Sleek Render - Lightning Fast Mobile Post Processing Effects

Is there any chance of VR support any time soon(ish) Couldn't see it roadmapped on your trello board. Doesn't necessarily have to support singlepass, although that would be great.

Out of interested, why does the asset description say " any form of VR is not supported yet" Surely basic Cardboard (which doesn't do singlepass) would do the processing (all be it twice, i.e. once per eye)

I've already bought the asset, just haven't had a chance to do the tests.

 

@jeromeWork It's all about focusing my relatively limited resources on making things better in a narrow scope. Supporting VR will force me to split my attention, doing several things at once. And it's usually doesn't lead to great quality in any of those things.
But I will surely get back to VR support once I have a stable feature list and good visual fidelity on my main target - the mobiles.

And thanks for the support! Cheers!

 

Thanks @Kumo-Kairo I totally understand. Just not sure why, with your main target platform being mobile, there are issues with mobileVR. It may not be optimised for it specifically but surely it's got to work? Have you by any chance tried it?

 

@jerokWork I haven't tried it myself, but had a few customers who did and said that it's not working as expected. Thus the general note about "any form of VR is not supported". Just to make sure it won't misguide anybody for buying, expecting it to work in that scenario

I have just remembered that I have community-driven features. I've added general VR research to the roadmap, if the demand will be consistent, I will definitely move to trying that too. Cheers!

 

Thanks I really liked the fact that you had a public Trello board. Makes it totally transparent for potential buyers, and great for users too.

... now VR Devs... let's hear some votes for this as a feature! Would be super usful to finally have a post fx that's useable on low-end mobileVR platforms

 

yes, I'm also looking for very fast and simple post fx for mobile vr. I haven't found a solution for fast basic bloom or fog / gradients that works smoothly on mobile vr + Single pass stereo support.

 

@phili_maas , @jeromeWork can you share some screenshots from your games? I need to know the scope of the bloom - which objects of which size should cast it on the screen

 

I tried the support form on the asset website but although I ticketed 'send me a copy', I've received nothing. I'm guessing maybe the form is broken and you won't receive my query? Apologies if I'm just duplicating an email you've already received.

Bought MEC pro ages ago and finally starting to use it

Sorry for the stupid newbie question... can I ask for clarification on avoiding the .CancelWith GC allocation?

The manual says to add the if statement after every yield return statement, but that doesn't make sense... if what?

I'm using MEC to optimise an AI system, the AICycle moves the player so I'm assuming I do need CancelWith.


My code is as follows:

Code (CSharp):

1. IEnumerator<float> AICycle()
2.         {
3.             //Will stop if the script is disabled at any point.
4.             while (this.enabled)
5.             {
6.                 if (currentBehaviour != null)
7.                 {
8.                     currentBehaviour.AICycle();
9.                 }
10.  
11.                 //Check to see if we should dodge.
12.                 //Dodges are automatically triggered after spending time in their target's line of sight
13.                 if (!isDodging)
14.                 {
15.                     if ((myTransform && targetTransform && canMelee && !isMeleeing && Vector3.SqrMagnitude(myTransform.position - targetTransform.position) < meleeRange))
16.                     {
17.                         isSprinting = false;
18.                         animationScript.StopSprinting();
19.                         SetProperSpeed();
20.                         //headLookScript.Deactivate();
21.                         StartCoroutine(AttackInMelee());
22.                     }
23.                     else
24.                     {
25.                         if (!isMeleeing && Vector3.SqrMagnitude(myTransform.position - currentBehaviour.targetVector) > distFromTargetToSprint && canSprint && engaging)
26.                         {
27.                             animationScript.StartSprinting();
28.                             SetSprintSpeed();
29.                             headLookScript.Deactivate();
30.                         }
31.                     }
32.                 }
33.                 MoveAI();
34.  
35.                 if ((!targetTransform && !engaging))
36.                 {
37.                     isSprinting = false;
38.                     animationScript.StopSprinting();
39.                 }
40.                 else if (Vector3.SqrMagnitude(myTransform.position - currentBehaviour.targetVector) < distFromTargetToSprint && engaging && !isDodging)
41.                 {
42.                     animationScript.StopSprinting();
43.                     SetProperSpeed();
44.                     if(!usingDynamicObject && !isMeleeing && !inParkour)
45.                         headLookScript.Activate();
46.                 }
47.                 yield return Timing.WaitForSeconds(cycleTime);
48.                
49.                 if(gameObject != null && gameObject.activeInHierarchy) // ... what ???
50.             }
51.         }

Any guidance much appreciated,

 

@jeromeWork I think you have missed the thread

 

Ah now I get it!!! I'm in the WRONG thread!!! Sorry! Very embarrassed

 

Epic

 

@Kumo-Kairo Now that I know which asset's thread I'm on!... in answer to your question, this kind of thing is what I'm working on:

 

Any chance for depth of field?

 

Sure thing, it's on my roadmap

 

Awesome! Looking forward to it.

