.

We hope it will be very helpful !

 

Version 2.1.7 of XFur Studio will be released soon (we expect it before mid February), with the following updates :

- New visibility method to try to reduce delays between an object becoming visible and their fur being rendered.
- First series of improvements to XFur Studio Designer

This, as we prepare for the 2.2.0 update which will bring some UI redesigns for XFur Designer and multiple QoL improvements by late February / early March.

 

Version 2.1.7 of XFur Studio is now available !

Improvements & Fixes :

• New custom visibility test in order to ensure that the fur's culling is not delayed. Before, in very fast moving objects, there could be a noticeable delay between the object becoming visible and the fur appearing, due to the use of the isVisible flag.
• Models can now be freely scaled when using XFur Studio Designer and their colliders will be adjusted accordingly for an easier painting
• XFurStudioAPI for painting no longer locked to 1,1,1 scales (this is experimental however, and some issues may still occur with non-uniformly scaled models). However, it has become slightly more demanding due to a few additional matrix transformations being implemented
• XFur Studio Designer now has an improved UI with bigger font sizes, better scaling and easier to use sliders. These changes were planned for version 2.2.0 but were pushed forward as a very necessary QoL improvement

 

We have published a small article detailing the development of the most recent patches for XFur Studio 2 as well as a small glimpse of the road ahead during the next few months. You can find it here.

Have a great weekend, and to everyone who celebrates it, Happy Lunar New Year !

 

Version 2.1.8 is coming soon with some further improvements :

• Internal shader property _XFurRimColor has been renamed to _XFurRimSelfColor to ensure consistency among all internal properties and compatibility with upcoming features
• Implemented property IDs for all common xfur shader properties that can be accessed with XFurStudioInstance.nameOfProperty to improve performance and make direct interaction with the fur shaders easier

Some other tests we are working on are a switch for the HDRP variants of XFur Studio from standard PBR to the Hair Shading model which should result in some graphical improvements for HDRP as well as additional tests on Unity 2020.x.

 

Version 2.1.8 has been released :

• Internal shader property _XFurRimColor has been renamed to _XFurRimSelfColor to ensure consistency among all internal properties and compatibility with upcoming features
• Implemented property IDs for all common xfur shader properties that can be accessed with XFurStudioInstance.nameOfProperty to improve performance and make direct interaction with the fur shaders easier
• A fix for a bug on the new visibility test has been added

The new versions of HDRP shaders are being worked on for the bigger 2.2.0 release later in March. Have a great weekend!

 

Version 2.2.0 is coming soon, in March, with a whole set of new features, improved rendering and lighting and much more...we are quite excited for you to see some of the additions we have made ​

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Have a great weekend !

 

As a small teaser near the end of the week...

We have been working hard on improving the rendering of fur on HDRP ( both for Unity 2019.4.x and 2020.2 ) which has produced really great results so far, with much more realistic fur while keeping essentially the same performance :

We will continue to post regular updates on our Twitter account before making a more extensive announcement here, so remember to check there for more regular updates and sneak peeks of XFur Studio 2.2.0

Have a great weekend!

 

As part of the many updates coming to XFur Studio 2.2.0 is a full makeover of our HDRP variants, now with a much more accurate rendering of highlights, translucency and more ( although the fur has been greatly improved in all rendering pipelines). Below you can find the first showcase of this brand new look for XFur Studio 2

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And as said in our previous post, fur rendering has been greatly improved in all rendering pipelines. Below, a small glimpse at how fur is looking in the Universal Rendering pipeline :

 

XFur Studio 2 version 2.2.0, our biggest update to date, has now been released ! ! !

Here is the changelog, but you can read a full in detail explanation of everything new and improved right here

Changelog :

Improvements & Fixes :

• Curly Fur is now stable and can be enabled with the Advanced Properties setting
• URP and HDRP 10.x packages now included for Unity 2020.2 & 2020.3 LTS
• Bug with the URP variants that prevented rim lighting features from working as expected

New Features :

• Fur Rendering 2.0 in HDRP with a new Hair shading model. Support for translucency and anisotropic highlights
• Fur Rendering 2.0 in URP with partial support for translucency and full support for anisotropic highlights
• Fur Rendering 2.0 in Built-in renderer with partial support for translucency and partial support for anisotropic highlights (main directional light only)
• Emissive fur in all pipelines both by emission map and emission colors
• Emissive decals in the decals module
• Experimental overdraw reduction feature in the LOD module
• Improved editor inspectors with support for both light and dark Unity themes and with a better integration with the editor itself
  
  You can always revert to the previous versions of the shaders by unpacking the old HDRP / URP shaders ( which are not overwritten by this release). Also you can switch back to the old methods for rendering in HDRP by enabling Emissive Fur ( Beta Mode must be enabled for this ). This should allow you to continue your work as usual if you want to skip the new rendering method.
  
