Chickens Shader Bundle

Hi,

Chickens Shader Bundle 1.6 is released on the asset store and Unitymagic and will hopefully help you to make better looking graphics. The price is $40(on the asset store).
Right now it contains:

- Self Shadowed Parallax Specular Mapping.
- Cook-Torrance Bumped Specular lighting.
- Approximate self shadowed Relief Mapping.
- Faked subsurface scattering skinshaders. Version 1.3 supports translucency..
- A Toonshader with variable lighting steps.
- Forcefield shader.
- Translucency shader.
- A simple image based lighting shader.
- Screen space subsurface scattering (Requires Unity Pro!)

All of them, except the screen space subsurface scattering effect work, with the Indie and Pro Version. Screen space subsurface scattering requires Unity Pro.
All shaders are SM 3.0 and are forced to be drawn in forward mode, because they use a custom lighting function. (They do still work with the deferred renderer)

Please let me know what you think about it, if the price is too high/too low, if you have any questions, any feedback, wishes for additional shaders/features and of course bugs.

Especially wishes, because it helps a lot to know, what type of shaders are needed.

Have a look at the videos for a better idea of what the shaders look like, or try out the webplayer demo.

So far, greetz the chickenlord

Update 1.1 changes:

Skinshaders:

- Shader changed to run in 1 pass instead of 3, making it only 5% slower than bumped specular on my pc.
- Changed so it preserves the overall brightness and added a variable to adjust it.
- Added a configurable light traveling effect with lightcolor changes (the red glow on dark edges).
- Added adjustable specular light spreading to the subsurface layers.
- Added a simplified version for artists who don't wanna adjust lots of values, which is also slightly faster.
- Added a simple SM2 fallback.​

Self Shadowed Relief/Parallax Mapping:

- Fixed a bug which could cause holes in shadows for large height values.
- Added defines to make it easier to change the number of lighting/depth steps.​

- Added a Toonshader with variable shading steps and outline thickness.
- Added a Forcefieldshader.

Update 1.2 changes:

- Added a non silhouette clipped relief mapping version, that receives shadows.
- Fixed a bug in the skinshaders causing wrong subsurface lighting for low attenuation values.
- Added a new Skinshader version (1.3), which needs less instructions, allows smoother looks and supports translucency.
- Added a translucency shader.
- Added a simple image based lighting shader, using a cubemap as lightsource. Number of light samples can be changed in the shader source. (Read the instructions!)

Update 1.3 changes:
- Added various detail shaders.(Relief mapped, bump mapped and parallax versions)
- Added a toonshader using a ramp texture instead of lightsteps.
- Added non self shadowed relief mapping versions, which can benefit from the deferred renderer as well.
- Slightly changed the skinshader v1.3 to allow a more realistic subsurface scattering look.
- Fixed a bug in the IBL shader causing wrong light samples being taken.

Update 1.4 changes:
- Added a Skinshader version using a separate specular map.
- Added a screen space subsurface scattering post processing effect (Requires Unity Pro)

Update 1.41 changes:

- Added cutout versions of the simple sss shader and skinshader 1.3. They use the MainTexture's alpha channel for transparency and a separate specular map.

Update 1.43 changes:

- Changed the 1.3 skinshaders to allow for a varying ambient occlusion intensity.
- Added toonshader versions using a separate specular map, so that transparency and specularity can be adjusted indepently.
- Added toonshader version whith an adjustable outline sharpness.
- Added various reflective fresnel cubemapped version.

Update 1.44 changes:
- Fixed cutout shadow bug.

Update 1.45 changes:

- Added transparent Rim Lighting as requested, double/single sided versions and unlit.
- Added Rim Lighting and Forcefield example scenes.
- Changed various property display names for clearer understanding.

Update 1.5 changes:

- Converted shaders to support directional lightmaps and per-pixel light probes. The ones which support them can be found under Chickenlord/3.5/
-> Note: Detail Shaders don't support per-pixel light probes and translucency shaders don't support directional lightmaps.
- Added a new bumped specular shader which supports both diffuse indirect lighting and specular indirect highlights, using the new light probe system.

Update 1.51 changes:
- Added an outline glow effect (Requires Unity Pro!)
- Fixed a bug in the translucency shaders which would cause flickering lights.
- Added a translucency spread slider to the translucency shaders.
- Minor performance improvements to some of the cartoon shaders.
- Fixed a bug in the screenspace subsurface scattering effect, which created multiple unused cameras.
- Added a bumped diffuse detail version.

Please note: Screen space subsurface scattering is a heavy effect, requiring some performance!
In addition it is in an early stage, so there may occur bugs and/or issues. Please let me know if you're having trouble so i can fix it or help settings it up correctly.

 

Wish someone would release a bundle of 20+ really optimised mobile shaders looking good chickenlord, keep it up

 

I would love to write some cool mobile shaders. But sadly i don't have any mobile licenses (neither ios nor android), so i can't help you out with that one, sorry.

 

looking good ! specially the relief shader.

 

Hey everyone, its live on the asset store

 

The relief shader is lovely!

