Shadow Softener - Official Thread

Unity didn't start allowing realtime directional shadows in Unity Free until 4.2, so Shadow Softener doesn't have any shadow data to work with. You'll have to download a newer version of Unity to get it working.

I hope this helps.

 

With the free version 4.6.0 shadows work? Besides dierctional light, spotlight work, PointLight, inside a room?

 

Unity 4.2 and above allows a single Directional Light with hard shadows, any additional (Point/Spot) shadows require a Pro license. Shadow Softener doesn't change these restrictions in any way, except that it can soften the "hard shadows" that Unity Free allows.

 

Excuse me I'm Italian, in the translation does not quite understand. So I advice you to download the version 4.2? or a higher version? So if I understand correctly the shadows only work for DirectionalLight, andnot to spotlight and PointLight? excuse me let me understand.

 

Use latest version (4.6.x)

 

You are correct, and I would recommend Unity 4.6.x as Hippocoder suggested. Shadow Softener will only improve shadows which are already functioning, so the first step is to get shadows working.

 

Thank You.
ok I try version 4.6. then let you know.

 

Ok now the shadows are present. How can I enter the shadows inside a room with PointLight or spotlight?

 

That requires Unity Pro.

 

OK.
I have a problem. When I drag the script I get this. How to fix?
I attach the image.

 

That is an Editor script, there is no need to add any Shadow Softener scripts into your scene. Shadow Softener is only a Shader package.

 

Listen.
I'm sorry but I thought I had more satisfaction by purchasing this asset shadows softener. Unfortunately, as a customer are not satisfied. I thought with this asset would meet my expectations in unity 3d. I spent € 41.72. I ask you kindly refund as money back guarantee.
Thank You.

 

No problem at all, please PM me your "Invoice No." and I will issue a refund right away.

 

[QUOTE = "PolyVector, posta: 1977390, membro: 78.883"] Nessun problema, vi prego il vostro "Fattura No." PM e io pubblicherò un rimborso immediatamente. [/ QUOTE]

Thank you! You are a humble person is kind.

I purchased through Paypal.
is possibile send money via Paypal?
Invoice number 9177244

 

I put in a refund request with Unity and will let you know when I get a response.

 

ok

 

Unity just got back to me and has processed the refund. It can take up to 10 days for the money to transfer, but hopefully it completes sooner.

 

[QUOTE = "PolyVector, posta: 1979256, membro: 78.883"] Unità appena tornato da me e mi ha processato la restituzione. Si può richiedere fino a 10 giorni per i soldi per il trasferimento, ma si spera che completa prima. [/ QUOTE]


Thank You. So I have to wait for reimbursement from unity? Crediting as is done through Paypal?

 

Yes, Unity should reimburse you within 10 days.

 

[QUOTE = "PolyVector, posta: 1979365, membro: 78.883"]. Sì, Unità dovrebbe rimborsare entro 10 giorni [/ QUOTE]
ok. Thank You.

 

We recently switched to using Shader Forge, which is great, but we can seem to get Shadow Softener working with it.
This is the section of code we modified. It compiles error free, but no softening.

Code (CSharp):

