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SSRR request from Community

Discussion in 'Unity 5 Pre-order Beta' started by Gokcan, Feb 13, 2015.

  1. Gokcan

    Gokcan

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    Hi Community,

    Maybe you know or maybe not Candela SSRR losed confidence. Many people including me does not want to buy his product.

    I have already know that Unity team have been working on it, but I request built in SSRR from Unity team as soon as possible. Maybe in 5.0.1.

    I want your supports in this thread.Thanks...
     
  2. cakeslice

    cakeslice

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    Agreed, PBR is extremely dependent on reflections and without SSR it just looks wierd in a lot of situations... SSR isn't that hard to implement and if the problem is older/mobile hardware, make it DX11 temporarily
     
    MS80 and Gokcan like this.
  3. MS80

    MS80

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    +1
    Agreed! We need SSR directly inside Unity, with standardshader support, seamless integrated in combination with reflection probes, gi and all the cool stuff! ;)
    It seems to be a small but important step!
     
    blueivy and Gokcan like this.
  4. KRGraphics

    KRGraphics

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    I am surprised this wasn't implented in Unity 4.6... we definitely need this. And it can allow us the option to bake to static cubemaps.
     
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  5. Gokcan

    Gokcan

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    Unity started to show its graphic features with unity 5. We want this process to go on.
     
    blueivy and MS80 like this.
  6. coldpizzapunk

    coldpizzapunk

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    I agree. This is one of the main reasons why I use Unreal Engine 4 For Arch Viz. I use Unity for so many other things, that SSRR is pretty much the last major item preventing me from using it for High End Arch Viz.
     
  7. Joachim_Ante

    Joachim_Ante

    Unity Technologies

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    We agree and we have top men working on it in paralell to shipping 5.0. It will definately not be ready as part of 5.0, but it's high on our priority list. And we will ship it as soon as it's solid in the 5.x series. Along with other image effects.
     
  8. KRGraphics

    KRGraphics

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    Yay! And I hope this will be as easy as a click of a button... SSRR will also make GI look pretty
     
  9. Gokcan

    Gokcan

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    It is really good for us to hear these from you @Joachim_Ante.
     
  10. Kronnect

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    Totally support the idea of including SSRR in Unity 5 and will love to beta-test it ASAP.
     
  11. KRGraphics

    KRGraphics

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    Same here... SSRR is pretty much the most needed thing right now, and the best part is, it will be all native within Unity
     
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  12. ShilohGames

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    +1 for SSRR in Unity5
     
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  13. hippocoder

    hippocoder

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    Sounds terrific. Hopefully they can be combined somehow so to reuse a lot of the work earlier on.
     
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  14. yezzer

    yezzer

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    Oh wow, that's fantastic news. IMO, Unity 5 needs to come with many more image effects. And more optimised ones too :)
     
  15. Gokcan

    Gokcan

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    Definetly. Not only SSRR. Lets say Unity 5.x to be graphic improvement release. Can we say it @Joachim_Ante ?
     
  16. Cynicat

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    glad to hear unity is aiming for SSR! i hope its done in a CGInclude so it can be put in a pixel shader as well. that way transparent objects can have reflections too. its one of the major limitations of unreal at the moment and is really killer to effects like water and glass(which look like S*** in unreal). i also back the idea of more image effects. however i think its more important to have more optimized ones(saving power i could use on other things). one thing i would also like to point out is temporal effects(re-projection, AA, super-sampling, etc..). which require a per pixel velocity buffer. this isn't the end of the world to implement, but i think we need what the people at nvidia had in their unity build. which was the previous model and vertex matrices built in. this way it wouldn't be dependent on a script on every object. or even better just make a total per-pixel velocity buffer a built-in thing ;3

    keep up the awesome unity!
     
  17. netvortex_dc

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    Any chance we will see a decent and fast water solution based on SSRR ?
     
    hopeful likes this.
  18. Reanimate_L

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    hmm image proxy billboard reflection and proxy mesh reflection would be doable too, also new water please :D
     
  19. Cynicat

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    +1 billboard reflections. mesh is actually really impractical in most cases I've found. proxy cube would be doable though.
     
  20. Reanimate_L

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    Actually, i think we talking the same thing, just different term. I'm forgot what is the correct term for that technique
     
  21. MS80

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    Excellent! Thanks for those great news! Can't wait to test it out!
    Can you give us some hints regarding the "other image effects"? ;)
     
  22. mtalbott

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    That's awesome to hear! I hope these "top men" are a secret UE4 parity team. They should just take every image effect/feature in UE4 and make an equivalent or better version for Unity. That would shut up a lot of the haters.
     
    shkar-noori likes this.
  23. Gokcan

    Gokcan

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    Everybody is so excited after your words. Is it possible to give us more informations about other image effects? and Can you share some screenshots with us about SSRR if there is any?
     
