Released: Ermis Special Effects

God Rays: A simple approximation with 3 passes over the depth buffer.

See it in action: https://playcanv.as/p/ki8ehcPF/

It will be released soon in our extension store: https://pic.pirron-rodon.one/

Depth of Field: An easy to setup single pass effect.

Check it out: https://playcanv.as/p/iyYTHqJM/

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Ermis Special Effects released! @playcanvas post process effects available:

  • Scalable Ambient Occlusion
  • God Rays
  • Depth of Field

Watch them, desktop only: https://playcanv.as/b/ZWfqkdUY/
Lower res, semi-real-time mobile version: https://playcanv.as/b/f5P5gzfh/
Get them here, combo option available: https://pic.pirron-rodon.one/

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New version released: edit all effects directly inside the Playcanvas editor.
v1.1.0

  • Scalable Ambient Occlusion
  • God Rays
  • Depth of Field

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New post process effect released:

  • Object Outline

A post process effect that can highlight any model in your scene using colored lines.

A simple and fast post process effect to highlight any model in your scene. Simple to use API to enable/disable the outline on any entity.

Code sample included using mouse hover to highlight any entity with a collision component.

See it in action here.

Get it here: https://pic.pirron-rodon.one

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Hello Leonidas,
your process effects are great, but doesn’t works on IE 10, Edge and Android.
Are you planning improve it ?
Radek

Hi @Radek_HART, thanks for your nice words.

These post process effects were built with high visual fidelity in mind. That means they induce a high performance hit and aren’t meant for real time rendering on mobile. The semi real time version above renders only a single frame once the camera stops moving, but still it won’t work on all mobile devices for several reasons (RAM, GPU, WebGL2.0 support etc).

On my test Android device it runs quite well (Samsung Galaxy S7):

About IE10 and Edge sadly they don’t support WebGL 2.0 (and also Safari and iOS). Without WebGL 2.0 there is no native multi sampling support on the render target and the effects are jaggy making them not worth the performance hit.

Edge is starting to use Chromium as its render engine so I guess soon it will fully support WebGL 2.0 making these effects compatible.

https://www.caniuse.com/#search=webgl2

Hi @Leonidas,

Just to mention that msaa is now used with post effects on webgl2 devices. (See https://github.com/playcanvas/engine/commit/4d080196264e236c8698960b9cf06b6e443666b6).

You might want to test your effects with the latest engine.

Thanks!

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Thanks @codebon!

Yes, we are using msaa in all effects already, working great. That’s basically the reason for the webgl2 requirement.

By the way, do you have any plans when you will be shipping the new post process effects pipeline (layer based)? I know that is already included in the engine just waiting for the final API and docs to move over.

Ye, this is big brain time.

what does that even mean? lol I dont undrstand

Hi Leonidas,
thank you for your reply and clear explanation.
It’s possible to add to your code checking for non compatible browsers and if WEBGL 2 is not supported then switch OFF postproduction ? Or even better switch to the cheaper solution then works in ALL old browsers like this: https://alteredqualia.com/three/examples/webgl_postprocessing_ssao.html

Without any fallback is not usable for any production - look at picture it’s your desktop demo from Edge browser.

Hi @Radek_HART,

I’ve updated the demo to switch off post production in case WebGL2 isn’t supported: https://playcanv.as/b/bFH78vQC/

That is very easy to do using a default PlayCanvas property, the effects are regular PC scripts that can be switched on/off. On the latest version for all the effects, that is included and it will switch them off automatically.

if (pc.app.graphicsDevice.webgl2 === false) // do something

It is in our roadmap to provide a fallback, since Apple doesn’t seem to grace us with WebGL2 support on Safari/iOS. So it is definitely coming, mainly waiting for the new post process effects pipeline to officially launch.

Thanks for fast answer and improvement.
Do you have any information when new pp pipeline will launched ?

No, but I imagine it won’t be long. It is already part of the engine and is used in places (e.g. Playcanvas Editor).

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We are reworking the Ermis Special Effects script from scratch to deliver a new version soon:

  • Increased performance, especially when using combination of effects. A parser organizes the effects to minimize the number of render operations to avoid the performance penalty when doing pass chaining.
  • A single script with simple on/off switches for the effects and additional optional settings scripts for any effect to override the default configuration.
  • Improved quality and less artifacts.
  • WebGL1 fallback to support platforms where WebGL2 isn’t available (Edge/iOS/Safari). If you have been requesting this feature, currently we have a showstopper waiting for a PlayCanvas issue/bug to be resolved, do upvote this thread: Depth Buffer in material shader
  • Easier to add new effects to the render stack in the future.

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Improved god rays effect with light accumulation and better performance overall.

image

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very cool

The new version has been released: