Heathen's Selective Glow

Asset Store
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Video
Web Demo​

Heathen Engineering’s Selective Glow Image Effect asset goes live today on the Unity Assets store (see links below). The asset package includes the Selective Glow Image Effect along with a battery of common use material shaders with selective glow enabled.


The selection of include material shaders includes dev favourites such as bumped specular, parallax specular and of course the transparent and cut-out variants and also throws in a tri-planar shader with glow enabled.

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Expect to see more standard material shaders added to the asset over time; Heathen Engineering is committed to customer service with a dedicated support site including knowledge base, FAQ, tips and tricks and more as well as a place for the developer to submit feature requests and the likes.

As to the inner working of the Selective Glow shader; the Heathen approach leverages Unity’s RenderWithShader feature on its image effect; material shaders with a glow enabled shader attached are processed on render based on the RenderType tag making it a trivial matter to enable your own custom shaders “Selective Glow”. The Image Effect shader carries a number of configurable values aimed at adjusting the overall feel and quality of the glow effect while the material shaders themselves carry the information necessary to describe per object glow intensity and colour.

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Glow colour its self can be adjusted per-object through 2 different mechanisms; 1st by selective a “Glow Color” which acts like a tint and 2nd by the colour of the Glow Map texture applied to the material which enables multi-colour glow effects on for glow enabled materials.
Heathen Engineering has published a video of the asset in action along with a playable web demo available on Heathen’s main site (see links below) and of course the traditional demo scene is available in the asset its self; showing just how the demo was done. Heathen’s Selective Glow asset goes on sale today for $30.00 on Unity’s Asset store.

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looks great , whats it like on mobile?

 

Unfortunately I don't have a mobile device to test against ... hope to resolve that by end of month and I will post some screens from the test.

That said its pretty easy on the machine coupled with the configurable div and iteration settings I hope to see solid performance on mobile.

 

Just build an APK for Android (very easy) and ask the community to test.
Nice Glow.

 

Thanks for the kind words.

We also have a dedicated support site for the asset (https://heathen.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/categories/200036772-Heathen-s-Shader-Collections) there is a FAQ and Tips Tricks section ... we want to offer as robust a support line as possible so any ideas on things you expect or like to see on the support side as well ... tutorials perhaps

 

Just submitted v1.1 for review

This update includes a bunch of additional shaders ... should now have a selective glow version for all the stock Unity shaders including a strait conversion of the Mobile shaders.

I also changed the naming of the shaders in the drop down of the inspector to handle the number of shaders a bit better and cleaned up the demo level a bit just removing some un-used assets.

This was submitted on a Sunday so look for 1.1 to hit the store around end of next week..

Note if you import on top of an existing 1.0 install you may need to reset the shaders on your glow materials as the names have changed in this release ... again this is to handle the number of shaders a bit nicer.

You should now see

Heathen/Glow/<type>/<name>

i.e.
Heathen/Glow/Transparent/Diffuse
Heathen/Glow/Normal/Bumped Specular
etc.


May look a bit odd to you to see "Glow" sticking out there on its own ... thats because we have several other shader resources in development which will all complement each other and be rooted in the Heathen grouping

 

v1.2 is live on the store now

This version adds a lot of material shaders and you should have a glow representation of all of the stock shaders at this point.

Note that 1.0-1.2 have a known issue with SE 2.0 which affects at least iOS; this has been corrected but wont be released until v1.3 later next week. The fix for SE 2 is simple enough and requires a minor change to SelectiveGlow.cs; we are more than happy to walk you through the steps via our support portal should you need the fix before 1.3 goes live.

You can find our support portal at https://support.heathenengineering.com or by simply clicking the "Support" tab on our main site at http://heathenengineering.com

 

v1.3 has gone live on the asset store (here)

This update includes improvements to the core image effect and better support for mobile.

