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Hi everyone,

we are happy to announce that we are currently working on a new asset: Planar Reflections Pro.

What is Planar Reflections Pro?

You name it: Planar Reflections Pro is exactly what you think it is. It is a totally new planar reflection system for Unity 5+.

Get realtime reflections (like mirrors) in seconds on any flat surface without fiddling around with Unity’s in-house reflection probes. With Planar Reflections Pro you can get realtime reflections with minimal impact on performance.

What differentiates Planar Reflections Pro from other planar reflection assets?

A lot to be honest. We implemented an easy-to-use (and even easier to setup) system. Once imported, you just select a object in your scene, add the Planar Reflections Pro script and hit the „Setup“ button.

The shader allows you to set multiple options to define exactly the look of the reflection you want to achieve.
Strength according to roughness, Blur according to roughness, Normal Map Distortion, Desaturation and so on…
Since we use reflection cameras, you can also use your image effects on those. So if your are not satisfied with GPU blur, you can also blur the reflection itself on the camera. Or add Bloom to reflections. Or Screen Space Ambient Occlusion. Or whatever :slight_smile:

“Performance, performance” - Name some values, dude.

In its current state, each planar reflection requires 0.6ms to render a full scene (not the demo scene, the demo scene not even takes 0.1ms of course) at Full HD (On a late 2011 Mac). So the performance hit is quite small.

Features in a nutshell

  • Realtime planar reflection with low impact on performance (0.6ms in a full scene at Full HD on late 2011 Mac)
  • Blurring with smoothness and depth accounting
  • Multiple reflective objects possible
  • Reflection in every world direction, with rotation around the Y-Axis
  • Dynamic rotation possible
  • Automatic detection of relevant objects that need to be reflected (no waste of performance) based on multiple options for you to play with
  • A lot of shader settings (General strength, Distortion according to normals, Smoothness accounting, Blurring, etc….)
  • Easy-to-use & setup (One Click Solutions wherever it is possible)

When will Planar Reflections Pro be available?

It depends on the amount of input, suggestions & wishes we get. We want to make sure, that Planar Reflections Pro is as best as possible from the beginning.

Nevertheless, since a t.b.d. sucks: We target a release in about 2-3 weeks.

Let’s talk money. How much is it?

Well, like I said, a t.b.d. sucks. But since we are still working hard on it to deliver a finished product and not an early beta, it really is hard to say and estimate. But as always, it will be priced fair.

Thanks for your interest! As always, any suggestion, comment and feedback is highly appreciated. Please ask all your questions below and we will try our best to answer them as soon as possible!

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Sounds fantastic. The Unity Planar reflections from the Blacksmith demo are extremely buggy.

Are you using two planar reflections in the demo scene since there are two surfaces that have reflections on different heights?

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Basically yes, but this case is a bit different. Since the height difference is really small, the system uses 1 camera and just 2 different offsets on the objects to not waste performance.

But in general: multiple planar reflections are no problem. :slight_smile:

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Looks good.

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There’s something about the screenshot demo I’m NOT QUITE liking, I can’t put my finger on it, perhaps the floor is too mirror like, or the reflections are not 100% consistent.

Could you try with a different scene perhaps?

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We will do that. And yes, we took the screenshot with no blur and no normal distortion to show clear reflections :slight_smile: But we will post some more screenshots from different examples in the upcoming days.

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As promised at least one additional screenshot showing rougher, more distorted reflections.

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I don’t want to be a stick in the mud, but I think there is a color space conversion error in the reflections. Or maybe it’s just the way the scene is lit. Have you tried comparing it to a reflection probe from the mirrored camera position?

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Oh dang! Thanks for the input. Color correction mistake in latest beta… Thanks a lot!

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Yeah I don’t wanna rain on your parade either, I loved your Victorian demo previously, but your screenshots aren’t doing much to sell IMO, you might wanna look at that.

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Not a problem at all :slight_smile: That’s what this thread is for: There is nothing to sell at the moment, since we are deep into the bug hunt and beta testing. Therefore: Attached a new screenshot with corrected color correction, some bugs fixed on lighting and shadows and additional options for desaturation and darkening of the reflection. Please note, that the skybox of course is reflected,too. That’s where the dark blueish reflections come from :slight_smile:

Critics & Comments apprecciated as always :slight_smile:

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Looks good, very good. A better showcase would be a material with variable roughness though. A metal with grease stains for instance like the one on the left:

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The Unity planar reflections have issues with variable roughness, but I don’t think it is a limitation of the method in general. Just with their implementation.

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Thanks again for the feedback. Will post a screenshot of a metal with different roughnesses soon :slight_smile:

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Some Update on variable smoothness :slight_smile:

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I really hate to be that guy, especially since this is definitely an asset I’m gonna buy.

Could you remove the normal map? I want to see what sort of convolution you are approximating. Not how the normal map can change the reflection direction.

That said. Even if you aren’t able to pull off a convincing variable reflection convolution, then this asset is still great. Especially for archviz.

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Not a problem at all. Another Screenshot this time with Normal Distortion turned off. :slight_smile:

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Very nice. Fantastic even.

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We are glad you (finally) like it :wink:

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Hey. So about 10 years ago I left the video game dev business to work on a software start up. I am not up to date on all the new graphics tech and am just starting out with Unity. So yeah, I am an old man. LOL Please explain to me in simple terms the difference between this and Unity’s reflection probes. And this only works on flat surfaces? Then will I still need reflection probes for curved objects?

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In terms of strengths, the Reflections Probe is best at reflecting the inside of a hollow shoe-box shaped object. It uses box projection to handle alignment of the reflection map, and generally does a pretty good job in general. However, it breaks down when the shoe-box isn’t hollow, the walls of the shoe-box aren’t aligned and parallel and/or almost flat.

Planar reflections are made to reflect one flat, planar surface. For a given reflection quality, they can be faster (because they’re only reflecting 1 direction, not 6) and can, because the reflection camera is ‘opposite’ the main camera, generally offer further quality advantages due to rendering what the player sees first and foremost. Some problems are the same however; the small gutter in the OP is generally acceptable, but rougher, more lumpy surfaces with greater height differences can cause issues. Also, for spectacularly rough, lumpy surfaces, there can be problems with what should be reflected not being picked up by the one direction the reflection camera is pointing.

PitHeimes, if I might, would I be able to snag a beta? There’s some tricks and methods I’d like to test against your system. Primarily, by adding depth of field(distance blur) to the reflection.

Unless DoF can somehow be encoded along with depth from the reflection plane, I get that this will be a sort of lock for roughness, but you can kinda see in the Oct 18 cube screenshot that even with a rough surface, the contact point is a lot rougher than it should be, and the sky is reflecting through the object somehow. To be more realistic, there should be a sharper reflection there, because the reflected light doesn’t have that far to disperse and blur.

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