Beautify! - Improve image quality producing incredibly crisp and vivid scenes

Hi - was there any resolution to the WebGL questions being asked earlier? I'm also finding that Beautify won't work in a WebGL build. If it's enabled, my camera just renders black, if it's disabled, the game runs fine. Firefox is reporting and error "Error: WebGL: Disallowing antialiased backbuffers due to blacklisting." and "InvalidStateError", but not sure if that's the cause/directly related.

Is there anything "special" that has to be done to make Beautify work with WebGL?

 

Hi @SteveJ !

Apologize for the issue. WebGL is a platform supported by Beautify but unfortunately one of the recent effects included in 3.2 stopped it working on WebGL. V4.0 was submitted a few days ago with new effects, improvements and a fix for WebGL making it fully compatible with WebGL again.

Please, in order to get the update now send me your invoice number and I'll refer you to the appropriate download link (or sign up on our support forum on kronnect.com).
Thank you.

 

Update received - all working perfectly now. Thank you very much for the super fast support!

 

I'm trying to get my build size down so I'm wondering which textures can be deleted from Resources/Textures? I'm publishing for iOS and it looks like dirt2 is used by the BeautifyMobile material, but can I delete the others?

Thanks

 

Sure! You can remove those textures which are used by the lens dirt effect. Just preserve the one you prefer or remove them all if not using this effect.

 

4.1 beta 1 is now available on kronnect.com.
Added an option to improve transparency support in Depth of Field effect:

Usual mode: transparency support is off. Glass does not contribute to out of focus blur, it just get blurred along the background.


New option: transparency support is on. Glass now contributes to out of focus blur at its focal distance.

 

I even have no 4.0 yet Looking forward for the new features you did not want to spoil

 

Hint, hint: sign up on Kronnect forum to get it now

 

Hi everyone!

Beautify 4.1 is now available and here're the changes:

- ACES tonemap operator
In previous versions Beautify was recommended to be used after tonemapping. This new option approximates Academy Color Encoding System transform from HDR color space into LDR at the appropriate stage within Beautify effect chain - now you can use the integrated tone mapping operator which provides a nice color curve and improves performance as it's integrated in the render pass. You can also customize final color using the provided vibrance, tint, contrast and brightness options.

- Eye adaptation effect
Eye adaptation or temporary blindness due to quick and important luminance changes in the scene is a new effect you can enable in this version. You can customize the eye adaptation speed for both dark to light or light to dark conditions as well as the exposure range to make this effect more or less subtle.

- Purkinje shift
In the dark, the human eye gets its capability to distinguish colors reduced. In the retina rods are responsible for vision at low light levels and they do not mediate color vision. Purkinje effect or purkinje shift simulates this fact transitioning to grayscale with a customizable blue tint under low light conditions. Below is an example on the right side, a bit exaggerated to better appreciate the effect:



- New build options to optimize compilation time and build size
Due to new shader keywords included in the shader package, this new version of Beautify includes a completely new build options section in which you can disable those effects that you won't be using in the build. They can be disabled or enabled at will at editor time. Once disabled, the effect is not available since the shader itself gets modified to remove the related keywords. This new option will reduce shader variants thus reducing compilation time and build size. This approach to shader keywords has been used in Shader Control, a new upcoming tool pending approval that will help you take control of all shader keywords in your project.




- Better bloom & anamorphic flares when using best performance setting
In previous versions, with Best Performance option enabled, bloom was reduced to one layer and anamorphic flares were not available. Now they are, although the process is somewhat simplified so it's faster (and not so accurate, but looks way better).

- Added layer mask field to depth of field autofocus option
This useful option will allow you to decide which game objects can be focused when autofocus is enabled.

- Added transparency support option to Depth of Field
Now transparent objects can contribute to the circle of confusion computation, hence providing a better effect.

Enjoy and share your screenshots! Thanks.

 

Version 4.1 is crazy. Very nice changes and unique new feautures!
I really googled like 30 Minutes about the new Purkinje feature to understand it. In some scenes with good light I did not see any changes but in a dark castle suddenly lot of colors disappeared and everything seemed more blue / black white 'ish. Gonna play a little bit more with this feature to see how to get the best natural result out of it.