 

Thx. I'll probably release Update 1.1 in a few days, with a few new shaders, few bugifxes optimizations etc. Still working on it though and i wanna create a few more videos, to show whats changed and whats new.

 

Wow looks awesome!

The parallax specular mapping on the bricks with the self shadows remind me of Oblivion's shading. This shader will definitely get more AAA looking games out there. I have yet been able to get great looking parallax shaded walls with Unity..until now.

I'd like to see more video examples of the parallax specular mapping on the bricks I'm really interested in this.

Question though (which I don't think has been asked yet) does it require pro?

 

No, all shaders work with the Indie version as well because that is really important to me.

I guess i'll also add some information on how fast the different shaders are (with a standard setup). Don't know how this will exactly look like, because wiriting down just the number of instructions and texture lookups might not say anything to some people.

Oblivion btw used, as far as i know, parallax mapping in the original version and steep parallax mapping with Oblivion IV Mod.

 

Update 1.1 is released. Heres a list of the changes:

Skinshaders:

- Shader changed to run in 1 pass instead of 3, making it only 5% slower than bumped specular on my pc.
- Changed so it preserves the overall brightness and added a variable to adjust it.
- Added a configurable light traveling effect with lightcolor changes (the red glow on dark edges).
- Added adjustable specular light spreading to the subsurface layers.
- Added a simplified version for artists who don't wanna adjust lots of values, which is also slightly faster.
- Added a simple SM2 fallback.​

Self Shadowed Relief/Parallax Mapping:

- Fixed a bug which could cause holes in shadows for large height values.
- Added defines to make it easier to change the number of lighting/depth steps.​

- Added a Toonshader with variable shading steps and outline thickness.
- Added a Forcefieldshader.

 

Really nice shaders! Good work Chickenlord.

 

I'm loving that skin shader!!!

 

Thx. Glad to see you like it. Im going to do a video on whats changed in the skinshader and how to use today.

Again if you have any shaders you'd like to see in this package, let me know. Because i really want to add more stuff to this package, however i don't really know what people need. And i don't want to add shaders, which may not be useful for anyone.

 

Can I use this on a mobile?

 

I don't have an ios or android version so can't give you a definite answer on this, but i'll try make some assumptions based on the ammount of instructions and tex lookups:

The self shadowed parallax/relief mapping, cook-torrance and skin shaders would probably not run very fast on ios and android, especially not the advanced skins shader and the relief mapping shader. Sadly the performance delivered by current mobile GPUs is nowhere near modern desktop GPUs.
The fast skin variant, cartoon and forcefield shaders should run well on mobile because they have instruction and tex lookup number comparable to a normal bumped specular or parallax shader.

Again, theres no chance for me to test it, so those are only guesses. In any case they are GLES 2.0, so they won't work on older mobiles.

 

Show an webplayer with the some thinks used this shaders then we can talk about an buy of this.

 

Well I have an samsung galaxy s and I guess thats not a problem.
But its very interesting and im very close to buy it anyway.

 

Looks really good, you have all the shaders I've been looking for, I'll defiantly buy this when I get around to it.

 

Hi again,

delayed the tutroial video a bit in order to get the webplayer demo done. It might take some time to load, as its 30mb. You can also play around with a few variables a bit. In the skinshader demo you can only adjust the simplified skinshaders smoothness, but keep in mind the multlayer variant allows more artistic freedom on the setup. It's just not in the demo, because it would have been way too many sliders for a demo.
Forcefield and Toonshading aren't in it right now. I'm going to add them soon as well.

 

Would you by chance be able to ever make a shader creation tutorial for people like me that really just cant afford to buy anything atm?

 

self shadowed relief mapping looks AWESOME!!!

 

@okimoki thx alot

@gore23 i dont't think i have enough time to do this, although i'd would love. Jessy has quite a good tutorial on GLSL and i guess there should be some CG tutorials out there (of course both of these differ in some ways from unitys surface shaders). Or you could use strumpys editor as it requires mostly the mathematical knowledge.

 

Any chance to get shadows to be able to cast on the parallax and relief shaders?

 

Yes, i'm currently working on it because i realized this issue exists a few hours ago as well. This one strange issue though. So you don't have shadows on parallax and relief? Because right now, i do have shadows on the parallax version, but not on the relief mapping. Anyways, ill add shadow casting to those which are missing it. If it happens on other shaders as well, let me now.

 

Just submitted a quick bugfix, that should solve it. Let me know if it works for you as well and if there are any other issues.

Changes:
- Fixed shadow casting/receiving.
- Changed fast skinshader, because it didn't work as expected.

 

Yeah, the parallax shader is receiving shadows for me now, might have been my fault earlier, but I'm not getting any real time shadows on a plane using the relief shader. Maybe real time shadows aren't even possible with relief mapping, I'm not sure.

Anyway these are some really fantastic shaders and look great, thank you for making these.

 

Glad to see you like it, but these shadow issues are really bugging me. No shadows at all? Okay, so is it a point light? Because that might explain it and i could fix it.

 

absolutely nice shaders!

lars

 

Thx alot.
If anyone is interest: To solve the shadow issues in the relief mapping version, there'll be two version in the next update. One fully supporting shadows, one supporting silhouette clipping and shadow casting (but now receiving).