• Added glow offset parameters to image effect to allow the adjustment of the glow positioning this corrects issues noted when rendering under OGL
• Separated the BlurConeTap shader from the image effect; you can now use your own blur if you prefer by setting the shader on the Selective Glow image effect; this also corrects an issue noted when rendering on iOS platforms
• Updated sanity checks, clean up and a few other 'behind the curtain' bits and bobs to give better logging in the case of issues and avoid some of the common warnings
• DX11 blending bug correct on Alpha and Alpha Test shaders

 

Great stuff man

 

Thanks for the support Play_Edu

 

v1.4 has been submitted to the asset store for review and should be available late next week.

This update resolves an issue where the glow effect inverts in some situations for example; DX platform with AA in forward rendering will cause your glow effect to render upside down. As of v1.4 the composite shader will test texel size and invert the y if needed.

 

Selective Glow v1.4 is live!

This update includes some clean up of the code as well as an important fix for Direct X platforms rendering with AA and release along side Heathen's Occluded Render resource which include Selective Glow enabled occluded render shaders for the common Unity shaders (Bumped, Specular, Parallax, etc)

 

Is it possible for you guys to add Lens Flare like the Anamorphic ones on "Bloom and Lens Flare" effect?

 

+1

 

Looking into this now; in the mean time you should be able to get the effect your looking for by using both screen effects on the camera by setting Bloom lower in the inspector than selective glow such that you render glow then apply bloom.

 

What is the performance like on mobile?

Thanks!
Jacob

 

Hi if I try to compile this for android pro I get the following error in unity

An asset is marked as dont save, but is included in the build:
Asset: 'Assets/_Heathen Shaders/Heathen Shaders/Shaders/Glow/_BlurConeTap.shader'
UnityEditor.BuildPlayerWindow:BuildPlayerAndRun()

I'm assuming it is meant to work on android as it has mobile versions of the glow shaders. How should I fix this ? It works correctly if I compile for pc and doesn't give that error.

Thanks,

 

I do apologise for the delay; for note for quick support I recomend emailing support@heathenengineering.com or visiting our support site.

That said the issue is likely caused by 2 resources in your project having the same name e.g. _Blurconetap is from stock unity, to correct you can either remove the duplicate and update the reference or rename one.

 

Same error here when compiling for Desktop and no duplicate file here.
To solve, just modify something in the file (add an comment), save and voila...
BTW, your shader works very well with Lux..

 

Thanks for that was in transit when I made the last post.

You'll see this pop up on occasion and any time I have seen it it was due to a shader that had the same name as another ... keep in mined shader names are not the same as there file names so open the file make sure its a unique name.

The cause of this is due to a dependency on Unity's stock Hidden/_BlurConeTap earlier on we just omitted it but that confused some as to why they needed to import all the stock image effects ... so we included it but if you already have image effects imported you might run into this issue; next release we will change its name to try and limit this issue in the future.

As to why it might pop up when you don't have a name issue; not sure I would have to dig into it; but its going to boil down to a conflict somewhere with the compiled resource.

 

Thanks for the reply.

 

We are looking for beta testers for v1.5b; if you have purchased Selective Glow and are interested please e-mail support@heathenengineering.com with your invoice number (to validate your purchase) and we will enable access to the beta source and assets.

We are looking for all types but in particular iOS pro users.

just a sample of what we are working on with v1.5
- New blur options
- Correction of blur effect offset experienced by iOS users
- General code clean up to bring SelectiveGlow.cs more inline with stock Unity effects
- Changes to prevent that pesky compile time error BlurConeTap marked do not save as well as updates to object names to prevent resource conflicts.

Thanks in advance

 

No reply? Does that mean it hasn't been tested on mobile?

Thanks,
Jacob

 

I replied privately to him via our support channel; v1.4 which is the current release works well on Droid and WP8 as I gather from users though some iOS users experience an offset with the blur feature which is being addressed in the v1.5 which is currently in beta.

Selective Glow includes mobile variants of the glow e.g. we have a glow variant of all of Unity's stock mobile shaders and v1.5 will include the ability to use Unity's Mobile Blur in place of the v1.4 and earlier Blur Cone Tap if desired.

