Volumetric Smoke Shader

ether that or just cutout particle shadows which is just lazy

 

I'm curious how this project is coming along. Did you already submit something to the asset store?

P.S.: I spent like half an hour looking for this thread and only found it because I remembered that "cloud sandwich" was being said in this thread ^^. I was looking for particles and shadows the whole time x].

 

Hi, great work! I filed when tried to do the same. Waiting for release on Asset Store. Can I join beta test?

My config:
Windows 7 x64
Intel Core I5 2.66 GHz
12 Gb RAM
Nvidia GeForce 560 Ti

 

I could test too if you want. Send me a private message if you are interested.

Win 7 x64
Intel i7
GTX 670

 

I would also be happy to offer my system for beta-testing. I have an AMD processor, which seems to be less common.

System specifications:
OS: Microsoft Windows 10 Enterprise
CPU: AMD FX-9370 Eight-Core Processor, 4415Mhz
RAM: 16GB
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX980
Monitor Native Res.: 2560x1440px

Thank you in advance for your consideration!
- S.

 

+1

 

sorry for the radio silence. on Christmas day my landlord called told me that my house was going to be demolished so he could build some apartments on the land and that i had to find a new house which is not easy at that time of year in Melbourne. The house hunting has taken priority and has unfortunately delayed the asset but as of today i have finally secured a roof over my head so after i finish moving it will be back to finishing off the asset

 

Sorry to hear that! I moved last year too and it took us 9 months to find our new home. I can't imagine how stressful it must be to have that deadline crawling nearer and nearer while you look for a new place. Glad to hear you found something!

 

im not sure if my stuff violates that patent as it uses a combination of several techniques.

 

Why would nvidia have any interest in keeping people from using advanced graphics technology? That stuff is a factor that drives their hardware sales and I'd imagine that they mainly patent things so that no one else does or as a backup plan in case they ever get sued for violating patents. If you are unsure, maybe you could just ask them, if it's ok to use?

 

thinking about it but not sure if it would be better not to draw attention to myself than strait up ask and risk it. as the saying goes its better to ask for forgiveness than ask for permission. anyway I'm still not 100 percent sure what I'm doing falls exactly under there patent

 

I understand your concern. Maybe use a fake mailaccount?

 

Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer by any means and my comment here should not be misconstrued as any sort of legal advice. However, I do work for an attorney who deals with patents as part of my full-time job.

Patent infringement (in the US, at least) seems pretty difficult to prove, unless you are doing the exact and complete "thing" that's been patented. A variation or omission from the patented technique, however small, usually means you're in the clear.

 

So after a long delay and a lot of F***ing around (Don't get me started about renting in aus) I'm back on station and working on the volumetric smoke. i have done the Inital packaging work and am now looking for a couple of alpha testers to test out what i have and give me some feedback.

 

I'd be happy to alpha test. Just send me a message with a download link if you're interested.

 

Free to do some testing if required.

 

This asset is of great interest to me. Additionally, I have a long weekend beginning tomorrow. I'd love to do some testing on your behalf.

Be well!
- S.

 

pulling together some basic documentation and ill throw up a drop box link hopefully within the day. before anyone gets too hyped this package isn't a magic bullet. it needs a lot of tweaking to look right

 

Of course! While I hope to have a solution such as this one for future projects, at the moment, I'm just excited to see what it can do and what contributions I can make to its success.

- S.

 

ok looks like pro builder basic is going to be bundled with the first alpha because i cant find a way to remove it without loosing all the models i have made with it

 

I'd definitely be willing to check out that dropbox link, help separate pro builder and proof documentation if you need.

 

just to clarify its the free version of pro builder so i wont be leaking any paid content

 

Just a heads up but the next version will require you to use the Unity 5.4 beta. Im implementing the Light Proxy Volume code to give my particles more light support

 

Supposedly if you manually delete ProBuilder scripts from your project directory you'll lose the script references but not the meshes.

 

I think i tried that but the meshes went with it

 

its not that big of an issue now while I'm working on alpha's and beta's

 

Added support for light probe proxy volumes. not sure how useful it will be in the long run apart from wrecking performance but its there

 

Screenshots!

 

hey does anyone know if there are any normal mapped particles available on the unity asset store? i had a quick look but i couldn't find any. anyway here is some very early wip of a particle effect with normal maps

 

Same setup with a slightly different normal map. the underlining technique produces a few to many errors, i was hopping it wouldn't be noticeable with the low frequency detail of smoke but i was wrong. next step should clean it up a bit

 

created this cool effect whilst playing around with compression options. might be useful for something in the future idk

 

here is a looping smoke particle with normalmap

 

and another one for u to test your system with

 

thanks man

 

Doesn't look like much but that's one properly normal mapped particle.

 

Very nice! Can we see a comparision of normal vs normal mapped in a practical use (Smoke)?

 

not using the best art assets and haven't setup lighting correctly but this should give you an idea of the difference

this is per pixel normal mapped


this is is per vertex normal mapped


the reason i'm doing this to to try and create the puffy volume effect you see in images like this

 

with better art assets and a little more shader code this is what normal mapped particles can look like

 

It's looking awesome! Keep it up! Really looking forward to being able to use this one day.

--IronDuke

 

Are you calculating the cotangent in the pixel shader for this, or just using the tangent as is?

More specifically can the particles rotate?

 

particles can rotate but for performance reasons they have to be bill boarded as in they have to face the camera directly

 

I'm asking about the normals. Unless Unity fixed something they didn't have proper tangents on quad particles so a rotating normal mapped particle wouldn't render properly.

 

well i used my magic programming skills to solve the quad tangent problem. there are still a few issues / limitations but for 90% of particle effects it works fine

 

Another test with a more cartoon Texture / normal map

 

Looking great.

 

hope you focus on realistic. Unfortunete how curretn devs. are using such a great engine like U5 to make pixel/2d/toon visuals that look worse than a lot of games from the 90's.

 

Not sure why, but that cartoon particle test is somehow mesmerizing...

--IronDuke

 

Because it looks like a lava lamp?

 

so in the latest version of the shader code i couldn't understand why my computer was running so slow. i eventually discovered that unity was trying to compile over 300,000 variants of my shader based off the multicompile options i had added, turns out making one mega shader with all the options isn't the best idea

 

Making good progress on multi light support, using a mix of per pixel and per vertex shader's to get good performance while still capturing the key high frequency details