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Sci-Fi Effects 2.02 BETA! New Modular Features and FREE Update

Discussion in 'Assets and Asset Store' started by s7, Dec 6, 2014.

  1. observerOne

    observerOne

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    Amazing update! is there anyway to get the nebula shader to work on android?
     
    s7 likes this.
  2. s7

    s7

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    Thanks! :D

    Try commenting this three lines in the shader source:

    #pragma only_renderers opengl d3d9 d3d11
    #pragma glsl
    #pragma target 3.0

    I'll take a more detailed look and apply nescessary fixes for the mobile platform soon.
     
  3. observerOne

    observerOne

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    Thanks for the quick response. It does render now but at a cost of 45 fps. Ill wait till you have something more mobile friendly. It all looks amazing though, great job.
     
  4. Steve-Tack

    Steve-Tack

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    Just pulled down the update - NICE!

    I'm wondering what the best approach would be to "fade in" the warp tunnel elements. It looks like ramping the alpha value for the Tint Color in the "Warp Tunnel" shader (warp_tunnel_001 material) from zero would work for the tunnel itself and ramping up the "Edge Mask Power" values in Nebula_Tunnel_Example_Blue_001 and 002 from zero to their proper values would work?
     
  5. s7

    s7

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    Cheers :D Yep, that should do.
     
  6. uds

    uds

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    @s7 really nice update!
    and thanks a lot for the red laser textures ;)
     
  7. s7

    s7

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    Enjoy it! I have started working on the next features update for the Sci-Fi Effects: missiles, thrusters, wormhole, scanner rays effect. Will see if the volumetric explosions fits in. Also, there is something else coming along, and hopefully, I will make an announcement soon :D
     
  8. ZJP

    ZJP

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    Yeah.. I bought this. May be an inspiration.
    I'm interested in everything you do. This adds consistency to my project to have a 'single asset provider'. ;)
    I only hope that you will not abandon your products one day. :(
     
  9. s7

    s7

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    Thanks. This is the right job for me where I can focus on things I like. So why should I ever abandon products I have invested my time into? By the way, I quit my day job and now working full time :D
     
    rushbier likes this.
  10. ZJP

    ZJP

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    Oh , sincerely good luck. :cool:
     
    s7 and hopeful like this.
  11. imaginationrabbit

    imaginationrabbit

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    Thanks for the awesome new effects! I was just about to upgrade to the newest version- is there any special procedure needed in order to do it correctly? Or just delete the old version and import the new one? Thanks!
     
  12. s7

    s7

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    Thanks a lot :)

    Thank you! I try to keep the upgrade process as painless as possible by preserving the existing structure. The last update was additive, but make sure to backup just in case. For example, if you never changed anything inside the Sci-Fi Effect folder, its fine to import a new one replacing the existing files. But if you did some changes, deleting or overwriting the previous version might cause some damage to your project. When in doubt, best way is to duplicate the project folder, and test if everything is in place after the upgrade (works for me!)
     
  13. Zaddo67

    Zaddo67

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    I stumbled onto this thread and after playing with the demo jumped at the discounted $25 price for this asset.

    Unfortunately when I got to the Asset it was $35. I was bit disappointing, but, hey, still looks great value @ $35, so I purchased.

    I just suggest you update the initial post on this thread with the current price ;)
     
  14. s7

    s7

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    Sorry for the inconvenience. We are getting completely smashed by the amount of work over the past few days. Theres a new update I'm working on at the moment, as well as the completely new asset being prepared by the other person recently joined the team. The good thing is we are really excited about how it goes and hope to make an update as soon as theres something worthy to show off.

    Also please check your PM ;)
     
    Zaddo67 likes this.
  15. Steve-Tack

    Steve-Tack

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    Too. Much. Awesome. I may pass out. :D

    On the scanner effect, if you haven't planned it already, it'd be super useful to have a controllable falloff (or "range").

    What I'd like to use it for is a visual to show the range of enemy ship's scanning for cloaked ships. So it'd be the equivalent of Metal Gear Solid where you can see the vision cone of guards on patrol. Though in this case, it'd be a plane that's sweeping back and forth.

    That's super non-realistic of course (in more ways than one!), but it'd be a helpful cue to the player. The idea is that if the player cloaks, they can sneak past enemies, but some enemies have scanners that can see through the cloak.
     
    s7 likes this.
  16. s7

    s7

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    Thanks for the tip! Yeah I will make sure to implement such controls so its easy to fade or customize in either way.
     
