Scion - Filmic Post Processing

Is the asset currently broken? Afaik it is not (I'd imagine this thread to be filled with a whole lot more comments about it if that was the case). I understand how disappointed you all are but I'd leave the torches and pitchforks and assetstore-ban petitions in the shed till the asset is actually broken and not fixed. At the moment it's feature complete and does everything it ever set out to be (plus a threshold value by popular demand, that the dev seems to generally disagree with, but implemented it anyway). Even if it ever gets broken by a Unity update, it seems like still enough people are using it to provide a fix themselves here. That said I still do think some better way of communicating this kind discontinued development should be better communicated on the assetstore by automated flagging after long periods of no updates.

 

i m not obliging him to update right now but out of respect to his customers he should at least reply to emails

if anybody knows how to fix it for 5.5 lt me know because i really need it

 

1+ for single pass rendering.

 

He can't be forced to continue supporting and updating a plugin he has made.
There is many plugins that got discontinued because the author just left plugin developments or left for many other reasons. When you sell a plugin you must maintain it for the current Unity version, but you are not forced to maintain it for next releases.
And there is what i call long term plugins, that are mostly the popular ones that got updates from long time and continue to get updates with new releases.
Anyway, with Unity Image Effects and Prism i am not sure Scion is still a good option.

 

@zenGarden maybe unity image effects and prism satisfied your needs but in my case i have to stick with scion for many reasons ... i m full production and i can't ditch scion because it run very well on consoles unlike prism and i have a specific look for my game , i can't change it now

 

I did support it and push patches for a year following its release. I assumed Scion would lose its flare following Unity's own Cinematic Post Process + I have not used Unity at all in any of the projects I've undertaken since Scion's release
Since there is obviously still people using it, I'm gonna see if I can update it to work in 5.5 (wording that cautiously since I have no idea what's changed and why it isn't working)

EDIT:
If anyone could tell me what's the issue with 5.5 I would appreciate it. I have not had Unity installed for a long time

 

In my defense, I did just what is suggested Patches for a year following release and support for a couple of months following patch release.

The issue with developing assets for the Unity store, and the reason I am no longer do so, is that the amount of work required for a stable product quickly expands past the maximum potential of return. A single developer on no budget can't possibly test all scenarios the product will be used for, and staying up to date on the engine (especially if ones daily work does not require it) and providing support takes a lot of unpaid hours. You could argue that purchasing an asset buys you the support, but from the asset developers point of view you quickly end up at minimum wage if even that.

This is also coincidentally why I nowadays refrain from using any 3rd party code that isn't either a huge open source project with many contributors, or a company from which I am buying a subscription (as opposed to a one time fee). I'm not saying the Asset Store isn't handled well, it does the best it can under its circumstances, but I do feel that it fosters an in my opinion poor way of developing which is the assumption that you have access to all these building blocks that you can just smack together without actually having to understand how they work. This is also why (again, in my opinion) games made in Unity tend to be quite lackluster in the performance department, and lack polish.

 

They reversed the scene depth buffer.

 

Did they at least add a compile time shader define for that?

 

Did you check this out yet?
https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/UpgradeGuide55.html

 

Hi Aieth,
I can speak for myself but Scion for now is the best all in one post processing package which works perfectly without spend too time tweaking settings... just drag on camera and all goes nicely.
I hope you can consider to maintain (also with payment upgrade) your awesome job on this tool
Max

 

i have this issue Assets/ScionPostProcess/Scripts/Editor/ScionWindow.cs(254,79): error CS0117: `UnityEditor.TextureImporterType' does not contain a definition for `Default'

 

Looking forward to an update. Also you could consider open sourcing this too @Aieth

 

@Aieth, if you simply released this asset with the virtual camera only i'd buy. There is not virtual camera in the asset store that i know of

 

Just got it, and works fine for the latest Unity 5.6

I tried most of the features. It plays well with other more updated cinematic effects on the asset store, as well as the PostProcessing stack.

The virtual camera is nothing at all like I thought it was (I thought it would let me set the camera perspective / view / focus / etc like a real camera), however it has an absolutely gorgeous flare and dirt effect, and the Depth of Field seems to have a few more features than the Post Processing one.

The grain has an interesting noise, more clumpy, but possibly useful in certain situations. There is a Lut blend too.

 

I tried the latest Unity post processing stack but the bloom is sub-par. Yours is much, much better. Please keep this project alive.

 

Just wanted to add that I think the price is a bit much for what you get. $30-$35 would be reasonable. In the end, you're getting a different flavor of a post processing stack where things are a bit overcrowded in the asset store.

