PIDI : Advanced Skin Shader 2

[IrrSoft1]

This asset has been released, you can get it here

Hi there,

We have been working really hard on a full revamp for all of our tools as 2020 approaches. At the moment, we are finishing the last features for the major update to our PBR Skin + Eye Shader asset which will be renamed to the Advanced Skin Shader 2, with a huge amount of brand new features and improvements over version 1.x

Here is an early WIP video (with some more recent and easy to spot footage) showing some of the features :

PIDI : Advanced Skin Shader 2 - Early WIP # 2

And some screenshots :

On the left, Unity’s Standard Specular shader for comparison.

Our system for dynamic wrinkles can be set up in 3 easy to follow steps :

• Assign a normalmap that mixes all the possible wrinkles of the character and its corresponding occlusion map
• Perform the “3 clicks setup” to generate the reference data used to generate the tension map
• Adjust the vertices detection threshold to adjust the intensity of the transitions to your particular mesh

This will allow the shader to generate a tension map on the fly and make the corresponding transitions between the different normals and occlusion maps, generating believable and high quality results within seconds.

The translucency and scattering parameters are fully adjustable as well, and special care has been placed on every single PBR parameter of our custom lighting algorithms to ensure that the results look great in any lighting conditions and on any device, from lower end smartphones to high end PCs with as little compromise in quality as possible.

We will share more progress about this asset as we approach its release as well as between the different updates after it is released.

At the moment, there is no ETA since there have been some technical issues on the Asset Store that are delaying new releases, but we are targeting a mid-late October release.

The price has not been set up yet, but it will be higher than the current price of version 1. Owners of version one will receive a considerable discount when upgrading.

There will be a Lite version with less features but at a very accessible price.

There are no plans to support HDRP officially at the moment, at least not until said pipeline is marked as stable and more thoroughly documented.

We hope you will find this early WIP interesting, and please feel free to post your questions and opinions below

Have a great weekend!

[led_bet]

This looks amazing. Can’t wait to use the newest version of the wrinkle system. Question about skinned decals: Does the decal system apply across the skinned mesh, or just the part that uses the PIDI skin material? Skinned decals are kinda sparse in the asset store at the moment and it would be neat to have something that worked across a model.

Thanks for all of your hard work!

[IrrSoft1]

@led_bet

This looks amazing. Can’t wait to use the newest version of the wrinkle system. Question about skinned decals: Does the decal system apply across the skinned mesh, or just the part that uses the PIDI skin material? Skinned decals are kinda sparse in the asset store at the moment and it would be neat to have something that worked across a model.

Thanks for all of your hard work!

Hi there!

The decal system we are implementing is based on the one we included with the first version, so it is closer to a multi-layered overlay system entirely driven by the skin shader.

However, due to the requirements of our own in-progress game, we are researching different methods to make a far more comprehensive decals system for skinned meshes (that due to the same requirements of our project should be able to mix well with all of our tools), so if our internal decals system makes good progress and we can find a way to make it easy to use outside of our projects we may put it in the store as well

Unfortunately, returning to your original question, at the moment at least the decals included with this asset will be more simple and limited to the skin materials.

We hope this helps and thank you so much for commenting !

[IrrSoft1]

Here are a few screenshots showcasing different lighting setups using the skin shader and ACES + HDR color grading. We are still tweaking some values, adjusting and exposing some internal settings (to allow as much fine control as possible) but at the moment we are quite happy with the results and the accuracy of the PBR skin for version 2

Have a great week!

[IrrSoft1]

Despite its considerable limitations, we are currently halfway done with the port of our Advanced Skin Shader 2 to the LWRP and Universal RP pipelines and we are quite happy with the results, especially after successfully porting a simplified version of our lighting algorithm

Over the course of tomorrow we will be adding translucency and attempting to port our tension maps system to these pipelines to ensure that the package retains as much of the quality and features as possible.

A few considerations to have :

- The shader is more demanding than a standard PBR shader for LWRP / Universal RP due to the additional lighting pass
- Due to the use of custom functions to achieve the lighting, LWRP and Universal RP support will be limited to Unity 2019.2+
- The quality of this port (as well as the deferred port) will be slightly inferior to that of the Standard Pipeline on forward mode, due to the limitations on lighting pass customization compared to Standard+Forward.

Have a great day !

[IrrSoft1]

And translucency is working now on LWRP, as well as a multi-light setup + point lights support :

These screenshots were taken in a ACES + HDR setup to better showcase the translucency effect

[IrrSoft1]

And the tension maps + dynamic wrinkles are now ready and working on both LWRP and Universal RP :

[IrrSoft1]

Here is a small comparison of the deferred version of the shader (running on Unity’s standard deferred pipeline, no need for any changes) with the approximated Scattering + Translucency :

and forward, showing very little differences :

Just a small comprobation that the shader is indeed working in deferred mode :

[IrrSoft1]

For an easier comparison, on the left we have the forward version of the shader and on the right the deferred one :

(translucency in Deferred is a simplified approximation due to the lack of access to the lighting pass)

We have been working as hard as we can to reduce the visible differences between both pipelines as much as possible. Here, both materials are using the same settings but we believe that some additional tweaking for deferred might give you even better results

Again, the deferred shader just works “out of the box” without requiring any changes to the deferred pipeline, nor any external assets (such as Uber, Lux, etc). Just assign any PIDI - Advanced Skin Shader 2 material, set up the lights that you want to affect the scattering and translucency in deferred through the tool’s UI and that’s it.