  24. Cynicat

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    while i agree unity needs better/faster image effects, i think basing your goals on your competitors is not wise. unreal has many image effects that are only really possible due to there strong use of Temporal Re-Projection(re-using pixels from old frames in the new ones). not to mention a lot of there effects are badly optimized and use TRP as a performance crutch. for example there SSR method actually only has a couple samples and re-uses pixels from previous frames. this causes ghosting, noise, motion trails and other artifacts. so you would think it would run great being such a cut up system? its still a huge performance impact. a lot more than it should be. reason? its a really simple implementation without much going on under it. they made temporally based effects really simple(TXAA as well) but didn't bother doing baseline optimizations. a shader in unity will generally run quite a bit faster than a shader in unreal(in my tests). i don't think we should be chasing an engine that can take 10 min to compile shader variants while unity does the same thing(and more variants for a lot more platforms) in about a second. unreal uses TRP as a crutch for many of its image effects(even when its actually stupid to do so, like with tone mapping adaption). I'm not dogging TRP(i love it actually) but unity isn't as set up for that kind of system yet. i hope unity gets better equipped for TRP(full velocity buffer, last frame matrices, etc....) but for now i think unity should focus on what their tech can do rather than what another engines tech can. unity has an amazing command buffer system, hybrid forward/deferred renderer, adaptive shader variants, etc... play to those. not to an engine that doesn't even support reflection probes on transparent objects.
     
  25. nipoco

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    Yes something that is quite crucial, alongside with other screen effects (Unity's current ones really need some love).
    But what I would like to see even more as soon as possible, is a nodebased material editor.
     
  26. mtalbott

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    Great explanation of the differences. I think I just learned a lot from your post. Your low-level understanding of both engines is far beyond mine. I guess my comment was coming from a more superficial/high-level comparison, which is to say, in my experience, UE4 creates better looking visuals out-of-the-box than Unity. I don't fully understand how or why UE4 looks better but it does, to me. I do think Unity needs to focus on matching or exceeding the visual qualities of UE4. I don't think they should copy Unreal's approach or methods, but instead, just the qualitative result.

    Maybe my concerns stem from when Unity renamed the "Standard Assets" to "Sample Assets." It seemed like a harmless change but what it said to me was that Unity provides assets that demonstrate the "possibilities" of the engine but are not committed to provided fully functional and integrated "features" similar to how I have experience UE4. The difference is subtle, and they changed the name back to "Standard Assets", so I remain hopeful that Unity can improve the out-of-the-box visual experience with "features" like SSR without relying on the Asset Store to fill in the gaps.

    Anyway, back to the subject at hand. YAY SSRR!
     
  27. PhobicGunner

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    Honestly as far as I can tell there's only a small handful of post processing effects which make UE4 look the way it does. And these are:
    • Motion blur
    • Ambient occlusion
    • Lens flare
    • SSR
    Applying these to a Unity 5 project (I have Amplify Motion, beta testing an AO solution, have SE's Bloom+Lens Dirt package, and am working on porting an SSR package to Unity 5), it started looking strikingly similar to UE4's look.
     
  28. hippocoder

    hippocoder

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    Yep, it's just post + PBR.
     
  29. KRGraphics

    KRGraphics

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    And I am using a Post FX cocktail right now... I even have amplify colour... once SSRR is done, it will look SO VISUALLY DELICIOUS
     
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  30. Devil_Inside

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    Post some images, guys. I don't have time at the moment to play around with all these things, but at least I could watch someone else :)
     
  31. KRGraphics

    KRGraphics

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    A lot of the effects I am using are just stacked onto each other carefully with Tonemapping set to adaptive reinhard
     
  32. nipoco

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    You forgot the GPU driven lit particles. Something that Unity also doesn't have. They can make big difference. But other than that, yes it's mostly their screen FX. It's even enabled by default in the editor view.
     
  33. Aieth

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    If you add chromatic abberation, depth of field and temporal AA to that list then I agree with you :)
    The major difference between postprocessing in Unity and Unreal is that everything is linked in Unreal. Its very user friendly to keep all post effects separated with drag and drop to activate, but try to replicate Unreals postprocessing that way and you will end up choking your GPU with wasted bandwidth. Far Cry 4 recently published their post processing. They do nearly everything in a single pass. Not even Unitys vignette shader is single pass, and thats just a single effect. Of course you could mitigate the impact by running in LDR but then youve forsaken quality.
     