 

Hi Kairo,

Just bought your Sleek render few days ago and totally loving its simplicity and great performance
I have a request here
Let me say first I am not a 3d art expert so I might be asking for something that's impossible to achieve or doesn't make sense...
But I was a bit disappointed with the way the Bloom looks: It looks like it more or less always create some kind of vertical hashes or chops, and the only thing I was able to do about this, is make the bloom weaker - then the "chops' go away but so does the nice glow neon feeling I'm after...
Let me paste some pics below so you see what I mean, hope it's clearer.

So my question is: Would you see a way to give users more control on how those "shades" or glowing silhouettes spread apart around the bright object, thus enabling me to limit those vertical chops?

Thanks a lot,

J.P.

Screenshots:

 

just discovered your Trello board, so I guess my request goes into the "Bloom spread" and "Bloom alternatives" cards - great to see you're on it already !!

Cheers,
J.P.

 

@Jean-Pif, hi, thanks for supporting it!
Regarding the bloom - it was a common feature request to make it work in more general cases, make it less anamorphic and less flickery. This is what I've been working on lately an there's an update pending in the assetstore. It contains improved bloom visuals (non-anamorphic bloom) and it's much less flickery. It should go live in a day or two.
Performance differences between "current" bloom and the new one is negligible, barely any difference on my lowest end asus tablet and zte phone. And there's also an option to go back to anamorphic bloom for large areas of bright light as sky.
There are also plans and currently ongoing research on making bloom more tweakable (like in FxPro with spread, like you've written), but I can't promise any ETA on this as I'm not pleased with current performance of this functionality yet. But we'll get there, I promise

Stay tuned for later updates,
Cheers

 

I have a question for users - how much is lens correction (lens curvature) used? I see it in every post processing package, but haven't seen any specific use cases for it in my work projects. This is the effect where the image "bulges" a bit, like with some kind of a "fisheye" lens

An example from FxPro package

 

That's right, just got the update and it does improve a lot the bloom effect! Great to see a problem one day and get the fix the next day, thx a lot
Cheers,

J.P.

 

Hey @Kumo-Kairo, just to be clear your tonemapping can't be use for exposure adjustment right? Have you got anything planned for that?

Cheers!

 

@adslitw current color grading solution works like color overlay. It just tints the whole image uniformly and it can't change contrast or bring brightness up (it can dim the picture if you make overlay color darker). So it doesn't work like a 3D LUT texture like it's usually done for color grading (it's a nightmare for OpenGL ES 2.0 and lower end ES 3.0 devices).
There are plans for adding something like an S curve - there's a trello card for that (think curves in Photoshop or S curve parameter in FxPro) - brightness + contrast, so stay tuned.

 

There were quite a few requests on making Sleek Render 5.3+ compatible. So this is what the 0.6.2 release is going to be about.

Starting from 0.6.2, the minimum version of Unity is dropped to 5.3. Works consistently from the single code base so I won't need to support a hell lot of different Unity versions for it.

I have also managed to get two IT student interns from the local University. So hopefully, in a month or so, it will allow bringing more content at a faster rate (quality and performance won't go anywhere, I will still be hand testing everything).

Cheers

 

Hey!

I wanted to thank you for creating a concise, efficient and easy to implement post-process script & shaders!

Regarding the lens correction/curvature that you asked about a couple of weeks ago: at least we have no need for this type of effect, and I personally have not been part of any project to use a similar effect so far, so this is not at all on our priority lists. Certainly, needs vary, so just commenting from one perspective.

What we would be extremely interested in the future, would be a (potentially) quality sacrificing, but blazingly fast depth of field -effect. Unity's old PP-stacks solution leaves quite a bit wanting in the render times department. DoF is certainly quite a bit more complex an effect, controls and implementation wise, to add, but the need for an actually fast and straightforward DoF solution is acute.

In any case, thanks again for your work on Sleek Render!

 

@Catalyst-NG thanks!
Stay tuned for a blazingly fast depth-of-field effect, I'm working on it

 

@Kumo-Kairo hey man how is the update coming along? I'm curious to hear what you think will be included!

 

@adslitw Hi! At the bare minimum this update will include master downscale and relative cost calculator.
Alternative blur/bloom techniques will most likely to come in 0.8

 

Hi,
Sounds like a nice asset! Seems like adding SINGLE PASS STEREO for mobile VR should be easy for somebody so adept at that sort of thing.

Here is some info about how to add. https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/SinglePassStereoRendering.html

Thanks in advance!

 

@DHARMAKAYA thanks, I'll take a look when I get to VR support

 

At this point it seems SINGLE PASS STEREO basically IS mobile VR these days. So much faster than multipass.

Think it may actually be much easier than Kumo expects.

By the way, nihonjin?

 

Nah, just an ex-weeb dude. I like how this nickname sounds

 

@adslitw one of the interns took the task with s-curve brightness/contrast adjustments, so expect this thing to be live in a month or so.

 

Awesome!

 

Hey there - is it possible with this asset to create a very simple blur effect for UI canvas? I need a performant blur effect when showing specific items on the screen which will blur the complete background.

