SSAO Pro - High Quality Screen-Space Ambient Occlusion

Tried that, doesn't work. I tried removing SSAO Pro from the project entirely. Closing it, then readding it to the project. Breaks as soon as I build, but will work until then. After that it breaks completely no matter if I reimport, I'd have to complete delete the files and then re-open Unity again for it to work. And then it would just break again when I build. Rinse and repeat.

 

Empty new project there seems to be no issues at all, works just like it should. How frustrating, seems like it's a problem on Unity's end and not your asset's.

edit: I deleted the library folder and updated to 5.2.1p3 and the issue seems to have fixed itself. Not sure which action fixed what but it seems to be resolved now. Some weird Unity thing, I guess..Hope that's the end of that!

 

Just got it and having a lot of fun.
As a suggestion, it would be amazing if some objects/layers could be excluded. For instance those ones that have AO backed already.
Cheers.

 

I see. Thanks anyways.
I don't know the technical details (actually I'm totally naive about shaders), so this idea might sound stupid:
Do you actually generate that black and white image and overlay it over the camera view? In such case it shouldn't be difficult to generate another white one containing the excluded layers and blend with the AO before aplying it.
I did a dirty test in Gimp, blending the AO over the image after excluding the cube.
Sorry if the idea was terrible.

 

I'm having trouble making SSAO Pro (right in image with med-high setting) as soft and smooth as the built in Unity 5 SSAO (left). In particular there is noticable banding and some whiteness on the edges of objects. Ultra settings make little difference

 

Ok well it's a cropped shot but I am working on quite plain/pale scenes at the moment so these things are much more obvious, even uncropped.
I agree SSAO Pro is better with finer details but a smoother look when required would definitely be good.

 

If I use the stencil buffer to cutout windows in some polys the SSAO effect does not work behind the window plane, perhaps because the depth pass is using a different shader. DO you know how I fix that?

 

What is the advantage of this over the built in SSAO that unity ships with in Unity 5? Aside from the slightly faster processing times.

 

Hello, I'm using it with Oculus and it's very nice. How do you enable/disable it at runtime?
If I disable the component SSAO Pro on the camera, the camera stops rendering.

 

Hi Chman, I've loved adding SSAO pro to my scene, a million times better than the built in SSAO.

I'm having some trouble however with transparency. I have a GameObject that is Initiated with the Standard shader set to Transparent render mode and I have it fade in. Once it's faded in I use the following code to switch it to opaque:

Code (CSharp):

1. Material mat = renderer.material;
2. mat.SetFloat ("_Mode", 0);
3. mat.SetInt ("_SrcBlend", (int)UnityEngine.Rendering.BlendMode.One);
4. mat.SetInt ("_DstBlend", (int)UnityEngine.Rendering.BlendMode.Zero);
5. mat.SetInt ("_ZWrite", 1);
6. mat.DisableKeyword ("_ALPHATEST_ON");
7. mat.DisableKeyword ("_ALPHABLEND_ON");
8. mat.DisableKeyword ("_ALPHAPREMULTIPLY_ON");
9. mat.renderQueue = -1;

But for some reason I can still see certain artefacts coming through from the scene behind the object. This a) only happens in forward rendering and b) only happens when SSAO pro is enabled. Turning it off or switching to deferred stops it. Weirdly if I manually edit the material in the editor (switch it to Transparent and back) it fixes it? Unfortunately I can't use deferred for other reasons. Any ideas?

 

Ah found it. This must be new, add this after SetFloat("_Mode", 0);

Code (CSharp):

1. mat.SetOverrideTag("RenderType","");

 

Any idea how to call it? It's (StandardShaderGUI) unrecognised for me? Do I have to import something?

 

Hi, this plugins is amazing but i´m having problems now with transparentCutout shaders and what is seems to be the add shadow pass. I have made a dissolve shader and when it´s value is 1 (full dissolved) the SSAO is painting a weird black mesh where the object is (but full occluded by the cutout). If I change the shader to a standar one with cutout all seems to work well but if i make a custom shader from a surface shader, when i include the "addshadow" pragma then this artifacts appear. This happens also with all that isnt the build-in standar shader (SF shaders or custom shaders made from the default one dont work for me).
Can u tell me if i need to change something? I really want to use this plugin in our project but we use transparent cutout shaders in almost all the objects here because of this dissolve animations.

 

But my shader is using the rendertype "TransparentCutout" and this seems to be included in the build-in shader. By the way ,how i would change that hidden shader to use it? Many thanks in advance.

