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

Less than 24h for the final poll of the Beautify Contest!
Vote your favourite project now - a free asset will be raffled among voters!

On April 21, a poll will be activated with 5 finalists according to the rules so everyone can vote the final winner!
Good luck and enjoy!

 

Thanks

 

Submissions phase has closed and we have 5 finalists!

Thanks to everyone for paticipating in this first contest!
And congratulations to @yohami, @HelixNGC7293, @OnklPeta, @Meltdown and @turboscalpeur for qualifying for the final poll.

Check out their amazing work: https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/1st-annual-beautify-contest-april-2017-submissions.463904/

 

Hi everyone!

The Asset Store has gone crazy with a 2nd wave of assets on sale!
Our top assets are now available at 30% off, including Beautify, Volumetric Fog & Mist, World Political Map Globe Edition and many others. This wave ends in 6 days.



Click here to check our assets on sale.

 

Since other people are sharing screenshots, I figured I would too. Beautify has really helped me increase the saturation of the colors in other scenes without making things look horrible like the the built-in tools are prone to do, but what really impressed me was the clarity it brought to the cinder blocks in the screenshot below. In fact, things cleared up so much that I had to go in and remove some of the dirt from the wall because it suddenly looked way too dirty. Many of my scenes were using 4k texture atlases for the whole scene that I was able to lower to 2k without a reduction in quality with Beautify applied as well. So even though I quite literally spent my grocery money / mortgage money on this asset in preparation to hopefully bring the game to itch.io refinery soon, I think it was well worth it. Thanks for this great product!

 

Looking for testers of a new beta! Anyone using orthographic cameras?

 

Thanks very much for posting your screenshot. Looks very nice.

And you have pointed to one great benefit of using Beautify. Because you can use lower resolution textures, the GPU cache is more efficient producing better performance, builds are faster and smaller!

 

Hi guys, yet another update:

- Full support for orthographic camera
Although core image enhancement effects where compatible with orthographic camera, in this update this support extends to all effects, including depth of field.

- Added Rotation DeadZone to Sun Flares
Small threshold to prevent crazy rotation of Sun flares when looking directly towards the center of the Sun.

- Added DoF exclusion layer bias parameter
Helps removing some artifacts when using the Depth of Field exclusion layer.

And two fixes:
- [Fix] Fixed bloom layer mask issue with VR
- [Fix] Fixed pink issue with DoF exclusion layer and water/reflections shaders

Enjoy!

 

Any Plan to add lens flare and chromatic abberation soon? So I don't have to keep scion in my projects.

 

Here's a pic of WPM Globe Edition + Beautify using the same directional light as the Sun, effectively beautifying the Globe

 

I am facing a strange behaviour with the current version.
If Bloom is deactivated and Lens Dirt Activated I see the Lens Dirt IG and in the editor really strong. I am using Threshold 0.5 and intensity 0.9. The Layer Mask of Bloom is set to Everything. I think this are the default?

By activating Bloom the Lens Dirt effect mostly disappears IG and the Editor. Its still activated though.

Does this have to do with the layer mask? The Layer Mask of Bloom is set to Everything. If I change it to nothing I understood that nothing should have bloom effect. But it behaves really strange. If bloom is deactived and Layer Mask is still on everything you see the strong Lens Dirt effect as explained above. If I change the layer mask to nothing the lens dirt effect is gone.

Something is really strange here. Some screenshots here:







Happens In Game and In Editor Mode.

 

@RonnyDance thanks for reporting this. I'll check it and get back to you soon.

 

Hi, Beautify is fantastic! I have a question. How can we change Eye Adaptation through script?

 

Thanks! Beautify exposes all its properties through the Beautify.instance accessor. For example you can control eye adaptation using:

Code (CSharp):

1. Beautify.instance.eyeAdaptation = true|false;

(Or set any other parameter using Beautify.instance.eyeAdaptation**** family)

I'd like to take the opportunity to announce availability of 5.1 update. Changes:

- Basic mode no longer activates Depth buffer generation which may save performance in forward rendering path

In forward rendering path, computing depth requires a custom pass which can be expensive in mobile. Now, if you choose the "Basic" mode of Beautify, this can be a performance booster. Note that if you're rendering shadows, the depth pass will be enabled by default.

- Added inspector warning when setting bloom layer mask to everything.

