Sci-Fi Effects 2.02 BETA! New Modular Features and FREE Update

I did fresh imports for both F3D Planets and Sci-Fi Effects, in their own projects even. Look at the release notes for 5.3, there are a lot of changes for Mac OS X, OpenGL stuff etc.

Please test this on Mac as soon as you can. Unity 5.3 and/or OS X El Capitan. Later I will test with Unity 5.3 + OS X Mavericks.

Here's the 04_warp_tunnel_example from Sci-Fi Effects. Fun fact: in the Game/Scene windows in the editor the nebula shows white. Hit Play, and it looks as it should. Same goes for 06_nebula_example. This is the exception though, the other mentioned problems for Sci-Fi Planets remain.

 

I think its #pragma only_renderers opengl d3d9 d3d11 causes this on GLCore. Will post the update soon..

 

Do you have this commented in the nebula shader?

// #pragma only_renderers opengl d3d9 d3d11
// #pragma glsl
// #pragma target 3.0

Unity 5.3 for Windows, GLCore 4.5 works fine with these fixes. Also updated the planets. It was #pragma, that was causing the issue.

Can you confirm this fixes the problem on OS X?

 

Yes, I have these three lines commented. What do you want me to comment or uncomment? If I keep only the first line commented things do not improve.

The Planets package has a similar problem. There, the Sun Corona is also white. There however, it's white both in Editor and in Play. In the Effects package, the tunnel (04) + nebula (06) have this problem, but they appear only white in the Editor, but correct in Play mode. That should be the NebulaStaticBoard shader.

Here's a screenshot during Play mode. As you can see, the Inspector remains white (unlike other, working materials) but the Game/Scene show the assets working.

 

Thanks for the update.

Just checking if you have the same shader file. By the way, have you got Pass {} line commented in both corona and nebula files?

Unfortunately the only way I can test this, is to start with -force_glcore on Unity for Windows. Also tried -force_glcore41 (This is basically the highest OpenGL level supported by Macs.) which gave no result, as I was unable to represent the problem on my side.

 

Is it possible to add bullet effects like these in this video starting at 2.40?

 

Hey,

Looks like railgun weapon effect from the package. I cannot guarante this will be added immediatly, but this defenetely deserves an attention.

I have prepared several new effects for Sci-Fi package already. A volumetric explosion, space rift, siege shield and several others to include in the upcoming update. Also I am working on a completely new asset. So we'll see how that fits in.

 

Nice. Any ETA?

 

Still a few things left to be done such as making it usable for others. There are scenes and models with a playable example. I cant show this at the moment, but I'll make a video and couple of screens with a description of the asset in its own forum thread.

 

Take your time and go for the best, as usual.

 

I'm getting the following errors when running the demo turret scene. Imported package in to new project on Unity 5.3.1f1
It doesn't provide a script reference in the errors.

 

From what I've read, those are errors that happen whenever you use particles in 5.3.1. It's a Unity bug.

 

Just downloaded and installed version 1.16 and running in Unity 5.2.4f1 and got the following errors:

Assets/FORGE3D/Sci-Fi Effects/Code/F3DFXController.cs(103,40): error CS1061: Type `UnityEngine.ParticleSystem' does not contain a definition for `emission' and no extension method `emission' of type `UnityEngine.ParticleSystem' could be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?)

Assets/FORGE3D/Sci-Fi Effects/Code/F3DFXController.cs(105,16): error CS1061: Type `object' does not contain a definition for `enabled' and no extension method `enabled' of type `object' could be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?)

I can pretty much guess what the code is trying to do but don't want to fix it just yet as I'm not sure what the downstream impact might be if I break something else.

I can't use Unity 5.3.1 just yet as there are font bugs that's forcing me to downgrade and stay with 5.2.4f1.

Any suggestions?

Manny

 

My problem was fixed with the latest 5.3.1p1 (patch 1) release.