Thanks

Edit:
As to performance this effect is very similar to Unity's glow or Unity's blur and should result in similar performance, e.g. Glowing objects will typically incur a second draw call. We have exposed a number of parameters to allow you to adjust the way in which the effect is applied to tune quality and performance. You can read more on that from the FAQ here (https://heathen.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/200250991-FAQ-Selective-Glow-) the Tips and Tricks section here (https://heathen.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/200271482-Glow-Best-Practice).

Also just noted which post you where referring to sorry looks like I did miss you and I do apologize; if you ever have any questions on any of our products support@heathenengineering.com is by far the most reliable way to get in touch with us. We or I should say I make an effort to keep up with the boards but we are on many of them and I more often than I would like miss a post.

 

Nice, well done.

 

Just a reminder we are looking for beta testers for v1.5b; if you have purchased Selective Glow and are interested please e-mailsupport@heathenengineering.com with your invoice number (to validate your purchase) and we will enable access to the beta source and assets.

We are looking for all types but in particular iOS pro users.

just a sample of what we are working on with v1.5
- New blur options
- Correction of blur effect offset experienced by iOS users
- General code clean up to bring SelectiveGlow.cs more inline with stock Unity effects
- Changes to prevent that pesky compile time error BlurConeTap marked do not save as well as updates to object names to prevent resource conflicts.

Thanks in advance

 

v1.5.0 has been released and includes the following
- New blur options giving you the choice between a blur tap and Gaussian approximation
- General code clean up to bring SelectiveGlow.cs more inline with stock Unity effects
- Changes to prevent that pesky compile time error BlurConeTap marked do not save as well as updates to object names

We are still open to running tests with the community so if your interested in helping Heathen with the next build of Glow just e-mail Support@HeathenEngineering.com

 

Why can't I remove that pink color screen issue on iPad. I have gone through the FAQs. But could not find the Selective Glow image effect to check it active.

 

Please add a checkbox for us to enable/disable your glow effect and a framerate-counter...thanks!

 

@hirenkacha: See follow up in the Heathen Support portal

@Cascho01: could you enplane what your goal is?

For example if you want to disable/enable the effect on a per-material/per-object bases you have several options depending on what effect your after.

To have the glow fade or transition from more white color to a less white color then off (something we use it for) simply update the _GlowColor parameter from script with the target color.

To have the strength of the glow pulse or fade in/out use the _Inner and _Outter values these are the intensity of the glow and setting either to 0 will turn it off so this is also an easy way to flip it on and off.

If your referring to toggling it on an off for all objects at the same time just enable/disable the SelectiveGlow component of the rendering camera.

 

Hello I am attempting to use this on a custom shader that has displacement. As you can likely guess the glow ignores my vertex displacement and renders over the base object. I know a little about shader coding but not certain if there might be a way to accomplish this. Any ideas?

 

Has this shader been tested with Unity 5 ?

 

+1

 

Hello!
I would like to know if it works in Unity 5 two. Is the six-million-dollar question with the plugins nowadays xD

 

We actually just updated for Unity 5.

Apologies for the slow response time here on the forums we are hard at work updating and extending the offerings we have available and should have a few new assets to tell you about in the coming weeks

To clarify:
Yes Selective Glow is now Unity 5 compliant. This update includes a new blur tap which should also resolve the pesky offset that managed to still be a problem on some iOS platforms.

Heathen's other offerings are being updated as we speak; next out the gate is the Tri-Planar essentials which will include support for unity Standard Lighting e.g. PBS and Terrain shaders. Find it here (https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/15520)

 

I use Unity 5 and oculus rift but when I set unity 5 to deferred rendering the cameras renders all black when I set it to legacy deferred it works great! Any way to make this work with unity 5 deferred rendering?

 

I assume your working on the latest release of Selective Glow v5.0.0.1b;

Cant think of a reason off the top of my head why you might be seeing this issue as I near always work in differed my self. Send my a support ticket @ Support@HeathenEngineering.com or via the support button on our main page; please send on with the following details and I'll see if I can reproduce the issue and work up a solution.