1.  
2. Shader "DeepMind/iOS/iOS_01_SS" {
3.   Properties {
4.   _MainTex ("MainTex", 2D) = "white" {}
5.   _BumpMap ("BumpMap", 2D) = "bump" {}
6.   _Gloss ("Gloss", 2D) = "white" {}
7.   _Spec ("Spec", 2D) = "white" {}
8.   _IOR ("IOR", Float ) = 1
9.   _AO ("AO", 2D) = "white" {}
10.   _Amb ("Amb", Range(0, 1)) = 0
11.   }
12.   SubShader {
13.  
14.      UsePass "ShadowSoftener/PCF4X4"
15.  
16.   Tags {
17.   "RenderType"="Opaque"
18.   }
19.   Pass {
20.   Name "ForwardBase"
21.   Tags {
22.   "LightMode"="ForwardBase"
23.   }
24.    
25.    
26.   CGPROGRAM
27.  
28.  
29.        // Define the Shadow Filter
30.        #define SOFTENER_FILTER PCF4x4
31.  
32.        // Include Shadow Softener
33.        #include "ShadowSoftener.cginc"
34.  
35.  
36.   #pragma vertex vert
37.   #pragma fragment frag
38.   #define UNITY_PASS_FORWARDBASE
39.   #include "UnityCG.cginc"
40.   #include "AutoLight.cginc"
41.   #include "Lighting.cginc"
42.   #pragma multi_compile_fwdbase_fullshadows
43.   #pragma multi_compile MARMO_SKY_BLEND_OFF MARMO_SKY_BLEND_ON
44.   #pragma multi_compile MARMO_BOX_PROJECTION_OFF MARMO_BOX_PROJECTION_ON
45.   #pragma exclude_renderers xbox360 ps3 flash d3d11_9x
46.   #pragma target 3.0
47.   #pragma glsl
48.   #ifndef LIGHTMAP_OFF
49.   float4 unity_LightmapST;
50.   sampler2D unity_Lightmap;
51.   #ifndef DIRLIGHTMAP_OFF
52.   sampler2D unity_LightmapInd;
53.   #endif
54.   #endif
55.   uniform sampler2D _MainTex; uniform float4 _MainTex_ST;
56.   #ifndef MARMO_LIGHTMAP_DEFINED
57.   #define MARMO_LIGHTMAP_DEFINED
58.      #ifdef LIGHTMAP_OFF
59.      #define lightmap float3(1.0,1.0,1.0)
60.      #endif
61.   #endif
62.  
63.  

Any thoughts?

 

The simplest way to add support to a Shader Forge shader is to reference Shadow Softener in a UsePass line near the top:

Code (csharp):

1. ...
2. SubShader {
3. UsePass "ShadowSoftener/PCF5X5" //Soften Shadows

If you wind up updating to Unity 5, the new shadowing system allows Shadow Softener to work without modifying any shaders, although it's possible that could change before it goes final.

Hope this helps,
Oren

 

@PolyVector

Hi,

Following my post on the Sunshine! official thread. I have few questions about Shadow Softener:
- Is Shadow Softener fully compatible with Unity v5 Personal edition released yesterday?
- If not, when do you plan to release an update?

Thanks!

 

Shadow Softener was working through most of the beta, but there have been breaking changes that needed to be addressed between updates. We'll be working on testing our assets with Unity 5 final starting today, and hopefully address any issues (if any) that we come across as soon as possible.

That said, the announcement that Personal users will now have access to all features implies the new built-in 5x5 PCF filtering will be included. This might just make Shadow Softener redundant for many users (or useful now mostly for Point/Spot lights).

Things should become more clear as we get a chance to dig into the new Personal edition.

 

Thanks for the fast reply.

So if I understand correctly 5x5 PCF filtering is now built-in the Personal version of Unity. But Shadow Softener is still useful when using Point/Sport lights, and even more if we want to go up to 8x8 PCF filtering. Am I correct?

 

Yes, that seems to be the current situation.

 

Ok cool.
If I do buy Shadow Softener now, would I have access to the update that you may release in few days for Unity v5 ?

 

Oh yes, it will be a free update as usual.

 

Shadow Softener 1.4.0 is Available in the Unity Asset Store

• Major overhaul for Unity 5
• Full support for the new Deferred renderer
• Modified Standard shaders included for Forward rendering
• Updated Documentation
• Many small fixes/tweaks

 

Hi,
I am using Unity 4.6.1f1 with many scripts that continued to stay stable within this build!

I managed to use many kinds of optimization techniques to enhance my scene and speed up the fps in order to run smoothly under Oculus DK2.
I have close to 5+ million polygons in a small open area. (very complex construction scene, full of pipelines, structure buildings, etc..)
I used InstantOC script for my scene, terrain Slice script, and Mesh baker to bake all my models and created Atalas Textures for the lowest drawcalls, and finally I sliced my models into chunk of blocks for the InstantOC to work efficiently when looking at them in every corner in the scene, it worked!

