Official Unity AOV Recorder update

Hi!
Here is my feedback:

Unity 2019.2, HDRP 6.9.1

Code (CSharp):

1. NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
2. UnityEditor.Recorder.Input.AOVCameraAOVRequestAPIInput.EnableAOVCapture (UnityEditor.Recorder.RecordingSession session, UnityEngine.Camera cam) (at Library/PackageCache/com.unity.aovrecorder@0.1.0-preview.3/Editor/Sources/Recorders/AOVRecorder/AOVCameraInput.cs:43)
3. UnityEditor.Recorder.Input.AOVCameraAOVRequestAPIInput.NewFrameStarting (UnityEditor.Recorder.RecordingSession session) (at Library/PackageCache/com.unity.aovrecorder@0.1.0-preview.3/Editor/Sources/Recorders/AOVRecorder/AOVCameraInput.cs:138)
4. UnityEditor.Recorder.Recorder.SignalInputsOfStage (UnityEditor.Recorder.ERecordingSessionStage stage, UnityEditor.Recorder.RecordingSession session) (at Library/PackageCache/com.unity.recorder@2.0.2-preview.3/Editor/Sources/Recorder.cs:160)
5. UnityEditor.Recorder.RecordingSession.PrepareNewFrame () (at Library/PackageCache/com.unity.recorder@2.0.2-preview.3/Editor/Sources/RecordingSession.cs:184)
6. UnityEditor.Recorder.RecorderComponent:Update()
7.  

Code (CSharp):

1. NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
2. UnityEditor.Recorder.Input.AOVCameraAOVRequestAPIInput.DisableAOVCapture (UnityEditor.Recorder.RecordingSession session) (at Library/PackageCache/com.unity.aovrecorder@0.1.0-preview.3/Editor/Sources/Recorders/AOVRecorder/AOVCameraInput.cs:127)
3. UnityEditor.Recorder.Input.AOVCameraAOVRequestAPIInput.FrameDone (UnityEditor.Recorder.RecordingSession session) (at Library/PackageCache/com.unity.aovrecorder@0.1.0-preview.3/Editor/Sources/Recorders/AOVRecorder/AOVCameraInput.cs:150)
4. UnityEditor.Recorder.Recorder.SignalInputsOfStage (UnityEditor.Recorder.ERecordingSessionStage stage, UnityEditor.Recorder.RecordingSession session) (at Library/PackageCache/com.unity.recorder@2.0.2-preview.3/Editor/Sources/Recorder.cs:168)
5. UnityEditor.Recorder.RecordingSession.RecordFrame () (at Library/PackageCache/com.unity.recorder@2.0.2-preview.3/Editor/Sources/RecordingSession.cs:134)
6.  

 

1. Yes, I use it with HDRP scene.
2. I tried both window and timeline.
3. I tried all recording options.
I guess this is due to RP asset settings

 

Tried it in the default scene and it worked

 

I can't find this option in my Unity 2019.2. I am using all the required versions.
Is it only for pro Unity users ?

 

I do hope you intend to quickly integrate that with Unity Recorder, also to extend support of AOVs to LWRP and even standard pipeline.
Please tell me you don't intend to keep it separate.

 

@marief_unity Well, as far as I'm concerned, it's another fragmented duplicate package.

 

Could we at least move the option to add AOV to the import window of the Recorder (just like samples) with a huge !warning! text about HDRP support only? Making it a separate package (but still the same tool and GUI element to interact with), seems a bit redundant.
One thing that would be very useful for anyone working in video production would be to have 'masks', similar to cryptomattes or multimasks? Color coding by material/entity/layer ... This is a must for compositing.

 

Hey, I'm trying to write my own custom recorder. However, all the recorders in the Recorder packages are marked as "internal". How did you guys manage to have AOVRecorder inherit from BaseTextureRecorder which is internal?

 

We are trying to use the AOVRecorderSettings in the scripted capture method. The ImageRecorderSettings work just fine for us, but the one thing we can't seem to figure out is where to set the AOVGType in the settings. We want to be able to record out the alpha for a matte. Does anyone know how to do this?

Unity 2019.1.9f1
Unity AOV Recorder preview.5 - 0.1.0

 

Looks like this is the AOVGSelection which is internal and defaults to AOVGType.Beauty.

 

The other thing with this is even though I set the AOVCameraInputSettings, it isn't setting the targetCamera in AOVCameraInput.RenderAndReadbackAOVCapture.

Code (CSharp):

1. aovRecorder.imageInputSettings = new AOVCameraInputSettings
2. {
3.     cameraTag = "MainCamera",
4.     source = ImageSource.MainCamera,
5.     outputWidth = 384,
6.     outputHeight = 216,
7.     captureUI = false
8. };

So I had to force it to targetCamera = Camera.main so that that it would let me run without a nullreferenceexception.

