Assets [Unity Awards 2018 - BEST ARTISTIC TOOL Winner] Aura - Volumetric Lighting

BEST ARTISTIC TOOL Award of the Unity Awards 2018​

Download Aura - Volumetric Lighting now on the Asset Store:
http://u3d.as/16gj

Download Aura - Volumetric Lighting now on GitHub:
https://github.com/raphael-ernaelsten/Aura​

Stay tuned @raphernaelsten

Features :

• Opaque/Transparent geometry support
• Works out of hands
  
• Particles illumination, fog and density
  
• Works in Forward/Deferred
• Works in LDR/HDR
• Completely scalable in realtime for quality/performances
  
• All types of light supported
  • Full shadows support (1/2/4 directional cascade(s), spot, point)
    
  • Cookie support
• Volumes injection (Global, Planar, Box, Sphere, Cylinder, Cone) with :
  • Density injection
  • Anisotropy injection
  • Color injection
• Volumetric texture support
• Dynamic 4D noise support
• Realtime preview in editor
  
• Fully commented sources
  
• Unity 2017.2+
• Needs a Compute Shader capable platform

Features previews (during WIP) :

• Spot lights
• Directional light cookie
• Spot light cookie
• Refined Quality with Temporal Reprojection
• Point light
• Volumetric texture light injection

Quick showoff :
Give a more dramatic look to the Village Demo Scene in 10 minutes

Cheerz!

Raphael

 

No ETA yet, awww mann!

 

Post updated with spotlights WIP preview.

Spotlights WIP preview :

 

Give it to us already!

 

Thread updated with DirectionalLight cookie preview.

Directional cookies preview :

 

What performance are we looking at and can we have the volume encompass the world? or is performance based on size and so forth? In a nutshell, I'm nuts about performance as I have a strict budget on console that only allows basically a millisec or two :/

 

There is no such notion as bounding volumes. The whole world, universe, multiverse are encompassed by default and undergo base parameters (base density, base anisotropy and base color) set on the main component on the camera...
Volumes are only there to inject(Add/Subtract) density, anisotropy and color locally (except for the "global" volume), according to their shape and some other parameters.

Computation is based on a 3D divided, ranged camera frustum so performances are (roughly) = volumetric subdivision (read volumetric accuracy, cell size, ...) + (the number of volumes/lights you add * their volumetric coverage (so yes the bigger a volume is, the more chance it has to be taken into account for cell computing)).
PS4 and xOne will be supported and my goal is less than 2ms on a PS4.

 

how does the directional light coockie make sense? one wants something like this as a local effect. doesnt it make more sense for a spotlight for example?

 

I agree (still not 100% though) that the fan effect "might" make more sense with a spot but it was a good contrasty example in my test scene.

Directional cookie makes sense as I could have used a "cloud" cookie for example...
It's not up to me to decide what people need or what makes sense for them...
My goal is to support all the unity lighting pipeline as it is so they will be able to combine everything however they want, and achieve whatever they want...
I just keep in mind that lights are not just used to mimic real life lightings but can be used to do crazy effects too. And if this can help them achieve event crazier effects by not restraining the possibilities, I'll be happy.

I'm a technical artist, I'll always keep in mind to keep the artistic possibilities at the max...

 

Sounds like I might let you be friends with my wallet then.

There's obviously going to be order problems somewhere, ie skyboxes, custom skies....water, maybe even trees?

 

Could you elaborate? Why would there be problems?
The effect is not just a post process, of course it can be one for opaque geometry and save pixels on the Fog application, but it can also be fetched into a shader and applied per instance/vertex/pixel and take care of the specificities of the objects in a custom shader if you want. That's how I fog and lit the particles for example

 

Oh nice!

 

would it be able to cast particle shadows? Like dense smoke?

 

Not at the time, but it is something that was already on my list of idesa.
Not the easiest thought...

 

How about low lying fog banks and mists and stuff?

 

You can use volume injections for that
Just like shown in the first video, you know, the first one, the loooong 14minutes video (I know, I was too enthusiast )

 

Here's a quick test with a planar volume and density injection with a dynamic noise mask on it :

 

Thread updated with SpotLight cookie preview.

Spot cookies preview :

 

Can't wait for that asset

 

Any ETA on this? Literally been looking for a solution like this for ages.

 

Before November 2021 is a fair guess
No joke, unity5.5 breaks many things in my current system so even less ETA :/

 

any news?

 

5.6 probably made him jump off a bridge. But stuff like scriptable render loops had to happen

 

i am just wondering if everyone jumps to scriptable renderloops - how do all those assets work together with all those custom render loops and is it still performant

 

I imagine they'll just have a function you'd call there, I've not looked into it in depth because I'm waiting for dust to settle.

 

Hey guys!

Thanks for taking news about Haze...

... and about my health

Things are that I am working at improving performances and quality, so no new big features for now and I am also very very busy at the moment so those explain the lack of news recently.

I was waiting to have more but I can already show this now, it's no harm.

