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SSRR request from Community

Discussion in 'Unity 5 Pre-order Beta' started by Gokcan, Feb 13, 2015.

  1. Marc-Saubion

    Marc-Saubion

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    I'm not sure about what you mean. The asset store is great but only when it is about content. When you want universal features like SSRR, you need to have them from unity themselves because a third party won't guaranty it work on the next update.

    As a professional, I can't rely on anything from the store if needed for more than my current project. For example, I found a solution to make a mirror, it worked well with previous Unity versions but not on 5 and I can't do anything about it because it was made by someone who posted a script on a forum. This is a kind of feature that should have been build into the engine instead of relying on the community good will.
     
    TheSniperFan and zombiegorilla like this.
  2. Deleted User

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    @Marc Saubion
    It will vary greatly, but there are also plenty of high-quality and well-maintained script and shader products on the asset store. I'm not saying it is inherently bad or good. I'm just saying that Unity sort of stumbled into crowdsourcing various pieces of their platform by creating the Asset Store.
     
  3. Kronnect

    Kronnect

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    @Marc Saubion: I feel your fear/pain when depending on third parties. I think everyone of us has confronted eventually the lack of support or discontinuation of some component/third party product.

    Recently I had a case with Candela SSRR. I bought this product a few months ago because it's simply amazing. Honestly I was not believing what I was seeing on the screen when I just drag and dropped the component onto the camera. Now, the product has some issues with Unity 5 and the developer is not providing support. What can I do? Well, while there's no other option I'll limit where and how Candela is used.

    In my opinion, the community plays a key role here, enhancing the experience by providing plugins and components that allow your software "pass the last mile". Said that, I also think that innovations become commodities in time, so it would be no surprise when principal provider start including that feature in the core of the platform.
    Microsoft is an example, as is Apple.

    I think this is the way this industry work. There'll be always space for the community and the main technology provider to strive for providing great innovation. As long as the component is well supported and there's no substitute from the main provider I will always stand with community as developer I'm. This way the community can grow strong.
     
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  4. nipoco

    nipoco

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    And that is Unity's weakest point IMO. It's mostly not a good idea to rely on third party solutions. There are a lot cases where customers were left in the dust and plug-ins got abandoned or have a generally bad support. Candela SSR is just one of many examples.
     
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  5. Kronnect

    Kronnect

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    I think we all agree on Candela SSRR case.
     
  6. 8Infinite8

    8Infinite8

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    It's not always the case. I've relied heavily on Marmoset's Skyshop (for the last 18 months), which is incredibly powerful and has frequent updates.
     
  7. Deleted User

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    @nipoco
    And what about the ones with thriving communities that continue to provide support, like Skyshop or ShaderForge? I'm not saying it is a perfect system. I'm saying it can be effective when it works right.

    If nothing else, discussion like this will hopefully either encourage Unity to provide an official solution, or encourage an enterprising individual to make a capable SSRR competitor.
     
  8. Fuzzy

    Fuzzy

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    Something that would be great imo would be like the standard-shader just as a standard-post-fx.
    Like an all-in-one solution where you can set up what you need and unity just puts all together in one post fx.
    Things you do not need (maybe unchecked checkbox) will not be calculated etc.

    Technically it should be possible, shouldn't it?
     
    shkar-noori likes this.
  9. TheSniperFan

    TheSniperFan

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    Whether or not the asset is properly supported doesn't really matter in this context.
    No matter how you look at it, third-party assets are always a risk (especially if they offer very basic functionality), because at the end of the day it's out of your control.
     
  10. elbows

    elbows

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    I get your point, but well documented assets with no code obfuscation are in some key ways more within my control than the core stuff built into Unity is. If I can see the code, and if I am lucky enough to understand it, I can keep it alive even if the author of the asset has lost interest in updating it.

    Obviously I'd prefer asset authors to keep on top of things, but when making purchasing decisions I do consider whether, for example, stuff is 'hidden' away in dll's or not, with a view to hacking away if the worst comes to the worst.
     
  11. hippocoder

    hippocoder

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    That's cool if you have time to maintain it, but the purpose of buying an asset is so you don't have to. Else you'd have just made it yourself. And for people who lack the technical know-how then that's a no-go. I think Unity-supported features and effects will always be preferable for a lot of people.
     
  12. TheSniperFan

    TheSniperFan

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    @elbows : Given that you're allowed to modify the code. Not all software licenses allow you to modify their code or ship modified versions. You have to be really careful about that, if you don't want to get yourself into legal trouble.
    On top of that, not every developer gives you source code access in the first place. If it ships as library, you're screwed.
     
  13. elbows

    elbows

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    I'm not suggesting its a great state of affairs, its just the way I'e had to deal with the reality and the risk without becoming too concerned about buying great stuff off the store.

    As for Unitys own stuff, it's easy to have mixed feelings about that. Not all features are created equal or given equal love. Just one example, I can't say I was overwhelmed to read on the Standard Assets thread that the guy behind it seems to have been moved on to a new role already.

