Scion - Filmic Post Processing

I'm using Unity 5.1.2 and the lastest Scion at asset store. In forward mode the HDR really don't change nothing. But to replicate this, just create a empty project, and put Scion on the Main Camera, and the image will be flipped. Going in the Quality settings and turning off the AA multisampling will make the image go back normal.

 

No Rush on this one, just curious if you had a chance to look into it

Thanks,

 

At the risk of sounding like I am interfering I must say it's really the wrong thing right now to try and stay on older platforms since Unity is rather buggy at the moment. If you have dependency on an asset you should have those assets get upgraded to 5.2+ rather than have other assets downgrade.

This is because:

a) it's not stopping. Several new middleware assets I know of are going 5.2+ only.
b) it's likely you will find bugs at some point you can't fix on 5.0. Then what?

So those assets holding you back should be the ones to change so that you can have better performance and less bugs by using a newer version of Unity. May I ask what it is that holds you to 5.0?

 

At the risk of violating NDAs, I will say that some of the platforms Unity releases for, have their own distribution, which are based on older versions of the editor. You HAVE to use those specific versions to compile for those platforms at present.

 

Ah I see! yes. Hopefully that will change as it's always a pain being stuck.

 

There is a problem with a LUT even if converting like author saying in documentations.
And if use Amplify Color for example, everything just too dark.

 

Just tested the plugin, this is Awesome

 

Yes there's a known issue in the current version. If the sRGB settings of the source texture are off it produces incorrect results. For the next version this has already been corrected and it will automatically work despite any eventual texture settings.

 

I dont have powerpoint, do you have a pdf version of your docs?

 

Interesting, they were supposed to be pdf's I think I copied the wrong files (the original powerpoint files) in before uploading. I'll fix that for the next version too

 

I understand that
In the mean time, what advice could you give for Depth of Field and Focal Length settings in my Scenario.
I have a game, where it's very similar to Katamari Damacy style of camera. I have a camera that follows a ball around a city, but I want to make sure that the ball is always in focus, but at the same time have some blur on everything else.
The trick is, that distance from the camera to the ball is variable depending on circumstances.

How can I make Scion automatically keep the focus on my ball, and give depth of field dynamically ?

Thanks,

 

You could use the automatic mode and make sure the sample point follows the ball. This reminds that I need to implement support for focusing on a transform. I will add that for the next version.

In the mean time, if you want a "fix", you could use the "Manual Distance" focus mode and update it via script. In order to get the correct depth do the following

Code (CSharp):

1. Vector3 camToObject = yourObject.transform.position - camera.transform.position;
2. float focalDistance = Vector3.Dot(camToObject, camera.transform.forward);
3. scionPostProcess.focalDistance = focalDistance;

 

Ill give it a shot! Thanks mate!

 

Teaser

 

Que Bonita!

 

Last scene in WIP made with Scion

 

I really like this pack and I think this is the approach unity should've implemented effects..
are there quality options for each effects?

 

You generally turn things off if you don't want them with tick box etc. There's one quality setting for dof but that's it.

 

I was always hoping that Unity would make some framework that would let post process effects autocombine.

Like a unity supplied pre-script that grabs all the passes, then each post script is *incomplete* and a post-script that outputs everything to screen.

I'm oversimplifying things of course.

Although now that Scion is here, it seems less necessary.

 

It would be really helpful if we could get some level of detail and quality options, either overall or per effect..

 

There are quality settings where they make sense. The performance requirements of both bloom and the depth of field effect is adjustable. However, effects like Vignette, Chromatic Aberration, Tonemapping and automatic exposure can't really be tweaked. They're a flat cost, either you do it or you don't. The upcoming lens flares will also be adjustable.

 

Calling lens flares done now. Needs some GUI work and stuff still, but shader wise (the hard part) it's done.



I've started using twitter now (yes I'm a bit behind). Going to be posting updates and stuff there, if anyone wants to follow and join in on the fun @JoveSoftware.

 

I really hope you can continue to evolve this product, I'm very pleased...

 

He will if we promote it... sales means support. At the low price he charges, he can't possibly be making much profit right now. It's not even on asset store grossing list.

 

Does Scion work on any mobile devices?

 

I have just read the review by "Shattered Reality". Are you going to take a look at what he wrote?

 

I have and I know it doesn't make sense. If he's got a bug or is using it incorrectly (ie too many keywords or whatever), the right thing to do would've been contact the author, like everyone else.

As for the rest of us we're happily using it.

