Aura 2 is a volumetric lighting/fog solution for Unity.
Aura 2 simulates the illumination of the micro-particles that are present in the environment but too small to be visible to the eye/camera.
Features : All types of light supported
â–¸ Full shadows support (1/2/4 directional cascade(s), spot, point)
â–¸ Cookie support Volumes injection (Global, Planar, Box, Sphere, Cylinder, Cone) with :
â–¸ Density injection
â–¸ Scattering injection
â–¸ Light injection Ambience Presets for 1-click kickstart Improved quality Multiple Cameras support Light Probes support Stereo / VR support Realtime preview in editor Toolbox with shortcuts Realtime Quality switch Fast Import Time Compatible with :
â–¸ Gaia from Procedural Worlds
â–¸ Amplify Shader Editor from Amplify Creations
â–¸ Bolt - Visual Scripting from Ludiq Opaque/Transparent geometry support Particles illumination, fog and density Works in Forward/Deferred Works in LDR/HDR Works in Gamma/Linear Texture2D and Texture2D support Dynamic 4D noise support Fully commented API
Hi there!
Seems great, but Aura 1 seems great too and there are other solutions out there too, so it’s really complicated to know which one is the best for each case aside from purchasing and testing them all.
What about performance? Can this run on mobile or Nintendo Switch at reasonable speeds?
Could you do a demo in order for us to test the performance?
Also, could you elaborate on the differences between Aura 1 and 2?
Does it still take ages to compile like Aura1?
Is it any faster at runtime?
Thanks
I’ll be buying as soon as I get home from work. Thanks for the great offer that was Aura, really helped my project. now, I’m glad to support your launch. Good luck. It looks amazing.
Hey,
Loved Aura 1 but had to ditch it due to all the well known issues, but as soon as I saw the “transparency support” feature, along with pretty much everything else, I purchased it right away!
However it appears the fade (transparency as well) settings in the default shader still has the same issue I had with Aura 1.
I tried to look at the shaders included with Aura 2, the settings, and the documentation, but couldn’t find anything, am I missing something?
Attaching a screenshot to this post.
How long will the launch price be available and what will be the regular price?
What other integrations are planned? I’d need Enviro, R.A.M., L.V.E. and Lux Water
Hi! Thank you.
Aura 1 will be soon deprecated and removed from the store, as there will not be any support anymore. I will not go into details because I don’t want to discredit my fellow publishers as they do a great job as well. Aura is the only solution on the store that uses the most modern technique for volumetrics. It is more flexible, more complete, can easily add features and is oriented towards the future as it is scalable in terms of quality/performances. Other solutions seem to have reached some limits, some of them not even being supported anymore.
Performances are good. Metrics are complicated but compared to Aura 1 they seem to be around 30% better for the same quality. Mobile and switch are not supported but unlike Aura 1, Aura 2 has already unofficially proved to be portable on other platforms than DX11/PC (with bits of work), unlike Aura 1. More will be coming.
I’ll indeed prep a demo build.
It’s a deep topic to cover. Compared to Aura 1, the visual quality has taken a huge step higher, the mathematics have been redone and the technical design rethought. Aura 2 is much more stable and reliable than Aura 1 which appears to be poorly reliable for builds. Aura 2 now supports a lot of features like Multicam, VR, unordered deactivation/activation, realtime preview, fixed bugs etc…
Aura 2 compiles in about 7 seconds, no need to take a shower, cook diner and tidy the whole house while waiting anymore
Thank you very much! I appreciate!
It’s not especially Aura 1’s fault, it’s the physically correct behaviour that does that. It will still happen in Aura 2 if you take the same approach. To avoid this problem, set the density to a veeery low value (like in real life, about 0.005) and the lights to very high strength.
Hi! thanks for your compliments. This looks great. Actually Aura 2 is designed to support/be able to apply on transparent materials BUT due to the nature of transparent objects (totally decoupled from the scene and rendered after everything), the shaders will need to be edited to apply the Aura effect like explained in the doc. The problem using Unity’s provided shaders is that they are not editable and I cannot inject code in it. That’s the reason I provide a first iteration of a surface shader. I will be pressuring Unity to find a more elegant and transparent solution. The ultimate one being that they natively support Aura in their shaders (let’s not dream I think).
The documentation will indeed be updated.
Yes it is! The only one on the Asset Store!
Prices will range from 47 to 67, special sales not taken in account.
I am taking contacts to expand and guarantee support of Aura 2 to those great assets out there.
Could you elaborate on what would be needed to make it compatible with Android and Nintendo Switch?
Or is it just that Aura2 hasn’t been tested for those?
By the way, is the full source code included with Aura2?
It hasn’t been tested for those indeed. Aura 2 works for example on PS4, but the directional shadow system needs to be adapted.
Yes code is included so you can fit your needs.
Just bought it. Cant wait to play around with it in VR (htc vive). Any recommended settings or tips for vr to make it as fast as possible? Also any plans for Enviro integration?
Hi! So I bought it yesterday for some Fulldome format usage since Multi-cam is supported. I tried making it work with one of the sample scenes and the AT-Bristol Dome Tools (https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/62664) and it seems like the point light is duplicated 5 times, causing a lot of disrepancies.
I tried on another “cam rig” with 5 cameras + 1 orthographic camera and it worked well except for a slight “boxing” issue where you can see lines where the cameras are stitched. (I’m unsure if it’s a cam rig issue or Aura but I bet it’s more on the camrig’s side.)
Another thing : I noticed that multi-object editing is disabled. Is there a specific reason why?
Just bought Aura 2, getting impressive results with just a few minutes in!
Been holding my breath since early February announcement, glad it have been released now!
Congratulations!
I have a few questions after playing around with it.
It seems like some volume disappears/culled after some distance, is there a way to control these settings? (I need some of the lights to be visible at a long distance for important visual cues)
Thank you. There are some fellows already playing in VR with 10ish lights and working like a charme at solid 90 fps. As always avoid unecessarily small aura objects and have good use of the existing ones.
Wow I honestly cannot tell about this kind of particular issues. Should be individually investigated.
I had to disable multi edition on some components because unity weirdly assigned the same values to all selected objects even if i did change it. Gotta be fixed of course
I do have ideas for supporting emissive materials but it’s a long shot.
Aura 2 works with the builtin render pipeline yes that’s actually one of its strength
Thank you for your compliments
Thanks for your nice words!
You can set a further distance in the Quality Settings on the Camera but it will distribute the quality along depth in consequence. I advice setting a bigger depth resolution if you do so.
There will eventually be SRP/LWRP/HRDP support. When they will be ok…
No official roadmap yet but there is already a list of planned features in the description on the store
Hey, I remember when I injected AURA 1 into my project it took an enormous time to compile the shader variants. In fact so long that I simply stopped waiting, canceled the task and deleted the project. Does AURA 2 come with the same problem? Can anyone of the early buyers tell me how long they waited after they added the package?
Yeah one more thing, I saw dust moths effect in screenshots, that usually is a sepate shader on the store are they included in AURA 2? I am talking about small glowing circles flying in fog volumes.
All types of light supported