Realtime quality change :

(and also persistant visual between resolutions!!! Maybe I'm dumb but this wasn't as strightforward as it seems)

Refined quality with temporal reprojection :

Actually, I am happy with this!
I had developed a similar system for our in-house engine back to '09 which we called "flexible render pipeline". So I am pretty used to this type of systems.

You have to understand that I have to struggle with hacks, guesses and retro-engineering to make Haze work. And it seems that I am transparent to Unity support team so it takes performances, time and energy (I can't blame that they have to focus on mainstream issues and not off-track things but anyway ).

So IMO, scriptable renderloops will be a good thing, and I don't doubt that the API will be good enough so we can port older solutions quite easily. In any case, I'll do.

Cheerz

 

Updated with a more obvious video showing the realtime quality change

 

Preview for point lights :

 

Man, this looks guuud! One day I want to make graphics tools like these because they are really the best!

Love your profile pic.

Alex

 

Thank you! It's me last summer

 

would love to beta test this in VR and give you feedback!

 

When can we get it?

 

I doubt it will work in VR out of hands... Probably will have to be in an update...
But thanks for your help it will be appreciated

 

Performances have increased dramatically.
The half-millisecond is at reach at 1080p on my GTX970...

 

Preview for volumetric textures light injection :

 

Hey! I was hoping you might be interested in doing some optimisations for 2.5D mode, say where the camera isn't ever going to be inside the lighting volumes. There must be some really nice optimisation tricks you can do then?

Love the work so far.

 

Hi!
I am always interested in optimizing for sure!
However, for as much as I can foresee what it implies, 2.5D mode will not bring any special context for improvement in here. I have no dependency on FOV, position, and no volume intersection overhead.

You are probably referring to the technique used by all the other solutions available on the store which consists of raymarching through a "volume" and writing into a screenspace buffer that will be added to the lighting later on.
I am developing something totally different here, let's have a chat if you have especially something in your mind

Thank you!
It's good to know that all the efforts are appreciated.

 

Awesome, sure chat about anything

Do you have a release date in mind?

 

My my! I wish I had one.
The school year is now over so, beside the game, I'll have more time to focus on this.

 

I quickly made a reproduction (no bloom, no hdr material, just basic stuff) on request from a photo :

(Fps was good... I just suck at encoding )

 

i already use a open source volumetric light solution but i really would love to see yours on my latest project.
hopefully i can get my hands on this soon.

 

That's already pretty cool. I know this solution and my asset is pretty different (physically correct especially), I hope it'll fit your wishes anyway.

 

Heya! I've been following the development of this asset for quite a while and aren't sure which one of the many volumetric plugins I should get for our current project.

The ability to inject localized settings (cubes, spheres, etc.) look very promising and haven't seen that one in the others I am looking at, namely DeepSky Haze and Hx Volumetric Lighting. However, in your description you state that your plugin only supports DirectX. We're building for Win/Mac/Linux, so OpenGL is a must.

Could you provide a comparison of features against the other plugins I mentioned? Would love to see if it meets our requirements even if it's not out yet - we can wait

Much appreciated, cheers!

 

Hi!
Dx11 it's a little shortcut I take sorry. It actually need a compute shader capable platform. I'll change this in the description.

I'll provide some comparison when I have time, sorry I am very busy now :/

 

in this last reproduction. are those light sources disclights spotlights? since you said you are not using any hdr materials!?

 

hello, sorry I was on vacation...

I used cone volumes with light injection, I could also have used spot lights.

By no HDR materials, I meant no hdr colors, so no bloom, no tone mapping, ...

 

no news on the haze front?!

 

Hi! Funny that you ask today as I was going to quickly give an update...

Again, sorry about the pace, I've had a crazy full life for the last year.
There are also things/bugs that I need to bypass or wait to be fixed in Unity (they are very more responsive than before with me BTW, thanks again Unity!), as I am driving off-tracks for a year now with this project.

I am finalizing everything, it's been in "alpha" for a while and now moving to (closed) "beta" with production-like projects.
I've identified a few things that need a little refactor, then will clean and comment all the sources.

For the good news about you waiting, I've been able to gain performances again, it is now running about 4 times faster than before (yes!).
FYI, in 1080p :

• High Fine Details @ ~225fps
  
  
• Low Details @ ~500fps
  

On the other hand, I decided that I will be changing the name Haze to Aura, for several reasons :

• the noun "haze" only refers to damp/wet air but, being physically correct, my plugin is actually made for simulating a wider range of environments (dusty, foggy, underwater, inside strange materials like jelly, etc etc).
  The name Aura refers to Latin and perfectly refers to this visible volumetric contribution of lights.
• the name Haze was too confusing for everyone with other old assets that have similar names. So I wanted to differentiate to be sure that people would get my product and not pick the wrong one.

Cheerz

 

Do you know if this will work with VR? If not, I would definitely love to test it out. I own a Vive.

 

It will not work with VR out of hands...
But the bases are set to make it work so it will certainly be in an update.