 

Glad you enjoy it. You can in fact change some camera parameters, if you set the camera mode to manual. The reason for the whole virtual camera thing, explained quickly, is this: All issues we face with varying lighting levels (especially with PBR) digital cameras already faced 30 years ago. They developed a bunch of algorithms for brightness adaption and tonemapping. Those algorithms were limited by the hardware (a game isn't limited by anything really) but cameras solved the problem so well with their limitations that it made sense to impose the same limitations on a game camera to end up with similar behavior. It's not perfect, but it's a solution that, IMO, works well.

I'm gonna drop the price a bit with this new patch. When I released Scion there were neither competitors nor alternatives from Unity



I've written an update that hopefully fixes the issue with Unity 5.5/5.6. I could use a few testers as I'm quite strapped for time these days. Anyone interested drop me a PM with your in voice number (or if I know who you are don't bother with that, just message me).
Since I've gotten a quite a few questions about what I'm up to nowadays, I've taken things a step further and have been writing my own engine for a game project. It's called... tam tam tam... the Scion engine. It's not at a level where it can be shown off but it's getting there

 

When I released Scion there were neither competitors nor alternatives from Unity

Well, Scion is a legend as far as assets go, but if you indeed feel like moving on from the asset, a price reduction probably won't harm it.
As you said yourself, we now have PRISM and Beautify and UT's own attempts.

 

I'm getting the impression that if you were thinking of building a house, you'd start by locating a forest and a quarry.

 

How do I set the Scion parameters from script?

 

still no updates :/

 

New update available!
Thanks Aieth!

 

Its Alive!! ;D Thanks Aieth!!

 

If nothing else it should get rid of the console errors I did submit the new patch using 5.6 only, so all of you on an older version of Unity will need to update in order to access it (separate Scion versions for separate Unity versions is a lot easier to maintain than #ifdef hell with multiple implementations)

 

I would agree with this to a degree but to fully agree I would want to reduce the scope of this - it applies far more to certain types of asset store products than others. I think its much, much worse for assets that are involved with rendering/shader and some other realtime/runtime stuff. Other kinds of assets such as tools that extend editor functionality, models, etc, suffer less developer burnout from what I've seen.

 

I agree with you on this, also I don't understand why lot of developers think that when they buy something on store, they have automatically free support for product forever. Me as developer in small studio where we don't have man power to do own post-process effects, we will be willing to pay month lets say subscription for support and updates or fee for updates. I think that way it will be better for all, its sad that Unity store don't support this and lots of developers don't want to pay for some services and products what other developers do.

 

Found it.

Code (CSharp):

1. ScionEngine.ScionPostProcess scionPostProcess = Camera.main.GetComponent<ScionEngine.ScionPostProcess>();
2. scionPostProcess.bloom = true;
3. scionPostProcess.bloomIntensity = 0.5f;

 

Thanks for the update! Why not create "Scion 2017" asset and making it possible to upgrade from Scion for around 10$? I'd be happy to have paid support throughout the 2017 cycle.

Apart from that: Scion is still king of the hill regarding postprocessing quality and speed.

 

I super-like Depth of Field from Scion. Any plans to make the DOF performance a bit faster. It is still quite heavy in my case, when the game goes into full screen mode. I wouldn't mind for the $10 upgrade, to get all new cool stuff and support.

 

80% of the development time of Scion was optimization for the Depth of Field. It looks good because it does a lot of samples. The first version, the reference I used before optimzation, did IIRC around 800 samples. It turned a simple scene into a slideshow on anything but the most recent GPUs. The optimized final version, using everything from pre-passes's to down sampling to jittering and temporal supersampling only does roughly 5% of that. What I'm getting at is that making it faster isn't easier, more samples cost performance. However, if you want it to be faster, you can play with the max radius setting. Setting it to lower values will allow the runtime to branch into faster code. Also always use temporal supersampling with a low sample count.

 

Hi, thanks for the tips. I will try it later. I know there is always a balance between beauty and performance. I hope you will contribute more FX effects assets to community in future.

 

Good afternoon. in version 2017 there are a bunch of warnings. How to get rid of them?

 

any chance to update it for unity 2017.1.3 the bloom effect is broken and throw render to texture error

 

As a followup of this, may I ask if you are going to provide support for the new 2018 features, integrating this along with the new pipelines and postprocess stack?

 

I don't see any errors or issue ... only few warnings.

Spoiler: 5.6.5 - 2017 - 2018 comparison

 

i get errors every time i have depth of field activateid with bloom i get the following
Assertion failed: Assertion failed on expression: 'depthSurface == NULL || rcolorZero->backBuffer == depthSurface->backBuffer'

Ps:warnings on consoles leads to game crashes unlike on pc you can live with it