  34. jashan

    jashan

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    Awesome! Can't wait to get my hands on this!
     
  35. Roni92

    Roni92

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    While I agree Its mostly about post fx, but not strictly post fx, but their quality, exactly. Look at AA in ue, dof, lens flares, blur, bloom, theyre just much better quality effects, than what Unity has included. "god rays" and volumetric lights would be very welcome to U5, too.
     
  36. Cynicat

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    i agree for the most part. one of the HUGE things unreal has is tools for artists to create content that unity allocates to programmers(unreal's programing sucks big-time). and i wasn't really trying saying unreal's effects aren't pretty. just that unreal focused a lot on quality at the cost of performance and covered it with temporal re-projection. i will also agree with the sentiment that unity needs to support there image effects and other content more. honestly(and not to be a downer, YAY SSR!) i think Unity needs several things before it can become a tool that artists want to use(speaking as an artist myself).
    1. Visual Node Editor Framework. to many things can be deferred to visual node editors. particles, game logic, cinematics, code, compositing, etc... we need an editor framework for custom node editors. then they could open source(like the UI) the visual editors they make(Shaders, Code, Animation Blending, etc...) and when the community makes cool tools/extensions they can take advantage of this.
    2. Better supported Standard Assets. Properly support/optimize the effects.
    3. Visual Code Editor. No run-time visual script BS. a node based C# editor. like Visual Studio with nodes.
    4. Some better Built-In Assets. a big part of why unreal is considered to be so visually impressive is the fact the assets are made by professional artists who know their S***. the levels are set up to look amazing from the start. this means even people who have no experience can make something that looks visually impressive and when artists see this tool they want to dive in and play with it.
    5. Better standard shader UI. Unity has Uber-Shading. that is awesome. CG artists are used to this kind of treatment. but unity's standard shader UI sucks. it needs to be(and will be) improved. something similar to marmoset toolbag would be nice. but with a badass node editor you can use to add new effects. =3
    6. Better Particles. Better tools and GPU acceleration mostly. i'd like to see something with a node editor(i'm from CGI what can i say, i like node editors.).

    Finally, this stuff won't happen over-night. they are taking steps. they are sprinting actually. Real-Time practical GI through Enlighten. PBR Scalable from android to PC. Real-Time Transparent shadows. State-Machine Behaviors which allow awesome procedural animation. thats not even giving credit for all the awesome stuff not visuals related. they are going in that direction and have a much stronger base to work from even if unreal have a content lead. Unity has a lot more potential and a lot more power. they mostly need more features.
    --------------------------------------------------------/\ /\
    keep up the awesome unity. *cuddle* ( ^_^ )
    ------------------------------------------------------>Unity<
     
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  37. 3agle

    3agle

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    You say they are better quality but in reality they just have better default settings. Tweaking the settings of the included effects will yield similar results.
    In any case if you aren't happy with the results, you can write your own or modify the existing ones.

    Unity already has 'God Rays' (and has since 3.x), any other kind of volumetric lighting is usually faked through billboarded/meshed transparent sprites.
     
  38. KRGraphics

    KRGraphics

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    I agree with all of this @Cynicat ... especially numbers 1, 4, 5, and 6. I am primarily an artist (CG Artist coming into gaming) and I have been able to get my models looking PHENOMENAL in Unity, especially with the current beta version (through careful tweaking to get the look I want). It is very important to make sure the tools we are using are also artist friendly... I do have Playmaker which is a start. Once I learn it more especially to use it to trigger states I create in Mecanim, and to get my characters moving, everything is cool.

    For better particles, Popcorn FX is looking freaking sweet.
     
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  39. Roni92

    Roni92

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    I disagree, look, there is 20$ asset - https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/17324
    Yes, its, bloom. Is it worth 20$? First thing you would think that its crazy... but if ppl are buying it and are happy with effect(and they are), then answer is yes. Now ask yourself, do this all people would buy it if they could achieve that pretty bloom with Unity's default's? I guess they wouldn't. Because why would you buy something when you have it for free, yeah? No. For free you have just S***ty example, showing that Unity can have bloom. And that you can buy real bloom from asset store/make your own. The same rule is applied to all other effects.
    Standard package post effects imo should be treated like placeholder, example, just to test and play with it, not really useful feature to use in serious product.
    But well, what I know? Some devs, do stuff for mobile and dont even care about such abstract thing like quality. Am I right? :D
     
    Last edited: Feb 16, 2015
  40. KRGraphics

    KRGraphics

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    Oh I have that asset Natural Bloom and it looks sweeeet next to other effects.
     