Now.. I managed to get pass through the period which I used to have Unity3d freezing on me and crushing my entire project, this was when I first started this project by importing only the original 3d models, but now, its all gone and the entire scene runs smooth and surprisingly maintaining 75fps in the Oculus DK2 camera so it was worth it afterall !

now, I need to add visual effects into my scene and Unity shadows are keeping me on the edge.

So I wonder if "Shadow Softener" or "Sunshine" will be beneficial to my project, my scene is in an open area under 1 directional light (daylight settings). I used SSAO Pro and made the entire scene look beautiful but I started to see Blurry effects few times whenever I move my head (the script caused a strong drop in frames since my scene is huge!)
however I managed to balance the settings to keep it smooth sometimes, but still, my settings in the shadow part is high and killing my resources. so I looked for a replacement of Unity3D shadows (because it is set, on High Res. Hard shadows only, with 4x Anti-Sampling and 4 cascades) to keep the scene looking great.

I need your advice in which of your software can cost less performance hit (if any) than my current settings. If you tell me both of them are great then I will ask you which one is the best in terms of performance comparing to Unity3d shadows? I don't mind replacing the entire system if its better performing and won't break my scene.

thanks!

 

HI,
i've just bought your asset to try to solve a problem with shadows i'm having.
I'm facing a problem understanding what i should do to enable it.
Reading the documentation i see that using unity5 i have to follow the Defferred lightning instructions ( i have only one directional light that creates the shadows ) even if i'm in forward rendering, so i went to edit -> project settings -> Graphics and set PrePassLightning as Deferred custom shader . At this time i need to modify my terrain shader adding

Code (CSharp):

1. #pragma target 3.0
2. // Define the Shadow Filter
3. #define SOFTENER_FILTER PCF4x4
4. // Include Shadow Softener
5. #include "Assets/Shadow Softener/Shaders/ShadowSoftener.cginc"

But with this settings i get 2 Fps on an ipad4 that , without this softner runs at more that 30 fps... what am i missing ?

This is my plane shader code

Code (csharp):

1. Shader"SolidColor" {
2. Properties {
3. _Color ("MainColor", Color) = (1,1,1,1)
4.  }
5. SubShader {
6. Tags {"Queue" = "Geometry""RenderType" = "Opaque"}
7.  
8. Pass {
9. Tags {"LightMode" = "ForwardBase"}
10. CGPROGRAM
11. #pragmavertexvert
12. #pragmafragmentfrag
13. #pragmamulti_compile_fwdbase
14. #pragmafragmentoptionARB_precision_hint_fastest
15.  
16. #include "UnityCG.cginc"
17. #include "AutoLight.cginc"
18.  
19. structappdata_pos {
20. float4vertex : POSITION;
21.  };
22.  
23. structv2f
24.  {
25. float4pos : SV_POSITION;
26. LIGHTING_COORDS (0,1)
27.  };
28.  
29. v2fvert (appdata_posv)
30.  {
31. v2fo;
32. o.pos = mul( UNITY_MATRIX_MVP, v.vertex);
33. TRANSFER_VERTEX_TO_FRAGMENT(o);
34. returno;
35.  }
36.  
37. fixed4_Color;
38. fixed4frag(v2fi) : COLOR
39.  {
40. return_Color * LIGHT_ATTENUATION(i);
41.  }
42. ENDCG
43.  }
44.  }
45. FallBack"VertexLit"//UseVertexLit'sshadowcaster/recieverpasses.
46. }

 

Shadow Softener isn't going to help performance, since it's adding PCF filtering on top of the built-in shadows. PCF filtering however, will look more uniform between both eyes than screen-space blurring.
Sunshine, however, is a replacement for the built-in shadow system, so performance is "different". It supports sharing the shadowmap between both eyes, so that can help performance in VR. I believe Unity supports this now, but possibly only in Unity 5.