• Rendering path (Differed I assume )
• Color space (Linear?)
• Camera set up (multiple cameras?, HD I would guess ... also any notable screen effects e.g. SSAO, AA, Bloom and what order they are in)

If you have an example scene small enough you can send that on to me ... saves you some typing

Finally I'm happy to screen share with you if thats easier for you; let me know ... preferably on our support portal ... faster response there

 

Just wondering how this glow looks on retina devices? With other glow solutions, the result looked much different on high and low pixel density displays, have you solved this issue?

 

Heathen's Glow has been used in several mobile and desktop apps at a wide range of resolutions with no issues regarding retina devices reported including a couple of games built for mobile devices and later ported to Desktop including shift to full screen resolutions so I wouldn't expect you would run into any issues. That said we have not tested it on retina devices in house (we don't have the hardware for it).

If you do run into any issues at all please do contact Support@HeathenEngineering.com and we will get the issue resolved.

A bit about Glow and how it works that might help you come to the conclusion your self.
Heathen's Glow allows you to select the blur you wish to use Fast Blur is a Gausian approximation basically the same as Unity's stock Mobil blur while without it its a tap blur. This is the likely cause of the issue on other solutions e.g. teh process of blurring the glow map before applying to the screen.

Heathen's Glow in a nut shell does the following
1) shader replacement. For Selective Glow materials go and render the glow map and glow settings
2) blur and ramp the results according to the image effect settings
3) apply to screen (blit)

In short you should see similar performance to full screen blur effects with additional draw calls per glow materials used. Behaviour (visual speaking) should be similar to Blur and Mobil Blur operations with regards to the glow aspect.

 

Bought the asset, it works great! Just wondering though if theres any way to make a transparent material such that the glow of another object behind it will show through?

 

yes there should be an example of this in the demo

You will find a cutout box with glow that has a glowing object inside (glow behind cutout)
You will also find the title is a transparent glow with glow objects behind as is the Heathen Valknut (3 triangles) on the walls

Drop us a line via Support@HeathenEngineering.com if you have any trouble getting that up and running.

PS Selective Glow has been merged into Heathen's Standard Shader (https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/40043) this new package includes Selective Glow, Triplanar and Occluded render as well as several features unique to it and is driven by a couple 'smart' shaders e.g. custom shader editors much like Unity's stock standard shader in fact we use the same lighting model to insure objects have the same 'look'
This isn't required of course but you may be interested in check it out, we have defined an upgrade path from Selective Glow, Occluded Render and Triplanar packages to this new collection.

 

Heathen's Selective Glow has been merged with Heathen's Standard Shader (http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/heathen-standard-shader.337997/)



Heathen's Standard shader mergers Selective Glow, Occluded Render and Tri-planar into much smaller set of shaders; that is 300+ individual shaders now supported by small handful of PBS (Standard Lighting) shaders.

Upgrade paths are available from the previous packages and we will be maintaining the individual packages for the time being. Note that Heathen's Standard Shader package has many features not available to the individual packages due to merged architecture it will not be possible to bring these new features to the individual resources.

Its also worth pointing out that Heathen's Standard Shader package will receive all of Heathen's upcoming material and screen shaders. You can find Heathen's Standard Shader package on Unity Asset Store here (https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/40043)

Please let us know if you have any questions.


Heathen standard shader with occlusion and glow features enabled


Heathen Standard tri-planar on material and splat/terrain

 

Bought it long time ago. I just tried it today. I like how easy to add Selective Glow to my shaders. I will do some tests on iPhones later. Currently, I rate it 5 stars

Would you consider to make another pack like Selective Glow for 2D Sprite & Spritesheet. That would be awesome!!!

 

^ I second the comment above, I really need it for my 2D game. Any chance?

 

Has anyone worked out how to fade out a glowing object without losing the glow effect - a glow that animates in and out for instance?

 

Apologies for the long delay there; we actually have a few users that use Selective Glow in 2D games. Applying a Selective Glow material to your sprites is all that's required.

As to fading out glow you can animate the material's glow settings to strengthen or weaken the glow effect per material is this what you are referring to?

PS: Support@HeathenEngineering.com is the fastest way to get support or answers to questions. We do watch the forums but occasionally we lag behind here; support e-mails on the other hand echo across our channels and remind us they are there till they get sorted