[Released] SE Screen-Space Shadows

This is where Scriptable Render Loops would enter the stage, which would make this a pain to install when the lighting was already tweaked and not Unity-update-proof.

 

I have only one question before buying this, how well does it scale with all the post-procs effects? Do I need to apply it before or after them? Or is it influenced by them in any 'bad' way?

If that's settled I'm in buying this

 

well it "augments" Unity's directional light shadows, so you probably want to have it near the top of the stack, i would imagine

 

It doesn't matter. I'm putting it before AO just to be sure, but I can't make out any visual difference when putting it at the end of the stack. It's applying a command buffer to the camera. Performance-wise it's about 0.65ms for a Full-HD frame on a GTX680 while in a dense forest with terrain and 3D grass.

 

So I'd have to apply them before the Unity's post-proc behaviour. Thanks for the tip, looking forward on grabbing this one.

 

thanks for the info !

 

Hi sonic !!

I am interested in your asset but I have some doubts

Can it be used with scenarios that have day / night cycles with real-time lighting? Maybe it's a stupid question but it's not clear to me.

Do you plan to include rendering path forward?

Would it work with any type of shader in the material? Ie ... I use infiniGrass and do not know if your asset would be compatible.

regards

 

Hi @sonicether ,

I was browsing through all of your assets I wasn't aware of and was particularly impressed by this, and this image in particular:



The shadows on the grass really seem to be fading on the tip, like they were using the alpha channel of the texture to make the calculations.

1) I'm not sure if it is a coincidence. Does this mean that this kind of scattering could be applied to particle systems that write on the Z buffer?

2) Is there any chance you could combine this with an integrated ambient occlusion shader/color bleed for performance sake?

3) I bought it on the fly, but later realized it was in the DX11 Subcategory of Unity. Is this really DX11 only compatible or there is a pale chance to obtain the same effect in DX9 as well? Will the system fallback automatically to the default shadows on a non compatible device? Will we able to determine if the SE is going to work on a certain device and manually switch it off and use the default Unity shadows?

4) Any chance you could introduce shadow distance scattering? This may not be the technical term. I mean: having crisp shadows at the base of the object (eg: a tall cilinder) and a very blurred on at the end? What about simply fading out the shadow, if the above solution is too heavy?

Thank you

 

@sonicether Very impressive work! Can you, by any chance, outline how hard would it be to make these shadows work with recently released pipe and area lights from Unity? They are done using command buffers in deferred rendering, if that's relevant.

 

Has anyone done any testing on super-large scale applications?

I'm thinking - could this be used to do shadows for a city as viewed from high up in the sky, where traditional shadow mapping just doesn't have the finesse to handle such things.

 

Hello!

I have a very specific question ... in paragon, unreal use shadow map to approximate hair thickness, when comparing the fragment to the shadowmap position, if it's below a shadowmap sample they use the distance instead of the comparison to blend a color accordingly (ie the thickness relative to the first light blocker).

The question is, how easy it's possible to tweak the shader to have "contact thickness"?

 

As others have said, it doesn't matter what order you place the script on the camera or what other effects you have going as long as you're using DX11 and deferred rendering.

It works just fine with day/night cycles.

Forward rendering path support is not possible, because there's no way to blend the screen-space shadows in with the traditional shadows properly in forward rendering. Consequently, only deferred-compatible shaders will receive screen-space shadows.

1. I'm not sure about z-writing particles. As long as they use a deferred-compatible material, I don't see why they wouldn't work.

2. Probably not, since the tracing that's going on is going to be slightly different than tracing for ambient occlusion.

3. I can probably get a dx9 version working and put out an update for that. That'll be handled via fallback shaders. I'm already using a fallback shader for Mac support, so I could just add another fallback for dx9 only support.

4. This would require tracing many rays which would degrade performance quite a bit. The shadow does have an adjustable "fade out" applied to it, as you can see in the screenshot you referenced.

Screen-space traced area shadows would require tracing many rays/way more samples and would be impractical for that reason.

This effect has an "accumulation" property that sort of acts the way that you're describing. Lower accumulation values allow some light to bleed through the thickness of a surface before terminating.

