Year/Release Date : 12/10/2023
Version : 2.4.2.2
Developer : Psychose Interactive Inc.
Developer’s website : https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/vfx/shaders/next-gen-soft-shadows-137380
Interface language : English
Tablet : not required
System requirements : Unity 2019.4.40 or higher
Description :
The next iteration of the smoothest, fastest dynamic soft shadow solution for Unity is here. Easier to integrate, faster to render, prettier than previous versions! Featuring powerful new tools, shading algorithms, optimizations, and user-friendly, non-descript lighting components to improve the lighting quality of your scene. NGSS is a complete shadow package to take your projects to the next level!
Shadow algorithms:
PCSS (Area-like soft-shadows) filter and PCF (uniform soft-shadows) filter. A powerful noise suppressor that will soar above the basic filters, acting as a separate filter and has on-screen infinite shadows Frustum with bilateral filtering and edge tolerance. Chose between blue noise or dithering. Samplers are stabilized in screen space, so shadow samplers jitter less while being time-friendly.
Optimizations:
NGSS uses the fewest samples to filter shadows while skipping fully lit or fully shadowed areas, making it one of the fastest solutions on the market for realistic penumbra shadows.
Inspirations:
NGSS has a revolutionary combination of kernel filters, mostly based on Monte Carlo. The result is high-quality, throttled dynamic penumbra shadows similar to ray-traced shadows, with excellent banding and aliasing removal, making extremely tiny shadow maps look outstanding.
Package:
Comes with a single Wizard tool to install the internal NGSS shadow libraries. One click to install and one click to uninstall. Local Shadows and Directional Shadows provide their own libraries, they are independent of each other. NGSS provides shadow components to connect to scene lights (all lights) that allow you to adjust shadow properties such as quality, softness opacity, etc. at runtime.
Finally, NGSS replaces Unity’s internal shadow libraries, allowing NGSS to behave just like Unity’s shadows while being compatible with any packages in the AssetStore that use the standard (built-in) renderer.
Shadow Features:
– Frustum Shadows (screen space traced) with two-way filtering for all light types
– Powerful denoiser that acts as a separate shadow filter on top of the base filter (multiplying quality for free)
– PCSS (area soft shadows) and PCF (soft shadows) for all lights
– AR/VR support for all shadows
– Full shadows on all platforms where Unity supports shadows (requires SM3.0 or higher)
– Cascaded blending on all shadow projections
– Native sampling support. Avoids duplicating RenderTextures, uses built-in lighting depth maps
– Set of quality filters: from 4 to 128 samplers (scalable from mobile to cinematic CG)
– Fast shadows. Uses custom aggressive early aid algorithms. Soften shadows only in the penumbra area, skip fragments that are fully lit or fully occluded.
Supported Platforms:
Works locally by installing NGSS libraries or with a remote cloud build system by including libraries directly into your shaders. Simple and quick setup.
Not compatible with DX9 and GLES1/2!
Compatible with AR/VR, DX11, DX12, PS4, XB1, SWITCH, GLCore, GLES3.0, Metal, Vulkan or equivalent APIs.
Requires at least SM3.0 on supported APIs.
Supported Unity versions:
Support for Unity 5.6 until 2019 (built-in renderer) HD & LW in the future.