Honestly, if you haven't updated to Unity 5, there are some nice performance improvements you'd benefit from. I highly recommend updating before buying additional packages, especially now that all graphical features are free.

Just for clarity, make sure you use the DeferredShading shader for Deferred, and the PrePassLighting shader for PrePass.
PCF filtering is one of those effects that hardly affects performance on Desktops, but on Mobile can kill performance. This is why I don't really recommend Shadow Softener for Mobile platforms. PCF4x4 requires 16 texture samples per pixel on top of your normal shader, so it's likely not going to be possible on an iPad.

 

thanks for the quick reply.
I tested Unity 5 and its quiet powerful, quick loading, more efficient when it comes to the true 64-bit horsepower!
no crashing anymore (hardly happens)
I have 32GB ram in my system but somehow I managed to squeeze everything into unity 32-bit.

The reason I switched back to 32-bit is because of my scripts. the authors did not update for many reasons.. Unity 5 was still buggy at that time. now I see the build has started to settle down which is good.
I will continue to stick with 32-bit because the project is near completed (I created dozen of Playmaker scripts, attached different scripts into it and into the whole project for different kind of reasons and the last time I tried converting everything I received errors after errors, so I saved myself a lot of time and simply continued with the 32-bit
In the next project (or if this project gets further updated) I will try moving to Unity 5 until I am sure its 100% working with everything I got.
thanks again.

 

I just started unity 5... created a new project, and have reimported most of my assets. I noticed though that shadow softener seems to no longer work.

It worked without me doing anything in Unity 4.X.... now it seems even the example scene is broken, the shadow softener shaders are pink (and thus in error)... cannot see the error in the console though.

Also, I notice your "shadow softened" half of the example scene now uses custom shader.... does shadow softener no longer work with the built in shaders?


My Unity version is 5.0.0f4


EDIT: Ah, read the documentation... did the described steps, still no luck.

I added the deffered renderer shader to the Graphics settings for that, but now all standart shader stuff is broken. In the example scen, the shadow softener shader is also still broken.

I get this error in the console:
This custom render path shader needs to have at least 2 passes.
UnityEditor.DockArea:OnGUI()

 

Shadow Softener has changed drastically for Unity 5, make sure you re-download it now that you've upgraded since there are 2 versions on the Asset Store.

It actually requires even less work to integrate into Unity 5. Directional lights now work without any change to existing shaders no matter what renderer you're using. Custom shaders are only required for Point/Spot lights when using Forward rendering.

Hope this helps.

 

I just downloaded today... what do you mean with 2 versions? How do I find out which one I downloaded? How do I get the other one?

So all I would need to do would be to download and import, and it should work for all lights out of the box in deferred renderer, right?

 

The Asset Store now serves up different versions depending on which version of Unity you are running. So if you downloaded Shadow Softener using Unity 4, and then upgraded to Unity 5, you'll be running the old one. Simply open up the Asset Store tab with Unity 5 and go to the Shadow Softener page as normal, and it will grab the newest version if you don't already have it.

If you are up-to-date and it's still causing you problems, feel free to zip up a project with the issue and PM it to me. I'll do my best to track down what's going on.

You're correct, it should work out of the box for directional lights with no configuration. If you want Point/Spot lights, you would need to be sure to go to the Edit->Graphics menu and select Shadow Softener's replacement Deferred shader, but that's pretty much it.

 

Okay, to be 100 percent sure, I will delete shadow softener from my project and redownload.

EDIT: Aaaaand it works... what?

Deleted all, reimported all, had to add the shader file to the graphics settings, now everything works as intended. Great!

Only guess what could have gone wrong... I moved all third party assets folder to a special "Thirdparty" folder in my project to make the project tidier... that might have broken a link somewhere in the shaders.

 

That's great to hear!

You're right that it was probably the "Thirdparty" folder thing. This is because, unfortunately, the way Unity's shader compiler references non-builtin .cginc files makes it necessary to hardcode the paths. Drives me crazy too, but users didn't really like all the "../../../.." style relative paths in the original release.

