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SE Screen-Space Shadows provides screen-space raytraced shadows for directional lights for sharp, detailed contact shadows. It can capture details in shadows that would otherwise be missed using traditional shadow maps alone.

This effect works by tracing in screen-space using the depth buffer information, similar to SSAO or screen-space reflections. Like these other effects, anything that is not directly visible in the main view will not contribute to screen-space shadows. However, because this effect is meant to be used in combination with traditional shadow maps to improve close-proximity contact shadows, this limitation is generally not apparent.

This effect requires DX11 or OpenGL 4.1 or newer. It is not compatible with OpenGL ES and won’t work for WebGL or mobile platforms. It is compatible with Unity 5.4 and up. SE Screen-Space Shadows requires the deferred rendering path.

Visit sonicether.com/screenspaceshadows for more information and screenshots


Click the image above to view the Asset Store page.




Since this effect uses the depth buffer to draw shadows, a parallax shader that modifies the depth buffer can cast and receive shadows (UBER used here).

Comparison Screenshots













The above graph compares the render time of SE Screen-Space Shadows (in the grassy scene seen above) and both Unity’s Antialiasing (FXAA) and Ambient Obscurance image effects.

The render time of SE Screen-Space Shadows is independent of scene complexity, and far away surfaces are quicker to calculate shadows for.

This thread will serve as the main discussion thread for this asset. Please share your experience with SE Screen-Space Shadows!

Did this asset help your project/scene look awesome?

If you’d like to share your work, post a screenshot in this thread and mention how you should be credited! The most awesome screenshots will be featured in this thread, on the webpage for this asset, and on the Asset Store page (with credit given, of course)!

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This looks awesome! I drooled a little bit when I saw the UBER Parallax + Shadows cube.

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A must-buy for me to hopefully fix the dreaded light leaks I got in my clean geometry, alongside the general aesthetical improvement. Very cool thingy you got there!

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At what resolution has the render time been taken? 1080p ?

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It looks pretty realistic!

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@No0B25 made an interesting comment above about how this effect could act as a solution to light leaking in Unity 5, something I had not considered. Could you comment directly on how generalizable this effect might be in that context?

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Looking forward to this! Your website is linking to the wrong thread on the SESSS page. The Unity Asset Store link is wrong too but that’s understandable since it’s not out yet. You could link it to your general asset store page for now though.

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Yep, 1080p.

This effect does help with light leaking a lot, but it doesn’t 100% solve it in some situations (since it’s a screen-space effect).

Oops, thanks for letting me know, I forgot to change those links! I’ve fixed it now.

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At 1080p this looks very good performance wise. I am guessing it goes insane though, in 4k. But thats 4k. Nothing you can do about it.

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The screenshots look super sweet! How much will it cost when it hits the assetstore?

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Does it support VR?

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$20

I can’t think of a reason why it wouldn’t work with VR, I’ve yet to test it out myself. Although I’m not sure how well a screen-space effect like this would translate to VR.

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Could you elaborate on your above comment, why this may or may not translate well into VR?

Also, given that the effect is tracing the depth buffer for directional lights only, how would this effect work for occluded geometry that only receives secondary bounce light from a directional light source. For example, consider the indoor archviz screenshot on the SEGI page: how would indoor props that are occluded by the ceiling and walls be affected if they are not immediately visible to the directional light?

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Sure. I only meant that sometimes screen-space effects can work well outside of VR, but with stereoscopic rendering, the limitations of a screen-space effect become more apparent. I don’t know since I haven’t tested it myself yet.

Also, shadows are blended as you would expect them to be. In areas that are already in “shade”, this effect doesn’t draw shadows “on top” of the shaded areas. Essentially what you get is (shadowmap shadows) * (screen-space shadows) where 1 means fully lit and 0 means fully in shadow. In the event that the shadowmap shadow value is 0, well, you see what I mean.

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Why the comparison with FXAA in the chart? Are you also doing AA in this shader?

I appreciate this is designed to be used in addition to soft shadows, but can you post another comparison of no existing shadows vs. screen-space shadows (other than the grass scene). I’m interested to see if this potentially could allow us to provide players with an option to turn off real-time shadows and just have SSS.

For $20 we’ll probably pick up a copy anyway to evaluate our jump to 5.4.3p3.

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Obviously only SE can give a definitive answer but my suspicion would be that using only SSS would look very weird because shadows would pop in and out of existence constantly. You’d only have shadows projected from stuff seen on the screen. I imagine if you’re at the back side of a house and turn around suddenly you’d go from being in the shadows to being exposed in bright daylight.

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Sure, I’m anticipating that. But it might be an acceptable compromise option for players who still want some shadows but lack the spec of PC to have them (we’re 100% real-time shadows with heaps of objects so it’s costly).

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Damn hard to wait for this to appear on assetstore :slight_smile: looks yummy!

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Wow looks amazing, nice work!

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@sonicether

  • Any updates on the asset store status? It’s taking a while to show on there it seems.

  • Is this meant to replace other screen space AO like SESSAO or to compliment them?

  • Is it needed when SEGI is used?

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