[BEST ARTISTIC TOOL - UNITY AWARDS 2019] Aura 2 - Volumetric Lighting & Fog

[generalknow]

@generalknow

sorry i Just did a development build and i get this error in that console …

Graphics.CopyTexture could not find source D3D11 texture object. Maybe it is a RenderTexture that is not created yet?
(Filename: C:\buildslave\unity\build\Runtime/GfxDevice/d3d11/GfxDeviceD3D11.cpp Line: 1643)

also get this when import into a new project…

Shader warning in ‘Aura 2/Particles/Blend Add’: Output value ‘vert’ is not completely initialized at AuraParticlesBase.cginc(33) (on d3d11)

Compiling Vertex program with _USAGESTAGE_VERTEX _USAGETYPE_LIGHT
Platform defines: UNITY_ENABLE_REFLECTION_BUFFERS UNITY_USE_DITHER_MASK_FOR_ALPHABLENDED_SHADOWS UNITY_PBS_USE_BRDF1 UNITY_SPECCUBE_BOX_PROJECTION UNITY_SPECCUBE_BLENDING UNITY_ENABLE_DETAIL_NORMALMAP SHADER_API_DESKTOP UNITY_COLORSPACE_GAMMA UNITY_LIGHT_PROBE_PROXY_VOLUME UNITY_LIGHTMAP_FULL_HDR

[generalknow]

@raphick

this is nothing. Can you try a normal player build?

I did a normal player build and everything worked fine.
just having the issue when i build for SteamVR. I am testing on windows mixed reality platform.

[MartinOrtiz]

@Wolfride2

You can do this prefabs from things like particle effects which would be a more efficient solution. And the answer is liekly no. Go to the asset store, type “volumetric light beam” and set the price to 0. There are about 4 results that might work for your situation!

ok, thanks for info

[MartinOrtiz]

I can still use Aura 2…

Can you explain what are “injection volumes”?

[KennyGuillaume]

Just bought the asset, and I’m really liking it!
Running into an issue though. When using the noise mask, I get this noise on my skybox as well.

Is there a way around it? I’m using the Azure[Sky] Dynamic Skybox asset by the way.

And related question to this. Is it possible to exclude the skybox from this effect entirely? So that, when choosing a color for the Aura effect, the skybox doesn’t change color.

Great work so far!

[MartinOrtiz]

What is the difference and/or advantages between

1. Global Volume?

2. Layer Volume?

3. Shape Volume (box, sphere, cone)?

[RPowers]

@raphick

Hello everybody! Thank you so much for all your nice comments and love about Aura 2 and your help to improve and make it an awesome product

General note regarding compatibility of specific assets and transparent shaders/objects.
Aura 2 fundamentally handles most rendering situations and also provides technical solutions to support custom/specific transparent assets (doc, ASE nodes).
For those least technical among us, not everything can be compatible out of hands, especially at launch, with Aura 2 as I cannot inject aura 2 inside the Unity system. That’s annoying but there are solutions.
You can always ask the publisher of your favorite incompatible assets to contact me if you want them to support Aura 2. I’ll be gladly working with them!
Or you all guys can just contact Unity to bring a native solution to support Aura 2 on native shaders. Who knows
55000 requests might trigger something.

Hi! I have had people working Enviro along Aura and aura 2 for a long time. It works with post processing stack although I’d recommend setting Aura 2 before it. 2018.3 is supported yes

Vegetation Studio is apparently compatible. I don’t know about weather maker. I’ll try to contact them to make sure they’ll be compatible with aura2.

Can you give me more console details? This shouldn’t happen as the toolbox is stripped from builds.

None are currently compatible with Aura 2 right now, shaders still need to be modified.

Fixed!

Awesome! Can you PM so I can follow this up!

Thank you for your nice message and compliments Aura 2 in the current state has taken me 2.5years

Yes presets are strong in order to be well visible like in a forest. They need tweaking of course. I can easily refine them according to your feedbacks (and I knew I’d had to).
The problems with playmode in editor comes from the preview which is still in improvement.

Yes I’ll make runtime demos when I have a little more time.
Aura 2 relies on the lights themselve so yes changing the light’s orientation will change the rays direction as well.
You can apply the presets at runtime yes via AuraPreset.ApplyPreset(Presets preset). The change will be immediate though, no lerp nor weight yet. This is planned for an update.
Rick is never gonna let us down!

