Scion - Filmic Post Processing

Thanks for purchasing! If you encounter any other issues or just have questions/thoughts in general, please do ask

 

I bought it day 0 AND wrote a review. Does that mean I get early beta access to new versions? <3

 

Yes, glare effects. I checked and it is even called "glare" in the options that show up in Substance Painter. Right, it produces rainbow type colors and flares. The other effects in YEBIS seems to be already covered by Scion (and other assets), though their DOF stuff seems extra fancy and they do advanced stuff like aperture blade simulation (!).

When I was teaching myself the basics of Substance Designer, I made a "programmer art" model to experiment with surface values and turned on post effects. That's where the YEBIS glare effect first caught my attention.

You can see in the first two shots that there are red, green, and blue effects in addition to the flares, some more subtle than others. Some of the effects even seem to follow the surface of the model.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/28342849/Unity_misc/YEBIS/YEBIS_Glare_wo_background.PNG
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/28342849/Unity_misc/YEBIS/YEBIS_Glare_w_background.PNG
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/28342849/Unity_misc/YEBIS/YEBIS_Glare2_w_background.PNG

The UI for the glare settings in Substance Painter:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/28342849/Unity_misc/YEBIS/YEBIS_UI_in_SubstancePainter.PNG

EDIT: bonus shot with the settings up high and looking into the sun. JJ Abrams mode:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/28342849/Unity_misc/YEBIS/YEBIS_JJ_would_be_proud.PNG

 

No problem
I have one request, the depth field works great, but is it possible to have an exclude layer for the depth field ?
For example, in my case, I have a fps camera with a gun near the camera.
I don't want the gun to be affected by the depth field, only the scenario around it.
If we had an exclude layer, I would place the weapons in a layer, and then exclude that layer in the depth field parameters.
Would this be possible ?

 

I've asked for curve-based DOF which might solve that if we can get fine grained control over it (I know I'd love it). The weapon issue is similar to the 3rd person issue. You can try manual range setting but it still isn't controllable enough imho.

 

yes, but with manual range this won't work, at least i'm unable to get it looking good. It's either depth field in the distance, or close distance, the point range works great, except I don't want it to affect the weapon.
Curve-based DOF might work yeah, as we could get it to exclude really close objects.

 

Aieth posted here that the next patch will allow you to exclude objects from the DOF. Should be coming in 1.1

 

Yeah thats coming in 1.1. It will be uploaded to the asset store some time this week, so its not too far off.

 

@Aieth do you have any plans to eventually add SSAO to Scion?

 

No I'm not planning on doing that. SSAO would benefit very little from integration into Scion, so there's absolutely no downside to using any other SSAO algorithm. There are already a lot of great SSAO for Unity, so I'm focusing on what isn't there.

 

Here's a sneak peak. Nothing too special going on. Added some more customizability to the bloom. Color grading support. I need to make a lens dirt texture
First picture has Scion on and second one has Scion off (duh).
As usual nothing special was done before taking this screenshot. It involves no variable tweaking what so ever, just line up the camera and Scion does the rest.

 

Looks beautiful
This is in the upcoming update ? With the exclusion of objects in the DOF ?

 

Yeah I have yet to implement the DoF exclusion but it will be in the next patch.

 

yay

 

@Aieth You mentioned you're not going to look at AA anytime soon. I was wondering if there were any AA solutions you'd recommend in the meantime to use with your plugin? Unity's AA doesn't seem to cut it for now.

 

ok cool, yeah I didn't know if it was inefficient to continue using a separate SSAO post effect. works for me, thanks!

 

@Aieth
Wouldn't it be a performance boost if Scion would include SSAO?
I am not sure how it works internally. Is Scion faster than stacked effects because it has all the image data in the buffer and thus does not have to move data around? Like a very huge function instead of having several smaller functions (=stacked effects)?
If this is the case, then it would in fact make sense that Scion had it included because it would be faster by design (=not so much moving of data around).

 

The thing with SSAO is that it needs to be run before transparent objects are rendered, while things like bloom needs to be run after transparents. So you can't combine them, because they happen in completely different stages of the pipeline (the middle and afterwards).

So if I added SSAO to Scion it would be completely separate from the rest of the pipeline anyway, just like using another asset already is.

 

I know there was a community port of SMAA somewhere. I guess that's the best AA available at the moment. It's not perfect but at least it's better than FXAA.