  17. Bradamante

    Bradamante

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    I purchased v1.0 of this asset. I now started to incorporate them into my project and started reading your code. Yes, it took me quite some hours to move your particle effects into my weapons system. And I haven't even started importing assets that were added with v1.1. But I expected that. Every Unity Store asset needs adaption more or less.

    The quality of everything is top notch. As I've mailed you, especially the sounds are great. Imphenzia's sound pack has better price/value, but his sounds have similar problems like so my sound packs. Weapons and explosions sound too weak, too scratchy, too high-pitched. Lacks a bass component which your sounds have.

    In my opinion your strength is media production, coding not so much. You did not provide a real, flexible weapon system. Instead your code just presents the assets. Reminds me of this.

    And that's good. There will always be newbie Unity users who purchase your asset and will you give a low rating since they are disappointed that this isn't just a drag&drop weapons solution. And yes, Unity asset store creators are deadly afraid of this effect. And since the Unity people haven't shown any indication (since I started using Unity) to get away from this ratings fixation you and others will feel tempted to provide better code.

    In my opinion you shouldn't. Looking at your effects, your planets and your sounds I'd say stick to media production. Imphenzia's planet package doesn't seem to be PBR ready yet so you might gain some ground here.

    My wishlist? Explosions and weapon effects that look more "alien". You got the orange gasoline explosion look covered, but what about colorful, exotic explosions and weapon effects? Might also be true for alien weapon sounds.

    As ZJP mentioned above, consistency is a major problem with building a Unity game from asset store items. That means, that once you as a media provider start delivering quality stuff (as you have) you will get a certain lock-in effect.
     
    Last edited: Mar 1, 2015
    s7 likes this.
  18. s7

    s7

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    First of all I want to thank you for posting this. I really appreciate your feedback, and what you have said with your post, basically reflects my own view of this business in general.

    The goal of this pack is to provide more of a visual part, rather than the drag and drop solution or a complete weapon system. I understand clearly, that I wont be able to suit and fit every other project needs with tons of modular code, while trying to come up with a universal solution.

    Instead, I decided to spend more time on visuals, and leave the code in a form of a quick dirty example to show the general idea. The main reason for this is that most developers use their custom systems or third party assets found on the Asset Store. They know how to approach a problem in their own scenario much better than me.

    I do have plans on adding more and more features to this pack, but I would rather provide the new additions with a quick examples, rather than a universal script which 'suits them all' when appropriate.

    The scripts are not the key feature of the package. But still, the samples give the viewer the instant perspective on what they can achieve. Also, they can always refer to it when in doubt. Someone might even get a better idea on how to implement something very similar for their own project by just looking at it. I belive the scripts do exactly what they should.

    I have noted your suggestions. As I keep working on improving current assets and developing new features, I welcome everyone to provide fresh ideas and feedback.

    Once again, thank you for your time and review.
     
  19. Steve-Tack

    Steve-Tack

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    On the topic of explosions, what would be nice too is some more of the orange fireball ones for variety. It might be cool to have one or more of those that would be appropriate for huge explosions, like to use when destroying capital ships.
     
  20. karmatha

    karmatha

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    I'm kinda on a tight budget, and I'm actually only interested in the holographic effect. Would you consider selling this separately?
     
  21. Maxii

    Maxii

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    Looks like a great product so I just purchased. A couple of minor points, and then a more significant issue:

    1. The warning on the solo gun is still present - aka normal map vs texture. I manually changed it from normal to texture as you said, but whatever 'fix' you mentioned you were going to make apparently didn't happen.
    2. The first post on this thread says v 1.2 is now available. I take it you mean v1.1 which is what I just bought?

    The biggee:
    3. I don't have UnityPro. I'm using the free version - 4.6.3. You did mention in the notes that distortion shaders require unity pro. However, I'm finding that hardly any of the new material coming with 1.1 works with the free version. I get the error (HDR RenderTexture format not supported on this platform) on every scene except the nebula example, including the turret demo. While I can't see any visual problem in the turret demo due to the warning, all the rest show alot of pink, which I think refers to the absence of a usable texture?

