Post FX Studio v2.0 [ RELEASED ]

echoLogin PostFX Studio RELEASED v2.0 !
( works with unity 3.5.7 or higher )

Do you want heat distortion in your game? Damage overlays? Color correction? Bloom? Shockwaves?
All at the same time? Post FX Studio is the fastest and most flexible AAA full-screen-image post-processing solution for creating and using multiple, simultaneous post image effects in Unity!. It is designed from the ground up for speed and efficiency and was built to run flawlessly on all platforms, including mobile devices!*

Asset Store link

2.0 Readme.pdf

Webplayer Demos:
Poisoned Effect
Old Film Effect
Flash Bang Effect
Low Radiation Fog Effect
Mobile Bloom Effect
Retro Pixel CRT Effect ( also uses posterize, scanlines and rgb channel offset )
Space Demo ( has multiple effects )

Features:
- Works with Unity and Unity Pro!*
- Craft your own effects from the inspector.
- Have multiple effects per pass/blit for speed.
- Shaders and System adapt for speed.
- Have different shaders/effects per scene.
- Fade In, Sustain, Fade out any effect.
- Animation Curves on many options.
- Export your effects for backup or to share.
- Trigger effects from script or PlayMaker actions.
- Causes no garbage collection!
- Auto Detail Option to help maintain 60fps.
- Add masks to any effect.
- Add dissolves to any effect.
- Includes full source code.
- Custom code option lets you program your own effects without having to worry how the system works.
- Now has option to work with unityscript ( js )

Created by Scott Host ( aka echoLogin ), a professional game developer with over 20 years experience!

The kind of effects you can create with Post FX Studio are only limited by your imagination!

* Unity Pro provides the best performance.
When using the free version of Unity,
PostFX Studio uses ReadPixels in lieu of render textures, which is much slower and may not be suitable for mobile.

 

Congrats on getting it done Scott Lovely piece of work there.

 

Thanks !! was quite a journey !

I will be submitting v1.1 tonight. makes all features work with non-pro versions of unity.

 

Great, as soon 1.1 is submitted I'll get this!

 

Cool thanks !

 

Awesome, Ive been waiting for this one!

 

I've just read Fady's review... wow fady has only purchased your two products. Also he says "the developer offers the best support I've ever encountered"

already? you just released it lol

here's another one "performance blows Unity's built-in Image Effects out of the water"

Is there any chance you could post like for like performance stats?

Also can you give a few examples of what kind of effects you would combine in a game? I just can't think of any

 

Hes just a satisfied customer, that customer is the reason I made postfx, I originally was going to make it part of framework and i told him that so he bought framework, but it became its own thing over time. When i told him postfx was for sale finally he bought it instantly! Not to mention he was a beta tester of POSTFX and i did provide support for months to him and many others ( whats wrong with that ? )

( and if you look at my other asset you will see i have a ton of happy customers and all 5 star reviews )

The main thing that makes my POSTFX faster is you pick what effect options that goes into the final shader, then final shader contains only the code you need. Then using shader keywords the shader adapts to the effect options currently being executed. Most Effect options can also be combined to one operation per pixel even if 5 effects going off using that option. ( Traditional way of doing effects "Stack on each other" and each one causes an exponential slowdown. )

In a simple test i had a 2 pass test going on an iphone 3gs at 60fps ( in a real mobile game you would probably just use one pass )

Heres example of things that could combine in game ...

1) Level starts off in greyscale fades to color when level starts, with a flash of white when starting.

2) Having color correction or vignette with any other effects

3) Night vision with scanlines and static with white flashes from brightness and maybe blood damage overlay that fades

4) underwater = slow distortion with color tinting then maybe damage overlay for player.

5) overlay + color tinting + distortion for a poisoned effect.

possibilities are unlimited really

Going to be adding area effects next. so distortion anything could be limited to a areas of screen ( like heat over fire ) coloring only on certain areas. it will be flexable

 

Yeah, because he's been watching for Post FX for months, waiting to buy it. I know Scott Host, he is not an amateur hour schoolboy, but the programmer of Raptor, and old school stuff, his stuff is rock solid top quality. You don't say the same about Marmoset do you? Yet that's riddled with 1 asset 5 star scores. And it is also excellent.

Regarding the uses: Well on mobile or if you need speed you might want an old film fx, with custom overlays, scanlines, or just go for your own 70s cinema grindhouse look. You could use it for predator vision but want your own alien overlays, there's a lot of combinations I can think of.

 

To the people who have bought it so far, if you have questions add me to skype name == "echoLogin"

I prefer to do live support via Skype, it really helps make a better product over time by getting to know people and how they develop games.
( Not to mention the screenshare is invaluable when doing support or explaining things )

 

I'm the reviewer in question I purchased his CORE Framework looking for some fast shaders and like I said, his level of support is unprecedented. I've been testing the PostFX for a while now and made sure I purchased it the moment it was available. I get zero benefit from leaving echoLogin positive reviews and I'm standing by my claim that it is fast as hell and amazing. See for yourself

EDIT: Regarding performance vs Unity Image Effects - I don't have any actual figures for Unity's, but a vortex/distortion effect was virtually unusable on an iPhone 4, while the PostFX had it running full-screen 60fps.

