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

Not with Aura 1, yes with Aura 2

 

Thank you very much for your hard work Can't wait for Aura 2..

 

Have used Aura for a fair bit now but never had cause to get it into a build
We started a new project and are using Aura 1 at the moment ... looks great in editor but is a no show in a build (2018.3.4) not sure why.

I hadn't heard your doing an Aura 2 till now ... and it looks relly cool .... from what I have read.

As to the issue with Aura on standalone build, is there a reason it shouldn't be working on 2018.3.4?
No errors appear in the log, our scene setup might be a bit non-standard though it all plays nice in editor ... details follow.

We have a 'main scene' which defines the camera and a few UI bits thus it also defines the postprocessing stack and Aura componenet. This main scene has lights or environment. At runtime a enviornment scene is loaded and this does contain aura volumes and lights ... see image below.
As you can see in editor it does as expected, no errors ... and as noted there are no errors in the logs on build.
I have tried setting up a Shader Preload incase something was getting stripped but that didn't seem to have any effect ...


As to the attached image
What you see is a UI which is part of the main scene and an environment with baked lighting, 2 aura volumes and directional light with aura on it. The environment scene is loaded at run time and set as the active scene.

Log from a test run is attached as well, nothing stood out to me as an issue with Aura

 

Awesome asset, and I will be purchasing Aura 2 as soon as it's out!

I am wondering if you might help me with some flickering, though (through transparent/cutoff shaders) as seen here:

Reducing Ambient Density to 0 makes the flickers go away. Is there something I need to do with the shader to resolve this problem?

Thanks!

[Update]
So I'm trying to add the code necessary for the shaders to work with Aura, however, I'm not super fluent with shader coding. I'm getting a compile error, <invalid subscript 'frustumSpacePosition'>.

I'm not clear on what I'm supposed to be adding from the Docs, there's the black background code and then the italicized Aura methods above it...do I use both?

Probably an example would go a long way to help =)

 

Hi Raph! I'm having this problem. In Game view in editor everything works fine, but when I build the game the point lights doesn't work correctly. What am I doing wrong? Thanks.

 

I wonder if this is related to the issue we are having. In our case Aura doesn't seem to be at play at all in build but works as expected in editor. Feel like I'm missing something simple.

In your case is it only point lights or all lights not sure what all you have in the scene you showed ... looks cool by the way.

 

Thanks for your reply lodendsg! I only used point lights in the scene to test Aura in my game project. But as I needed a volumetric lighting solution asap, I switched from Aura to the Adam project implementation in the following link:
https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/VolumetricLighting
It is easyer to setup and tweek and gave me some nice performant results. I'm using the latest Unity version (2018.3.5f1). See image bellow:

 

I think I'm somewhat getting there, but the Unity Editor gives me this compile error when I try to #Include Aura.cginc:

Unexpected token '('. Expected one of: ',' ';' at Structs.cginc (32)

The Structs.cginc line it's talking about is:

(32) half4x4 ToMatrix() <---this one
(33) {
(34) return half4x4(half4(a.x, b.x, c.x, d.x), half4(a.y, b.y, c.y, d.y), half4(a.z, b.z, c.z, d.z), half4(a.w, b.w, c.w, d.w));
(35) }

[Update]

So normally Unity shaders can't declare methods inside structs, however you must be using this for your ComputeShader because when I tried to change things it broke.

Should I wait til Aura 2 in order to modify my shaders to work, or is there another way around this error?

 

It's a known issue with Aura. Reduce the Far Clipping Plane parameter on you main camera and/or increase the Field of View value, values below 50 generates this kind of artifact.

 

Ive done some additional testing on our build and found that Aura was turning its self off ... but doesn't say why.

