Soft Particles dont work VR

Unity Engine
1

Hi, I have a game where I use multiple cameras (car and the mirrors) and its in VR.
For some reason the soft particle option doesn’t work. How can i control the rendering mode for all the cameras in scene in order to make the soft particle work

Thanks,

Eliran.

2

Something to try: The camera must be set to generate a depth texture. Having shadows enabled should also turn this on automatically.

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3

I’m having the same issue. When I use Soft particles in Single pass stereo the particles dissapear. Issue happens with both regular particle shaders or the new Particle Standard shader. And I am using shadows in my scenes. But, I am using Unity 2017.1.0f3… I’ll try to update if I have the time, just in case it’s a quirk with the version. Or is it that the shaders are just not compatible with Single pass?

Anyway, any advice will be greatly appreciated.

Also, I’m away from my computer, If I can I’ll post some screenshots if needed.

Edit: nevermind, the standard particle shader had errors, so I reimported it and the shaders started to work again. strange…

4

Hi,

I’ve just tried this and, with a very basic setup, it seems to work correctly for me.

Please ensure you are rendering a depth texture (using Deferred, or Camera set to render a depth pass. The latter is enabled via script or if there are shadows. Unfortunately the Soft Particles setting doesn’t automatically enable it).

If you’re still having problems after that, please submit a bug report with a minimal repro project.

Link for enabling the depth pass via script: Unity - Manual: Cameras and depth textures

5

Hi, im building a VR project and am having trouble getting my soft particles to render despite pouring over this information.

My camera is rendering in Deferred, and I’ve confirmed that my camera isnt actually rendering a depth texture despite enabling shadows on lights in the scene. Ive confirmed this via:

cam = GetComponent<Camera>();
Debug.Log(cam.depthTextureMode);

which returns “None”

Is this a limitation with Unity free? this thread seems to confirm this: Soft particles, depth texture, Unity-free. - Questions & Answers - Unity Discussions

using Unity 2017

Am I doing something wrong here? how to i actually enable a depth texture pass? Thanks

6

We don’t restrict these features in Free anymore. (See comparisons on https://store.unity.com/)

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7

Will be upgrading to Pro very soon but great to know thanks. Any recommendations on how to get my soft particles to work in my case then?

  • Developing for Vive / SteamVR

  • have shadows enabled on at least one light in my scene.

  • Particle system emitting billboards with Sprites as the material texture … shader = Particles (additive/soft)

  • soft particles turned on in quality settings

  • Script on camera to check if its rendering depth texures returns “None”

Debug.Log(cam.depthTextureMode);

Documentation says "DepthTextureMode.Depth" will “builds a screen-sized depth texture”… how to implement this?
im using single pass rendering… any bearing?
Would really appreciate some help if you got it to work. Thanks

8

Yes it works, but took me a few mins to work it out mind, check the following:

Render settings, check that Soft Particles is checked (enabled):
Edit->Project Settings->Quality

Check that the material is Particles/Additive (soft).

Then add this script to the cam:
*Note this script is also executed in the editor!

using System.Collections;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using UnityEngine;

[ExecuteInEditMode]
public class camDepth : MonoBehaviour {

    void Start () {
        Camera cam = GetComponent<Camera>();
        cam.depthTextureMode = DepthTextureMode.Depth;
    }

}

If you use this then keep in mind the restrictions of scripts in editor mode:

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