[XFUR 3 OUT NOW] XFur Studio 2 - The most advanced fur for unity, in all platforms and all pipelines

Community Showcases
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We are very happy to announce that XFur Studio™ 3 has just been released, as has XFur Studio™ Core. These two new tools bring all the power and performance of our top rated fur simulation suite to the latest Unity releases in either a fully featured or budget friendly manner.
Users who bought XFur Studio 2 - Ultimate Edition after March 1st, 2023 will be entitled to a free upgrade to the Personal Edition of XFur Studio 3.
Users who bought XFur Studio 2 - URP Edition after May 30, 2023 will also be entitled to a free upgrade to the Personal Edition.
Users who bought either edition before the given dates, will be entitled to a 50% discount if they upgrade before July 31. Starting on August 1st, the discount will be of 30% only, as a benefit for early adopters.
XFur Studio™ Core is a more streamlined version of our fur solution. It offers support for both Built-in and URP, it includes the full XFur Designer suite (used to style the fur within the Unity Editor) as well as access to the XFur Studio API to perform changes to the fur at runtime. It does not support HDRP, Curly fur, Emissive Fur, Basic Shells (for low end mobile) nor any of the advanced modules (Decals, LOD, Physics, Weather FX, Randomization).

It is also a far more affordable option for smaller projects, with a price of 50 USD. Users of XFur Studio 2 (either the URP or the Ultimate Edition) are entitled to a 30% discount if they choose to upgrade to this more limited edition, meaning their final price will be 35 USD. This upgrade price does not have any time limits.

Users of the Team Edition can upgrade to the corresponding Team Edition of XFur Studio 3 with a 50% discount. Again, this upgrade does not have any time limits.

Links to the assets are here:

XFur Studio - Core Edition
XFur Studio 3 - Personal Edition
XFur Studio 3 - Team Edition

As such, XFur Studio 2 is now deprecated from the Asset Store and will be receiving technical support until October 1st. You are heavily encouraged to upgrade to the latest version, especially if you are using Unity 2021 or newer.

ORIGINAL POST:

[Version 2.7.0 ]( [XFUR 3 OUT NOW] XFur Studio 2 - The most advanced fur for unity, in all platforms and all pipelines page-3#post-8496752)now available !

We are proud to present to you our most recent and biggest tool to date, XFur Studio 2!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SY4-P1y7YE4

XFur Studio 2 is the ultimate fur rendering system for Unity. The next evolution of 2018’s Unity Awards nominated XFur Studio, the brand new XFur Studio 2 has been re-written from the ground up for extreme performance, quality and ease of use. It is the result of over a year of development and carefully listening to the requests and suggestions of our hundreds of customers to learn what would make their use of XFur Studio better and more efficient as well as the integration with their games more complete
.

XFur Studio 2 allows you to add realistic, fully customizable and efficient GPU accelerated fur simulations compatible with all platforms and rendering pipelines* to your game within seconds and in just a few clicks

Features :

  • Advanced fur rendering for Forward and Deferred (in the built-in pipeline)
  • Full lighting and shadows support on a per-instance and per-material basis
  • Unparalleled performance and quality on all platforms
  • Highly rated customer support, full documentation and extensive video tutorials
  • Compatible with VR and mobile
  • Design tools included to edit, paint, shave and groom the fur all within the Unity editor
  • Highly scalable, from low detail fur for mobile games to extremely high resolution for close ups and cinematics
  • Dynamic LOD management
  • Post Process support *
  • Compatible with HDRP and Universal RP
  • GPU accelerated fur physics simulation on all platforms, even mobile
  • Snow coverage / melting simulation
  • Other visual FX such as rain and blood are also supported
  • Fur can be groomed in any direction within the Unity Editor through our tools or at runtime
  • Fur painting, editing, shaving and grooming supported at runtime through an easy to use API
  • Basic fur editing at runtime can be done through 3D brushes, with no coding required.
  • Source code included