Anyways, have a great weekend.

 

Hey Poly,

having a small problem, up until now I've always used point lights in a project and shadow softener has worked flawlessly and then a few days ago, I started doing an outdoor scene. I'm using 1 directional light and shadow softener is not working. I does indeed still work for spotlights and point lights. At first I thought it was my scene, but it seems to be the same in your demo scene. I'm using unity 5 pro, deferred mode, default install path, any ideas?

thanks Taz

 

I just tested on Mac+Windows with Unity 5.0.0f4 using the new Deferred path, and couldn't reproduce this. If you zip up and PM me the project I'll take a look for you.

 

No probs, thanks for checking there must be another asset in the project conflicting with it, project is 30GB+ i'll do some more tests

Thanks Taz

 

Okay, cool. Maybe you just have another "Internal-PrePassCollectShadows" in the project, that could do it.

 

That was indeed the problem

thanks
Taz

 

Bug? n Compliment

First, this asset is the most essential thing in the Store next to Shader Forge. It crazy Unity has not done this yet.

Second,
I'm in Unity 4.6 have the latest ShadowSoftener and point lights seem to be broken.
I'm using all differed shaders and player. PC Build settings.

When I change the ShadowSoftenerConfig I get these errors.

Shader error in 'Hidden/Internal-DeferredShading': Can't find include file UnityDeferredLibrary.cginc at line 60
Shader error in 'Hidden/Internal-DeferredShading': Can't find include file UnityPBSLighting.cginc at line 61
Shader error in 'Hidden/Internal-DeferredShading': Can't find include file UnityStandardUtils.cginc at line 62
Shader error in 'Hidden/Internal-DeferredShading': Can't find include file UnityStandardBRDF.cginc at line 63


Spots are looks fantastic and points are jagged. They look like the mobile shadows.

What do you think...?

 

Thank you,
The deferred errors are because that shader is only supported in Unity 5.0 (it's for the new Deferred renderpath). I would have conditionally compiled it out if I knew a way to do that.

Point shadows are a weird beast. You can't, to my knowlege, use Bilinear PCF on them, due to the 3D coordinate system of cubemaps that Unity uses. The only way to filter Point shadows is to average multiple samples, which is basically "Classic PCF" without the additional smothing.

Shadow Softener will allow you to do up to 64 taps (48 in Deferred) on a Point light, but it will never look quite as soft as a Directional/Spot light unfortunately. You can try increasing the filter for Point lights in ShadowSoftenerConfig.cginc and see if you can get it to look nicer. If you're already using PCF7x7 (AKA: PCF48) for Point lights, you can try decreasing the SOFTENER_POINT_KERNEL in ShadowSoftenerConfig.cginc:

Code (csharp):

1. //Edit: Normal range is [0 - 1], but larger values may be needed depending on scene scale
2. #define SOFTENER_POINT_KERNEL 0.5

Hope this helps

 

Yea totally understand. I realize there are some limitations. I don't expect it to exactly like the Spots, but if you have a look at this image...There is a spot left of camera and a point for the lamp.

I've tried all variations of settings and there is no effect 1x1 to 7x7. The point light is not being sampled at all from what I can tell.

 

Oh, I see what you mean... that looks like 1-sample shadows. I'll do some testing, maybe there was a regression somewhere.

 

If you could PM me this project, maybe I can figure out what's going on. I was unable to reproduce it on my machine.

 

For anybody else having this problem with Point lights shadows, the cause appeared to be the scale of the scene. In a very large scene, the softened shadow edges can appear very small/harsh. The quick solution, if you don't wish to scale down your scene, is to play with Shadow Softener's Point kernel size by defining it in your shader (ShadowSoftenerConfig.cginc if you're using Deferred rendering)

Code (csharp):

1. // Play with larger values to match the scale of your scene:
2. #define SOFTENER_POINT_KERNEL 20.0

I hope this helps.