Unity Free Bloom

Current Version: 2.0



Hello! I am a single working developer that recently got the idea that Unity Free needs some bloom post process action. So I started up a project that solves this.

The way it works is the camera sends out a number of rays (The number depends on how high quality the bloom is set to be) and detects if it hit nothing (Sky), a normal object (No bloom), or a bloom object (Glowing game object).
If the ray for pixel 1 hits nothing, then it renders that pixel as the sky color which is defined in the inspector. If it hits a normal object, then it's rendered as black, or nothing in other words. If it hits a bloom object, (An object with the Bloom Object component attached) then it renders that pixel as the color defined in that objects Bloom Object component. Brightness is also an option. After that texture is finished being processed, it's blurred by a number (In pixels) also set in the inspector.

Light Shafts:


Bloom:


All of it is right here:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/99046525/PostProcesses2.0.unitypackage


Let me know what you think and what other features you guys would like in this! Note that this isn't only going to be bloom. I'm probably going to add DOF as well if I can.

If you ask me to make a post process effect, make sure it's one that doesn't require sharp images (Twirl, Fish Eye, Color Correction, etc). DOF will probably just use an alpha map to blend the original scene with the blurred texture. Thanks!


NOTE: The effects only takes place once the game is running.
NOTE 2: Using a quality level over 150 is usually not acceptable. For blooming, you could easily get away with a quality of 40.

 

Actually looks really nice! Look forward to seeing updates.

 

Indeed, it does. Tagging this to keep an eye on it.

 

When I clicked the second png link, I was amazed!

 

Thanks you guys!

@HyeMyNamels

"On the 7th Day God Clicked Render". I love that line quite a lot! xD

 

Yeah I read that somewhere awhile back, just trying to keep it alive.

 

this looks quite cool, never thought you could use rays like this, so basically you are sending out for example 256 x 256 rays ? making a total of 65 536 rays?
Thats alot of rays, how does it affect performance.

(sorry havent downloaded the package yet, dont have that much time)
anyway nice to see such a cool thing
You could also do some oldschool realtime shadows rendered to a projector did this kind of stuf back in blitz3d
Also about dof, i'm not sure because you need to get access to depth values, tho you could render the color depending on how far the object is in a range of 256 tones, and then apply the blurrines depending to the tone you are in

 

A lot actually. Just tried it. It looks good, but is way too expensive to use it an a game the way it is right now,

 

Looks cool! For a second there I was hoping you might have found a way to make a "performance free" bloom effect

A man can dream, though. A man can dream!

 

well in theory you can make it faster cuting down the rays 2x with a rectangular section and blending through the missing ones, should give a extra performance boost...


Edit: by rectangular i ment like

Code (csharp):

1.  
2. 010
3. 101
4. 010
5.  

 

How high are you setting the quality values? I can set it to 0.02 or 0.03 with 2 or 3 blur iterations and works fine on a 1360x760 screen maximized. I disabled it with nearly no difference in speed at all to see how much it changed. (And the scene I tested it in was filled with Mesh Colliders and Bloom Objects).

Keep in mind that a Quality value of 0.3 is really over doing it. The default was set to 0.05.
Also, the size of the texture adapts to fit the screen better, so bigger screens makes for a larger amount of rays. I'll be working on making a way to get around that soon.

Thanks for your responses!

 

Haha, you're right. I don't know what I did wrong earier. It works pretty good right now.

 

@primaerfunktion

Okay, good! After posting my last reply to the thread, I was worried my computer was much more powerful compared to normal PCs and laptops.

 

The problem is the resolution. Both Screenshots have the same Settings: Quality is 0.03 and Blur Iterations are 2. This small change of resolution has a huge impact on performance.

 

Bloom + DOF and i would be happy to pay/donate for such an asset for UFree!
Is chromatic aberration possible in your opinion?

 

One thing is that the larger one is a little more then 2 times larger compared to the smaller one. That means it's casting 2 times more rays. But I'm making changes so that it has a limit to how large it can go, and still keep the same aspect ratio.

On the unrelated matter: I noticed that you have a lot of draw calls in your scene. I think you should try to find a way to cull out objects that aren't visible. ; )

 

@nukeD

Not completely sure. It's a possibility. I'll see what I can do!
Is that scene a UFree scene you made? Looks nice!

 

Just finished version 1.01! It now has an option for brightness in the main bloom component, which has a more direct approach to brightening. I also fixed primaer's complaint where more rays are cast on larger screen sizes.