 

@Ben BearFish: I suspect @Aieth is referring to Thomas Hourdel (creator of SSAO Pro)'s free SMAA shader here:
https://github.com/Chman/SMAA-Unity

If I were going to place my bets on an AA solution at the moment, it would be Flow Fire Games' "Super Sampling SSAA":
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/37214

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@Aieth: Your asset look absolutely fantastic. The only features I would hope to see before I am completely sold are lens flares, specifically the functionality present in Paroxe's "Ultimate Bloom": https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/31396

...And histogram-based eye adaptation, such as that implemented by Paroxe's "Filmic Tonemapping":
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/29341

Any chance of seeing these features implemented in the near future?

Regardless of your response, thank you so much for the incredible efforts that you have put into your asset. It's obvious that you take great pride in your assets, and your willingness to share your efforts with the community benefits us all immensely!
- S.

 

Correct

I'm going to do lens flares as well, but I'm keeping the ideas to myself for now before I know more. Whatever I do is going to be focused on performance though, and not based on append buffers and indirect draw (e.g drawing sprites using a shader).

By histogram based eye adaption, you are talking about exposing a full color range right? And not automatic exposure as in adapting to the brightness of its surroundings?

 

Missed this. If it's a serious request then sure Unfortunately for you, the case with post process like this is that the beta phase is really short. It's not a gradual transition to working, it's pretty much binary. So when it works it goes on the store asap.

 

@Aieth: I'm please to hear that lens flares will be included in your package!

Adapting to the brightness of the surroundings is what I am referring to (which I now notice is already included in your package), but not applied in a linear manner. Many solutions simply adjust the scene as a whole. Histogram-based, as I understand it, shift the mid-point while striving to keep the lights and darks within or close to a visible range.

 

Great post process setup. It has been pretty much a drag and drop upgrade for a number of my scenes. I have a question about the scene viewport rendering. I have some HDR scenes that are VERY bright in the viewport, which is not an issue with Unity's tonemapper as it affects the scene window viewport rendering, but with Scion (and I'm guessing other tonemappers) I don't see any tonemapping in the Scene window. Is this possible or is there any easy workaround? Right now I am leaving a Unity tonemapper component on the camera, and leaving it enabled while working in the scene, and unchecking it (leaving Scion only on) when i go into play mode. Thanks!

 

@Aieth, do you have plans for integrating your SSR implementation from Jove? (I'm not sure if that's feasible, so forgive me if I sound ignorant. )

 

I need to get my hands on this... PRONTO!!! I would make my project look extremely realistic

 

@Aieth : SSAO, SS color bleeding and SSRR are quite common in scene setup, yet I know their implementation is not really simple and they could significantly lower the FPS. Could we hope to see any of them as a Toggleable feature in Scion or do we have to fallback to third party solutions?
Has Scion been tested and compatible with some of the existing SSAO, SS color bleeding, SSRR assets on the store (eg: Candela SSRR, SSAO Pro, SE Screen-Space Ambient Occlusion, etc.)? I suppose I have to add them *before/on top of* Scion.

Can we, in very specific setups (I know it sounds bad what I'm going to ask), have multiple Scion components on a camera? (for example if we want to use part of its features *like DOF*, then a Grain/Grunge PostFX, then again Scion for Vignetting and Color Aberration?

Could you please limit the use of sliders (or extend their range) in the interface to let us play with the values right out of the box thus increasing the artistic possibilities?

Thanks for your time

EDIT: duh, I read all the posts in the thread, I suspect I already have an answer for SSAO, SS color bleeding and SSRR, guess I have to use third party components, and Scion after them.
Just bought it, can't wait to have some time to upgrade to Unity to 5.x and try it!

 

I see what you mean. I'm going to look into improve tonemapping but I have yet to decide on a specific approach. The point of Histogram based tonemapping is to use the full color range present in the scene, which obviously sounds good. So my answer is we will see

The issue is that Unity is designed around the idea of separate passes. So when you tag your OnRenderImage function with the attribute [ImageEffectTransformsToLDR] Unity will make sure the output is LDR and that pass will also get called for the scene camera. Unfortunately there's no way to *only* do the tonemapping for the scene camera, as far as I have figured out. If I remove the compiler macros that stops it from being active in the editor the scene camera also gets a weird DoF applied, it isn't pretty. The best "solution" I guess would be to turn off Scion tonemapping and add a separate Unity tonemapper, and then turn on Scion again when you build. Or write a script that does it on entering play mode.

I've considered it but opted against it. The biggest issue is actually integrating the SSR post effect into Unitys rendering. You don't have the level of control you would want to.