I really love how you are updating Beautify and adding important features to it. You completely replaced SCION in my project. Only Ambient Occlusion, SSAO and Screenspace Reflections are Postprocess Effects I am still using from Unitiy5 Default / Cinematic effects.

Keep up the good work. So happy owning your Asset!
Cheers
Ronny

 

You're welcome and thank you for sharing your impressions.

I think this new purkinje shift adds more immersiveness and tone to dark environments since our retina gets extra light from outside the monitor thus preventing rods to take over cones. As you can see, you have a shift amount (which defines the amount of blue tint) and a luminance threshold. Decreasing the threshold will make this effect only enter into acction at much darker scenes.

 

Hello everyone! We have a new handy tool available on the Asset Store for managing shader keywords at project level and reduce compilation time and build size. Check it out, it's called Shader Control:
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#!/content/74817

 

Any plan on filmic grain, chromatic abberations and lens flares? Pretty much the only things needed for me to kick Scion out.

 

+1 for Lens Flares. The only thing that is really missing. But anyway never saw such a good Depth of Field when using Autofocus. The effect is simply awesome.

 

Thanks for the suggestions!

A minor update has been submitted with some improvements and better compatibility with the future Unity 5.5. No new effects yet.

 

Update 4.1.1 is now available. This is a minor update that provides support for Unity 5.5 and a fix for an issue related to dirty lens effect with bloom + anamorphic flares enabled.

 

Hi guys,

A few updates see the light on the Asset Store including improved VR and Unity 5.5 support. All of the following effects have been updated and verified to work fine with an Oculus DK2 with and without Single Pass Stereo feature:

- Beautify: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#!/content/61730

- Dynamic Fog & Mist: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#!/content/48200

- Volumetric Fog & Mist: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#!/content/49858

- Tunnel FX: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#!/content/68564

As always feel free to post your comments, screenshots and/our requests here or on our dedicated support forum at kronnect.com.

Cheers!

 

Hi! Happy to announce Terrain Grid System is on 24h SALE today!
This is a flexible, documented and well supported grid system for both Unity terrain and 2D projects - check it out, you might be interested!
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#!/content/47215

 

Hello i have a significant problem that happens with Beautify
this is the image from editor


and this is from build



i nailed down the problem to Beautify, because the effect appears if only beautify is attached to camera.
This is a very significant issue that was bothering us since we started the project but only recently i decided to finally look into it and found out what it was.
We are using the latest 4.2 on unity 5.4.0f3

 

Hi @pointcache
Could you please send a screenshot of the player, camera and Beautify settings to contact@kronnect.me? Also specify which graphics API (DX11, OpenGL) and target platform (PC, Mac, Android, ..).
I will get back to you after trying your setup.
Thank you!

 

+1.

 

I've been experimenting with some nice effects I can achieve by placing a texture image in the Lens Dirt effect...



...which leads me to request a minor feature: expose UV tile/offset properties for the lens dirt texture, which would allow the texture used above to be *much* smaller -- since, unlike a normal dirt texture, it's a small repeating pattern. In order to achieve an effect like the one below...



...I'd also want an option for the component to auto-resize the tiling so that the example hex pattern above stays consistent for all aspect ratio displays -- of course you'd want to turn that off for normal fullscreen dirt textures. Maybe a better approach would be an option to turn on tile-mode...?

 

Hi Beautify looks amazing,
Before I buy for VR only projects, I see it supports Single Pass Stereo rendering, is that all Image FX included in the package or just some?
Also what version of Unity does the support start at or at least what version have you confirmed this with?
Thank you

 

Hello Kronnect Devs,

i´ve stumbled over a an issue using version 4.1.1 with Unity 5.4.2f2

Whenever i make changes in the Anamorphic Flares Section and i switch the scene all changes are gone. Also Unity does not ask to save changes, so it seems to not recognise them. Might be that even if i save manually unity ignores them, cause it´s not flagged dirty (wild guessing here ^^)
It seems indeed possible to trick unity into a save by changeing something else in addition, but thats for sure a bit annoying

Thanks for the great Asset!

 

I'm having an issue with Beautify and Tenkoku. At certain times of the day, which Tenkoku manages, the screen goes entirely black based on the angle of the camera. It's mostly at horizon level that it seems to black out, if I look all the way up it goes back to normal. If I disable the Beautify component on the camera it goes back to normal. Any thoughts on how to fix this?

I'm using Unity 5.5.0f3.

 

Hi!

Beautify 4.2 is out with a new mask texture option for vignetting and frame effects as well as some minor fixes.

Apologizes for not having replied earlier to latest messages on this thread but for some reason I didn't get any email updates.

@Barliesque thanks for the suggestion. If you don't mind sending us the sample texture so we can test?

@Radius yes, all effects support Single Pass Stereo Rendering. They have been tested with an Oculus DK2 device.

@The_Arrival we'll make sure that's improved in next update. Thanks for reporting!

@emrys90 we'll digg into that. This has been reported earlier but no clue about Tenkoku. Now we have more information and can investigate further. I'll post any update on this thread as soon as we reproduce the issue.

Thanks everyone!

 

One more thing: if you're updating to version 4.2, please close any open scene (or open a new temporarily) and remove previous version of Beautify (entire folder) before importing the new update. This will ensure no older files remain in your project and your settings will be preserved.

You will want to review the build options as well, as new shader features have been incorporated in this update (and you may want to disable some).

 

If it would help you I could do a screen share sometime for us to try and track the issue down.

 

Thanks, I'm in talks with @chingwa looking to test both assets and sort any common issue.

 

Alright thanks.

 

Hi kronnect

Some questions...

I guess your asset works under directx, right?

Is your asset compatible with Unity's new cinematic effects?

Do you consume your asset a lot? Could you put a performance comparison on the same effects of cinematic effect of Unity?

I work with infinigrass and with some image effects Unity gave me problems. Do you know if your effects are compatible with the shaders of infinigras ???

I am interested in buying your asset but I would like to know these doubts before.


Thank you!

 

Thanks for your reply, I purchased, however Eye Adaption does not seem to work in VR with Single Pass Stereo Rendering. I can see it working correctly in the editor however in a build or play mode, no result. Is there a setting I am missing possibly?. Thank you.

 

Yes, DX9/11, OpenGL, WebGL, Android, iOS are supported. Also on Xbox and PS4 consoles as some users have reported.

Yes. Note that Beautify also includes a tone mapper (optional) so the order, depending on the effects used, is important.

Beautify is a very fast effect. Can't provide an accurate global comparison since both packages include a different set of effects. Said that in our tests Beautify performs faster with bloom + dirt + vignetting + ACES tone map operator and that including the image optimization which is included out of the box in Beautify. Note that you can use Beautify without the extra effects which performs ultra fast and already makes your scene pop. We're constantly improving our assets so feel free to reach us on our support forum with your suggestions or requests.

Sorry, don't own Infinigrass, can't say much about it - Beautify improves a lot the resolution of the grasses btw (check out also @turboscalpeur packages! https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/turboscalpeurs-grass-forum.395638/). Let me know if you find any issue with Infinigrass and we'll gladly look into it.

 

Will check this and get back to you. Can you send us by email a screenshot of Beautify's setting? Thank you.

 

@Thrawn75 you guys have a great plugin, however. Currently every-time I build with your plugin it crashes. Not so good, and I've put in the leg work into finding the culprit in the project because it is due in a few hours, I am trying to narrow it down on your stuff but the 4.2 update has caused my project to crash and burn. I am using Unity 5.5.0, at first I did a update then I did a clean install of your package just now and it didn't work. It built without it. I've tried so many things with this and I think the hangup is with the shader compilation. I dont have my editor logs anymore but I know that was the last things on them. Can you possibly send me the previous build so I can narrow this down a bit more?

 

Hi! Please check the Build Options section in Beautify's inspector and disable any effect that you don't need. That will speed up the compilation. If you have any question regarding those keywords, please let us know.



Note that once compiled, it will be cached by Unity so next builds will be lot faster. If you still face build issues, please contact us again. Thanks.

EDIT: you can download any previous version from our support forum (once registered).

 

reducing the number of features did the trick. I will note that I left a build running for almost an hour on a very powerful machine and it still didn't compile it. Now at-least I know moving forward to not have all the boxes checked!

 

Yep. The build options feature of Beautify guarantees you that the shader will only execute the relevant code saving ms for you otherwise will be executed but not used. What happened is that version 4.2 added two new features (masks for vignette and frame) and that boosted the permutations a lot so disabling unused effects is important now.

 

Hi, I got this effect in the scene windows.
maybe you can tell me, why~ thanks.

 

Hi! Thanks for using Beautify.
By default, Beautify tries to reproduce the same configured effects in Scene View with the Scene camera. To disable this behaviour, you can edit Beautify.cs script and comment out the line before the class declaration:

// [ImageEffectAllowedInSceneView]

Best regards.

 

Hi! Thanks for your help, my question solved, very very nice!

Best

 

will i get less fps from a scene i got setup on mobile IOS with unity post effect stack using beautify?

 

Hi Damien, thank you for your question.
Usually adding another image effect will reduce performance if you don't disable something else as that involves an additional full screen blit at the minimum. But it also depends on what combination of effects do you use on each of the packages. Beautify is designed for speed so it may be a little faster on some effects acting separately but can't say what your results will be when using both packages. This is something you need to try and see.
Regards.

 

Beautify is causing my builds to fail silently in the latest 5.5.1. It took a long time to track it down (2 days), if I have it in my project the build will fail on package resources phase during the compile shaders bit. Might be worth you confirming everything is ok. I'll do some more tests on this end too.

 

Hi! Please check the Build Options in Beautify's inspector and make sure you disable all unwanted effects. That will reduce dramatically the compilation time!

 

Ok, I will try that but I'm fairly sure it never builds for me with it in the project unless it should take 4 hours plus? I'm doing more tests as I type. I redownloaded the package and see these errors when importing : "Binary to YAML conversion: type unsigned int is unsupported"

 

Just to confirm I disabled everything apart from Daltonize & Tint. It eventually built. So is the compile time just really big for all effects on? It must drastically extend build time, unnaturally so that I assumed Unity had crashed on me. Well I know to be careful now.

 

Hi @Beloudest, glad you sorted this for your project.
Beautify packs many effects and variants in the same shader (and will add more in the future). It's what's known as an "uber shader" - and to be able to perform as fast as possible it uses one or two keywords per effect. Each set of keywords may duplicate the compilation time. A small number of features should not take so long to compile but as you add a feature it grows exponentially.

Note that once Unity has compiled the shader for the first time, it will remain cached, so next builds will be almost immediate. Beautify provides you the Build Options to allow you mark which features you won't be using and it modifies the shader for you, disabling those keywords. Using just the appropriate set of keywords ensures that your project won't waste unnecessary keywords (there's a limit of keywords per project for all shaders) and will run as fast as possible in your game without adding junk code to your build which may also take unnecessary GPU cycles.

If you need all of the effects or many of them you can also modify Beautify.shader file (or BeautifyMobile.shader if you choose the 'Best Performance' mode). Edit it and look for lines that start with #pragma multi_compile ... For example, to force use of Bloom you could replace:

Code (CSharp):

1. #pragma multi_compile __ BEAUTIFY_BLOOM

with

Code (CSharp):

1. #define BEAUTIFY_BLOOM 1

(Remember that in order to deactivate one given feature, use the Build Options which is easier - above instructions are just to force the feature without using a keyword which is what takes time during compilation).

In next updates we'll try to trim down the use of shader keywords so everything should compile faster.

Please don't hesitate to contact us directly by email if you need anything else.

Regards.

EDIT: just tested latest update which has been submitted today. Using a combination of Bloom, Anamorphic Flares, Lens Dirt, ACES tonemap operator, Tint and the Image and Colour Enhancements options took near 1 minute to build the demo scene #1. It's just if you mark *everything* that can take lot of time as explained above.

 

Hi there!

An incremental but useful update is now available (v4.3).
This update adds a new Outline Sobel effect which works much better for 2D games and reduces shader keywords by one. Additionally it provides a convenient reminder to use the Build Options located in the custom inspector.

Remember: it's recommended to remove previous version before importing any new update of Beautify.

Enjoy!

 

I don't know which one i will use
beautify or prism
can someone help me out?