Bloom layer mask is intended to limit the bloom and anamorphic flares to certain game objects (included by the layer mask). One may mistakenly choose "Everything" instead of "Nothing" assuming that will just bloom everything, but that's the wrong choice since it will add a lot of overhead. If you are not using Bloom Layer mask leave this value to "Nothing" (default value) so bloom will naturally be applied to the entire frame buffer or set it to the specific layers you want, but don't select everything. In this update, a warning will show up if you set it wrong:



- [Fix] Fixed bloom layer mask issue with Lens Dirt

Reported by @RonnyDance, this issue should be fixed now.

Cheers!

 

Hi,

I'm getting this error after I build the project



I using Unity 5.5.3p2 with deffered rendering and Directx 11 only for the graphic API

 

Include errors usually points to import/upgrade issues. Right-click and choose "Import" on Beautify/Resources/Shaders usually does the trick. If not, please try the following:
- Close any scene
- Remove Beautify folder
- Import latest Beautify from the Asset Store (currently 5.1)
- Build again.

Thanks.

 

Thanks, reimport remove the error

 

Hey so I'm not the best when it comes to shaders and the likes so this may be a stupid question but is this intended to replaces Unity's Post Processing Stack or would it be used alongside it?

 

Hi @Barabicus,

Of course, they can be combined! Both packages provide lot of options and different implementations so often you want to try which is the best combination for your project.

Beautify provides some cool options not available in Unity's Post-Processing stack:

- Drag & drop instant image enhancement combined filters with presets and options like depth controls (eg. HDR dither can only be applied to skybox, avoid artifacts around fine wires, ...), luminance thresholds (prevents sharpen artifacts on bright areas), motion control (good for VR) and 3 global one-click modes with different degrees of performance, useful to provide your game users a quick quality selector which affects the entire set of effects.

- Bloom: soft and natural implementation with options not available in Unity's like layer mask (can choose which objects are affected by bloom!) and depth atten controls (ie. allows you to prevent skybox overexposing the image). Ultra mode for best VR experience.

- Anamorphic flares: not present in Unity's post-proc.

- Sun flares: unique effect with corona rays, diffraction effect, ghosts and solar wind animations, not present in Unity's post-proc.

- Depth of Field with Bokeh (bokeh not present in Unity's): also with autofocus, layer culling mask and support for transparency! Users love this effect and many have purchased Beautify just for the DoF effect!

In addition to the above unique options, Beautify also provide nifty effects like Purkinje shift which simulates retina color perception under low light, textured frame, outline (both depth and Sobel based), Sepia (with blend intensity), Daltonize and night + thermal vision effects.

Note that Unity Post-Processing also provides effects not available in Beautify like Screen Space Reflections, Antialias, LUT and SSAO, so you can combine Beautify with those. You may also want to take a look at Amplify Color and HBAO which provide a greater array of options and flexibility in their fields. Note that sharpen effect won't produce the best result when mixed in the same render pass than a LUT filter so having it separated will preserve the artistic touch of the LUT.

In the end it boils down to which singular effects do you value most and how you combine them to get the look you like most for your project.

Cheers!

 

Don't know if this has been reported but I believe I found a bug in VR using latest Unity 5.6.1, Latest SteamVR and latest Beautify plugin. Whether it is in Single or Multi pass stereo rendering mode the issue is with using layer masks to designate what to apply bloom effect to in my case. The left eye shows nothing and the right eye shows an offset bloom from the geometry on the layer set to apply bloom. If I change to none so that everything is affected by bloom then it works as expected. I tested with your example (1st scene) and experienced the same issue when designating an overlay layer to mask. Thanks for all your great work on this essential asset!

 

Thanks for reporting this. Unity 5.6 introduces a serious VR bug which has been confirmed by Unity QA (case 918634). Not sure if it related to your report. Will verify it and get back to you asap.

 

Hello, I'm using 2 (sometimes even more) orto camera setup. Everything works fine in the editor with and without Beautify but when I try to deploy on iPad, something gets rendered once on the whole screen but then everything from that time on else get rendered into like 25% screen (see screenshots). If I disable Beautify and deploy to iPad, everything works as expected. Do you have any idea what I did wrong? If I put beautify on my menu camera (rendered first) then everything is ok but effect is applied only on demo camera which is not something I want.