  For URP, an option to switch off anisotropic highlights and translucency if you so desire is in the works and will be available within a few days.

Have a great week!

 

Hi, I was wondering if this would be a good plugin to use to create lawn style grass?

 

Hi there,

While the shader could be used for said effect, its main purpose is to render fur over the surface of creatures and using XFur Studio for such purposes may not produce the desired results either in quality or performance (or both) depending on the size of the landscape, its distance to the camera, the amount of polygons, etc. In short, while it could work with some effort, it is not the recommended usage and the results may not be optimal. We hope this helps!

 

Version 2.2.1 has just been released with the following improvements :

• Translucency / Transmission strength can now be controlled in all rendering pipelines on each instance
• Grooming algorithm can be changed in HDRP to a variant that better matches grooming in Standard and URP (changing Grooming Algorithm in the material within the database to 0 or 1 switches between default grooming and this new version)
• Translucency and Anisotropic Highlights can be turned off in URP directly in the material within the database by switching the Rendering Mode value to 0.

We hope this will be helpful!

Have a nice weekend !

 

Hello,

I recently started using this tool, and I must say that it looks amazing so far, except that we're working on a mobile game project and I'm having a hard time switching pipelines and playing with settings to find a way to use it with an acceptable framerate.

So it would be great if you could steer me to the right path. Which pipeline should I use to achieve the best performance? I tried URP without much luck, although I couldn't enable the "compatibility mode" that appears in "xfur studio instance" component when using URP, and I don't know why?

 

I had a much better frame rate in standard pipeline, but still I'd like to try URP with compatibility mode enabled if it's possible.

Another question: I saw the rain / wet fur demo. It looks like it's very easy to paint the wetness effect in runtime. How can I do the opposite to simulate a hair dryer?

In XFurStudioAPI.Paint() I changed this:

Code (CSharp):

1. brushColor = Color.white;
2. PainterMaterial.SetFloat("_BrushMixMode", 1);

to this:

Code (CSharp):

1. brushColor = Color.black;
2. PainterMaterial.SetFloat("_BrushMixMode", 0);

It worked for fur color. The darker wet color turned back to normal, but the squeezed shells didn't go back their original positions. What else should I do?

 

Hi there,

Please send your support requests to our support email with your proof of purchase / invoice attached and all the information related to the issue

We will be happy to assist you and give you more information about this, but this forum is not the best channel to do that as some information / code snippets are not intended to be shared publicly and it is far easier for us to keep track of the different support tickets on our support email.


EDIT : Regarding performance, Standard is still the fastest pipeline for mobile (and the recommended one). Depending on the device, it is highly recommended to reduce the rendering scale / resolution of the app to improve performance, which is what we did in our own AR demo shown a few months ago, which had almost 20 characters with fur running at >35 FPS on a Redmi Note 8. Compatibility mode only works at the moment in the Standard Pipeline, but this may change with an upcoming update.

Thanks!

 

Version 2.2.2 of XFur Studio 2 is coming very soon (around next week) with the following changes :

Fixes and improvements :

• Improved behavior of Painter Objects to improve interaction with all kinds of models
• XFur Studio API now supports removing FX through painting (including through Painter Objects), not only adding them to the XFur Instances.
• Interaction with Weather zones can be completely disabled on a per-instance basis.
• Melting can now be disabled entirely on VFX
• Fixed a few bugs and issues with XFur Studio Designer when used with multiple fur materials
• Fixed a bug with the Auto-update materials behavior

We hope this helps !

 

Patch 2.2.2 is now available and ready for download.

Fixes and improvements :

• Improved behavior of Painter Objects to improve interaction with all kinds of models
• XFur Studio API now supports removing FX through painting (including through Painter Objects), not only adding them to the XFur Instances.
• Interaction with Weather zones can be completely disabled on a per-instance basis.
• Melting can now be disabled entirely on VFX
• Fixed a few bugs and issues with XFur Studio Designer when used with multiple fur materials
• Fixed a bug with the Auto-update materials behavior

We hope this helps !

 

I'm looking to add some hairs to insect/spider models... Where the hair isnt particularly "dense" per se... but more scattered around in certain areas. I noticed there is a "fur thickness" slider setting but haven't seen its effect in the sample videos.

Is your asset capable of painting on different densities of hair? Is there an example somewhere that is a similar density to what an insect might have?