 

echologin is it possible to create SSAO with this package too, or is it somehow included. I am mostly interested in this posteffect as it is more or less broken broken the default one provided by Unity.

 

SSAO is not in at this time,I do plan to add that eventually ( cant even guess at a timeframe right now )

-Scott

Update: this is my plan

get v1.1 this weekend
Add area effects ( v1.2 )
SSAO ( v1.3 )

 

The evidence that has been presented before me has shown that echologin AKA Scott does in fact provide the best support that helios has ever encountered,
and the jury unanimously has voted that Helios is not guilty of falsifying a review on the asset store.

"Heres example of things that could combine in game ..."

Thanks Scott for taking the time to explain

I'll probably purchase soon.

"Going to be adding area effects next. so distortion anything could be limited to a areas of screen ( like heat over fire ) coloring only on certain areas. it will be flexable"

That feature would be awesome Scott

Regards
Mohoe

 

Cool ! If you get it and have any questions just ask ( Skype is best for support if u have it )

 

Adding one last thing to v1.1 b4 submitting. ability to copy a pass from one render group to another using effect options or filters, would be able to do proper bloom/glow and effects like sin city w/o having occlusion problems.

EDIT: This new feature will make the possibilities endless, almost done with it

Could do things with this new feature im working on like pass only certain colors
to another RenderGroup to process different effects only on those colors.

Think sin city effect but the non grey areas also glow or have any of the other effects.
or crazy stylized tron glows.

 

Having GREAT success with this so far. Really pleased with the results.

I'd love to see some examples of use through code - turning effects off and on, etc.

 

Or I could try looking at the sample project and realise that everything I need is right there in the example scripts

 

nice ! perfect timing on a current project I am working.
purchased

 

Lol so your good to go ?

 

Cool thanks !!


Ill make more videos once i get 1.1 out ( 1.1 will add a ton of possibilities )

 

Yep - working like a charm and looking' pretty damn fancy

 

What's next scott? for updates?

 

Thanks ! a lot of hard work went into this

 

Well next im adding ability to send pass 1 or 2 before or after its processed to another render-group for further overlay processing.

This will allow many stylized glow/bloom effects, could also just pass certain colors to another pass for a sin city type effect than apply more effects to only those colors. the possibilities this new feature adds are exponential. could do things like blur dark colors and have lighter colors clear ( or other way around ) or do same for only certain colors.

Then in future updates SSAO and Area Effects.

 

Hello Scott,

Would it be possible to add Amplify Color and Amplify Motion to the asset?

You mentioned that it's easy to add any shader effect, but I'm not sure if these two would be so simple or possible to add. They have full feature free version on their site(watermarked). Would you be able to test it out please

Thanks Scott

 

You could amplify or tint color now by using multiply effect option with amplify value. You can desaturate by using gray scale with a fade value. Can also use a color correction ramp texture with multiply or any option ( All effect options can be combined into a single effect which makes the possibilities almost unlimited )

Motion blur is not in as of yet, tho it might be possible with some work using multiple rendergroups and layers.

Are you using unity free or pro ?

 

Just a small test with v1.1 to show u can pass the screen before or after pass1 effects have been applied to another group to be processed further.

In this case the glow only group is blurred, distorted and scanlines ( horz and vert ) added to just the glow.

v1.1 Test


is that flexible or what ? ( and as fast as can be, only does what is needed )

The good thing is there is a lot of room for more optimizations.

( will be submitting 1.1 in a day or 2, just want to make sure there r no bugs )

 

Hello Scott

Nice effects you got there

I'm using Unity Pro.

I've purchased Amplify color and Amplify motion and both of them are perfect. I think I will use them along side PostFX. It would be cool though if there was way to put both of them in one pass using PostFX.

did you download them?

The main thing I will use PostFX for is area distort. I've purchased Pro Flares and have added them to my missiles and they're great, but I think the one thing that is missing is a distort effect coming from the missiles flames. Do you think later when you have area effect it would be possible to do that?

 

Yes that is the plan but i cant guess on a timeframe ( to have heat exhaust from jets or guns )
I am thinking not only area effects but a kinda moving particle area system that distorts things in a direction.

The hardest part of this thing is keeping it working with unity free.

 

"Yes that is the plan but i cant guess on a timeframe ( to have heat exhaust from jets or guns )
I am thinking not only area effects but a kinda moving particle area system that distorts things in a direction."

Hmm I like the sound of that Scott

"The hardest part of this thing is keeping it working with unity free. "

My instant reaction is "Drop the freesters" but then again from a financial perspective it might not be wise.

Regards
Mohoe

 

The main reason i want it to work with free, is when i goto my macbook it doesn't have a unity pro ( my 2 activations are used by pc and imac ) The thinking is I cant be the only one that would like things to work even if not optimal speed on a 3rd or 4th machine.

 

Ok i just got v1.1 100% working with non Pro Versions of Unity ( Unity Free )
And also works with unity 3.5.7 now!

NOTE: it will be A LOT slower when not using Unity Pro. i will post 2 demos soon to show differences in speed.

