SE Natural Bloom Dirty Lens

Seems like Sonic Ether is busy working on a SSAO asset. http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/super-fast-high-quality-ssao.279534 And a realtime GI asset as well. https://twitter.com/sonic_ether/status/568444503062786048

A bit disappointing there have been no updates to Natural Bloom since its first release despite the promises.

 

There is a nice SSAO PRo on the asset store that works a lot better than the Unity included.

But anyway, it's a typically behavior of "Grab the money and leave!" SE Bloom didn't work well from the first release.

I would never buy any other asset from him, because you can be assured it's new stuff is also halfway worked as before.

Hes a wannabe in my opinion.

 

In what way does SE natural bloom not work for you? It will only work with linear lighting generally, and it works well in Unity 5.

It's not quite complete enough for me but it's far from "doesn't work". It doesn't work well at all with gamma pipelines if that's what you are thinking.

 

That is a bit akward though, since gamma is used extensively. I am just about to use it in my project and is not the best news to learn this.

Of course i will try to use it with gamma.

 

I have been a big fan of the asset and definitely disappointed because I want to be confident that the asset is going to be continued. But given movra's post, I'm not.

 

I have permanently glitches with this asset while rotating the main cam. Poping super bright pixels flashing whole screen or on the light itself. Color flashes as in the previous link. All that stuff become more visible as lower the frame rate becomes. I think many ppl didn't see this because they run on 60 or higher frames, then "false frame" isn't noticeable that mutch.

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/se-natural-bloom-dirty-lens.243430/page-4#post-1999267

I prefer linear lightning and I do not change to gama.

 

Has anyone successfully been able to get se natural bloom to work with vignette blur working? I am getting artifacts that look like little squares when using a blur in conjunction with SENBDL. Thanks guys.

 

Question on how I should be using SE bloom with a Cockpit camera set to clear flag "Depth only" and World camera underneath. I'm having a problem where if I put SE on the world layer the cockpit does not get bloom but If I put SE on the cockpit layer everything washes out. Thoughts?

 

According to the very end of the following blog post, Sonic Ether was one of the asset store devs who had a presence at GDC 2015 via Unity:

http://blogs.unity3d.com/2015/02/27/unity-at-gdc-2015/

I would therefore hope that the present disgruntlement on this thread is a very temporary thing that is resolved. Otherwise it calls further into question UT's approach to asset store items and publishers that fail their customers but keep on selling and promoting their assets on the store.

 

So, let me clear things up for you guys.

Unity did invite me to GDC, and as soon as I found out I was going, I spent nearly all of my waking hours preparing for that. I really wanted to show off something new and important to me, figuring that most had already seen SENBDL, so I decided to emphasize my dynamic GI solution. I had to spend weeks porting that to Unity and polishing it up for the demo, not to mention, modelling, scripting, and animating the demo itself.

Before all of this happened, I actually did do some work on SENBDL. I have improved performance and image quality (via an optimization I discovered during the blur pass) and started experimenting with anamorphic light streak effects and making sure everything checks out for Unity 5. I've also experimented with some more dynamic effects like water and steam on the lens. Hopefully, with Unity 5's command buffers, I can also implement dirty/icy/foggy glass as well.

SENBDL is important to me and still has a lot of room for improvement. Chaos in my personal life and GDC have been obstacles for me in the past few months, but now that GDC is over and things are settling down, I plan on fully diving into fixing bugs and adding the features I've promised.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

 

Thanks for the update SE. I'll be buying SENBDL as soon as you certify that's it's U5 friendly, and SSAO on release. Both look fantastic.

 

Aside from the scary warning when you import it, SENBDL works great in Unity 5 for me!



Really looking forward to the mentioned updates and features for the new version! Keep up the awesome work Sonicether! Please take your time and release it when it is ready!

 

I'm getting that problem where unity keeps re-ordering my image effects, putting Tonemapping before SENBDL. Obviosely SENBDL is meant to happen before the tonemapping.

How's everyone else avoiding this problem?