Worth checking if your font bugs are fixed in the patch http://unity3d.com/unity/qa/patch-releases

 

I'm having issues with the missile explosion effect (Explosion_007_Example). When the explosion respawns via F3DPool, the blast and flare effects are missing. So the effect looks super cool the first time and kinda cool every time after. I'm uncertain why this is occurring.

I'm using Unity 5.3.1p1 with Scifi Effects 1.15. This is 100% reproducible in the "09_missiles_example" demo scene.

 

have the same errors

any ideas?

 

changed the code in F3DFXController
to:

for (int i = 0; i < ShellParticles.Length; i++)
{


//var em = ShellParticles.emission;
ParticleSystem em = ShellParticles;


em.enableEmission = false;
ShellParticles.gameObject.SetActive(true);
}

dont know if its correct but at least it compiles and the demo scene works

 

Does anyone else have the F3DPool problem? Are 5.2 users having this issue?

 

s7, I just wanted to say I've really been enjoying your Sci-Fi Effects Pack tremendously however there's been one problem I've been having.

I was modifying F3DLightning.cs and was having trouble with the oscillation calls and F3DTime. For some reason F3DTime is not calling or, from what I can tell from the Debugging I did, even adding the timers. I added the script to my scene, and Update() in F3DTime is being called however OnOscillate() in F3DLightning is never being called.

I'm having this issue with both unmodified F3DLightning and modified, and I'm running Unity 5.3.1 is this a known issue?

Edit: I should add that if I call OnOscillate and OnFrameStep in Update in F3DLightning it works flawlessly.

 

Hello there! Awesome package! Loving it.

I've getting the following error and not sure what might be the issue:

MissingReferenceException: The object of type 'F3DDespawn' has been destroyed but you are still trying to access it.
Your script should either check if it is null or you should not destroy the object.
F3DDespawn.Despawn () (at Assets/FORGE3D/Sci-Fi Effects/Code/F3DDespawn.cs:51)
F3DDespawn.DespawnOnTimer () (at Assets/FORGE3D/Sci-Fi Effects/Code/F3DDespawn.cs:44)
F3DTime+Timer.Tick () (at Assets/FORGE3D/Sci-Fi Effects/Code/F3DTime.cs:50)
F3DTime.Tick () (at Assets/FORGE3D/Sci-Fi Effects/Code/F3DTime.cs:127)
F3DTime.Update () (at Assets/FORGE3D/Sci-Fi Effects/Code/F3DTime.cs:134)

Any Thoughts?

 

I bought the v1.16 package today (it's on sale!) and tried the examples with Unity 5.3.1f1 (personal). Got lots of complaints in the log (e.g. IsFinite), leading to sluggish behavior. Updating to 5.3.2f1 made the problems go away.

 

I have the following errors using Unity 5.3.1f and SFE 1.16:
Assets/FORGE3D/Sci-Fi Effects/Code/F3DBeam.cs(195,41): error CS1502: The best overloaded method match for `F3DTime.AddTimer(float, int, Action)' has some invalid arguments
Assets/FORGE3D/Sci-Fi Effects/Code/F3DBeam.cs(195,41): error CS1503: Argument `#3' cannot convert `method group' expression to type `Action'

I also get the same errors as @fadden with the missile demo when using the 2 homing missile options.

EDIT: Updated to 5.3.3f and the compile errors still remaing. This was done by adding to an existing project. Adding to an empty (new) project, no errors.

No error messages for the missile as originally stated above.

I also get a Fix Now option for solo_gun_flames_02.tga saying it must be marked as a normal map when adding the package to the project.

 

Hi,

Make sure you have the F3DTime script attached to a persitent gameobject in your scene.

Do you have any other assets in your project which may also have F3DTime class file? I beleive this error may also appear while you are using the outdated F3DTime file. If all that what is said is true in your case, then make sure you have the original file for that particular project and also update all the packages.

Just in case this wont work. Make sure to try the SFE with a clean project and let me know how it goes.

It is best to contact me over the email via support@forge3d.com

-Alex

 

Hey fadden,

Thank you for your feedback. This is a known Untiy bug behaviour and the update definitely fixes the error.