Notices :
This is a new release and as such, new features and several improvements are to be expected in the upcoming months
Post Process effects that depend on motion vectors (TAA, advanced Motion blur) are not supported. FXAA is the recommended anti-aliasing method
HDRP and Universal RP variants are slightly more demanding than the Built in version due to the internal architecture and limitations of SRP technology
Alpha / Beta versions and features of Unity are not supported. The use of LTS versions of Unity is highly recommended
Characters and models using XFur Studio 1.x or XFur Mobile require additional work and manual setups in order to upgrade to XFur Studio 2. Due to the many internal differences between both versions an automatic upgrade is not possible

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Additional information :

The tool is available in two editions : Ultimate Edition (for individuals) at a $125 USD price and a Team Edition (for larger teams / companies) starting at $1250 USD

Users who bought XFur Mobile - Standard Edition licenses after August 7, 2020 may be eligible for a free upgrade to XFur Studio 2. Please contact us to our support email for assistance.

All XFur Studio 1.x users who bought the asset after August 7, 2020 will be provided with the upgrade at no cost automatically, simply by going to the Asset’s page on the Asset store.

New features and improvements will be released periodically for this tool, guaranteeing that it only gets more efficient and flexible as time goes by.

To give a big thank you to all our returning customers, the users of the original XFur Studio 1.x and XFur Mobile, we are giving them a 30% discount when upgrading to XFur Studio 2.

We hope that XFur Studio 2 becomes a great addition to our projects and games and that with this new release it helps you make your creativity shine even more. We can’t wait to see what you will create with XFur Studio 2 :slight_smile:

Have an amazing week !
Irreverent Software

[DEPRECATED] XFur Mobile - Please follow the link inside to XFur Studio 2, our newest version
XFur Studio 2, the most complete fur solution for Standard, Universal RP and HDRP
[DEPRECATED] XFur Mobile - Please follow the link inside to XFur Studio 2, our newest version
[DEPRECATED] PIDI - XFur Studio. Please follow the link inside to XFur Studio 2, our new version
[DEPRECATED] PIDI - XFur Studio. Please follow the link inside to XFur Studio 2, our new version
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Looks incredible! But one question:

Post Process effects that depend on motion vectors (TAA, advanced Motion blur) are not supported. FXAA is the recommended anti-aliasing method

We use TAA so what does this mean? Just that it won’t affect the fur, or will there be visual issues?

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The issues may be similar to XFur Studio 1.x (some ghosting) due to TAA not working nicely with very small details moving fast from frame to frame. This effect may be reduced if you adjust the values of the TAA filter (if you had no problems with XFur Studio 1.x + TAA you should see more or less the same results with XFur Studio 2 + TAA )

EDIT : For added clarity, the fur shaders from XFur do not interact with TAA and TAA itself produces slight ghosting with fine details that move fast when they are not made by actual geometry. This effect is not too noticeable and is exactly the same kind of effect that existed in XFur Mobile / XFur Studio 1.x.

If you had no problem with TAA + XFur 1.x / Mobile then you won’t have problems with TAA and XFur 2

We hope this helps !

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Great — we’ve had no problems with v1.

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I can’t believe it’s still the shell method :hushed:
But I need curly hair, you should look into truchet style (seek them on shadertoy), that might work with extreme layering

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Hi there,

We are indeed researching extensions to our new techniques not only for curly fur but also for other complex “shapes” for the fur strands and, thanks to the very unique way in which XFur Studio 2 operates, to add a lot of new effects and customization capabilities at a minimal performance impact.

There are a lot of, let’s say, “highly experimental” features within our private branches of XFur Studio 2 which will become available as we improve them and get them up to at least a beta stage. Right now the biggest hurdle is our intent to ensure all features are available in all 3 pipelines at the same time which presents a unique set of issues, but we are making progress.