 

Unity's forward directional shadows are also done in a screen-space deferred manner. It just needs to be done as a command buffer attached to the light instead of a camera image effect. Assuming you only need the camera depth texture to do the effect, you should be able to just render the SSS directly into the screenspace shadow mask.

https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Rendering.LightEvent.AfterScreenspaceMask.html

Forward rendered objects that have a shadowcaster pass inject themselves into the depth and albedo. Again assuming your effect only needs the depth this should work, even with particles, though they dont write to the normals which causes some pain for SSAO.

 

Strange, because I tried this, and it didn't work. Is there some sort of configuration that enables or disables this screen-space pass for directional shadows in forward rendering? Perhaps I had it disabled...

 

It's disabled for mobile, and in 5.3 and earlier it can manually be disabled in the settings file (though not exposed in the editor), it would also sometimes not be enabled if cascaded shadows were turned off. Otherwise if you have cascades turned on Unity has to render them in the screen space style as the shaders don't support cascades otherwise.

 

Okay, I'll look into this. Thanks!

 

thanks for the reply.

If the shader works with deferred mode means that it is compatible with your asset, right? Although I have seen the information that has contributed bgolus, I hope you can also upgrade to support forward rendering

regards

 

@sonicether, @bgolus I thought about the same thing concerning screen space forward shadows. This might be possible according to the way Unity handles shadows when you're not targeting mobile platforms.

 

Support for DX9 and possibly forward rendering are good news indeed!

I think I may be missing something tho. If the shadows have already got an adjustable fade out (and this feature alone would have been enough me to buy the package), why is the grass receiving the fading shadow, but the fence isn't?

Since area shadows would require an excessive scattering to look good, I believe that distance fading would be a nice alternative. I kind of hate having al those sharp (well, sometimes) almost raytraced shadows everywhere! (personal rant )

 

Wow!
You are doing such a great job!
Firstly I was impressed by SEGI, which is amazing!
Now you made this!

Thanks you! You pushed the level of graphics on Unity to the new level, and your tools is very important for our project.

Also I am like your way to showcase a tool, "before / after" images and even interactive images on your website.
It is important for such tools.

 

Couldn't they be "naively" treated as point or directional sources for the purposes of those shadows, since influence of area on penumbra isn't really great anyway in short range contact shadows this effect is covering?

 

The grass doesn't have shadowmap shadows, so the screen-space shadow fades into nothing. The fence and other geometry have shadowmap shadows, so the screen-space shadows fade into those shadowmap shadows. The fade itself helps blend the transition from screen-space shadows to shadowmap shadows.

Sure, but for the best effect it needs something to fall back on (shadowmap shadows). Plus, I'd pretty much have to rewrite the shader for area lights for this.

 

Hey guys, I'd just like to encourage you to share any screenshots you'd be willing to share in this thread! With your permission, and with credit given, I'd like to feature some screenshots from users on the webpage and Asset Store page for this asset!

 

Well, I kinda have one, but I don't know if it's good enough.

 

Hey, thanks for the asset.
Is there some way to exclude objects from casting shadows? I would like to have my grass unaffected. I can receive great results on normal geometry, just on grass it doesn't really look that great. Thanks!

 

Hello SonicEther,

We are using it in our desert survival game "Badiya" Alpha 1.4 which is available now on Steam Early Access:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/545050/

More info on the game itself can be found on this thread:
https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/badiya-infinite-procedural-survival-game-in-the-desert.443967/

SEGI is next on our radar once it gets blue noise and cascades!

Here are the Screen Space Shadows comparison Screenshots (Feel free to use them):

 

Dang, the difference it makes to shadows on the character is impressive!
Also, that game looks kinda cool!

--IronDuke

 

This is super impressive, and I understand that you're comparing it to other screen-space features because of the way it operates. But could you run a straight comparison of it versus Unity's basic lighting system, and then coupled WITH that system as it should run? I'd love to see the frame rate or time impact of the combination.

 

It's unlikely that you'd get a useful comparison out of that. Screenspace effects like FXAA and SSAO and these SS Shadows, are generally decoupled from what is actually on the screen, the only thing that affects them is screen resolution and what quality you set the effect to (High, Med, Low).