 

Keep those updates coming, when devs are on top of their creations, it shows the community and myself that the dev(s) are on top of it.

 

This is much better.

 

Will be waiting for more updates!

 

Version 1.02 is now released.

There are 2 bug fixes in this one, but they were pretty noticeable ones.

1: When the screen size changes, the bloom crashes.
2: The color of the bloom on one side of the screen is copied over to the other, because the result texture was not set to clamp.

 

Good job on these updates.

 

I will be waiting for more! My game looks much better with bloom!

 

Thanks you two!


I am still trying to figure out why applying a radial blur doesn't work. (Working on Sun Shafts)

 

I really hope the dof will come soon.

 

@skater

The DOF hasn't been confirmed that it will happen. It's only a possibility. You shouldn't get your hopes too high on that.
This is Unity Free after all. We still have limits.

 

If you can get the depth with the raycast you need to place a blury texture over it . If thats possible.

 

And the blurry texture would be extremely hard to be accurate, and slightly blurry DOF effects and transitions between none and heavy is nearly impossible in the free version. I am going to at least try.

 

Mabe If you just asign one gameobject and the rest is blury also another material with a custom material could help

 

Finally got a new update out.

1.03 has only 3 changes, but they're bigger and better then the others. First off, at last, the bloom is fully functional with changing options including the screen size at run-time.

Next, I have a way to make it so that the bloom will only show up on parts of a mesh depending on an assigned texture. (Texture must be readable and the object must have a mesh collider.

Cheers!

 

Performance has nearly doubled! Great work. I'll be watching this more now. Waiting for more.

 

Hope it can be used for hdr. so if you are in an area which is dark then the brightness of the blur would go up if thats right

 

@carking

I'm glad you like it


@skater

You could actually make a very simple script to solve this.
It would basically check to see if a raycast starting from the camera, going to the sun. If it hit anything, you're in a dark area. If not, you're in sunlight. If in a dark area, then just use Mathf.Lerp to slowly adjust the bloom brightness. It's a simple script, but I may put it in the next version.

 

Also you would need to brighten up the bright areas in the lightmap

 

@skater

I just program the bloom. You guys can do what ever else you want to make it look good.

 

This looks pretty cool.
How does the performance compare to the standard Unity pro bloom?

 

@Tiddlesworth (Nice name)

I don't have the pro version, but it all really depends on the quality level. Setting it to 10 (Generating a texture of about 10x6) it makes extremely little performance impact. I find 20, the default value to be a good balance between quality and performance.

 

First off, 1.1.0.0 is out. Plenty of good features added in there. Hope you all like this release

Second, I'm just making the way I display versions of this more accurate to how it should be.

Edit: Just realized a glitch in the Texture Tiling. Will be changing that and uploading it still as 1.1.0.0 very soon.

 

I will download it momentarily! What's new in 1.1.0?

 

@Gearing Games

I'll just copy and paste the release notes:

Features:

Added HDR effect to the main Bloom component.

Added a Ray Layer Mask variable to the Bloom component.

Added "Null Color" variable to the Bloom component
that changes what color objects with no bloom object
will be in the result texture.

Added Tiling and Offset variables for the emission
texture on the Bloom Object.

Removed:

Camera variable removed from the main Bloom component.
(My vision for that turned out to be nullthing greater
then an error)


Extra credit to any of you that caught all 4 of my puns in the parentheses ; )

 

What texture should you use for the bloom texture/material?

 

That's generated by the Bloom component. The only thing you're really doing with the material is setting the shader. By default it's the Additive Particle shader, which works just fine. But you could get really weird and have something like an unlit transparent cutout.

Only requirements for the shader to work in this is that it have a "_MainTex" property and does not use the "Cull Front" line.

 

So I can just make a random material, apply it there, and just make it the Additive Particle Shader?

 

Yeah, but I do already have a material in the folder for the bloom. Already set to default additive.

 

Thanks for the info. I'll be awaiting the next update!

 

I'm going to let this version go on for some time while it's in beta stage. After a week or so, I'll release the next version if it's done. If bugs are found in this one, then I'll fix them and re-upload.

 

Hi,
Do you think it's possible to modify this script to make ambient occlusion in unity free ? I'm not well to create scripts like this but do you think it's possible ?

 

That is very well possible. However it will be much harder for me to find time to work on this project as of now. I got accepted into a game development group, so I don't have as much time to work on my own projects.

 

This looks excellent, very good job !