    Also, obviously I wasn't able to change to linear color space as that requires DeferredLighting mode which requires Unity pro. Also obviously, I'm not an artist. I'm a programmer.

    Is what I've described above what you expect to happen or is there something else in the setup I've missed?

    Update: Flames appears to be a primary texture problem. Its the flamethrower in the turret demo and also the flames I think in the effects preview (explosions), and also the flames in the burnout examples.
     
    Last edited: Mar 2, 2015
  22. s7

    s7

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    1. Please ignore the warning and do not convert. You will see this once when you import and this is taking more time to investigate unfortunately.

    2. Thanks for pointing out. That one is fixed already :D

    3. Select your main camera and turn off HDR to remove the warning. The pink squares indicate that you cannot use the heat shader (Pro feature only). Search for 'blast' and 'heat' using the hierarchy search field and disable the particle systems you have in scene starting with specified names. You might want to update the modified prefab as well.

    Linear color space is not available in Unity Free so you can ignore this step. Theres a gamma color space prefabs I have put when a significant difference in visual appearence might become more noticable.

    Thanks for making a purchase and I hope you enjoy it!
     
    Last edited: Mar 2, 2015
  23. s7

    s7

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    Unfortunately the effect you have mentioned is not available for sale as a separate package.
     
  24. s7

    s7

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    The bigger the better :D Ok but I cant give you an ETA on those. Just wondering, have you tried scaling the existing explosion with particle scale script you have included in there?
     
  25. Maxii

    Maxii

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    Thanks! That seemed to solve most of the issues.

    I'm still getting material "no property" errors from the Burnout_Heat_001 material in the project view.

    Also, what is supposed to happen with the debris field example? I vaguely see a debris field (low light) but there is nothing dynamically happening in the example besides the cubes dropping to the floor from gravity. I remember seeing a demo you made available in this thread that had the camera moving through it...

    A recommendation: I'm sure I'm not the first who doesn't yet have UnityPro. I suggest you add in a "import this package if you don't have unity pro" Readme so others don't encounter this 'first impression' gotcha. I've seen that done in other assets to accommodate different versions of unity.
     
  26. s7

    s7

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    It's the same story with the burnout heat as it uses the same heat shader. Make sure to suppress or remove those heat materials so you get no more warning or errors.

    Debris field allows you to fade the field based on camera distance. Try moving your camera throught the field and you will instantly notice the effect. This might get usefull when, for example, you enter a dense asteroid field, but you dont want to show the effect at greater distances.

    Thanks its a great suggestion and might get realy helpful for Unity Free users. But lets just see how the Special Event goes before making any promises ;)
     
  27. Steve-Tack

    Steve-Tack

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    I haven't yet, but I'm sure it would work. If you do end up adding more explosions, it'd be convenient to keep the "base" sizes similar so that it'd be possible to swap them in and out without messing with the scaling too much. I suppose it's less of a size thing as it is a variety thing. There's certainly no rush from my point of view. I'm a *long* way from finishing my game. :)
     
  28. s7

    s7

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    Awesome news about Unity 5 going free! Huge thanks to Unity Team for all the unlocked features!

    How do you feel about trying Sci-Fi Effects with this free key?
    *KEY REDEEMED*​
     
    Last edited: Mar 6, 2015
  29. karmatha

    karmatha

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    Voucher does not seem to be valid? Is that because it is already redeemed?
     
  30. s7

    s7

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    Not sure why this is happening. But I can see the key in my publishers administration and it looks exactly the same as in my previous post. Also the key seems to be valid as it appears there were no redeem.
     
  31. karmatha

    karmatha

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    That's weird. Maybe something is wrong on Unity's end. I am getting

    "The voucher code is not valid."

    even though I paste the code in exactly. Checked it with a friend and he got the same message.
     
    Last edited: Mar 4, 2015
  32. s7

    s7

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    Please check your PM.
     
  33. karmatha

    karmatha

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    It worked! Awesome. Thank you so much!
     
  34. s7

    s7

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    A glimpse at the new missile models!

    Here they are, coming nicely for the next update. The meshes are in range of 350-500 tris with additional LOD level shrinked to 60%. Textures include diffuse with specular in alpha, normals and glow map.

    Aside from that.. I have progressed with the new shader which has a very nice looking turbulent effect. Things are moving quite rapidly these days... well.. stay tuned!