Aura 2 is not a cloud simulation system (mainly because of the need of selfshadowing) although it can still achieve very good results alike

I am not sure but you’d need to be able to disable the fog from it. Best I can tell is to ask the dev of envirosky.

Yes there is! You can create a Aura Volume from the toolbox, select the Inject Light so the volume will be filled with fake light. You can apply a 2D/3D texture mask on that volume if you need to refine the borders of the shafts

There are no direct plans on HDRP (it is not even close to be usable for production) as 98 percents of users are not willing to use it now and the rest has only tried…
Gizmos freeze issue is on the work
Vegetation Studio and Enviro reportedly work with Aura 2.

Can you try modifying the depth bias towards 0 to test?
Yes transparent shaders need to be modified to support Aura 2 as mentionned, please have a look in the doc so know how.
Transparent shadows are just fake s**t using dithered shadowmaps. Still scratching my head to have them work correctly.

Thanks! Setting depth bias at 0 looks much better in VR.

[GordGames]

@raphick

3. I don’t know about it I must confess since I always disabled it. However unity fog is poorly supported on non pc platforms and is erratically applied in shaders so it could happen that it weirdly overrides aura.
   Will need to follow this up.

Hope you’re feeling better soon! Fog is pretty much the last of my issues. Since my game has a huge map and you can be flying pretty high, I do need a way to hide the camera clipping. Unity fog has worked ok (it goes through the post processing stack, so maybe that’s why it interacts weirdly?).

Any suggestions? I could look for a 3rd party fog replacement I suppose.

I an planning on porting to the Nintendo Switch (some day… a year?) so hopefully you’ve gotten Aura2 working with that by then!

[AndyNeoman]

Anyone manage to get Aura 2 to work with Post process V2? If just updated to latest store Aura 2 but still if I put Post process on the camera it goes completely black.

[GordGames]

Fog Update: Upgrading from the old post processing stack to post processing v2 has made a big improvement.

[GordGames]

@AndyNeoman

Anyone manage to get Aura 2 to work with Post process V2? If just updated to latest store Aura 2 but still if I put Post process on the camera it goes completely black.

I did just that, actually.

[GordGames]

This is with post processing v2 using a stylistic fog and a few effects:

[CloverBite]

Hi,

Thank you for your awesome work! We used AURA 1 in our project and are now transitioning to AURA 2.
After importing the package, I have the following error in my console:

NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
Aura2API.Texture3DExtensions.RenderTexture3DStaticPreview (UnityEngine.Texture3D texture3D, UnityEngine.Rect rect, UnityEngine.Vector2 angle, System.Single distance, System.Int32 samplingIterations, System.Single density) (at Assets/Aura 2/System/Code/Editor/Extensions/Texture3DExtensions.cs:167)
Aura2API.Texture3DEditor.RenderStaticPreview (System.String assetPath, UnityEngine.Object[ ] subAssets, System.Int32 width, System.Int32 height) (at Assets/Aura 2/System/Code/Editor/Editors/Texture3DEditor.cs:135)
UnityEditor.AssetPreviewUpdater.CreatePreviewForAsset (UnityEngine.Object obj, UnityEngine.Object[ ] subAssets, System.String assetPath) (at C:/buildslave/unity/build/Editor/Mono/AssetPreviewUpdater.cs:33)

I’m using Unity 2018.3.8f1. I have completely removed AURA 1 before importing AURA 2.
Thank you again

[khos]

Hi Raphick, All,

I recently purchased Aura 2 to get it implemented in my game, like it so far but have a noticed a couple possible issues, I would appreciate feedback/recommendations on these please:

Light through particle systems, not sure if you are aware of this, does it support working with particle systems? See sample below.Before particle system:

During particle system:

The light still seems be showing on the ground/trees in this view. It could just be my scene setup. Not sure if this looks normal or expected, would appreciate your feedback.

Multi cameras in use issue, I waited patiently for Aura 2 as multi camera is supported. You will see with this video that when switching between horse/player (and car) the lighting is sometimes very different, even though all the Aura components are enabled the at some point the Aura effect is not seen anymore in the game. Why is that?
Video sample:

Aura2 multi camera issue

Ghosting issue. You will see in this video how I move around/zoom and there is a ghosting image, as if Aura is “catching up” to render the volumetric effect. Note, I did not see this when using Aura1. Any recommendations on this? Is this a performance issue, how can I improve?
Video sample:

Aura2 ghosting issue

Thanks in advance.