(Filename: Line: 123)

Located Aura object with enabled status of False

(Filename: C:\buildslave\unity\build\Runtime/Export/Debug.bindings.h Line: 45)

Located Aura Volume object (Aura Global Volume) with enabled status of False

(Filename: C:\buildslave\unity\build\Runtime/Export/Debug.bindings.h Line: 45)

Located Aura Volume object (Aura Planar Volume) with enabled status of False

(Filename: C:\buildslave\unity\build\Runtime/Export/Debug.bindings.h Line: 45)

The above are Debug.Log messages we added to a testing script which on start of the second scene searches for Aura object and the volumes that should be there and simply reports the enabled status of the componenets ...
For my next trick I will see if I can figure out why they are disabled and what they do if I try to force them back on. The Auto-disable of Aura objects is a bit anoying so to the author I recomend handling that a bit different ... few sugestions follow.

1st Let the developer choose what to do if some condition is true that the componenet cant be on and should be disabled. You could do this very easily for example by having the validation ran before any of your scripts as its own process and have that validation fire off events for Not Supported, Supported and any other environment type conditions you think should adjust handling. These events could then be used by us developers to call various functions for reporting the issue so its not a black box and possibly for resolving whatever issue there is effectivly overriding or modifying the validation.
So lets say this Validation script had a Bool on it for IsValid ... we could decide if IsValid should be set to true or false. Each Aura object could then simply test 'IsValid' to see if it should disable its self. You could even be nice and have Aura objects register to this Validation object such that we could iterate over them at run time without having to do a search ... Cinamachine does this with its brain and virtual cameras and its handy.

What ever solution you choose just make sure that it doesn't auto disable/enable things without telling the developer about it in some way, preferably a loud way thats hard to miss.

 

Update on my last post ... I have confirmed that if I force the Aura objects to activate all works as expected so the issue appears to be simply that Aura deactivates its self incorrectly.

 

That was exactly what was happening to me. When I finished the build process, the Aura lights was deactivated. Strange behavior.

 

FYI, it's discontinued and doesn't support directional lights, so I'd stick with Aura if I were you.

 

We would recomend Aura for sake of quality as well ... over other options we have played with various ones from Asset Store and GitHub to include Unity's swing at volumetric lighting.

We had looked at other options in the past and while Aura has its little quarks ... like disabling things for funnsies :/ ... and it can be tricky to learn how to adjust and get the results you want ... but once you overcome thouse which really isn't to hard just takes time and forum posts, we find the results with Aura are closer to our desired look than we could achieve with other options at least that is our experance so far.

 

We reviewed the source from Aura and from what we could see it should have been that if Aura disabled its self that it should have reported as much to the log however we found no such record in the logs.
We are trying to track down where exsactly its getting disabled so we can fix that and remove our current hack which is simply to find all the lights, volumes and the image effect and force them back on.

 

Hello everybody thank you again for getting interested in Aura!
Please remember that it's getting deprecated as Aura 2 will be out soon.

Yes, this is an artifact coming from the depth occlusion. You can try to select a higher quality or disable it in the Settings tab of the Aura component.

Unfortunately nothing. There are some case where point lights shadows seem not working. Will be fixed in Aura 2.

Never encountered this. will keep it in mind for the future! Thanks!

Not that I know. One possible clue is that the objects loading order has (again) changed and mess with the know problem of ordered activation needed in Aura. If so Aura 2 should solve the problem.
I read your feedbacks. Thanks. This particular issue is known for a long time and comes from a wrong assumption. Unfortunately the whole architecture revolves around this. Bypassing the deactivation will only cause errors. This hassle is fixed in Aura 2.


Thank you again all for your interest/investment in Aura 1 for the past year

 

Given the number of people who will still be using Aura V1 and asking questions about it it could be worth creating a new Aura 2 thread when that release time comes.

 

Thanks for your hard work ... looking forward to Aura 2
Do we know if 'soon' is days, weeks or months yet? I know 'soon' can be a scary thing to say as an indie just looking to adjust my short term tasks to suit.

 

Of course!

My pleasure!
We're talking about days

 

Could you provide a comparison of hx volumetric lighting against aura volumetric lighting,fog volume and unity's own volumetric lighting in hdrp pipeline?