 

Hi,

Just submitted update 1.2. Here's the list fo changes:

- Added a non silhouette clipped relief mapping version, that receives shadows.
- Fixed a bug in the skinshaders causing wrong subsurface lighting for low attenuation values.
- Added a new Skinshader version (1.3), which needs less instructions, allows smoother looks and supports translucency.
- Added a translucency shader.
- Added a simple image based lighting shader, using a cubemap as lightsource. Number of light samples can be changed in the shader source. (Read the instructions!)


And a video of the new shaders

 

Awesome update!

 

Thx alot. Hope the bugs you had are all fixed now.
Currently working on a new webplayer version showing all the shaders.

 

Updated the webplayer demo. Also found a bug in the IBL shader which is getting fixed in the next version.

 

Nice. Unfortunately not for deferred mode

 

It works with defered mode.

 

Guess i have to clarify this. So "forced to be drawn in forward mode" doesn't mean, they do not work in deferred rendering mode. What it means is, these objects using my shaders don't get the deferred lighting benefits. Its btw the same with all transparent objects if you have a look at the documentation: "Deferred Lighting can't handle semi-transparent objects. Those are rendered using Forward Rendering."

So objects in your scene using the built in shaders(except transparents) are drawn with the deferred renderer. All objects using my shaders are drawn with the forward renderer. And afterwards they're mixed.

Exceptions are the toon, forcefield and the IBL shader. These three do support deferred rendering. The IBL completely ignores any lights in your scene, so it works. The toonshader's deferred variant does not look the same as the forward one though.

 

(bookmarked)

 

Hey Chickenlord,
Just bought your great package and I like it a lot...
I was wondering though, since you have a simple IBL shader in there, are you going to do a fake-HDR as well? (that would be awesome)

Take a look at this project (unity) this guy did in 2009: http://www.moonbytegames.com/visualization/
This would be awesome if you did some HDR lighting in your package as well, cause I can't find any HDR shaders anywhere!

And, how did you do the lighting on that 3D head model? That looks sweet, I have the same model but can't achieve that image quality! Any chance for a 3d scene or an instruction on how to achieve that kind of quality?

Thank you

 

Hey,

Glad to see you like it. Yeah you need a few more textures (nothing that takes a lot of painting skills). I guess i'm going to make a quick tutorial video today, to show how its done. Are you referring to the skinshader demo?

The IBL shader itself is already done in linear space and with 32bit precision(per color, not per pixel). But again, theres currently a bug with the light vector distribution that i know of and thats already fixed, but not uploaded. I guess for real HDR you'd have to wait for the Unity 3.x update containing it or hope gtpdz' plugin gets finished some day. I could try doing a post processing filter, though i doubt i get reasonable results which are close to real hdr. If i get some though, i'll let you know.
Until then, have you tried this one: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/98851-My-HDR-attempt.?highlight=hdr+tonemapping Haven't had a closer look at it, but it might be good.

 

Nice shader package, as soon as I have my internet connection I 'll buy this
Only a question: ALL the shaders work on all them features on indie version? ( I hope yes )

 

Chickenlord,
Thanks for the link buddy, I'll have a look

Yes, I'm talking about the skin shader demo, actually, the skin shader 1.3 image that you posted here and is also viewable on the asset store

I wish you'd include the complete thing in the next update
And the tutorial would be awesome (please add references so we can catch up)

 

@95KillerZ95
ALL shaders with all features work on indie as well, yes. Obviously there are some points were it helps to have the pro version. I.e the translucency on the skinshader, so you can set translucency on the face itself as well and not only on the ears. But yes, they work with indie.

@ Curious
I guess i'll ask the guys at ir-ltd if it would be okay to include the headscene as a demo. I'll post a link to the tutorial when its up.

 

Chickenlord,
I guess it is okay, I have seen a few demos using the same model from ir-ltd.net including 'Advanced Surface Shaders' on the asset store
Thanks for the tutorial mate, can't wait

 

I just wanted to ask what it felt like being the lord of all chickens. Do they bow and scrape before you? Sorry if it is off topic

 

Tutorial is up now: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBTB17hcbio
Sorry that it did take so long. Youtube took a very long time do process.
Please do note, that the colors in the video are not correct due to usual codec issues.

@hippocoder
Picture in my head made me laugh Theres actually a story behind my nick, based on a trip to the uk some years ago. But you can't understand it without knowledge of the german so language. But it basically doesn't have to do anything with chickens at all

 

Wow, thanks for the video tutorial, it is very informative
I specially liked the little trick for creating translucent maps

Can't wait for a new update
Thank mate

 

You are a golden god.

 

Hi, just wanted to let you know, the package is now available on Unitymagic as well.
http://www.unitymagic.com/shop/en/featured-products/chickens-shader-bundle.html

 

I like Forcefield shader. It's looking cool, and working on indie. Very good work!

 

Thx a lot guys. Again if you're missing anything, feel free to tell me, Currently working on the next update and i guess its gonna be ready in one or two days.

@ScienceFictionado
Could please explain this to me, because i don't seem to get what you're trying to tell me.