Tomorrow we will work on the “CGI Style” or “Stylized Skin” shader as well as on its own character model as well as on a potential alternative for the wrinkles system, more similar to the one included in version 1.x and which, though considerable more complex to set up than the new tension maps system may allow more accurate control over every transition. After this, only the documentation will be left before we send the asset for approval to the Asset Store

Have a great weekend!

[IrrSoft1]

The stylized character and shaders are now ready, we are currently making extensive tests over the whole asset and iterating over the UI to ensure that the workflow is as easy and flexible as we possibly can. We are also going to add the UV based decals / overlays support in the upcoming days to send the asset for approval very soon

Have a great weekend !

(WIP, character not fully textured nor set up)

[rockin]

Can’t wait to get this new version! Do you have a planned ETA?

[IrrSoft1]

@rockin

Can’t wait to get this new version! Do you have a planned ETA?

Hi there and thanks for your comments !

We are currently implementing a few last minute additions to the shader to ensure it comes packed to the brim with new stuff (and working really hard on a possible auto-update feature which is taking longer than expected due to the many MANY improvements made between versions) but if everything goes well it should be available in early-mid November

Some emphasis on “If everything goes well” since the Asset Store has been really unstable in the last two months for us as publishers with some considerable down time that prevents us from uploading anything or that gets assets stuck in an infinite queue (it delayed our latest release of another asset by almost ~12 days) but again, if everything goes as expected it should be sent for approval next week and be ready to download in mid November.

We hope it will really be useful for your projects, so thanks for asking and for your interest !

[rockin]

Yes, I’m using v1 and I plan to do something like a character editor, where I can change base skin texture, but also add beard, tattoos and such. And I would prefer to work directly on top of v2

Good luck with the release, waiting anxiously.

The screenshots so far look impressive

[IrrSoft1]

We are currently finishing both the Decals system and the secondary wrinkles system (this one might be pushed for version 2.1 in order to get to the early-mid November release)

This secondary wrinkles system will be similar to the one found in version 1, where bones and blendshapes are tracked to detect changes in their position and generate transitions between several normalmaps through the use of a facial regions map.

While the tension maps method will be the default, preferred solution to use wrinkles with the system, this alternative method is currently in development and will be included as an alternative that offers more control over the whole process (again, it may be pushed back to v 2.1)

We will be showing the UV based overlays/decals system very soon and we expect to send the asset for approval this weekend

Have a great week !

[IrrSoft1]

The new overlays / decals system is finally ready, and it allows for many different and interesting effects :

Masked blending between the 2 textures

Additive blending :

Multiplied blending :

And a mixed setup, with the first decal being additive and the second being masked :

Each overlay texture can be set up on either the UV0 or UV2 channel and have their own scale and offset. Each overlay texture can have their own specular color and gloss values as well.

We are considering adding more parameters to these values as well as some integrated effects such as rain, but these may come as part of a future update so we do not delay the release of the asset

Have a great day !

[IrrSoft1]

The Advanced Skin Shader 2 will be send for approval during the weekend, as right now only the documentation and promotional materials are left to finish

The wrinkles systems we have introduced in this version have very different workflows and many different advantages for their own unique use cases. These systems are the Tension Maps and the Regions Maps approach.

Tension Maps :

• Automated transitions between the standard normal map and the wrinkle maps.

• Easy set up ready to use in just 3 clicks.

• Due to its automated nature, results may not be as accurate nor customizable as with the Region Maps approach and the amount of poses with accurate transitions is limited

• Supports transitions between rest pose and wrinkle pose normal maps and occlusion maps

• GPU based, extremely efficient.

• Compatible with LWRP / URP

Region Maps :

• Manually set up “pose snapshots” used as references to calculate wrinkled areas

• Use region maps to define up to 4 blending areas (per pose) to precisely blend in the wrinkles map

• More involved set up requiring to manually place the character in the desired “pose” both with blendshapes and bones before taking a “snapshot” of it. More flexibility and control = more time required to set up the wrinkles.

• Allows for a very high amount of normal maps and region maps to be used at once, to create all kinds of wrinkles for any amount of poses with great precision.

• Does not support (yet) transition between different occlusion maps

• CPU based. Becomes more expensive the more poses you use and the more blendshapes / bones you track

• Does not work on LWRP / URP, only in the Standard pipeline

[IrrSoft1]

The asset has just been approved and released on the Asset Store !
You can find the brand new thread for the asset here or get it directly on the Asset Store right here

[SammmZ]

Looking forward to check it out, looks amazing! Just one question, you didn’t include eye shader to the asset like in a previous one?

[IrrSoft1]

@SammmZ

Looking forward to check it out, looks amazing! Just one question, you didn’t include eye shader to the asset like in a previous one?

That’s right. The eye shader in the previous version was included as a last minute extra during the initial release at a moment when we thought it could add some extra value to the package but for this new version we wanted to focus on the main product itself, the skin shader, and try to make it be the best we could.

Having both an eyes and a skin shader (which attracted quite different users with different needs) as part of the same package and trying to support both while providing patches for only one or the other got confusing for many users and increasingly difficult to maintain on our end (especially after the release of the SRP versions).

So for version 2 we did a bit of rebranding, changing the name of the asset to better reflect what it is and decided to remove the eye shader. At some point in Q1-Q2 2020 we plan to release version 2 of our eye shader as its own product (with a very considerable discount for owners of the original PBR Skin + Eye Shader) in order to make support, patches and updates for both of them much more efficient and in the end offer a much more stable, improved and valuable product for all our users

Thank you very much for your comment, we hope you will like the new version and look forward to see what you can do with it !

[SammmZ]

Oh, thanks a lot for such a detailed answer! Can’t wait to put my hands on the eye shader as well. Keep it up, great assets!