 

I tried to use your asset Aura using Unity 2018.3 but it gives me this error

MissingReferenceException: The object of type 'ComputeShader' has been destroyed but you are still trying to access it.
Your script should either check if it is null or you should not destroy the object.
UnityEngine.ComputeShader.SetTexture (Int32 kernelIndex, System.String name, UnityEngine.Texture texture) (at C:/buildslave/unity/build/Runtime/Export/Shader.cs:672)
AuraAPI.Frustum.ComputeData () (at Assets/Aura/Classes/Frustum.cs:188)
AuraAPI.Aura.UpdateFrustrum () (at Assets/Aura/Classes/Aura.cs:351)
AuraAPI.Aura.OnRenderImage (UnityEngine.RenderTexture src, UnityEngine.RenderTexture dest) (at Assets/Aura/Classes/Aura.cs:189)

 

Read the readme/description and let the compute shader compile ;-)

 

I'll be interviewed on stream with @TheMessyCoder
this Saturday Feb 23rd on his Twitch channel.
Last time was a fun!

It's the opportunity to talk about Aura 2 status and features, join the party!

​

 

Please reply

 

I'm sure they have better things to do than do a comparison for you. If you want to compare them, do it yourself.

 

Also hx volumetric or Fog volume 3 is not even their asset and why should they have that.
Plus they have given the aura 1 for free, to be sure Aura 2 will be Great!!!
Also, note, none of these assets have said they have hdrp pipeline, yet.

 

I have been running into a rather large memory leak that I have narrowed down to be caused by Aura. In an empty project, I import Aura and build the project using the Directional Light Example scene. When running, it seems to allocate about 100MB/s until it crashes about 20-30 seconds later.

I setup a barebones scene with just a camera and the aura component and built that, and it experiences the same result. If I then remove the Aura component I have no memory leak.

Any idea what could be causing this?

Additional info: I've tried debugging this with the unity memory profiler, and nothing shows up. Task manager reports 3+ GB memory use, but the profiler only shows a few hundred MB.

I am currently using 2018.2.20, though I've also had it be reproduced in 2018.3

 

Here is a shot of the scene, after running for about 30 seconds, x64 build (x86 build runs out of memory by this point):

 

It goes even beyond. I've always been ill at ease doing comparison with others because I think it's a biased process leading to disrespectful, unfair and intellectual dishonest results. All of them are fantastic works! Some have done their time, some are meant to be of restrictive use, some are still in development ...
Besides, it's illusional to compare everything. Even if they seem alike, some things are not comparable, in terms or techniques, achievable results, performances, potential, flexibility, future oriented, ...
All I can do is related the feedback I receive from the people that actually has done some comparison work themselves. Aura (and therefore Aura 2) technology apparently has the most flexibility, achievable quality, reasonable performances and seem to top in preferences of users. But again, these opinions may come from biased fellows

It will It's a way-better Aura 1

Nope, they probably won't. About Aura 2, I risk not putting my finger in this ever changing machine until it's stabilized, or even better, out of preview.

I am aware of small leaks coming from some shadow maps but not at this order or magnitude. I have changed a lot of things in Aura 2, let's see if this still happens to your with it.

 

Aura 2 isn't free anymore

 

Sounds like it will be worth every penny to me

Is there any update on timing... Still one or two days for Aura 2 to come in Feb

 

A long path has been traveled since the past 2,5 years and now that Aura 2 has been released, it's time for me to fully focus on Aura 2 and the future.

I wanted with Aura to give a present to the community, to make our favorite engine step forward and share hard-to-access knowledge. You have overtaken my expectation way beyond what I imagined, meeting awesome people, sharing benevolence and showing that everyone could make it.
The top of this awesome experience being winning the Unity Award 2018 of the BEST ARTISTIC TOOL.
Thank you again 54 000 times for your returned love

Aura will be deprecated in some time, but I currently leave it available so you can still download it.
I'll leave this thread opened so you guys will still be able to interact and chat about Aura but it's very unlikely that I'll come here much anymore.

You can check the thread dedicated to Aura 2 here : https://forum.unity.com/threads/aura-2-volumetric-lighting-fog.636229/
or watch the release trailer :

​

See you around another corner!

Thank you!​

 

Darn, should have waited another minute
Congrats on the release in Feb !!!!
Happy days ahead

 

@raphick Very beautiful posting, thank you.
For me, it is developers like you that care about Unity and the Community,
that really makes Unity a special place.