  41. 3agle

    3agle

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    I'm not disagreeing with you here, I fully understand there are asset store alternatives. My point is that this doesn't strike me as something Unity need to change. Your post does support this too, since these alternatives are available for those that can't do it themselves. I think there are more worthwhile things Unity could be focussing on, stuff that would benefit from engine integration (SSR being one).

    My view is this, anyone big into development are likely to not use Unitys Standard Assets for production. They will make their own characters, controllers, lighting, shaders etc. Image effects included. I'm not saying everyone will do this or to that extent, but from experience, this is the best way* to get a unique, great looking product or at least one tailored to what you need.

    And don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting a game can't be great looking with built-in effects, just that I'd suggest they are there as examples and bases rather than a plug-and-play game maker. That's how we approach development here anyway, to each their own and all that. We have plenty of standard stuff in some of our projects, but where we need to, we've rolled our own stuff and I'd expect others to do the same. I certainly wouldn't expect Unity to cater to our specific needs unless it is something vitally missing from the engine.

    *slight exaggeration perhaps.
     
  42. hippocoder

    hippocoder

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    Yeah this is the main issue with Unity at the moment. But how would you have unity solve the issue of flexibility?
     
  43. Aieth

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    To be honest I'd have it remain the way it is. A full post process chain is an all or nothing deal, where you have to make choices all the way through (you cannot realistically maintain several separate chains, all targeting different art styles and performance considerations). UE4 very specifically designed theirs around first or third person games with next gen graphics in mind. Not saying it can't be used for other stuff, but I am saying that it ends up suboptimal for other applications.

    That said updating the post processing in standard assets is still useful. What you gain in flexibility though you do pay for in performance. Many seem to be under the assumption that more standard assets is gonna give UE4 looks/performance, and that simply isn't the case.
     
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  44. kurylo3d

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    Perhaps we need one post process that encompasses them all at the same time. Would that somehow save on performance if you were planning on using all of them to begin with?
     
  45. Aieth

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    It would save a lot of performance. I'll do a little example below. Say that you want the following effects:
    Motion blur
    Depth of Field
    Vignette
    Grain
    Tonemapping
    Bloom

    This means you do three separate blurs (motion blur, depth of field and bloom). You also do 6 different combination passes. Even if you want to keep maximum quality and keep all the separate blurs, lets do some math on the combination passes. I am going to assume an HDR texture, since we're going for maximum quality. Lets say we are doing full HD at 1920x1080. Lets also assume that a texture read and texture write have the same costs.
    This means that the combination passes for each frame require 1920 * 1080 * 8(bytes per pixel) * 6(reads) * 6(writes) = 570mb. Now lets say we are targeting 60fps, this means we are now using 570 * 60 = 34200mb, or roughly 33GB. So we are using 33GB/s just for combination passes. GPUs are fast, but 33 GB per second, just for stuff that could be done in a single pass! Now, if it was single pass, the bandwidth requirement would drop to one sixth, or just below 6GB/s. So the difference is a whopping 27 gigabytes per second, just because we are using separate combination passes. That is absolutely ridiculous. And this is only when considering the combination passes, you can save performance by combining other stuff together (like Far Cry 4, which except for bloom only does a single blur pass). When I see setups with 10-15 image effects it makes me cringe, there is a whole frame budget going into combination passes.
     
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  46. hippocoder

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    Yeah this is how I got vignetting+bloom+dof+film grain and a bunch of other effects going on vita at 60. Just have to do it yourself.

    At some point near the end of the project I'm going to have a mighty task trying to combine the 10+ post fx we've got stacked for our PS4 title.
     
  47. SteveB

    SteveB

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    @hippocoder @Aieth Curious why we don't see Combined Effects assets on the Store or heck, from Unity themselves...
     
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  48. Aieth

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    I'm kinda busy working on something else where that is included ;) Who knows, in the future I might make a standalone post processing pack, but for now I'm doing it all for Jove.
     
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  49. SteveB

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    @Aieth ...yea with your rather stunning work on Jove, optimized post-effects would just knock it all out of the park. :D
     
  50. Deleted User

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    I'll chime in on this. Yes, SSRR would be a nice addition, and thanks to Unity 5 I think it is finally possible to do it properly. They now have a standard gbuffer for accessing data, and they have an integrated reflection probe system so it can have a fallback for pixels where SSRR fails.

    As for what ships with Unity by default, here's my standpoint. Unity is basically supported by crowd-sourcing. They have a minimum feature-set to keep the engine cheap, and rely on contributors to fill in the missing functionality by building on the base that is provided. So while I always encourage them to improve the base, I know that the real power is in the asset store.