 

Hi,

If you use F3DTime class then you have to make sure you stop the timer before you destroy the object. If you do not do that and the timer will keep running after the object is destroyed, the method will be called on an object that does not exists.

You should remove the F3Despawn script if you like to handle the despawn of the specific object.

For some reason you might not like the behaviour, then I suggest you check on InvokeRepeating and replace the timer calls: http://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/MonoBehaviour.InvokeRepeating.html

 

Hi,

Sorry for my late reply. For some reason I dont get notifications from Unity forums sometimes. You can easily reach me over the email though via support@forge3d.com

To answer your question: You need to initialize the script by calling OnSpawned method. This is actually called automatically with the most pool managers. You can put a call to OnSpawned in Start, either check the example for a helper script, that calls OnSpawned for you.

Hope this helps!

 

Hey,

Can you please go with more details on your issue? Please make sure to send me a word at support@forge3d.com

Thanks!

 

Hi,

This is fine. The following code handles the shells particle system on the turret in the weapons example scene.

Make sure you are on the latest package version as well as using final pathed Untiy build. I confirm there are no errors.

 

Any update?

 

Hi, just bougth the asset today, and after import it for the first time in a test project, I get the next message:

NormalMap Settings

A material is using the texture as a normal map.
The texture must be marked as a normal map in the import settings.

Assets/FORGE3D/Sci-fi Effects/Effects/Solo Gun/Textures/solo_gun_flames_02.tga

Fix now | Ignore


I tried with Fix now button, but not sure if it really fix the issue, by tye way I'm using Unity 5.3.2f1

Thanks in advance

 

As soon as its done. To be honest, theres some effects I would like to be added before dumping the updates to the store.

 

Hey karldv,

Just click ignore.This is one time warning at the moment of the import and its completely normal.

Cheers,
Alex

 

Hey Guys, I also bought the package, and wanted to suggest to add 2d versions of the effects, as I will use them in a 2D game. It's not that complicated to adjust everything to work with 2d colliders for example, but takes some time, and would be very helpful or a lot of developers, and you could add a new label to the package description

 

Hey jollyblade!

Thanks for making the purchase and I appretiate all your feedback. I will look into adding 2D colliders in future.

Cheers,
Alex

 

Hi thanks a lot for answering, I reimported the asset again and do as you said and everything works fine. I tried the vulcan gun in a test scene in my android phone and it works and looks great, congratulations for this great asset!!!

If you allow me, I would like to ask you about the shoot behaviour that activates the gun effects, for example using Input.GetKeyDown and Input.GetButton("Fire1") I can make the vulcan gun to fire and stop firing without problem, but when try to do the same with a button for mobile, the gun fire and decrease the ammo quantity as it should be, but when I stop pressing the button the bullet and muzzle flash effect keeps active, even when a trigger event PointerUp is used to call the Stop Method in F3DFXController.cs. I even tried with a second button with OnClick to call the Stop Method and nothing, the fire effect remains active, my last try was to put a Debug.Log("Stop") code line inside the Stop Method in F3DFXController.cs to make sure is being executed and curiously the text Stop is showed in the console window, but despite that the fire effect is still active.

I will greatly apreciate any idea or suggestion to make it work.

Cheers, Karl

 

Hey Karl,

Thank you very much

First of all I suggest you start with your own weapon controller based on that sample script you have at the moment. It was designed to run the sample scene and to introduce the basic ideas of maniging the effects and may not be suitable in your case.

Now I assume you have your own script and you will come to the point of managing timed events. You have two options here: the F3DTime class, either the builtin InvokeRepeating and CancelInvoke. Its up to you completely which one you prefer the most. If you have F3DTime, make sure to remove the timer before you delete the gameobject to avoid error messages on calling a method on that deleted behaviour.

All the effect prefabs were designed with pooling in mind. This means it wont work if you simply put the prefab in the scene and click play. Of course this depends on the script that runs the effect, such a projectile script. You need to call OnSpawned and OnDespawned methods on them. The pooling solution (already included as an example) does this for you as soon as you spawn and despawn the prefab. So if you have no pooling in your project, make sure to call these methods whenever you instantiate an effect.