The highly modular way in which XFur Studio 2 works will allow us to easily release these features and let each user decide by themselves if they want to try them or not during their beta stage and, if they are not stable enough for their needs, disable them again without any risks.

Thanks for the suggestion about truchet patterns and style, we will certainly look into it. XFur Studio 2 is in good part, after all, the result of more than a year of development and constant re-writes and improvements in order to try to include (or make possible) a lot of the suggestions and requests made by our users over the past 2 years and a half :slight_smile:

And indeed, it is shell based fur. Geometry shaders do not play nicely with the new SRPs yet and most low to mid end smartphones do not support them at any usable level, so shell shaders are still the most flexible and powerful method to render fur with tons of effects and customization possibilities in every platform and pipeline and ensure that everything, from the most basic fur to the GPU physics and snow simulations can run on any console, PC and on most modern mobile devices :slight_smile:

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I was wondering how it can handle teh insane fillrate of the shell method, but then I figure out that generating from tip to root instead of the inverse can take care of that by early rejection, so that’s how the technique came back from the fillrate death, impressive :hushed:

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XFur Studio 2 is a constantly improving tool and as such we are currently developing what will be its first minor update. While there have been no bug reports nor functionality errors to fix so far, there are a few features that didn’t make the cut before the release.

In the upcoming 2.0.1 patch you can expect a few small features added to XFur Studio 2 :

  • [Stable] Per-material light probe toggle settings. Light probes blending can be either enabled or disabled
  • [Beta] Single sided or double sided fur.
  • [Stable] Improved FX look for Basic Shells shaders
  • [Beta] New fur parameters

This small patch should be available next week :slight_smile:

EDIT : Single and double sided fur has been upgraded to Beta state since our early tests work well on all rendering pipelines

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A small patch targeting Unity 2018.4.26 to solve some bugs and metadata corrupted during the upload has been sent for approval. It should be available for download within the next 48 hours.

These bugs do not exist in newer Unity versions, so we encourage you to upgrade your projects to the latest LTS release, meaning Unity 2019.4

Have a great day!

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Design tool not shown at runtime, tested with unity 2018.4.26 and 2019.4.9

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Please send any support requests to our support email with your invoice number, so we can solve any issues faster.

Also, the designer interface only appears if you have a character with fur in the scene before pressing play. We just tested in 2018.4.26 and designer works without issues as long as a well setup character/model is present, as is intended.

In short, if you don’t have any model present (like in your screenshots) there’s nothing to show.

We hope this helps!

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The patch fixing all known errors when using XFur Studio 2 in Unity 2018.4.26 has been approved on the asset store (much faster than expected!) so it should be available for download already.

This should allow you to open XFur Designer without issues. Just please keep in mind that for the UI to appear you need to have a model in place, with fur, ready to be edited. If needed, you can copy one of the spheres from the demo scene to Designer to edit it, placing it at 0,0,0 in the designer scene.

Please read the documentation for more information.

Have a great day!

1 Like
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Thanks, the fur editor works fine, although I have some questions.
in the tutorial you can see how can change the size of the fur in fur properties, but it does not work properly.
the fur is not updated with xf shells
https://ibb.co/vJ0c0h1
the fur is updated with basic shells
https://ibb.co/L1ChTLx

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Hi there,
I do not know what you mean with adjusting the size of the fur since there is no “Fur Size” parameter. Furthermore, the pictures you share do not show fur being resized. Please explain your problem in more detail and please ask for support through our support email as we told you before, as that allows us to provide better assistance in a more efficient manner.

We hope this helps

15

Please ensure that you have open and are currently viewing the SCENE VIEW. If you only open the Game View the changes you make to the fur will not be applied until you open the SCENE VIEW again. This is once again by design, since the in-editor updates can only happen when the object is visible in the scene view, due to the Game Camera not calling the update functions when the Unity Editor is not in Play Mode.

We recommend you to follow the tutorials step by step and trying to mimic the workflow as much as possible in order to familiarize yourself with the workflow of XFur Studio 2.