[ZAXIS]

Concerning building to Nintendo switch:

the platform does not support ‘RGBAFloat’ Texture format, and therefore works only where they are not used.
Otherwise it is running alright

ps: I checked SystemInfo, and it claims it can support RGBAHalf

[jdclark3d]

Hello, I am having an issue related to particles as well. I have a dark smoke particle system and when I use any of the Aura particle shaders it will turn it white. Then when I use the standard alpha blended I get the color correct but then the transparency gets messed up and you can see the edges of the texture map where it should be invisible.

[cygnusprojects]

Hi @raphick ,

Trying to make R.A.M compatible with Aura 2 so I’m following along with the manual:

1. Include “Aura.cginc” located in the “/Aura 2/System/Code/Shaders/” folder.

#include "Assets/Aura 2/System/Code/Shaders/Aura.cginc"

However this does already result in an error:

Shader error in 'NatureManufacture Shaders/Water/Aura/Water River Tesseled Vertex Color Flow': Unexpected token '('. Expected one of: ',' ';' at Structs.cginc(27)

Is there an actual example available that can be used as a blueprint for shader adjustments that needs to be done for Aura 2 compatibility?

[raphick]

@KennyGuillaume

Is it possible to exclude the skybox from this effect entirely?

hi! it’s actually because it is a volumetric effect… it happens before the sky. removing aura from the skybox would really be a killer and cause big artifacts as the fog would only apply on objects but would be cut by sky.

@MartinOrtiz

What is the difference and/or advantages between

1. Global Volume?
2. Layer Volume?
3. Shape Volume (box, sphere, cone)?

Those a just different shapes but can inject the same data inside. Have a look at the doc for more information

@CloverBite

Hi,

Thank you for your awesome work! We used AURA 1 in our project and are now transitioning to AURA 2.
After importing the package, I have the following error in my console:

I’m using Unity 2018.3.8f1. I have completely removed AURA 1 before importing AURA 2.
Thank you again

This message is harmless and is about some changes made by Unity in 2018.x it only happens at import

@khos

does it support working with particle systems?

Yes use the particle shaders that are provided with Aura 2 or modify yours to add Aura 2 system in it

@khos

Why is that?

Are the same bas/quality presets applied to all the cameras?

@khos

how can I improve?

Disable occlusion culling in aura quality or reduce/disable reprojection or get more fps

@ZAXIS

Concerning building to Nintendo switch:
the platform does not support ‘RGBAFloat’ Texture format, and therefore works only where they are not used.
Otherwise it is running alright
ps: I checked SystemInfo, and it claims it can support RGBAHalf

Great Info! Thanks

@jdclark3d

when I use any of the Aura particle shaders it will turn it white

Have you tried reducing Light Factor? Are the materials in the transparent queue?

@cygnusprojects1

Is there an actual example available that can be used as a blueprint for shader adjustments that needs to be done for Aura 2 compatibility?

The doc was update and I indeed intend to have a tutorial about it. RAM shaders are surface shaders so you’ll need to have a look at the provided example:

• open “Assets\Aura 2\System\Code\Shaders\Shaders\SurfaceShaders\AuraStandardAlphaBlended.shader”
• copy the pragmas at lines 35 36 37
• add “finalcolor:Aura2_Fog” in the surface pragma line
• and copy lines 43->66 and 75->88 in your shader

[cygnusprojects]

@raphick

The doc was update and I indeed intend to have a tutorial about it. RAM shaders are surface shaders so you’ll need to have a look at the provided example:

• open “Assets\Aura 2\System\Code\Shaders\Shaders\SurfaceShaders\AuraStandardAlphaBlended.shader”
• copy the pragmas at lines 35 36 37
• add “finalcolor:Aura2_Fog” in the surface pragma line
• and copy lines 43->66 and 75->88 in your shader

Works like a charm, thanks!

[khos]

@raphick

Are the same bas/quality presets applied to all the cameras?

Disable occlusion culling in aura quality or reduce/disable reprojection or get more fps

Multi camera issue:
Yes, I have three cameras that use the same presets file! I still see the issue, have you tested with multi cameras? Like 3 of them?

Disable occlusion culling has helped, thanks.