Code (CSharp):

1. if (aovRecorderSettings != null)
2. {
3.     targetCamera = Camera.main; // Added to stop NullReferenceException
4.     targetCamera.Render();
5.     RenderTexture.active = outputRT;
6.     readbackTexture.ReadPixels(new Rect(0, 0, outputWidth, outputHeight), 0, 0, false);
7.     readbackTexture.Apply();
8.     RenderTexture.active = null;
9. }

I am also seeing that the first frame is always missing as shown in the Known Issues log.

 

Hi!
Really great that you guys added this package. We are using Unity to render and still do a traditional composting workflow as a final step after unity, so any additional passes we can get out of unity are greatly appreciated!

We still have a bunch of questions, we hope you can help us with!

1. will multichannel exrs be eventually supported? For our comp workflows it just makes everything more conveniant
2. currently there only seem to be the commonMaterialProperties available as render passes (plus depth)
   It would be fantastic to have access to the other information you can view in the debug view like the LightingModes for example to get proper diffuse lighting and specular lighting passes.
   I tried to expand the current package to be able to render these Lighting passes by using "LightingProperty" and "SetDebugLightingMode", but I couldn't quite get it to run (it alway rendered the beauty instead of the expected lighting pass)
3. will MotionVector pass be included soon? we want to add motion Blur in Comp!
4. How would you go about adding more complex custom render passes?
   I am currently implementing an object/material/asset ID solution that depends on shader overrides. Currently it is done using an additional render process after rendering beauty and the other passes.
   I would love to include this process directly into the "main" render process and render it to its own pass.
   Do you have any suggestions on how to get that to work?
5. Lastly the ID passes rely on metadata that should be written into the header of the exr. Currently this is done in a separate follow-up process. Is it somehow possible to write medata into the exrs when rendering with aov recorder or are you guys thinking about adding that?

I hope you guys can give us some answers.
Thanks for all the good work for making films with unity!!

 

Figured out the answer to my question. In the base Unity Recorder package, under Editor/Sources there's an AssemblyInfo.cs file that exposes the unity recorder's internals to the AOV recorder

 

@marief_unity
Just noticed that AOV recorder doesn't work with raytracing (only beauty and depth pass work, but no alpha, or normal for example).

 

I get such random results with raytracing that I can't even reproduce some errors
Let's just say this is something to keep an eye for with AOV.

 

is it possible to render each frame with 200 pathtracing samples?

also when i installed this package the path tracing gets removed and replaced by some default hdrp with no raytracing and that's it, even the prefab gets corrupted in such way. my guess is AOV nukes the setting to force render one layer, didn't test it now that it's stable

 

Hi @marief_unity
I found if the scene object far from the camera( about 14 m) ,the depth out will useless. Is there any function to out put the object far from camera with depth？

 

So where is this wonderful plugin to the Recorder these days? Cannot find it in the package manager.

 

it's called Unity Recorder and is a preview package you can install and use

 

I know of and use Unity Recorder. It's the AOV bit that seems to be hiding. I found someone who copied the project and used that version, but not how I like to roll. I can't find it in the package manager anywhere (previews enabled and all).

 

My bad, I'm looking for a depth export also but cannot find it in the Unity Recorder I'm afraid

 

Because that is in the AOV extension to the recorder. Where did it go, I don't know.

@marief_unity can you shed light?

 

@jean_unity_film_tv can you shed some light?

 

Any chance that the AOVRecorder class will get made public? You know, so that we can do things like populate the recorder list from a script. Alter the settings in the recording based on scripted logic. Automate the process (via scripting) of running the recorder with the AOV extension on one scene, switching scenes, running a different AOV Recorder with different settings on the second scene, switching scenes again, etc., etc..

 

Sweet. Thanks.

I'm currently using it for a work project, and during the last team meeting, someone asked if I could automate this so that they wouldn't need to babysit the server. I was able to make things public on the included C# files, and I got no compiler errors. I haven't done a runtime test yet because I'm done for the day, but if it does work, it would be nice to not have to manually alter the package every time we install it on a new project or update it.

Thanks for the quick response,
-Francisco

 

I'm having some trouble finding the AOV Recorder plugin for Unity 2020.1.9f1.

 

Hi fct509.
Please find the below note added by teck_unity. It worked perfectly fine for me.

 

Are there any tutorials on how to use AOV for rendering out different passes?

 

Bump

 

Let me ask a more specific question.

If I want to do an Alpha pass AOV Image Sequence, is there a way to flag certain objects to be masked out?