historica fantasia, development blog 06, shaderforge character shader

@OtakuEatMama : @HistoricaFantasiaDevBlog : [email protected] 1By Matumit Sombunjaroen V1.0 2017/03/06

Historica Fantasia Dev BlogChapter6:

Character Shader Hypothesis

@OtakuEatMama : @HistoricaFantasiaDevBlog : [email protected] 2

The Reason this is done before Programming

Historica Fantasia will fieldUp to a Maximum of 100-200 individual Characters at once.

Most Models will be duplicate. But Processing test is still needed to see the Limits.

Depending on the result of this Experiment,Certain Battle Presentations cannot be Use

Best Case Scenario: Full3DJust put everyone on the field like in TotalWars

Worst Case Scenario: Cut-in BattleOnly do full render on Units that are taking part in a Battle


Rendering Objective

Flesh

Cloth02

Leather01

Metal Faction Color

Leather02

Every Characters will all share the Same Materials.This is done by allocating UV to a color slot in the texture.

Pros:Minimal Resources Needed for RenderingCan field vast amount of Characters with Shared Materials

Cons:Cannot use Normal or Occlusion MapNeed High PolyCount to obtain Hi-Quality Visual

Because there will be no close-up shots of the Characters,The Cons should not be much of an issue.


Toon Ramp Shading

Flesh

Cloth02

Leather01

Faction Color

Leather02

Non Metallic parts will use Toon Ramp ShaderWith Maximum of 3 Ramps forShadow => Base => Highlight

The Shader will also receive Lighting from Environment.


Toon Metallic ShadingGloss

Highlight

Fresnel Light(Not sure if it’s

the correct term)

Rim Light

On top of Toon Ramp Shading,Add Gloss Fresnel and Rim Lights.

Variations for various Metals


Shader Forge

For various Reasons,Shader Forge, will be use for the Experiment


Experiment 1Faction Color


IssuesPlayer and Enemy will have Different Color Clothing.But increasing Materials or SubMesh will increase SetPass.

The Problem is, Adjusting a Material will make a Global EffectAs such, the same Material cannot be use for both Faction

Primary Solutions:Using Script to relocate Cloth’s UV to another Color’s coordinate.

Secondary Solutions: Add another Material per Faction.Add SubMesh to Model.


Experiment – Relocating UVThis Script successfully allocate the 1st 50UVsTo Blue Coordinate (0.5,0.5).

The Problem is, In order for this to work,You need to know which UV Indexes are used for

the Faction Cloth Mesh.

Because there is no effective way of finding it out,Other than Trials & Errors per Model,This is really impractical.


Experiment – Multiple ObjectsBy increasing the exact same objects.Batches & SetPass Calls do not get increase.

Adding another Material to same ObjectIncrease Batches & SetPass.

Adding a different Object with same MaterialIncrease Batches,But do not increase SetPass.

Therefore, it is preferable to Increase Object Count,than to Increase Material.


Experiment – SubMeshThis one is an Object with a SubMesh,And Have 2 Materials assigned to it.

The Result is similar to having 2 of the same Object With different Material.

Because SubMesh is part of the same Object, It also has the issue with UV index


Conclusion

Make Faction Cloth a separate Mesh,Share the Same Material with Every Factions,

Then use Script to reallocate just the Cloth UVs.


Experiment 2Multiple Shader Material


IssuesUsing Masking in ShaderForge,

Is it possible to obtain different Shadings in different Color SlotIn a Single Material?

We will try a simple Experiment,Where only Red Slot will have a different Shading.


ShaderForge Test…..IT WORKED…..

This is more simple than I thought.

Basically, all I had to do is Multiply Masking

-----------------------------------------------------

In the case of very Complex Masking,

Pre-Multiply each Shading Scheme to a Mask=> Then Add everything with Add Node.


Conclusion

By Using ShaderForge Masking,There is no need to separate Metal

to a different Materials

As such, only 1 Material is needed


Experiment 3Shader Setup


Toon RampThis part of the Shader will create Toon Ramp

The Color is affected by Environmental Light

Ramp is created by Multiplying a Gradient Texture

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As an alternative,

Light Color can be replace with Colored Ramp.This will reduce needed Processing Power.But the Color will no longer

be affected by Environmental Light


Metallic Toon

I cannot remember what I did any more,Let just say it worked

Rim Light

Gloss


Toon Ramp V02A Different Version,

This one Create Ramp Step from Float Value

Compare to Ramp Texture, it is faster to update,But it cannot do Smooth Shadowing on Steps.

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The Process is made by Unity’s Kobayashi-SanYou can reference his shader from herehttps://www.slideshare.net/nyaakobayashi/unity-14-

shader-forge-102-shaderforge


Experiment 4Try Mass Field Units


Characters to useI am using Aoi Character Pack, from Asset Store.

It has Multiple Preset Characters with 3 LODs each.

Since each Model are from different Files,We can use each of them to represent a Model

We will try with HiRes Models first, then down to LowRes Models

10 Models were randomly selected as Base


SetupIn the case of a Single Character,FPS: 124.4Tri: 52kBatches: 22SetPass Calls: 7

After Filling in the Scene with 200 Characters,

FPS: 76.1Tri: 4.8MBatches: 2062SetPass Calls: 8


…..Try AnimatingUsing Walking Motion from Blendshape & Tails


….This turned out way better than I thought…..


What else can we do?Even if I were to go for a relatively high Polycount for the Final Product,it should be no more than 5k per Model5k*200 = 1M Tri => Nearly 5times lower than what we tested.+ The Models will not be shown all at once on Screen

So, In Conclusion, there should be no Problem

With Method SelectionBut just for the sake of Science, I will try to see how many Models can I fit in to get it down lower than 30FPS


After several try,600 Characters


As a Side note, this is my PC Spec


Try the OriginalTry Animating 200 Characters

w/10 Different Base Models + Original Materials

FPS: 95.8Tri: 168kBatches: 71SetPass Calls: 71


There’s a really big differenceswhen compared to using a Single Material


One Final TryOriginally, each Model has Submeshes with 4 MaterialsWe tried using one Material per Model instead

FPS: 92.5Tri: 188.6kBatches: 81SetPass Calls: 23


Even if the Models do have Submeshes,Assigning them with the same Material lower it down


Final Comparison

Single Material


10 Materials


Original



Final Conclusion

Put every character on the field like Total Wars is possible

With this Single Material Method

historica fantasia, development blog 06, shaderforge character shader

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