Edit: On iPhone it does not work at all, but it appears to be some Unity bug with post-effects + metal, disabling Beautify makes it work in iOS. So I did some research and I have disabled metal for iOS and replaced it with OpenGLES3 and it work on the iPhone and the iPad correctly. So it's probably the same bug reported here.
https://issuetracker.unity3d.com/issues/ios-metal-gpu-hang-error-ioaf-code-3-in-xcode-console

 

Hey so I just picked this up and first of all its fantastic! It really adds that little extra something I've been looking for. My only concern is I use PopcornFx as a particle system, if you're familiar with it, using the bloom effect with Beautify it doesn't seem to recognize particles from popcornFX. If you're not familiar with PopcornFx is a particle system for unity which renders particles by means of a component on the camera gameobject. I'm not too good with shader jargon and the like but maybe it works in the same way that post processing effects do. I'm just not sure why bloom doesn't seem to work with it. Bloom from Unity's post processing stack works fine with it. So I'm confused as to why it would not be working. Maybe you have any ideas?

 

@Wolar thanks for reporting. Please submit a bug report to Unity so they can also check Metal compatibility. I have identified at least another image effect bug with Metal as well (not related to Beautify). I'll try to build a repro on my end and send a proper bug report as well.

@Barabicus will verity it and get back to you. Try the following: a) make sure it's listed before Beautify on the camera stack b) disable bloom layer mask (set it to nothing) c) reduce Bloom threshold and/or set it to ultra.

 

We decided to give Beautify a try a few days ago, and the difference is amazing. Here are some before/after split screen shots so that you can see the difference. What an amazing asset. Thank You!!!!!!

 

Happy to announce the availability of Beautify 5.2 beta 1, with Single Pass Stereo support in Unity 2017.1.
You can get the beta from our support forum on kronnect.com and it will be available on the Asset Store in a week.

Cheers!

 

Hello Thrawn75,

I just bought the asset and it looks amazing.
However when i trying to build the game for Windows_64, an error pops up and the game crashed upon running.
Here is the screenshot of it:



Any idea why it is happening?

btw i am using the Unity 2017.1.0f3(64bit) version.

Thanks a lot.

 

Strange error. Perhaps some Editor scripts are out of appropriate folders in your project? This does not seem directly related to Beautify though. I have just double checked this and successfully built the demo scenes for Unity 5.5, Unity 5.6 and Unity 2017.1 in an empty project. Did you move around files?

Here're some results that might help:
https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/unable-to-build-the-project.418166/
http://apexgametools.com/forums/top...x-an-asset-is-marked-with-hideflags-dontsave/

 

Hi there I purchased your asset strictly for mobile as it says it won't effect performance but it's effecting it badly. Is there any links to tutorials on how to use beautify with mobile?

 

@Carterryan1990 Beautify contains many effects, when combined they will always impact performance (as with any image effect on mobile). Performance hit depends on type and number of effects, options and quality level. The fastest mode is “Basic”, which only uses the core image enhancement set with extremely optimised code. “Best Performance” will use variants of the extra effects (like bloom or depth of field) which are simplified implementations (ie. uses less texture fetches). As more effects you add, the more performance hit.

To assist you with some tips, please send a screenshot of your settings to contact@kronnect.me.

Regards.

 

Hi everyone,

Sharing Song of Fungus from @HelixNGC7293 full of great soundtrack, music and visual effects using Beautify.
Eddy created this game in 72 hours for the latest Ludum Dare 38 and finished in 12th position among 1841 games!
Check it here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/song-of-fungus

 

hello,
i'm using Beautify on unity 2017.1, i try to set up bloom layer mask to make only the particle effects can be bloomed,
but it seems not worked very well, if the terrain mesh are not in the bloom layer, the particles bloom effect doesn't show,
looks like depth info are not correct if the terrain mesh and the particles are not in the same layer,any idea how i can make it right?

 

Hi @LazyQQQ !

I have just tried to reproduce your issue with no luck. What I have done:

- Create a new scene
- Add a particle system and assign it to a custom layer X
- Add Beautify to camera, enable bloom, set layer mask to layer X.
- Increase intensity, decrease threshold to make particles shine

It works as expected. I'm using latest beta though, which will be available to the Asset Store today or tomorrow. Are you using VR? In this case, the new update solves an issue with bloom layer mask and Unity 2017.1. If not, I'm not sure what the issue could be, if you can send me a repro scene I'll gladly check it.

Cheers!

 

Hi!

Yet another update is now live (5.2).

- VR: Support for Single Pass Stereo Rendering changes in Unity 2017.1
- Added downsampling options to Bloom Culling Mask, Depth of Field Exclusion Mask and Depth of Field Transparent Mask features
- Added "Boost" options to bloom layers, which allows you to better fine-tune the bloom effect.
- Added Max Bright parameter to prevent out of range HDR issues with Bloom and to clamp high luminosity pixels

Update now and remember to review your Build Options (button located at top of Beautify's inspector) since upgrading resets the shader modifications.