 

So what's the preferred setup for multiple cameras? Combine them first and then apply SSAO? Apply individually to each camera? How would that impact performance? Does forward/deferred make a difference?

 

"Last camera" would be the one with the highest depth?

Unity 5.2.2f1, SSAO Pro 1.6. Was experiencing weird behavior in my project so I'm testing in a fresh project.

Have two cameras -- MainCam (depth -1) clear flag set to skybox, renders everything but View layer. ViewCam (depth 0) Clear Flag set to depth only, renders only View layer.

Putting SSAO Pro on either camera only affects that specific camera. Does setting ViewCam's clear flags to depth only clear the depth buffer? I assumed that's the main way people use multi camera setups.


(only enabled on ViewCam)

Am I misunderstanding something?

 

Hello!
First off I want to say that i love the program. It makes my game shine.

I do have a question about distortion shaders - when I apply Effects/Distortion/ParticlesCutOut material to an emitter the particles do not honor the alpha/cutout completely. Each spawned particle has a faded black element where it should be invisible. When I remove SSAO pro the effect looks fine - alpha/cutout working properly no faded black elements.

Here is an example of what I am seeing with SSAO pro turned on:



The red circles outline the faded black elements which are the flat cards as they are spawned. The distortion effect works but the black elements ruin the effect.

Any suggestions?

 

Can it be used for realtime or is it more for like cut scenes?

 

Is folder of this asset movable? I have big project with finished folder structure and I need it to be movable to custom path Also a question - is this asset really better than standard Unity 5.2.2 SSAO? I mean is difference really visible?

 

It's faster, more tweakable, and thus better.

 

It's way faster.

I generally don't like SSAO filters. I think they are like bloom in the 2000s, they are very overused. I only use them with low intensity values so they are more subtle. But the built in filter is rather slow, so it was not worth it. Now I'm adding SSAO Pro everywhere

 

@Chman: I seem to have found an issue with using SSAO Pro in combination with orthographic camera projection. I may or may not have found a bug that causes the number of SetPass calls to explode and I'm having trouble determining under which exact circumstances it does it. But it seems harder to reproduce it not doing it than getting the high number of SetPass calls.

Please see these 2 screenshots for comparison of my testcase:



I have imported the ssao pro files straight from the assetstore window. I'm still using Unity 5.2.1f1

What I find especially weird is that if I have the play mode running and I switch the cam from ortho to perspective the SetPass calls go back to normal, but if I leave it at ortho and remove the SSAO Pro component from the camera (still in play mode) the SetPass calls stay high, even after switching back and forth between perspective and ortho. I'm really confused what is going on there.

 

Thanks for the quick reply! I think you are spot on. Same behaviour with the default SSAO effect and I now noticed that the massive increase in drawcalls correlates with the text on the camera component changing from "info: renders depth texture" to "info: renders depth & depthnormals textures". If the ortho camera causes problems here I wouldn't be surprised if I'd get problems down the line with other components as well. I'll re-evaluate if I really need the ortho camera or if I could use a very narrow FOV instead with the perspective camera.

Good luck with your move! I've moved to another city a few months ago and moving accross the country must be so much more stressful. I hope all goes well, enjoy your new home!

 

I'm getting very bad performance with Unity 5.3. Profiler reports huge Overhead when SSAO Pro is enabled. Absolutely fine in 5.2.

Funnily enough I get a similar lag and spike in Overhead when Tilt shift (built in Image effect) is enabled and set to High Quality. Perhaps it shares a similar Graphics API call?

 

Runs fine under 5.3 for me. Didn't notice any difference.

 

Hmm struggling to reproduce with a completely new project. I can reproduce it in the Unity 5 Shooter sample project from the asset store - although that has some other weird problem, the camera completely breaks with SSAO Pro enabled. The Overhead is visible.

> What's your target API ? DX9/DX11/GL ?

It's set to Auto Graphics API

 

Hmm ah, i'm on OSX, El Capitan. I have the same problem with the standalone OSX Builds. The Unity 5 Shooter project works ok for you with SSAO enabled? I will try to find some reliable steps to reproduce it.

 

Yep that's the one. Ah right, maybe the Shooter project has a different problem then. My personal project has a Perspective camera with a FOV of 20 and set to Deferred rendering.

I will delete/reset everything from my project systematically until I have located exactly what the cause is and package it up.

As I said I have a very similar problem with Tilt shift, I deleted everything from my upgraded project, including resetting the Player and Quality settings and leaving just the Camera in an empty scene and still have bizzare overhead when tilt shift was set to High Quality. Creating a new project from scratch and setting the scene up to be same the had no issue. I've reported it to Unity, nothing heard back so far.