 

Hey Zomby, if you save the camera & image effects out as a prefab, it should prevent it from reordering your effects

 

@sonicether I've been watching this asset for a long time, and am looking forward to your GI and SSAO.

Also can someone inform me of any good reasons these days why anyone would choose gamma rendering over linear? I'm not being facetious... I was trying to think of reasons but I couldn't come up with any on my own so am generally curious.

 

One reason is linear doesn't work on all hardware, or so I've heard.

Another is that games have been using gamma space lighting for like 15 years, and there have been very beautiful games in that time. I guess you could say that gamma space lighting makes things look like a video game, and that's a perfectly valid visual style to go for.

 

sonicether, thank you for clarifying! I'm very happy you will be updating SENBDL.

 

@ZedalisDesign Thank you very much! Making it a prefab worked! (actually updating the already existing prefab)

 

Hi @sonicether , could you please add a shader for 2D sprites like you have done for the texture and particles? I cannot get my 2D sprites to glow using SENBDL? I know that you mentioned that the image should be bright and emissive, but how do I make sure that a 2D sprite is emissive and do I do this within Unity or Photoshop? Your assistance would be much appreciated as I really love the product and want to use it for a 2D game.

 

I'll definitely look into this and do my best to include a super-bright emissive shader for sprites.

 

Thank you, I would really appreciate that as I absolutely love SENBDL!

 

Do you have any temptative date for the update??

 

+1

 

Say, does this asset depend in any way shape or form on the type of camera being used - orthographic vs perspective?

In my setup, it works fine with a perspective cam, but in a different project using a ortho cam the image is simply bloomed in the most impossible places - even if the bloom strength is set to 0.

 

Damn, I was really planning on getting SENBDL but not if i can't expect those kinds of results in Gamma.

 

Has anyone recieve a response from the developer??

 

No, but the Dev is working on releasing updates to SENBDL, a GI asset, and a new, high quality SSAO asset. From what I understand the Dev is interested in releasing the SSAO and GI asset around the same time. From the forum posts (at least) the SSAO asset should be out any day now... just waiting.

 

God that would be nice.. Hell package them all together and I'd be the first one in line to buy it

 

Haha, yeah that'd be nice. I suppose the asset would be available by now if it weren't for GDC... That being said, I'm really glad SonicEther was able to present at GDC. Unity should hire that guy...

 

I just wanted to know if the developer has any date... or at least to respond my messages...

 

Hi all, I wonder if any of you know how to resolve my issue, I'm racking my brain? I'm using a Standard Unity Shader in Cutout mode. Using a #C script I am updating the emission colour property of the shader on the fly. All is working great my only issue is as soon as I change the colour the bloom effect disappears and the colour just appears solid with no nice glowing emission. It works fine in the editor using the picker so am thinking I should be able to do it during runtime. Any ideas? Thanks. I've been tinkering with these shader properties with no luck:

Code (CSharp):

1.     GetComponent<Renderer>().material.SetColor ("_EmissionColor", progressScheme.Evaluate(percentage));
2.         GetComponent<Renderer>().material.SetColor ("_EmissionColorUI", progressScheme.Evaluate(percentage));
3.         GetComponent<Renderer>().material.SetFloat ("_EmissionScaleUI", 20f);
4.         GetComponent<Renderer>().material.SetFloat("_Cutoff", 0.5f);

 

Yep, GDC took up a ton of my time and delayed development.

I've noticed the same issues when trying to change the emissive color of the standard shader at runtime with a script. I couldn't personally get it to work, so if you figure anything out, please let me know! Otherwise, I may have to write a variation of the standard shader to get that to work.


So, I'd like to discuss what's coming for the next update and what I've got planned for future updates. Right now, I've fixed vertical flipping bugs, orthographic camera bugs, the issue where super bright pixels would "blow out" the color buffer and cause it to go black, and general Unity 5 compatibility issues. This upcoming update is meant to fix issues and ensure compatibility with Unity 5. I'll probably publish this update within the next few days.

As far as future updates, I've been experimenting with diffraction spikes and other lens effects, it'll take some time to optimize those effects, add customization to them, and ensure visual stability. Here's a sneak peek of some of those effects (keep in mind it's a very rough work-in-progress at this point, so what you see is subject to change).