 

Hi there,

The fur thickness values are not designed to control coverage density but rather to control the thickness of the fur strands themselves. You can however make some less dense fur by generating your own fur strand maps (the tool to generate fur strands maps is included with the asset but you can also use Photoshop or other image editing software). While we do not have a ready-to-use example of insect fur (and since it is Saturday we are not at the office ATM to make one) the closest we can share is this picture where we are using curly fur with a quite low density :
​

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You can see on the back the llama using full density curls and the front one using the same patterns but with a much lower density strand map. You can control those settings in the strands maps asset here :

​

We hope this helps !

EDIT : Please be aware, however, that the density of the fur in a character has to be uniform over the whole surface at the moment (unless you are using multiple materials). In a future update, we will add support for varying densities but at this time the density of the fur is applied to the whole surface using the fur material.

 

Yeah - that's actually exactly the type of thing I was wondering about. Will purchase and give it a shot. Thanks for the super fast reply on a weekend.

Edit: Yep. Bought the asset and had the effect I was after within just a couple of minutes. Very easy to use asset. Thanks so much.

 

Thanks to you for your purchase

We hope you will continue to find the asset very useful (and that, if you have the chance, you may take a minute to rate it on the asset store! ).

Also remember to get in touch through our support email or here through a PM if you ever need assistance when using it.

EDIT : Also if you (or anyone else) want to share their work we would love to see it too!
You can use #madewithxfur and #xfur2 or tag us directly on Twitter @IrrSoft

Have a great week!

 

XFur Studio 2 is part of the Spring Sale !

You can get now XFur Studio 2 with a 50% discount, until April 30!

This post is also to talk about some of the features planned the next update(s) for XFur Studio 2 :

Patch 2.2.3 - 2.2.4 (near the end of April):

• New value for grooming strength, to control dynamically the intensity of said effect.
• Auto-adjust for scale will also modify this property so that scaling up or down a model doesn't destroy grooming data *Beta
• Overdraw reduction in the LOD module becomes a stable feature

Patch 2.2.5 (late July):

• Masking introduced to XFur Studio Designer *Beta
• New settings for fur strand generation *Experimental
• Improvements to XFur Studio Designer UI

Patch 2.3.0 (September 2021) :

• Fur profile mixing *Experimental
• Internal optimizations to fur generation using Jobs wherever it is possible *Experimental
• HDRP emissive channel with the hair rendering model in Unity 2020.3 LTS

This is just a small roadmap of the planned features. Some of them may be delayed in order to prioritize bug fixes, QoL additions and some other features that are needed by most of our users. In any case, right now is a great time to pick XFur Studio 2 at its lowest price and get ready for all the features coming in the next few months !

Have a great week!

 

Version 2.2.3 is now available :

• New value to control the tiling of the fur's color map on all rendering pipeline independently of all other properties
• New value for grooming strength, to control dynamically the intensity of said effect. * Beta
• Auto-adjust for scale will also modify this property so that scaling up or down a model doesn't destroy grooming data *Beta
• Overdraw reduction in the LOD module becomes a stable feature

 

This is just a small reminder that there are only 3 days left to get XFur Studio 2 at its lowest price with a 50% off, just in time for the next series of big updates that will be coming in Q2 and Q3 2021!

Get it now on the Asset Store!

And remember to keep an eye on this thread for updates on patch 2.2.5 which will come with several improvements to XFur Studio Designer

 

The updates for XFur Studio 2 will unfortunately be slightly delayed, as we have some personal matters to attend within the next couple of weeks, starting next Monday. This also means that support requests may be replied to at a slightly slower pace than usual. However, rest assured that progress with these updates will continue to be made and soon we will have more information and new features to release

We expect to be back and replying to all support requests at our usual speed by June 10.

Have a great week!

 

We are finally back from our time away, the updates should resume soon. The reason for our absence during these past weeks is a simple one : we got married !

To celebrate we are back and share a bit of our joy, we are having a small sale for both editions of Xfur Studio 2 until June 20 with a 50% off on the ultimate edition and a 20% off on the team edition!

Have a happy and productive week, we will have more updates and news about XFur Studio for you very soon!

 

The sale has been extended for exactly one day, so if you want to get XFur Studio 2 at its lowest price in any of its two editions you still have some hours left!

The sale now ends on June 21 (CST, for extra clarity)

Have a great day!

 

A small patch for XFur Studio 2 is coming early next week, adding some performance fixes and important reductions in GC allocations that should help with CPU usage. After this, we will be working fully on the improvements for XFur Studio Designer and internal work on adding some Jobs and Burst support to some processes.

Have a great week!

 

The patch has been sent for approval and will be available for download soon enough, most likely before the end of the week. This patch reduces GC allocations to 0 in most cases and will help performance by reducing CPU usage.

We will update here as soon as it is ready to download