 

In theory it should, but in practice it is likely to be far too slow. A semi modern PC can run it without issue (full HD on a GTX 560 ti it's taking about 3.5ms for me) but phones would struggle. Or at least so I think, I have not tried it. Let me know if you do

Yeah I have responded to that review. Most of the issues are related to bugs that have been fixed a long time ago, he is running version 1.0.

 

Actually I tried and it's doing very well. I'm using Scion + Amplify Motion + Color Correction Curves in my game on iPhone 6 (il2cpp + metal) and it's going good, stable 30 fps. Unfortunately on iPad Air/iPhone 6+ performance is going to be much worse due to amount of pixels. Note that my scene without post-processing takes 1ms on iPhone to render so it's 1ms -> ~30ms performance decrease.

 

Looks amazing. I wonder how well this would play in combination with TrueSky. I'll let you know once it's updated!

 

Works fine with truesky, but it is an automatic effect so you would have to manually adjust it slightly in code depending on conditions. I don't see why using truesky or not would affect anything

It's attractive and you can supply your own lookup textures.

 

Patch 1.2 is officially done. Uploading to the asset store

 

See that? throw money at it.

 

Here is a strange request, can you make Scion make a film like flicker ?
I have a bit of a Noir setting Im playing with, and it would be cool to have a old film flicker effect

 

That sounds like something very specialized that only very few people would be interested in Not saying it is a bad idea, but it is probably outside the scope of Scion.

 

Fair Enough

 

@Aieth is the latest patch up in asset store already ?

 

Depends on how you define up I uploaded it yesterday, but it is pending approval. Hopefully it will be quick, but it can take up to a week.
If anyone wants the patch right now (but without an included demo scene), PM your in-voice number and I will hand you a download link.

I believe with this patch the last "childhood diseases" of Scion have been cured. Including but not limited to DoF getting messed up on assembly reload, GUI being sluggish and exposure sometimes going whack under weird lighting conditions.

 

Could you put a good SSAO Solution into Scion?

 

Aieth has already stated previously here that he's likely to not add SSAO, as there are other good solutions already available and there's no real performance benefit in "integrating" it with Scion's other effects. Not saying he won't change his mind in the future, but it has been discussed already.

 

Ahh, Missed that. I use SSAO Pro and love it, but would like to see it integrated into a single tool

 

I like SSAO Pro as well. Chman does good work.

 

Yeah the term post process is a bit misleading, it implies everything is just done after rendering. What post process should be called is screen space effects. You can separate screen space effects into two categories, true post process and lighting approximations (where a scene is represented by a two dimensional height field , what in Unity is known as the camera depth texture).

Lighting approximations are image based ways to approximate lighting (duh), like SSAO does by calculating the occlusion of pixels or SSR does by following a ray attempting to find an intersection in this two dimensional height field called the depth texture. You can add in other stuff here like screen space shadowing (tracing shadow rays in screenspace, often done in cut scenes in AAA productions for detailed facial shadows etc). Then there are other things like screen space GI and what have you. Basically lighting approximations only touch what happens before the light reaches the camera.

Then theres the post process part, which is mostly aimed at introducing imperfections. Yes, imperfections. A normal camera is not perfect, theres lens distortion, blur and light leaking (bloom). This is about increased the visual fidelity of the image, and it only touches what happens after the light has already reached the camera.

You could argue anti aliasing is a third version of screen space effects, since its purpose is to combat undersampling (go full HD on a 5 inch monitor, you do not need AA anymore. Now stretch it over a 5x5 meters wall, aliasing ohoy!). However anti aliasing needs a full image to operate on, you can't combine it with other things. Ideally anti aliasing would be run between the lighting approximating effects and the post process. That is what UE4 does with its temporal anti aliasing.

 

Yeah although that would for sure double the price for no speed benefit.

 

Everyone following Scion will probably be interested in hearing that I am increasing the price to 65$ as of patch 1.2. So if you want it for 50$, get it while you can!

 

Word

 

No worries, i'll wait the asset store

 

Picked this up ahead of the 1.2 price increase. Along with Alloy, it's a 'just make it look amazing' asset. Really happy with the results, and looking forward to the lens flares posted earlier.

 

It's getting better with every update Tested out Scion and it's rad! Will definitely use this instead of Unity's Image Effects for my future projects. And Unity, please consider hiring Aieth.

 

Finally got around to buy Scion and took it out for a test drive. It's an amazing plugin. One thing I think would be really useful is to have an exclusion dropdown for the auto focus setting. Sometimes you want the camera to move behind stuff and still keep them blurry (trees, fances etc). Great job Aieth!