I'm very sorry that development has been so sluggish. At this point, I've gotten myself involved with quite a few major projects and feel a little overwhelmed trying to juggle them. As far as that goes, I've learned my lesson now. Thank you for understanding.

 

The spikes look cool. Make sure they can be rotated as the camera transform changes, because your own eyes and glass surfaces have that effect as well.

 

Looking nice there sonic, thanks for confirming that my issue is universal. Something I noticed that may help a pro like you is that if you put the Standard Shader in debug mode in editor and find the emission colour properties and change it there you get the same problem - glow stops. Whats of interest is if you put it back into edit mode and move the Alpha Cutoff slider the glow returns which lead to think you just needed to change the Cutoff during runtime to resolve but it didn't work, so whatever that slider does is the solution. It's a shame, my GUI looks top notch with glow and color changes are a must. I will see what I can do also but SS is pretty advanced for me right now, cheers. I look forward to the update.

 

Nasty solution was to create 3 materials and swap between those, I lost the gradients in between my 3 main colors but I still have glow.

 

Cool, subscribing so I know when the new version is released. I want to see what all the hype is about.

I've tried all the included Bloom effects including the new one in Unity Labs and they all share all the same problems in my opinion.

 

I've been doing this for a project. I found I had to multiply my target color to get it above the normal color range. You could use any value you want as long as it gets above 1 but using the alpha-value of the material's original emissive color seems to match the original emission strength.

Here's a quick example.

Code (CSharp):

1. using UnityEngine;
2. using System.Collections;
3.  
4. public class EmissionColorChanger : MonoBehaviour
5. {
6.     public Color ChosenColor = Color.red;
7.  
8.     private Color _startColor;
9.     private Color _currentColor;
10.     private Material _material;
11.  
12.     void Start()
13.     {
14.         _material = GetComponent<Renderer>().material;
15.         _startColor = _material.GetColor("_EmissionColor");
16.  
17.         ChosenColor *= _startColor.a;
18.         _currentColor = _startColor;
19.     }
20.  
21.     void Update()
22.     {
23.         if (Input.GetKeyDown(KeyCode.Space))
24.         {
25.             _currentColor = ChosenColor;
26.         }
27.  
28.         _currentColor = Color.Lerp(_currentColor, _startColor, Time.deltaTime);
29.         _material.SetColor("_EmissionColor", _currentColor);
30.     }
31. }

 

Haha, typical I just finished implementing a complex UI system with loads of shaders for my colors. I shall try this out and see how I get on. It will save so much time if it works for me down the line. Thanks. So just to confirm in theory the color needs to be amplified above normal saturation to have a high intensity, so this is what the Emissive Amount slider does in editor but during runtime it doesn't account for it?

 

Yes, that seems to be the case. Hope you get it working!

 

I did indeed get it working. Wow wish I knew this before. Thanks so much, I wont have to mess around with multiple shaders anymore I hope.

 

Can you say when you will release this new version? I would be willing to buy this asset

 

hi
is it mobile friendly now ?

 

Got the new version, but I am still having trouble with the camera being flipped.

It only seems to do it when I have Forward lighting selected. Is there anything wrong with my settings?

 

Whoah, has the SENBDL_v2 been released? I don't see any indication on the asset store page(?)

 

Oh, my mistake. The asset store page says it was updated on 1st of May... 2014. I overlooked the year and thought it was updated yesterday.

Sorry to get your hopes up

 

Could someone please explain a good way to mitigate the 'twinkling' that trees produce when Bloom image effect is applied?

 

I don't think anyone knows what you're talking about, friend. It usually helps to show something like that happening if you're looking for a diagnosis.

 

It's not related to this is it?

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/fix-for-shimmering-trees-in-deferred-mode.311961/

 

Right, I am familiar with this problem, but this is not what I am referring to. I will try to post a picture of it ASAP, but for now I have resolved to remove bloom from the camera; the scene is being displayed on an Oculus Rift and adding image effects is reducing FPS, considerably.

 

any word on the new release?