Congratulations with the release! I truly hope that Aura 2, can be nominated
for the 2019 Unity Award for best artistic tool

 

*finger crossed*

 

I have tried Aura free edition. After compiling and installed, it is working, and the results are impressive.
However I have a problem. In my project I swicht between two cameras, one for land action and another for flying action (airship). The case is Aura stops working when I add the Aura component script to the second camera.
I get the errors even when exit the play mode in the editor.

ArgumentNullException: Argument cannot be null.
Parameter name: mat
UnityEngine.Graphics.Blit (UnityEngine.Texture source, UnityEngine.RenderTexture dest, UnityEngine.Material mat, Int32 pass) (at C:/buildslave/unity/build/Runtime/Export/Graphics.cs:549)
UnityEngine.Graphics.Blit (UnityEngine.Texture source, UnityEngine.RenderTexture dest, UnityEngine.Material mat) (at C:/buildslave/unity/build/Runtime/Export/Graphics.cs:554)
AuraAPI.Aura.OnRenderImage (UnityEngine.RenderTexture src, UnityEngine.RenderTexture dest) (at Assets/Aura/Classes/Aura.cs:194)

Any help?

 

@raphick Just got done integrating Aura 2, and it seems there is no longer any memory leak/issues. Thanks for the update! Aura is great

 

My pleasure

 

Is there a way to combine this with Envirosky without getting double fog, like I'm getting now?

 

I'm getting this error whenever i enter playmode:

Graphics.CopyTexture can only copy between same texture format groups (d3d11 base formats: src=27 dst=1)

 

About AURA 2, i'm very interested in buying. Can I use it in combination with enviro ? I wish to replace the sun light with aura light and have volumetric effect in my level. My level doesn't use realtime day/night cycle but do load every level on a random time of the day so my second question is : is it possible to change the aura atmosphere preset on real time.

if (time <10 && time > 4){setting = dawn} would work on awake or start ?

 

Aura 2 has a new page ,you might wanna go there

 

can't find it, google lead me here lol

 

https://forum.unity.com/threads/aura-2-volumetric-lighting-fog.636229/

 

does aura 1 support android?
i use aura 1 final version.
my target platform is android. i keep getting this error again and again and nothing is working:

NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
AuraAPI.Aura.DisposeFrustrum () (at Assets/Aura/Classes/Aura.cs:357)
AuraAPI.Aura.OnDisable () (at Assets/Aura/Classes/Aura.cs:147)
UnityEngine.Behaviour:set_enabled(Boolean)
AuraAPI.Aura:Reset() (at Assets/Aura/Classes/Aura.cs:116)
UnityEngine.GUIUtility: ProcessEvent(Int32, IntPtr)

this is my test scene:
View attachment 424558

could someone help me please?
we are at the end of our project(near to publish time)and need the volumetric fog for an specific scene.

 

@afshinunity Have no idea, but looks like the directional light needs to be dragged in here:

 

Hey, love the way Aura 2 looks and how quick it is to get a range of good results!

I like the ui too, but it seems a good amount slower than most other 3rd party extensions. The biggest pain is that in 2019, every time I exit play mode the Aura scene presets menu pops back up for a second even when it's completely disabled in the preferences menu. This adds a freeze of a couple of seconds to every play mode iteration.

Is there any way to completely disable aura UI stuff for a while in a project? I really don't like it slowing down my unity editor, and am leaning toward uninstalling it during development, then adding it back in during polish.

 

Am I the only one getting this? I've done nothing with the editor. What's up with the Aura 1 UI?



Edit: This is Unity 2019.3

 

@amarillosebas You're possibly the only one trying to use Aura 1 in Unity 2019.3! Buy Aura 2 if you want to use the newer versions of Unity. And 2019.3 is still in alpha. So not a good idea unless you want lots of bugs.

 

Hi there, is Aura 2 compatible with HDRP? On the asset store page it says it isn't, but I have seen some posts which claim otherwise?

Also, is Aura 2 more optimised than the built in volumetric light in HDRP, or does it offer more optimisation settings? Our current FPS with the built in volumetric light is around 20-25 FPS.