I'm not stopping you

I've opted against implementing post effects that belong more on the rendering side, like SSR and SSAO.
SSAO for example is always run before transparents is rendered, so it doesn't matter where in the chain you place it. It will be called before Scion is.
SSR could be done both ways, so safest bet is to place it before Scion.
I have tested Scion with SSAO Pro and Sonic Ethers SSAO, but there's no reason Scion would not be compatible with any solution. I say that with the utmost confidence. If you manage to find an SSR or SSAO asset that isn't compatible with Scion I will buy a hat and eat it.

If you dont want an instance of Scion to do tonemapping (e.g the output texture is LDR as opposed to HDR) you would need to comment out the attribute [ImageEffectTransformsToLDR] on the OnRenderImage() function. I'll add a separate script in the next patch that supports this out of the box.

The sliders are very generous in their settings The [0,1] sliders are interpolating and can't go outside that range, and I doubt you would even want to get close to the edge in the other sliders. It's easily changeable in the code if that were to happen for some reason though.

 

Understood on the SSR. I guess with the SSR solutions on the current asset store sale, I was wondering if there was hope that you'd be incorporating something into Scion, especially since Jove's SSR has no shimmer.

 

Hmm, I saw in this post that Unity has implemented a separate reflection buffer starting in 5.2. Not sure if that is intriguing enough...

 

Yeah I might reconsider SSR once Unity implement it themselves. Should reduce the time I have to spend on it by like 75%

 

I'm going to take that as a soft "yes," as my ultimate hope is to use your implementation.

 

@Aieth
Perhaps you could offer it for a discount for a limited time?
This might increase your popularity as well.

 

If you consider the number of integrated effects, their quality, and the fact that their integrated nature means performance is better than pulling from multiple assets, the price seems extremely reasonable. As a customer, we all want assets to be less expensive, but we have to temper that desire with the understanding that a developer has to make enough money from selling an asset to make it worthwhile to support it in the long term.

 

We will see once 5.2 is out I am considering it. Don't know if I would add it to Scion or release it as a separate asset though.

I have signed up for the Unity sale, so if picked Scion will go on sale. I'm not going to do a separate sale though, there is little reason seeing as you barely get any extra exposure.

 

A separate SSR asset sounds fine by me!

 

It's now part of my project, really like what this asset doing

 

In the upcoming version, is it possible to smoothly change from one LUT to another based on physical volumes or position?

 

Glad you like it

I'm keeping it pretty barebone. It does allow blending between two LUTs, but if you want to automate it you will have to do that yourself. There's no volume system included. In other words, the GPU functionality is there but you will have to do any fancy CPU side things yourself.

 

@Aieth Brilliant, if it allows blending via API that will be perfect

 

Version 1.1 has been submitted to the asset store!

• Support for OpenGL
  
• Support for color grading
  
• Bloom range modifier
  
• New depth focus mode, a focal range (as opposed to just a point)
  
• The option to completely skip tonemapping (e.g compatibility with any other tonemapping script)

 

"hook" a brother "up" "dog"

 

I am seeing "Version: 1.0 (Jul 27, 2015)", is 1.1 taking some time to approve?

 

I'm guessing Aieth meant he submitted it to the asset store yesterday, but it hasn't been approved just yet.

 

It can take a week, plus or minus a couple of days, to be approved.

 

Hi @Aieth, I was thinking, would God Rays fit inside the pipeline of Scion? I personally use it quite often and would love to have it inserted as part of Scion.

The alternatives would be having it applied before Scion, probably risking to have Scion's bloom applied to it (that would result in an exaggeration of the effect), or after Scion, possibly without color correction and the other useful post effects.

 

Just added this to my wishlist for purchase soon. I'm in the middle of converting my 4.x project to 5 and not ready to add one more thing to the mix just yet, otherwise I'd get it right now.

My cameras contain a jumble of effects plugins and it would be awesome to drop all that and combine as much as possible. My main camera has:

• Bloom
• SSAO Pro
• DOF
• Vignette and Chromatic Aberration
• Cinema Themes LUT
• Amplify Color
• Color Correction Curves
• SE Natural Bloom and Dirty Lens
• Amplify Motion
• Antialiasing

All great effects and I get a really nice result, but it looks like Scion will help cut down on the clutter. Hell yeah.

 

So I gotta ask... Why are you using three different color correction and two different bloom post effects?

 

Congratulations to all, 1.1 is released!

Looks like everything is 2x brighter now on same settings for me, was there some major changes in tonemapping or exposure formulas?

Also, color grading is not working correctly for me. I am converting from Chromatica Studio's LUT, but it shows wrongly, i am keeping Chromatica for now.

Also, i get Unity Crash with "pure virtual function call" when changing to manual range mode in Dof.

 

YAY UPDATE.