► Vertex Thickness Generator ◄

Vertex Thickness Generator
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Editor and runtime solution for calcualting per-vertex mesh thickness (based on the GDC 2011 Colin Barre-Brisebois talk), that can be used in various calculations and effects, like translucent and subsurface scattering shaders, soft-body simulation and others.

Editor tool bakes calculated thickness values inside any mesh vertex buffer and supports all render pipelines.

Runtime API returns calculated per-vertex thickness as a float[] array and supports only Built-in and Universal render pipelines.

Before purchasing check documentation for better understanding how tool works and what limitations it has and try this editor tool on your models, to see how mesh thickness is calculated and what results expect.

Note, demo scenes from the screenshots below are not included.





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Your pictures looks great ! Nice job!

 

Could you make a video on how the tool works?

 

Cannot promise video tutorial, but here is a documentation explaining how tool works and this editor tool to try it yourself.



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Can anyone share the name of an open source or commercial shader that's able to use the data in this tool?

I own Lux, Uber and a few others that can do subsurface scattering from data, but none in this particular format, baked into the vertex data.

 

Arkhivrag, all the subsurface shaders I own expect a texture map, it would seem like the other tool you released is necessary to make this data useful for subsurface like effects, correct?

 

If shader is a custom hand written and you can not modify it to read the baked thickness from a mesh, or you cannot use ShaderGraph and that shader only reads thickness from a texture - then yes, you have to use vertex buffer exporter tool, any one and not necessarily mine.



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I see, what's here is good, I understand its use.

However, I'll point out that your marketing materials are deceptive. You provide no avenue or guidance to achieve what's presented in those pictures. And it's sus as hell that the tool needed to get to your results came out at the same time. No mention of how they may work together either. My suggestions is only using the B&W pictures alongside what additional tools you used to get to those awesome results. That aside, I believe a make-good is in order, I'll likely buy the vertex tool anyway. But my reviews won't be great

 

As this asset offers only computation of mesh thickness and nothing more, I do understand, some users can make incorrect interpretation of this tool usage based only on the promo images, that's why description additionally includes documentation with preview tool, for anyone to manually check their 3d models and see what is mesh thickness (and compere B&W results alongside with original models).



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I can only speak for myself, but it shouldn't require a half hour of investigation into your documents and demos to get a clear understanding of the tool. You're asking too much. Simply use a screenshot of the tools actual output. That's all we need to figure this tool out.

 

As a person who is just dipping my toe into the topic of shaders and who thought that the promo pictures of this (and your other assets) looked amazing, I would second the request to add more tutorials about how to achieve effects such as shown in the promo pics.
I can imagine that it would be nice for people who are in my situation and want to learn to use the full potential of your tools without having to google every second word^^

 

Promo screenshots are from various projects and I can not share them .
This asset offers no shaders (or shader tutorials) - just a tool for calculating mesh thickness. If you know what it is and how to use it, you can achieve even better results.

If you are new to shaders, know, that not everything demonstrated in CG is achieved with complex shaders.

For example this screenshot: Spheres are using standard Unity shader and mesh thickness here is used only for color emission strength. No additional cost for subsurface scattering calculation, it is just a simple math: "Emission = EmissionColor * BakedThickness".



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I've purchased this asset and tried the QuickStart scene, but after the Run I see some errors and it looks like it's failing to generate the thickness of the vertices.
What's wrong?
Unity 2019.4.26f1 / Windows10 20H2 / Geforce RTX 2060 / Built-in Rendering Pipeline

 

Confirm bug.
Editor tools tries to create Self Isolation layer and because of the bug in Unity2019.4.26, it fails.
Problem does not exist in Unity 2019.4.0, 2020.3, 2021.1.
Will try to fix it tomorrow. For now, inside editor manually create new gameobject layer with name Self Isolation.





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Thank you for your prompt support.
Creating the "Self Isolation" layer manually solved the problem!

 

Good afternoon!

I am trying to use Convert Vertex Color to Texture on a mesh generated by Vertex Thickness Generator but I'm getting only an opaque black texture as a result even when using the resulting mesh from the Vertex Thickness Generator demo scene.

I read the instructions for both assets and am using the latest version (as updated today) but I feel like I may be missing something?

Reproduction Steps:

1. Start new HDRP Unity 2020.3.21f1 project.
   
   
2. Import Convert Vertex Color to Texture and Vertex Thickness Generator assets.
   
   
3. Open Vertex Thickness Generator demo scene.
   
   
4. Open Vertex Thickness Generator editor window, add Hands mesh.
   
   
5. Bake / Generate a new prefab using the default settings (store inside Color / RGB) which generates a Hands Hands mesh.
   
   
6. A new prefab successfully added to scene using Hands Hands mesh generated from step 4 and shows grayscale gradient.
   
   
7. Open Convert Vertex Color to Texture editor window and add Hands Hands mesh.
   
   
8. Convert Vertex Color to Texture editor window shows opaque black in Preview > Display Mode > RGB.

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Problem is in the free hands 3d model that I have used in that example scene - it has no uv0.
Technically it has, but all its values are 0. If you try to apply any textures to it, you will see it.

That's why baked vertex colors are exported as black texture, all UVs are 0 - black.



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That's what I was missing! Thank you, got it sorted out now.