Also please note that if you download the package for Unity 2017.1 and later you try to import it to a previous version of Unity, the Unity Editor will grab the Unity 2017.1 version of Beautify which will give you errors. This happens because Unity Editor uses the same download folder for all Unity versions, and now there're two specific packages of Beautify on the Asset Store targeting Unity 5.4+ and Unity 2017.1. If you face this problem, just contact me and I'll send you the package for Unity 5.4/5.5/5.6.

 

Thanks for the reply,
one more step,
- add plane in the scene and set to a different layer
the particle above the plane get bloomed but others not.look picture one.

picture two is set the plane to the same layer,all the particle get bloomed
.

 

I have reproduced this. Bloom's Layer Mask also takes into account depth to prevent sorting issues. Since default particles (and anything rendered after opaque queue) don't write to z-buffer, their luminance contribution gets clipped by Beautify.
As a temporary workaround to solve this (despite of future updates) please edit BeautifyLum.shader and comment out line 135:

Code (CSharp):

1.           //c.rgb *= (depth01>depth02 - 0.01);

Also, comment out lines 232-236 if you use the Anti-flicker option:

Code (CSharp):

1.         //half nonEclipsed = (depth01>depth02 - 0.01);
2.         //c1.rgb *= nonEclipsed;
3.         //c2.rgb *= nonEclipsed;
4.         //c3.rgb *= nonEclipsed;
5.         //c4.rgb *= nonEclipsed;

Hope this helps.

 

Hi!

Regarding the issue with particles, no more shader editing. Latest beta includes full support for blooming particles while preserving rendering order and correct geometry clipping. A new demo scene plus a particle material/shader has been included in latest beta to enable this:

 

Hello,
Getting the bellow warnings after switching to the Android platform.
Beutify now do not work at all.

 

Hi! If anyone else is having the "Tiled GPU Perf." warning console messages with Unity 2017.1, I can confirm this is fixed in patch 2 available here: https://unity3d.com/unity/qa/patch-releases

Also, Beautify 5.2.1 has been submitted with a new demo scene showcasing the particle shader and a fix for Android and Unity 2017.1.

 

Awesome Thx Thrawn!!

 

@Thrawn75 have there been any reports with issues on Beautify on a Galaxy S8+ on Android?

I'm using Unity 5.6.2p4

I have someone testing my racing game, and all they see is this...

 

Hi @Meltdown! What effects are you using? Looks like an out of focus DoF or a bloom off screen buffer blitting directly to the screen device for some reason. I have been testing recently Beautify on major latest version of Unity on Galaxy 7 with no glitches or compatibility issues. I will check with that specific version just in case.

Is it possible to deactivate the effects of Beautify in-game so the user can pinpoint which one could be related to this?

 

I have a Galaxy S7 too with no issues, its only on the S8+ this is the first time I've had this problem reported by a user.

Here are my settings...



So it looks like I'm using mainly bloom and outline...

 

Thanks! Will contact you if I find anything useful.

 

Hey @Thrawn75 ! Is it possible to use beautify bloom in screen space overlay canvas?

 

I don't think that's possible. Screen Space Overlay canvas is drawn above everything, including the image effects. In fact if you disable all your cameras, the canvas is still visible. So this is bitting after everything else on its own.

You could put your canvas in Screen Space Camera mode and set the Plane Distance to the camera near clipping plane. Or use ZTest Always in the shaders used to render your UI. That way the UI will also render on top of everything but will also be affected by image effects. Sounds good?

 

Ok, I'll try to put the canvas in Screen Space Camera. Thank you!

 

Thrawn75,

I don't suppose you know how much Beautify will add to the size of a WebGL build using Brotli compression, do you? Size is REALLY a big issue for us. Unity's Post-Processing adds 2.5MB and Amplify Bloom adds .6. Just looking for something as small as we can get Thanks!

 

Hi, beatify is awsome, and performce great at pc, but how much perfomance loose can be on android if i use only bloom? Mayby this is something with my phone, i getting perfomance drop from 60 to 20-30 fps.

 

@Thrawn75 Could I make a very modest feature request? Currently, entry fields that do not contain sliders, do not fallback slider option, like Unity entry fields do. For example, when you hover over a transform entry field, a slider cursor will appear, indicating that you can range select a value for that field by adjusting the slider. Beautify does not do this and this is most evident on the ACES tonemapping exposure option.

Also, Beautify GUI does not seem to update after undo commands, e.g. ctrl+z(?)