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Hello all, I was wondering if ASE would be the right way to go about adding a glow effect to portions of an object? Shaders/materials are not my strong suit, so apologies if I'm not asking something correctly here. I'm just hoping to be sent on a correct path for this.

What we need:
We need to be able to have parts of a mesh glow and "bloom over" on various gameobjects in our levels. An example would be wanting to have the blue rune symbol in the stone block below glow, but the rest of the object (the grey stone area) not glowing. Right now we have a shader with an emissive mask on it that allows us to make it bright and also change the color and intensity of the emission. Ultimately we would like to also have it glow as well as be emissive.



Simulated effect (note the glow "bleeds" off the surface):



Our goals:
1. A system that will be compatible across multiple platforms and performs well across a range of hardware specs (nice-to-have if it scales down to mobile devices, but not critical).
2. Allows us to individually control the glow intensity and color at runtime based on game events for different gameobjects in the scene.
3. Allows us to have many gameobjects with glow in the scene (say up to 50 instances of various gameobjects with glowing parts).
4. Plays well with alpha-ed materials that may be in front of/behind the glow (such as particle effects) so things sort correctly.[/list]

Thank you in advance for any ASE examples, recommendations and help anyone may have. If ASE is not the way to approach this and you have another technology that would work (or know of one), please let us know. We did just check out Amplify Bloom, but it looks like that is not meant for glowing parts of objects and is a full screen effect?

Best,

Scott Blinn
Greyborn Studios
Luna and the Moonling

Hello Scott,

Thank you for reaching out to us, ASE can definitely help you achieve the effect that you are looking for but you will need an additional Image Effect asset for the actual glow/bloom generation. We recommend trying our award-nominated, and high-performing, solution, Amplify Bloom.

Amplify Bloom Trial - Download

For the rune effect, the usual workflow would involve creating a mask for the rune shape that would be used to drive the emission value of your ASE shader. The bloom effect could then be tweaked in order to take into account the most emissive materials present in your scene. You can try this effect for your self by plugging a mask rune texture to your emissive input and enabling the Amplify Bloom camera component.(using the trial)

1. A system that will be compatible across multiple platforms and performs well across a range of hardware specs (nice-to-have if it scales down to mobile devices, but not critical).

Amplify Bloom is the ideal solution. For optimal performance be sure to use the Low Precision mode, you can tweak it by adjusting the Range value. The Realistic technique is more GPU demanding than the Natural technique, it's not recommended for mobile devices. The Mip count can also influence performance, be sure to use the lowest value possible for your project. For even faster results try the Source Downscale option, lower values will provide a considerable performance boost. Depending on your project, you can also disable unnecessary effects such as the Bokeh or Flare filter.

2. Allows us to individually control the glow intensity and color at runtime based on game events for different gameobjects in the scene.

You can control the emissive value of the material for that effect. We use that technique in our own game, Decay of Logos.

3. Allows us to have many gameobjects with glow in the scene (say up to 50 instances of various gameobjects with glowing parts).

Quantity is not a problem, it's a screen-space effect.

4. Plays well with alpha-ed materials that may be in front of/behind the glow (such as particle effects) so things sort correctly.[/list]

Shouldn't be a problem, be sure to let us know if you run into any issues.

As an alternative, you could always overlay quads with additive materials but this can be quite time consuming. I don't recommend it unless the effect you want to achieve is impossible with image effects.



Looking forward to your feedback.

Thank you for the quick response! We had started going down the road of additive quads/particles for the glow effect, but like you said it can be time intensive.

I'll look over your post in detail when I get back to the office. As I mentioned I briefly looked at Amplify Bloom this morning. I guess I didn't look hard enough lol (or know what I'm looking at yet).

Cheers,

Scott

GreybornStudios wrote:Thank you for the quick response! We had started going down the road of additive quads/particles for the glow effect, but like you said it can be time intensive.

I'll look over your post in detail when I get back to the office. As I mentioned I briefly looked at Amplify Bloom this morning. I guess I didn't look hard enough lol (or know what I'm looking at yet).

Cheers,

Scott

No problem, happy to help. Indeed, it can be quite time consuming but it does work well for specific cases. As you mentioned, it's an image effect, but it's quite flexible.

Thanks!

Thanks again for your help. We went ahead and evaluated (and then purchased) Amplify Bloom. It should do the trick for us!

GreybornStudios wrote:Thanks again for your help. We went ahead and evaluated (and then purchased) Amplify Bloom. It should do the trick for us!

No problem, happy to help. Thank you for your purchase, we really appreciate it.

Thanks!