Just going to test and then submit 1.1.

Lots of fixes and added ability to do glow/bloom effects

added a lot more effect options too this weekend

 

Hi,

In 99% of the time I use a stack of these shaders Crease, Glow, Color Correction and Antialiasing (Windows desktop only). Your tool can it improve my framerate and how?

Thanks.

 

What is "Crease" can you show me an image or video example ?

Just added more Glow features ( will be in next update )
Color Correction is in now ( can also use multiply which is faster )

As for AntiAliasing you can fake it by making screen smaller or bigger then the real size with blending on for a "fake" anti aliasing.

For example you could choose to divide screen size by 2 ( this will give almost 200% speed boost ) but then put the blend mode
to bilinear. So now you have a speed boost plus a little AA effect. ( can do same thing by making the render buffer bigger, but this will be slower )

The main thing with this is it can do multiple effects in one pass which means SPEED.

I will add more screenshots, docs and videos soon to explain more what this does and how.

 

@echologin...

I've run into a little issue. I'll post some screenshots when I'm home, but I thought I'd just get your brain ticking on it

I'm using Multiply, Texture Multiply, and Greyscale (as in fade in from). In the Editor and a Windows build, everything is great - all looks fine and as intended. When I build to iOS though, the game camera (that has the effect on it) is extremely dark - to the point where it's not useable. The UI all looks fine - as in, the screen brightness settings are all good.

Do you have any thoughts on why the iOS build might have an issue?

I'm going to try turning off the effects one at a time to see if I can narrow things down to a particular effect, but again - I thought I'd post the question in case it's something really obvious to you.

Thanks!


EDIT: Here's the screenshots. Exact same build - effects not tweaked in between.


Within the editor:


Running on an iPhone 5:

 

I think you have to increase the Amplify amount on the Multiply effect, at least thats what i did.

 

I'm trying it now with the setting maxed out at 8. This is WAY too bright in the editor, so I'll see how it looks built to the device.

If you need to tweak the settings between platforms, that's definitely something worth knowing.

 

Hmm... have tried a bunch of stuff. Eliminating effects, tweaking settings, etc. It's still too dark even maxed out at 8.

Will wait and see what Scott says - curious if there's a reason for the hard limit of 8 on that Amplify value. Seems like if I could just go a little higher, it would solve the problem.

In other news, I'd just like to say that I think echologin has done an amazing job on the interface for this thing. It's VERY well put together - so quick to add and remove effects and tweak settings. It's genuinely a joy to work with. Great stuff!

 

Im guessing its a variable precision problem in shader. ( There should not be a drastic difference from editor to device )

I just made limit of 8 because of precision of the variables in frag/pixel shader.

Can u try the game w/o any postfx see if it still gets darker on device ? also check if you have any lights with intensity above 2 ( this would get clamped at 2 with most mobile shaders ) So if light intensity was 6 it would be bright in editor then only 2 on device.

-Scott

 

Actually... try exporting to iphone with "Optimise mesh data" ticked off. I recall this caused various brightness issues at one point exporting to iOS with post fx myself (presumably it's optimising the vert colours in that case). But try it anyway. It's very little if any speed difference having it ticked off.

 

So im going to add this to Post FX Studio v1.1 before submitting

1) Choose frag/pixel shader precision
2) Ability to add more than one effect option of same type to a pass.
3) Option to check an effect option as always on ( Then it not use up the 6 total slots that toggle )

I was going to submit what i have now, but the UI keeps changing so id rather not waste time making new a walkthru pdf and video when i know its going to change again when i add the above stuff.

 

There's only a single Directional in the game. All the shaders in the game are CORE Framework - do they count as "most mobile shaders"?

Didn't know that about the cap of 2... that's kind of interesting.

I'll try that tonight. That one might be interesting as I'm pretty sure that it IS turned on currently.

 

yes when using fixed precision variables in frag shader, the maximum value for RGB or A is 2. so if you have a white light ( 1,1,1,1) intensity of 4 it would never get brighter than intensity of 2 ( at least with my shaders in core framework ). You can use the double light in frag option to increase brightness to 4, but that adds extra multiply in per pixel which sometimes is slower, sometimes no difference ( depending on device and shader )

 

Okay - that's good to know.

Thanks!

 

That hasn't fixed it, unfortunately

 

what is your light intensity set at ? and does it darken w/o using postfx at all ?

This next update will knock your socks off. i can see this becoming node based hybrid eventually.

 

Light intensity is 0.5

And it didn't darken BEFORE adding post fx, so I assume that's the cause. I'll try taking it out completely tonight. I'm at the "day job" right now so there's only so much sneaky personal work I can get away with

 

Ill send you beta of 1.1 when its ready, it has to be the precision thing ( anyway u can make some simple project to show this problem ? )

 

UPDATE: still working on update, its going to be a HUGE update, TONS of new options and many optimizations.

there is a bug in the COLOR CORRECT effect option ( will be fixed in 1.1 )

im not gonna try to guess at timeframe but i hope just a few more days.

If anyone who purchased it would like to beta test update PM ME with invoice number