Again, to be more clear : in order to visualize changes in real-time while in edit mode the Scene View has to be visible, otherwise the Unity Editor will not call the update functions of XFur Studio 2 as intended.

We hope this helps!

EDIT : After careful testing in Unity 2018.4.26 with several models, every single fur parameter and property is working as expected with both XFShells and Basic Shells modes.

XFur Studio 2 - Working in Unity 2018.4.26 :

6294649--696454--upload_2020-9-9_11-52-12.jpg

6294649--696457--upload_2020-9-9_11-52-28.jpg

and even with changes to the pose of the character :

6294649--696460--upload_2020-9-9_11-53-31.jpg

Please if you have any further issues contact us to our support email with additional, precise information and screenshots of the settings you are using and the parameters you are trying to modify as well as with your invoice / proof of purchase in order to provide you with better assistance.

We hope this helps!

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I just sent an email about the cause of the problem, thanks for your support

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There is a slight issue that has come to our attention. While we are considering a general built-in fix for this, the best solution would be for users themselves to address it in a per-project basis, so a small section in the documentation will be added about this particular situation to help users solve it. The issue is as follows :

Some third party plugins, especially those involving inverse kinematics and animation work on the LateUpdate callback but with a modified script order execution forcing them to execute AFTER all other scripts. What this means in practical terms is that XFur Studio 2 when working in XFShells mode renders the fur and THEN the third party plugin moves the bones, making the fur appear as if it is floating.

The solution? Always ensure that XFur Studio Instance is executed after all the other scripts related to animation or bone manipulation in the Script Execution Order settings of your project.

Again, a small built-in workaround will be included with the next update but to ensure that everything works as expected it is still better to ensure that XFur Studio Instance is the last script in the Script Execution Order list after any and all IK / animation scripts from third party plugins.

Also, please remember to attach your invoice / proof of purchase when you ask for support otherwise we will not be able to provide you with any assistance.

We hope this will help some of our users if they experience this issue.

Have a great weekend !

1 Like
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XFur Studio 2, update 2.0.1 has been sent for approval and should be available next week!

This is the changelog for this version :

Fixes and improvements :

  • FX rendering for Basic Shells now matches 1 to 1 the FX rendering of XFShells
  • Automatic fix for script execution order issues. May still need manual setups, but it should prevent most incompatibility issues with third party assets using custom script execution order setups.
  • Adjusted rain direction vector
  • Fixed incorrect setting in URP demo

New Features :

  • Per material double sided fur settings (XFShells only). Select your database asset in order for it to auto-generate the double sided variants of XFur materials, then press Ctrl + S to force Unity to show the new assets.
  • Per material light probe settings (XFShells only)
  • Wind direction and strength now have adjustable influence over the rain and snow directions
  • XFur Wind Zone component has a new, easier to use UI
  • Exposed Fur Smoothness parameter on all fur materials

We hope these will be some useful additions for the very first update of XFur Studio 2 !

1 Like
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Version 2.0.1 is now available !
Changelog :
Fixes and improvements :

  • FX rendering for Basic Shells now matches 1 to 1 the FX rendering of XFShells
  • Automatic fix for script execution order issues. May still need manual setups, but it should prevent most incompatibility issues with third party assets using custom script execution order setups.
  • Adjusted rain direction vector
  • Fixed incorrect setting in URP demo

New Features :

  • Per material double sided fur settings (XFShells only). Select your database asset in order for it to auto-generate the double sided variants of XFur materials, then press Ctrl + S to force Unity to show the new assets.
  • Per material light probe settings (XFShells only)
  • Wind direction and strength now have adjustable influence over the rain and snow directions
  • XFur Wind Zone component has a new, easier to use UI
  • Exposed Fur Smoothness parameter on all fur materials
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A small patch will be sent to the store to fix a small issue with the fur not updating when the scale of a mesh is changed. This update will become available very soon, probably as soon as tomorrow.