The muzzle flash and similar effect are automated in terms of despawning and handled by F3DDespawn, which has its own timed event. What this means, is that I never had to keep track of these effect in a controller script because they are despawned automatically. Since you said you have issues with them firing on their own, you might want to look at the despawn script and maybe manage these manually.

Feel free to drop me a word at support@forge3d.com if you have further questions

Cheers,
Alex

 

Hi, thanks again for another quick answer

It take a little bit more of time of work in the code, but finally the effects are working properly with mobile buttons

Again thank you for time and as always great support!

Have a great day!!!

Best Regards, Karl

 

Hi,

I'm at the beginning stages of making a mobile app with this asset. I'm only using a handful of the effects at the moment (sniper, gatling and an explosion) and they look really good. However I noticed that the file sizes for some of the explosion images are huge (e.g. Explosion_001.tga is 67Mb on its own). I think this is causing my app to blow the app store 100mb size limit as I can't even load it into Test Flight as there is not much else in there.

Is it possible to downscale these textures and have them still work? Or is there something else I should do to make it them a more mobile friendly size. Or should I use different explosions?

Any guidance gratefully received as I'd really like to use the effects.

Thanks

 

Hey there,

Good question. Check on the texture overrides for your specific platform.

Android: http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/class-TextureImporterAndroid.html
iOS: http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/class-TextureImporterIos.html

You can also convert the textures to whatever format you prefer using any third party software with batch processing feature.

Basically downscaling the explosion texture will help shrinking the texture size and saving up some memory. You can experiment with the texture resolution by lowering one up to the limit where it becomes blurred and unreadable on the specific device.

For example I am using these effects myself on my S6 Edge and Gear VR and never had to worry about APK build size. The build and delivery over the wi-fi takes up to 5 minutes. Its a scene similar to the turret example from the Sci-Fi Effects plus some flight mechanics and several models from my VR project.

Hope this helps and feel free to ask if you need something.

Cheers,
Alex

 

I was referring to my other post:

My workaround was to not use the pool with those items and just instantiate every time. I'm not sure if it is a Unity bug that has been fixed recently either. It's not a very pressing issue for me anymore.

 

Hi,
I'm using the warp tunnel effect. Is there any way to get full opacity in the warp shader? I'm not very familiar with shaders code. I would like to fade in/out and in the middle of animation the opacity with alpha = 1.

I achieved the effect by adding a standard material (rendering mode fade) in the list of the warp tunnel renderer and controlling the alpha of the material from code, but is resource-intensive for mobile be using two materials in the same mesh of the tunnel. So I think the best solution would be to control the opacity in the same shader, any ideas?

Regards and nice asset.

 

@s7

I am building my own laser/plasma beam weapon with your asset.
I read code of F3DBeam.cs and have a question of it.
Do you actually use F3DBeam.BeamFrames in your asset? I didn't find any example that uses it.

 

Hey there,

Thank you very much! You can check the shader parameters by opening the shader code, and using the shader parameter name, you can change any value from your script.

For example:

this.renderer.material.SetFloat("_SomeParameterName", someFloatValue);

Here you can find eveything that is related to controling your shaders from script:

http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/MaterialsAccessingViaScript.html

Hope this helps!

Cheers,
Alex

 

Hi,

Good question... Yes the BeamFrames array is used with the lighting gun mainly.A custom beam animation can be applied if you'd like to customize the beam even more.

You can find the example by opening 02_effects_preview scene and checking the lightning_gun_beam->lightning_gun_beam_002 gameobject.

Cheers,
Alex

 

Thanks for your fast response.

I am modifying the alpha in the way that you have described, but when I change the alpha to 1, I still see through the walls of the tunnel. Does not become completely opaque. I'm using the effect to change background scenario in runtime, and I would like to take the time that was completely opaque to swap the background. Sorry if I'm not explaining very well, English is not my native language.

Regards and thanks again.