    But as per my asset store comments, at least for me this side of Unity offers the security of me being able to poke around with the code. I know its not for everyone, but I like the parts of Unity that can be open source. And if they want to make a big deal about their opensource initiative in future, a new set of image effects (as 'officially' mentioned earlier in the thread) would be a good fit in my book.
     
  14. elbows

    elbows

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    It is good to be aware of such issues and to remind others of these factors. In honesty, I anticipate that this particular issue doesn't exist with the vast majority of stuff I've bought off the asset store, but perhaps I am wrong.
     
  15. Aurecon_Unity

    Aurecon_Unity

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    Bingo. When DFGUI went belly up I could have jumped ship to NGUI but instead decided to wait for the release of 4.6 and the in-built UI solution.

    I couldn't present the risk to my company and make a solid argument for another UI plugin and I'm pretty sure I wasn't the only one in this boat, either.
     
  16. Marc-Saubion

    Marc-Saubion

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    Like you said, when it works right, which isn't enough for a professional.

    To me, the asset store is great if I want to buy content: lately, I bought a package of city themed models (lampost, signs, bus-stops...). It was fine because it was an economy of time for me and cheaper or my client, but I don't need that package for all my project and it would be easy to replace.

    Now, when it comes to "universal" features like SSRR, either I have it for good or I don't: I'm not interested in a potentially disposable feature. Buying that on the asset store could be like buying a car that runs on proprietary fuel: not matter how good the car, if the company making the fuel goes bankrupt you're left with a useless 1.5T of metal that does nothing.

    When your professional reputation is at stake, you don't take that kind of risk.
     
    Last edited: Feb 23, 2015
    ZJP likes this.
  17. Joachim_Ante

    Joachim_Ante

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    So image effects in general and SSR / Temporal AA / Bloom and other effects is a focus area in the 5.x series.

    SSR is something we are quite far with and looking very good and we have completed most high level optimization work on it. A new Bloom is also in it's second development iteration now, we are using it in some of our own demos and iterating on it.

    Temporal AA has been started but still needs quite a bit of work.

    Generally we very much agree that it is very important for quality and that we should ship high quality image effects out of the box. There are some that work great on the asset store too and especially with image effects flexibility and different approaches are important. Image effects is definately an area where when you push for high quality you want to tightly control it and likely tweak or write them yourselves. But having a great and optimized set of image effects out of the box is definately something we want to have.

    We want to stick with the approach of standard assets included in the project, so that content specific optimization / tweaking can be done on the source code level in a simple way for you guys. Some of the image effects require some base features to integrate them perfectly like SSR (deferred reflection buffer) and Temporal AA (velocity buffers). So we will add those base features in 5.x and then release the standard assets along with it.
     
  18. kurylo3d

    kurylo3d

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    Any thoughts on a camera effect that encompasses multiple image effects? Saving on performance if you need multiple....
     
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  19. Marc-Saubion

    Marc-Saubion

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    Also, having them delivered with decent pre-sets would be nice. Like Joachim_Ante said, it is important that it works out of the box.

    Meanwhile, we need to be able to change the effects order on the camera: it is ridiculous that we have to delete them if we realise we forgot or misplaced one.
     
  20. Reanimate_L

    Reanimate_L

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    So it might be some kind of Image effect chain component. or just make the component inspector drag able to rearrange them not using "Move Up/Down" menu, it's tedious..
     
  21. Marc-Saubion

    Marc-Saubion

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    Does that exists? I never thought about it, I always tried a drag and drop and was disaponted it still didn't work on Unity 5. :maximum poker face:
     
  22. Devil_Inside

    Devil_Inside

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    Yeah, you can move components up or down using the component contextual menu.
     
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  23. Joachim_Ante

    Joachim_Ante

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    We definately have ideas for image effects pipeline with combinable effects. If you heard about director project, you might imagine how it fits into the mixer idea there... Anyway, thats really not very relevant for this discussion which is about shipping more awesome image effects in the nearer future.

    Currently most customers who take image effects serious, they at some point lock down their usage of image effects. Then they take the shaders we made and combine them into a script combined pass / shader and optimize for the specific combination.
     
  24. KRGraphics

    KRGraphics

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    What's that?
     
  25. Reanimate_L

    Reanimate_L

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    well just don't forget about those who can't/don't know how to do that when they want to use image effects also. :)

    i think it was mentioned at unite videos
     
    Marc-Saubion likes this.
  26. KRGraphics

    KRGraphics

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    I'll have to watch them again... and speaking of Unite 2015, I hope you guys will be there... will be awesome to meet the muscle behind this great engine.
     
  27. ZJP

    ZJP

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    That is why I bought 3 of the 4 Behavior Tree of the Store. Fingers crossed that one of them go to the end ( of my main projet). :rolleyes: