[RELEASED] SECTR VIS: Dynamic Occlusion Culling

We're very excited to announce the release of SECTR VIS on the Unity Asset Store. SECTR VIS is a low memory, high performance, dynamic occlusion culling system that ensures you never waste time rendering what the player can’t see.

• Culls everything Unity can render.
• Fully dynamic, no static requirements.
• No tedious baking process.
• Initial setup of a scene takes just minutes.
• Simple and completely under your control.
• Supports occluders for large spaces.
• Hand optimized for mobile and console.

If you're interested in learning more about SECTR Vis, check out the brief video below, post a question here, check out our online demos, or email info@makecodenow.com.

[video=youtube_share;c8m3QGzMIWc]http://youtu.be/c8m3QGzMIWc

 

Just an FYI for anyone using VIS or COMPLETE, there may be a bug in Occluder Auto-Orientation code. I'm traveling and haven't had time to confirm it yet, but if you have any confusing behavior with Occluder auto-orientation, please email support@makecodenow.com. If I confirm the bug, I'll post a fix here and include the fix in the next update.

 

I just confirmed that there is a bug in the Occluder auto orientation code. The fix will be in the next point release later this week, but if anyone needs the fix sooner, just change line 96 of SECTR_Occluder.cs to the following:

Code (csharp):

1. Vector3 cameraVec = cameraPos - occluderPos;

 

FYI that there is a GUI bug in a Sector creation helper dialog. This will be fixed in 1.0.1 but you can fix it yourself replacing Line 48 of SECTR_CoreMenu.cs with this:

Code (csharp):

1. if(sharedChildren.Count > 0  EditorUtility.DisplayDialog("Overlap Warning", "Some object in this Sector overlap other Sectors, which may cause unexpected behavior. Would you like to make them Members instead of children?", "Yes", "No"))

 

FYI that SECTR 1.0.2 is now live in the Unity asset store.

SECTR 1.0.2 Release Notes
CORE
* Documentation updates and fixes.
* Fixed bug in Portal bounds computation.
* Significantly optimized Sector and Member update.
* Improved Sector creation logic in complex scenes.


VIS
* Fixed occluder auto-orientaton and reverse culling.
* Major optimizations to occluder culling.
* Occluders can occlude portals.

 

SECTR 1.0.3 is now live in the asset store. For folks interested in using SECTR for open world games, definitely check out the Beta Terrain GUI. It will auto create sectors and portals for your terrain, even split the terrain into multiple chunks for you. The GUI tool is in CORE, and STREAM is now aware of how to handle connected terrains. There's also a new Region Loader for easily streaming a volume around the player.

SECTR 1.0.3 Release Notes
CORE
* Beta Terrain Sectorization GUI. Ideal for setting up terrain-based open worlds.
* Additional optimizations in Member update.
* New Optimization chapter in CORE manual.


AUDIO
* Fixed a bug with max instances not properly limiting playback.
* Fixed leaking pool objects when reloading in editor.
* Fixed bug in application of fade out to HDR sources.
* Fixed Propagation Source attenuation beyond max range.
* Beta Audio System HUD.


VIS
* Fix for visibility traversal terminating early in complex scenes.
* Fixed bug with directional shadow caster bounds projection.
* Minor optimizations to portal and occluder early out logic.


STREAM
* Chunk properly handles unloads during loads and vice versa.
* Fixed duplication of extra components on Sector during export.
* Beta of new Region Loader. Ideal for open world streaming.
* Beta support for terrain grid streaming and stitching.
* Minor optimizations to Loader update logic.

 

FYI that SECTR 1.0.4 is now out. Major improvements are Beta PlayMaker support and improved Open World tools.

SECTR 1.0.4 Release Notes
CORE
* Beta PlayMaker Support.
* Fix a Unity warning when a Portal is created through the drawing interface.
* Beta Terrain GUI groups new objects when splitting terrain into pieces.
* Beta Terrain GUI can include static and/or dynamic objects during sectorization.


VIS
* Beta PlayMaker Support

 

Can you explain the workflow for using VIS on a terrain? Every time I try, Unity crashes. Here are my steps.

1. Create a terrain

2. SECTR/Terrain (BETA)

3. Split the terrain 4x4

4. When I add a VIS culling camera, Unity crashes.

Have I forgotten to include something?

 

That's exactly how it's supposed to work. I think I can repro the bug here. You said that Unity crashes, but on my machine it actually hangs/locks up. Is that what you are seeing?

 

Ok, this is a real bug and I just fixed it.

To anyone affected by this, simply delete the following lines from SECTR/Code/Vis/Scripts/SECTR_CullingCamera.cs:

Code (csharp):

1. if(currentNode.portal)
2. {
3.     visitedPortals.Remove(currentNode.portal);
4. }
5.  

If you don't want to modify the code yourself, email support@makecodenow.com and I'll send you a code patch.

PS - For terrain occlusion culling to work, make sure to setup an invisible layer as described in the VIS docs.

 

Thanks for the quick reply. Yes, Unity is licking up not crashing.

What I really want to do is streaming of terrain chunks. Any advice?

 

OK. I got streaming to work. I guess I was thinking that I need occlusion and streaming of terrain. Maybe stream is enough.

 

Awesome! If you're not using it already, check out Region Loader for streaming terrains. It's pretty helpful.

As for Streaming vs Culling, they are designed to work together. You can think of Streaming as a kind of very coarse culling, and of course it also saves memory. Culling is useful when you want to do more fine grained rendering optimizations on top of the data that needs to be loaded. In exterior games, usually you rely mostly on streaming and then just make judicious use of Occluders where you can to simply and quickly cull objects behind large objects like mountains, buildings, etc.

 

SECTR 1.0.5 is out and fixes two critical issues, one of which is a workaround for a Unity bug that can cause save game corruption. Everyone should get this fix ASAP.

SECTR 1.0.5 Release notes
CORE
* Workaround for critical serialization bug that could cause scene file corruption when creating portals in projects with mixed/binary serialization.

VIS
* Fix bug that could cause infinite loops/hangs in scenes with a lot of pass-through portals (i.e. sectorized terrains).

 

SECTR 1.0.6 is now available on the Unity Asset Store. This version fixes a critical VIS bug, so if you have VIS you definitely want this ASAP. Also includes some UI related fixes.

SECTR 1.0.6 Release Notes
CORE
* Fix some issues with multi-selection and custom inspectors.
* Properly orient portals created by Terrain window.

VIS
* Properly fix portal traversal culling bug introduced in 1.0.5. Now traversal works for all known portal types and scene configurations.

 

I'm happy to announce that SECTR COMPLETE is part of the May Madness sale for 50% off on the Unity Asset Store! We've reduced the price of the individual SECTR modules (AUDIO, STREAM, VIS) to match.

There's also a new version of SECTR to celebrate this sale. 1.0.7 is likely to be the last update before 1.1.0, which will be the same code but with additional demos showing off the new features that have come online since 1.0.0.

SECTR 1.0.7 Release Notes
CORE
* Added optional PortalDetermined mode to Member. When set to true, Sector membership will only change when the object passes through a Portal (instead of whenever it enters a Sector Bounds). Ideal for games with very complex/concave scenes.

 

SECTR 1.0.9 is out! Major improvements include better terrain sectorization and some other Core bugfixes.

SECTR 1.0.9 Release Notes
CORE
* Terrain window supports automatic Sectorization of Terrain Composer created terrain grids.
* Fix crash splitting terrains with trees in the Terrain window.
* Sectors no longer include Particle Systems in their bounds computation as they are too dynamic to be reliable. Also fixes issues where sometimes Sector would expand to include the origin due to a particle returning an invalid Bounds.
* Custom inspector class updated to more perfectly match behavior of default inspector, including support serializable, private, non-hide-in-inspector variables.
* Updated documentation with more information about advanced bounds logic and the new portal determined membership mode.

 

SECTR 1.0.10 is out. Contains some Core bug fixes.

SECTR 1.0.10 Release Notes
CORE
* Added documentation about working with Terrain Window to CORE Manual.
* Fix bug where missing null check in Member could cause crashes on some platforms (like iOS).
* Fix bug where results from Portal’s viewport Sector selection/swap GUI would be erased in play mode when performed on a Portal in a Prefab when the user pressed Play.

 

For folks interested in procedurally created dungeons and SECTR, the excellent DunGen just added support for SECTR VIS. If you have both products, simply enable a #define in DunGen and you're off to the races!

 

SECTR 1.0.11 is now out. This is one of the biggest updates to VIS and includes a brand new LOD system and major optimizations to culling, including support for multi-threaded culling (ideal for complex scenes on multi-CPU systems).

SECTR 1.0.11 Release Notes
CORE
* Sectors created by the Terrain window are now parented above the Terrain rather than being added to the same object. Fixes issues with certain 3rd party scripts expecting to be on the same object as the terrain.
* Fixed seams appearing between terrains when using the split feature of the Terrain Window.
* Guard against null lights in the baked only lights table.
* Fixed PlayMaker integration compile issues in Unity 4.5.

VIS
* Band new LOD system for more efficient rendering in open world games. Just add SECTR_LOD component. See VIS manual for more details.
* Major optimization pass on occlusion culling. Includes streamlining of core routines as well as support for multi-threaded culling. See VIS manual for more info on threaded culling.
* Culler component is now deprecated and no longer necessary. To manually control culling behavior, simply use the new attributes on Member and Sector. Previously added Cullers will continue to behave appropriately.
* Fixed PlayMaker integration compile issues in Unity 4.5.

 

Are there any benefits in using your brand new LOD system instead of the LOD group system already present in Unity Pro?

 

VIS LOD supports things other than just Renderers and arbitrary numbers of LODs. VIS LODs are guaranteed to work with VIS culling, which Pro LODs are not. Also, I think the VIS LOD GUI is much easier to use.

 

Thank you for your fast reply! I have a few more things if you don't mind.

First, it looks like you forgot to add AddComponentMenu for SECTR LOD, because I don't see anything.

I would also like to know something about the Culling Camera component. How should I implement this when using two cameras simultaneously, because I am using this for an Oculus Rift project. Would just adding it to one of the cameras be enough?

 

No prob! Thanks for the note about the missing LOD menu thing. I'm adding that now...

Regarding Occulus, the correct solution is to add a culling camera component to both cameras. However, you may be able to get away with just the first one because of a bug in how Unity handles custom culling. I know that Headtrip games is using VIS w/ Occulus on iO Moon. I just emailed him to see if he can comment on what works for him.

 

Hello,
I actually only have the culling camera on my Right camera, works well. BUT if it's incorrect, I'll add it to the left as well!
Headtrip

 

SECTR 1.0.11a Release Notes

VIS
* Always update LODs even if there are no Sectors.
* Add LOD entry to the SECTR Create menu.

 

I just got the update with LODs, very glad to see that! But two questions:

1) I don't see how to add the LOD component to an object. EDIT: Oops, was looking in the Component Menu...just found it in the Game Object menu.

2) How do you recommend setting up Occluders on a building? Ideally (in my mind, at least), it would use a cube, since that matches the general shape of the building.....I know I can have the occluder orient to face the camera, which is fine for a circular column, but for a square or rectangular building, it won't be accurate -- I'd have to size it to the smallest dimension. Is that just the way it has to work?

3) Oh, and do you still plan to add LOD to SECTR Streaming? That would be a huge help for my project.

thanks!
Dave

 

1) Ok, cool! Glad it works for you.

2) The usual best solution would be a single occluder with auto-orient around y. As you say that describes a cylinder which inscribes the building, but often that's good enough. If the building is a great occluder and the cylinder trick doesn't work, then you can make one occluder for each side.

3) It's already there! Check out the Proxy feature in the Chunk component. It allows you to specify (or create) a mesh that will appear when the Chunk is unloaded, and disappear when it's loaded.

PS - what game is this for? I'm compiling a list at sectr.co/games.

 

Ah, great! But I don't see anything about Proxies in the manual -- is that not added yet? And what do you mean by "create" -- is there a way to generate an LOD mesh from a sector? That would be awesome (but sounds quite difficult)!

We're using this in a new version of our game WolfQuest, for iPad and Android tablets.

 

Yeah, Proxies are a brand new feature. I forgot to include the updated Stream manual in 1.0.11, but you can download the latest version from the site. To create a proxy, just export a sector for streaming, import it, and then the Chunk inspector will show a tool that will allow you to make a new proxy mesh from the sub meshes (or you can just specify a mesh you made of your own).

 

Hey,

So I've been experimenting with SECTR VIS tonight and I wanted to ask some questions.

Here's my test scenario, just so you know what I'm doing:

I set up a simple test scene with 4 terrain tiles (each under a SECTR component) with basically nothing on it, just flat textured terrain tiles connected together.

I added my player prefab and then attached the VIS culling component to my player's camera

I then placed a building prefab I use in one of my maps which is made up of a building exterior shell with an interior fully furnished with props/meshes/colliders of all kinds.

I added a SECTR to the building root, which encompasses the entire building. Then I added a portal to the entrance to the building. I managed to get the props inside the building culling correctly and tested out the group vs individual culling.

I then made 4 more copies of this building and placed them along a line, each behind the original (each approx 300k tris, incl child meshes/props). So total all buildings equal out to about 1.2M tris on screen at a time.

I created occluders and placed them so that the front building occluded all the other back buildings (checked the editor/stats and saw the tri count/buildings go down)

So based on this my questions are:

1) I noticed that I was only able to get performance to be equal to a non-occluded test case without the vis component by turning off all my batching and then placing enough triangles on screen to equal out to about 1.2M verts. If I turned on batching, my FPS without culling on were drastically better than with culling enabled. Is there a "sweet spot" so to speak where the system shines in terms of performance? I'm trying to gauge the right time to use it since my scenes may be a mix of large outdoors and indoor sections and I'm trying to determine the best workflow for this.

2) I looked all over the docs I think and didn't find an answer to this. Is there any component out of the box to toggle culling on/off at will, akin to SECTR STREAM with the neighbor/door loader scripts?

I created a system similar to SECTR VIS for my procedural indoor levels before SECTR was out (and it works nicely so I plan to keep it, but I did not intend to use it for everything) and one way I handle culling is by using doors in my level. When you open a door it triggers a render command for all the components within the next room, and turns off all the renderers to rooms directlty adjacent to the room I'm in. Again, similar to your neighbors approach to STREAM. I think it would be useful for VIS to have an easy to use component that allows you to specify say, a portal you can walk through that triggers any culled objects in a Sector to render. Perhaps just take the STREAM components and make them toggle culling on/off instead of loading/unloading.

3) Is there some built in way to toggle how often the PreCull call is made? I'm guessing the majority of the performance drain is coming from culling all objects each frame but I'm wondering if you may still be able to get decent results by doing it every other frame or every X time interval instead of every frame. So slow plodding moving games may be able to get away with updating the culling every second, but fast paced Quake3 type games may require it every frame as it is right now.

4) It looks like Terrains may not be properly culled at the moment. I tried many times to get the culling working on them with this simple test case (Used the Terrain tool and had it create Sectors/Portals automatically for the terrains only, set the layer on my camera to an invisible/culled layer on my camera mask) but had no luck. In the latest Asset Store version I didn't notice a test scene under Vis that uses terrains, so I had no way of checking if I missed a step perhaps. Am I doing something wrong or could there perhaps be a bug? I'm thinking I'm going to Stream my terrain tiles but still, it would be nice to make sure VIS is working on them in case I ever need it to.

Anyways I would love to hear your thoughts on this. I'm still learning the in's and out's of the system so please let me know if I'm getting anything wrong.

 

Hey! Lots more good questions. Happy to answer them.

0) Occluders are awesome but they are expensive. Use them judiciously, usually only on really big objects that block a lot of stuff. If your buildings have entry portals plus you load the interiors only when you are close, that may be more than sufficient and more efficient than occluders.

1) SECTR VIS CPU cost is pretty much directly proportional to the number of objects culled. By default, Sectors will cull each child individually while Member's will cull as a group. You can override this default behavior by setting the Child Culling property on Sector/Member. As a test, I suggest you set all Sectors to Group Child Culling and see how the CPU time is. In general, though, it just requires iteration and there's no guarantee that VIS will always be a CPU win in all scenes on all computers. Unfortunately.

2a) Just disable the culling camera component to disable culling

2b) You can set the Closed Portal Flag and VIS will ignore all objects on the other side. The included Door component can do this or you can do it yourself. If you combine that with Group loading, you'll get a view-accurate version of what you're asking about.

3) Right now the system assumes one PreCall per frame. Part of that is to allow multi-camera setups (which should work now but for a Unity bug) but it's also to avoid some of the really gross stuff that you get into when you try to take advantage of temporal coherence in occlusion culling. The tendency is to layer hack upon hack and it makes things really messy. It would make the product much harder to maintain and support, and so far I've not seen a scene that couldn't be fixed with better group culling, static flags, etc.

4) Terrains can be culled but they require a special setup because of Unity junk. There's a special section in the VIS manual on how to set them up for culling, and when it works you won't see it work in the PiP display, but you will see it work if you watch the stats in the Unity Profiler. Note that terrains also have very large bounding boxes so they may be "visible" according to the bounds even when the raw polys seem like they are not visible.

 

SECTR COMPLETE is on sale now for 50% off as part of the UAS August Madness sale. Also, SECTR 1.1.0 is out, just in time for the sale.

SECTR 1.1.0 Release Notes
CORE
* Added new Quick Start panel including live information on news, sales, and updates as well as quick links to useful videos, docs, and support.
* Make sure to never double-add Sectors for Portal Determined Members.
* Removed legacy Unity 3.5 code, added initial compatibility code for Unity 5.

VIS
* Disable culling threads at compile time on Win Phone 8 where the threading API is not supported.

 

SECTR looks like it could be useful, but I just have a quick question about how it works.
Does SECTR VIS automatically split meshes across sectors bounds? And does it require that the sectors which touch other sectors be coplanar and not overlap?

I've worked with sector-based culling in FPS games and usually we'd place the sectors, anywhere 2 sectors touch, a portal is made (like a hallway connecting to a larger room). The level meshes were also automatically split along the sector's bounds so that culling is precise (just static geometry is split)... this means that whatever is outside a sector is never rendered since the meshes have been clipped to the sectors.

 

Hey, just bought SECTR Complete today on a whim and I've managed to get VIS working alright but I've run into a few technical limitations and I'd just like to make sure it's not just me being stupid, if you've got time to answer a few questions about your system that'd be awesome.

I'm going for a proc-gen world created at run-time (love that your systems support that, by the way), when I stick a point light in with shadows in a scene being actively culled by VIS, when VIS culls an object, the shadow it's casting gets culled also. The most clear example I can give is standing in a shadow cast by a wall, only to look away from a wall and the shadow disappears along with the wall when it's culled. (This is usually most visible when an object is culled due to leaving the camera frustum btw)

I understand there's a way around this with Directional Lights via utilizing a few attributes on SECTR Core's 'Sector' and I've got that to work, but does that mean that directional lights are the only shadow-casting lights I can use in a scene with VIS without encountering the aforementioned problem? Totally cool if so, I just need to rethink my lighting/shadow strategy, but I thought I'd ask just in case.

Slightly off topic, but if there isn't a solution to this problem, any advice on where I should begin looking for a solution to lighting/shadows for a proc-gen environment?

Also thanks man, awesome product.
of course, if any extra information is required I'd be more than happy to provide it, though I'm off for the night so apologies if it's a little late.

 

VIS does not split meshes* but Sector membership is not exclusive (if you add a Member component) and Sectors can overlap, be nested, etc.

Portals are user created either using an included drawing tool or by using any planar convex mesh.

VIS tries to practice "first, do no harm" so objects not a child of a Sector or Member will be unaffected by culling.

* There is a custom tool for splitting Terrain.

 

Point and spot light shadows should work correctly with culling. I spent a lot of time making sure this exact case works properly.

Is your light a child of a Sector or does it have Member component? If not, can you try adding a member component to the light?

 

Exciting news! SECTR is a technical achievement finalist in the 2014 Unity Awards! If you like SECTR, please take a moment to vote for it!

 

Hey again,

I fixed the problem as per your advice, thanks for the help man
If you're at all interested in specific details, doing what you said didn't help to begin with until I created a directional light and attached it to the Dir Shadow Caster of my Sector, that's what caused all to be well for me, even if I deleted it afterwards.

Also, voted for Sectr for the Unity awards (first time) but it took me a Google search to find it, that link above might have intended to be this one? Forgive me if not!

Once again, thanks!

 

Glad you got it fixed. Not sure why the dir caster was necessary temporarily. It shouldn't be so lmk if you see that again or have other insights into the cause of the bug. Hopefully it'll just work though

 

Your videos make it seem like that only thing you need to get it working is to add the camera script. But a tutorial about setting up sectors, portals, and occluders would be nice.

 

The Core video shows how to setup Sectors and Portals. I agree that I need videos for more advanced stuff like occluders, LODs, etc.

 

FYI that I just discovered that this actually was a bug and so I just fixed it. It'll be part of the next update in a day or so, but if you need it sooner, email support@makecodenow.com.

 

SECTR 1.1.1 is now live in the UAS, just in time for the end of the August Madness sale. It includes some bug fixes, including the shadow popping bug described by LW. Also includes a new culling mode for 2D and Iso games or any game where the camera is outside of the scene.

 

SECTR 1.1.2 is now live in the asset store. Includes mostly bugfixes for CORE and VIS.

 

SECTR 1.1.3 is now live on the UAS. Includes VIS optimizations and some bug fixes.

 

I have a question about the "make proxy" tool - When I click "make proxy mesh" Unity asks me to first select a mesh to be made into a proxy. How am I supposed to do that, and still click the button, which is a part of the parent component? I'm trying this on a small terrain mesh that's been split into chunks, if that makes a difference.

 

You check the button next to the mesh in the hierarchy in the inspector. All checked meshes will be used to make the proxy.

PS - in the future please post STREAM questions in STREAM or COMPLETE forums.

 

Also, the proxy only works on regular mesh objects, not Unity terrain. Unity makes it very hard to get at some of the data I would want to properly support terrain.

 

SECTR 1.1.4 is now out on the UAS. Includes AUDIO improvements, lots of bug fixes, and early Unity 5 compatibility!