I already tried many blur effects - all which mentioned high performance - but they all halfed the FPS or more on older android devices.

Thanks a lot,
Oliver

 

@lorddevil It's pretty easy to blur a 3D scene under uGUI canvas. Blurring a 3D scene under other 3D objects is quite more tricky as it will either require command buffers (preferred) or a multi-camera setup (an easy, user-oriented way that is less robust in case of mobiles).
So yeah, while it's totally doable, it's way too much game-specific thing going on here which doesn't really allow for a generic robust solution (more generic = less performance). If you feel confident enough to try shading and pipelining, I can guide you more or less step by step. (And maybe we will create a sort of an explanation/tutorial video so others can benefit from that too). Please contact me through direct messages if you need further assistance

 

Perfect. Do you introduce resources to learn about that?
I know shader coding but want to dive in. How can we create stack post processing with a lot of post processing for mobiles efficiently?
and one question, it is better to create several passes and set them arbitrary to enable and disable effects or use for example OnRenderImage/OnPreRender/OnPostRender and shader materials and send source to destination rendertexture sequentially or other way?

 

You can take Sleek Render as a base for your custom effects

It's always best to combine as many different effects into one pass as possible. More passes mean more framebuffer bindings and it's the most expensive operation in OpenGL ES 2.0. Features then can be enabled/disabled based on shader keywords (shader variants)

 

So you say that we combine all of them in one pass (Distortaion,Blur,Tone mapping,Bloom,...) and control them using boolean or shader variants multi compiles?

 

@mahdiii technically you won't be able to combine all of them (say Bloom requires at least a few separate passes of blurring), but if something can be combined, it should be combined. And all that's left after combining effects can be further controlled by bools and shader variants

 

Therefore if I can not combine them, which approach is better?

 

Separate sequential OnRenderImage are not really suitable because they require intermediate copies of the fullrez texture so it can be passed further. You rarely need fullrez textures for post processing (save for color correction), so it will just be a waste of resources.
So the best way is to put all of the effects into one script with OnRenderImage (or use some custom render-texture based solution which doesn't involve OnRenderImage) and put all of your effect passes there. This is actually what Unity guys do in latest PostProcessingStack v2, they have also adopted this "One OnRenderImage call for all effects" approach, so it's really the way to go.

 

Are you planning to add culling mask? Would like to know, thanks!

 

@Idlerid what do you mean by "adding a culling mask"? Can you expand on that? This thing is just too broad of a meaning, I need some clarification.

 

@adslitw Brightness / Contrast is live. Intern developer Amir done a great job of implementing it, it turned out to be as fast as it can possibly get. We have to give him some credits on that

I've also added a relative cost calculator to help with calculating rendering budget for different mobile hardware (timings are for low-end and most general case of Mali400 GPU with medium resolution).

Cheers.

 

now that you have curves for contrast brightness, are those also seperate for rgb?
if not i like to request rgb curves for color grading

and could you look into supporting volume boxes? where the players walks through a volume box and the strength of the post processing changes / blends.
this way it posisble to blend different colors and effect strengths. unity post processing v2 also has this now.

 

No, right now it's a uniform brightness/contrast formula. Channel-wise settings would most likely require more or less real tweakable curve, not just a simple formula (so it really allows some substantial control). I will add this to the backlog and we'll see how it plays out.

Yeah, I like that feature too, I'll definitely look into it.
I have actually thought of implementing it, but the functionality is relatively trivial so it can be implemented by an end user, allowing Sleek Render package to remain small and simple. On the second thought though (as it's pretty trivial) I will most likely implement it as a separate free package that will complement the main Sleek Render package so the latter remains small and simple without unneeded feature bloating.

Thanks for the feedback.

 

Hey do you think you could add s-curve , chromatic and blur or may be a fast antialiasing setting for mobile ,i have fxpro but its just fps killing , then i tryed and bought your package and actually its the best solution for mobile i found
Good job

 

There's a brightness-contrast setting that serves as an s-curve, you shoud try that. Basically FxPro's S-Curve setting is Contrast in Sleek Render.

It's on the roadmap for research. Blur will definitely be there at some point, but I can't say that about chromatic aberrations for sure.

Fastest AntiAliasing for mobile is MSAAx4 (right in Unity's quality settings). It's hardware accelerated and almost free on tile-based GPUs (99.9% of used mobile GPUs are tile-based, save for Tegra 3, Tegra 4 and Tegra K1). You will barely see any performance impact. Some GPUs like new Malis even have optimized hardware accelerated MSAAx16. But MSAAx4 is the safest bet for most devices (including low-end 2011-ish ones)

And thanks for the Assetstore review

 

Ok thank you , for mobile antialiasing i was pretty sure fxaa was the faster but now its like not working on android on my rescent test, may be im wrong

 

Any post-processing Anti Aliasing (including FXAA) will always be slower than hardware MSAA. FXAA also usually looks worse. So using MSAA is a win-win.