Both Unity's main renderer and the shadow renderer (has to render everything again to generate shadow maps) DO scale with that's in the scene. So, if you had a flat plane, with just a cube and a directional light, screen space shadows might take longer to render than everything else (Unity shadows and all else) combined, but if you have a complex scene, where the Unity shadow renderer has to re-draw a thousand objects to cast shadows; the screenspace shadow performance shouldn't change much if at all.

If you want to get an idea of how it runs, add the FXAA post-effect twice on your camera, that's roughly gonna be the same as your performance hit for medium/high SS Shadow settings.

 

@sonicether
Just to be sure - should this post effect be placed above or below the standard post processing stack in the camera component list?

 

It seems logical that it would be applied before the stack, if not right at the top of the camera scripts. It is, after all, augmenting the lighting and shadowing Unity does and isn't an artistic filter.

 

My project could really use some of your awesome screen space shadows
Any hope of a Forward render version using command buffers on the directional light as an entry point?
Deferred only makes sense for lots of point or spot lights, otherwise it's too heavy and has many disadvantages like being incompatible with multiple render targets and only having a single lighting type for materials.
Deferred screen space reflections are cool but way too buggy and expensive to consider using them comercially.
Because of this, I really think Forward render is the way to go and the only reasonable solution for me.

 

Thank you for this amazing plugin. I'm using it for two applications that will run at an exhibition in Las Vegas in March 2017 and I'm so happy with it... Here you can find few early screens from one of the environments, more coming soon while I'm going on (here there are only mining environment work in progress setting, there will be machinery and components, then I will have also a totally different construction site with machineries and components).

https://connect.unity.com/p/5857f46c090915003342358b

 

It doesn't matter where you place the script on the camera, since it uses command buffers to apply the effect before any other post effects.

I'm just finishing up work on updating another one of my assets, and then I'll look into it in more detail soon!

 

I want to know if the Screen-Space Shadows system
works correctly only if I disable the hbao on my project...
because I have to use Screen-Space Shadows and hbao together...
is it possible to use them together?

 

I use them together without any issues, and they look great.

 

@sonicether Hello, I started using this asset for Ghost of a Tale. If you'd like to use a screenshot:



But I'm also writing because after doing a Windows build in 5.5.0p4 I got those errors:



Would you mind taking a look at them please?

 

No problem!

 

I sent a message through your website but never received a response. I'm developing for the PS4 and XB1 and wanted to know if this asset would be compatible with one or both.

 

I can confirm it works on Xbox One.

 

Thanks Seith. The PS4 is my lead platform and the one I'll need it for first.

 

Sorry about that, I must've missed it!

Since I can't personally test anything on PS4 or Xbox One, I can't definitively say for sure. However, I do have in mind the things that need to be avoided when writing shaders in order for them to work on those platforms, so there's a good chance it'll work on PS4. If it doesn't work and I ended up missing something, definitely let me know and I'll fix it as soon as I can!

 

PS4 works out of the box.

 

Picked this up today and ran the demo scene. Not sure why but static batching doesn't seem to be working and I'm getting like < 30 FPS on a GTX 980 + i7-6700K build.

Anyone else experiencing this? Unity 5.5.0p4.

 

PS I tried this package out with another scene using OpenVR via SteamVR and it worked great! No measureable impact on performance with or without the effect on for that particular scene.

EDIT: Multi pass of course. Although single pass would be amazing too if possible!

 

Hi,

Is this suppose to be an upgrade to SE- SSAO? Or am I suppose to use both of them together?
(I haven't bought this one, so I'm not sure what kind of options there are).

 

Is it like AO?

 

Nope, it's literally shadows for very small objects. You use it alongside AO.

 

Perfect

 

Hi sonic ether,
I bought your asset, it's really great, thanks! It would be nice, if you could help me:
What do I have to change when I'm using a custom shadow caster like "Sunshine!" ?

I think, I have to set the shadowmap (or the Screenspace shadowmap?) of Sunshine in your Shader, the rest should be fine, however I don't know where to do that, maybe you could give me a hint?
(Currently it's not working with Sunshine. Only when I turn off the Sunshine Camera Script it works..)

Thank you,
Best Regards

Edit: As a workaround I just removed DisableBuiltInShadows (); in the Sunshine script.. but would be nice to know how it works when I disable the unity shadows and use only Sunshine's custom shadows?