     
    Steve-Tack likes this.
  35. ZJP

    ZJP

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    Oh yeah!!!. :cool:
     
  36. Steve-Tack

    Steve-Tack

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    Wow! It's kind of a shame, since most of the time in my game you wouldn't really see the missile mesh (they move fast).

    Any chance of including the original PSD files for the textures? I've had some fun manipulating some textures that came with a purchased space ship pack, converting them to PBR for use in the Unity 5 standard shader. By using the Photoshop layers with white/black/different shades of gray I was able to create new albedo, metal, smoothness, and emissive maps. I also used Substance Designer to generate an AO map.

    It would be amazing to someday also have individual weapon barrel models in the exact style of those missiles and/or your turret model. In my game, I mostly have single, fixed weapon barrels with a few turrets (that are mostly single barreled).
     
  37. s7

    s7

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    Actually I'm looking into creating PBR materials to put along with the current legacy version I have at the moment. Also the turret needs to be updated and I might consider adding new parts to it ;)
     
  38. Steve-Tack

    Steve-Tack

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    Yeah!
     
  39. Exeneva

    Exeneva

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    s7, do you take requests? This one shouldn't be too difficult, I hope?

    Your shaders/materials are very high quality, but what I'm looking for is not a beam but a curved trail.
    For example, here is your blue plasma beam:


    It looks gorgeous, but I need a trail that can be curved, not a line. Would it be possible to add curved versions of your beams to the asset?
     
  40. s7

    s7

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    Hey Exeneva. Thank you I appreciate that. Would you mind sending me more detailed email at support@forge3d.com and I will see how I can help.
     
  41. s7

    s7

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    Another quick update showing the progress on missiles!

    There are 3 types at the moment: unguided, guided, and predictive.
    The detonation distance is basically a square magnitude value which triggers the explosion and despawn routine.



    I have added new explosion for this particular example:





    Smoke trails and exhaust particles:



    Of course, I'm also pushing forward with the rest of the new features for this update. Expect to see more and hopefully version 1.2 will hit the Asset Store by the end of March!
     
    Last edited: Mar 14, 2015
    Rajmahal, ZJP and hopeful like this.
  42. Amnoon

    Amnoon

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    There is an error in the Lightning Gun . When you hit something with a collider the lightning continues ignoring the collision. I just noticed it in Unity 5. It worked fine before. It will be fixed in the future?
     
  43. s7

    s7

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    First of all, have you tried setting the Layer Mask for F3DLightning script in the inspector?

    This was tested with Unity 4.6.1p3, 5.0.0f4 and 5.0.0p1. Is there anything you can help me to reproduce this issue?

    You said it worked fine before. May I ask what version you were using?
     
  44. Amnoon

    Amnoon

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    I have just dowloaded the last version of unity 5 in the website and i have imported your last updated package. Then I opened the turret demo, I switched to the lightning gun and this is what happens (You can see it in the screen. The beam ignore every collider, just the beam. The muzzle and the flare work fine). I used the 4.6.0f3. Thanks for your help.

    Sin título.jpg
    Sin título2.jpg
     
  45. s7

    s7

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    There is an example prefab used in the demo which consists of two beams. Select the child beam like shown in the image and set the Layer Mask to Everything.

    Thanks for pointing out! I will make sure to update the prefab for the demo scene with the next update!
     
  46. auroxi

    auroxi

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    I've sent an email regarding this, but just wondering if anyone knew how to resolve. I've just got this pack and wanted to use the lightning effect, however when I drop it into my scene it looks like the picture.

    I've tried messing with numbers on the inspector but I still can't get it wave-like (ignore the red lines, that's for the pathfinding).

    Does anyone know how to get it looking properly?

    Thanks
     
  47. s7

    s7

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    Make sure you have F3DTime script put somewhere in the scene. Then you would need to invoke OnSpawned() on the specific F3DLightning instance. Or you could just add F3DDummyEvent to the lightning to see if it works straight away.

    Edit: Sent you an email reply ;)
     
  48. auroxi

    auroxi

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    Right you are, it now looks much better thanks :)
     
  49. Amnoon

    Amnoon

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    A ok! Thanks i thought it was in everything!
     
  50. imaginationrabbit

    imaginationrabbit

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    I just upgraded my 4.6 project with Sci-fi effects to 5.0 and I'm getting this error -any ideas? Thanks!