Edit: I'm using only the shader "Warp Tunnel", without the tunnel distortion gameobject.

 

You might also want to change the blending mode inside the shader to the traditional transparency.

Check out the manual chapter on blending modes in Unity: http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/SL-Blend.html

You should look for Blend SrcAlpha OneMinusSrcAlpha and basically replace the Blend One One string inside the shader. Your transparency should work now and you will be able to swap your skybox (or any backgroud) while the tunnel is fully opaque.

Let me know whether this works for you and also please send me a direct email to support@forge3d.com with your result or any questions you have.

Cheers,
Alex

 

Hey!

If somebody wants the beam to work in 2d, paste the following code into the F3DBeam class, and tick the enable2D box in the editor

It would be anyway a nice feature to support 2D out of the box. Room for more purchases I removed some other code I needed for my own project, if it doesn't work, write me.

Cheers!


RaycastHit hitPoint; //Raycast structure
RaycastHit2D hitPoint2D; //2Draycast structure

void Raycast(){
if (turnOn2D) {
Raycast2D ();
} else {
Raycast3D ();
}
}


void Raycast2D()
{

//Calculatedefaultbeamproportionmultiplierbasedondefaultscaleandmaximum length
float propMult = MaxBeamLength * (beamScale / 10f);

enableCollider (false);
hitPoint2D = Physics2D.Raycast (transform.position, transform.up, MaxBeamLength, layerMask);
enableCollider (true);

// Raycast
if (hitPoint2D.collider != null)
{
//Getcurrentbeamlengthandupdatelinerenderer accordingly
beamLength = Vector2.Distance(transform.position, hitPoint2D.point);

lineRenderer.SetPosition(1, new Vector3(0f, beamLength, 0f));

//Calculatedefaultbeamproportionmultiplierbasedondefaultscaleandcurrent length
propMult = beamLength * (beamScale / 10f);

//Spawnprefabsandapply force
switch (fxType)
{
case F3DFXType.Sniper:

F3DFXController.instance.SniperImpact(hitPoint2D.point + hitPoint2D.normal * 0.2f);
ApplyForce(4f);
break;

case F3DFXType.RailGun:
F3DFXController.instance.RailgunImpact(hitPoint2D.point + hitPoint2D.normal * 0.2f);
//ApplyForce(7f);
break;

case F3DFXType.PlasmaBeam:
//ApplyForce(0.5f);
break;

case F3DFXType.PlasmaBeamHeavy:
//ApplyForce(2f);
break;

default:
break;
}

//Adjustimpacteffect position
if (rayImpact) {
rayImpact.position = new Vector3(hitPoint2D.point.x,hitPoint2D.point.y, 0);
}
}

//Nothingwas his
else
{
//Setbeamtomaximum length
beamLength = MaxBeamLength;
lineRenderer.SetPosition(1, new Vector3(0f, beamLength, 0f));

//Adjustimpacteffect position
if (rayImpact)
rayImpact.position = transform.position + transform.up * beamLength;
}

//Adjustmuzzle position
if(rayMuzzle)
rayMuzzle.position = transform.position + transform.up * 0.1f;

//Setbeamscalingaccordingtoits length
lineRenderer.material.SetTextureScale("_MainTex", new Vector2(propMult, 1f));
}

 

Bump. Sci-Fi Effects 2.01 BETA is Here!
Head to the first page to read more or Purchase in the Asset Store.

 

You, Sir, are awesome for making this incredible update... it's rare too see assets from the store being updated as much as yours, let alone with updates that big!
Thank you for making my day!

 

Thank you for your time and your amazing comment! The next series of updates are on their way, and that will change Sci-Fi Effects and Force Field even more as we submit to the Asset Store. Please allow at least a week for the review team to approve before packages go live.

In the meantime, you will find me posting developer notes in our forum revealing much of our progress. Please swing by and help us build the community! I also encourage you to subscribe to our newsletter and get the latest happenings in and around the FORGE.

Once again, many thanks for your feedback and the support.

Sincerely,
Alex