Doom Style Billboard Shader

23 Comments + Add Comment

• 
  Smackware 06/04/2015 at 14:13

  Just wondering, why not solve this with a script?

  Script properties:
  List of [ AngleRange -> Sprite ]
  Main Camera (camera to compare the “Forward” of with the object’s forward

  The script checks the angle between the camera’s forward and the object’s forward, and decides which sprite to use

  ~120 to -120 = Front (both objects are facing each other)
  cam=> /|\ obj

  ~ -120 to -60 = Side (left)
  cam=> \|/ obj

  -60 -> 60 = Rear
  cam=> obj=>

  That way we can even define much more refined angles (4, directions, 8 directions, 12 directions, etc..)

  Reply
  • 
    mgear 06/04/2015 at 15:21

    Yes, that would work nicely, just wanted to try it inside shader 🙂 and it should be faster with shader, if you have lots of objects

    Reply
    • 
      Smackware 12/04/2015 at 18:04

      Thanks for the reply 🙂
      A shader is pretty cool indeed

      Reply
• 
  aw 14/04/2015 at 16:25

  Hi,

  we are interested in a fully working shader version of this: http://unitycoder.com/blog/2015/04/06/doom-style-billboard-shader/

  Also animation etc. would be important.
  Are you interested in this aswell and can we support you in any way (with a donation or soemthing like this)?

  Thank you.

  Regards
  André

  Reply
  • 
    mgear 14/04/2015 at 20:37

    ..You could donate extra ~2hrs per day, thx 🙂

    I do plan to update this more, but just no time yet..

    If anyone has ideas for anim support etc. do post here, even if its just reference links.
    Also, should check daggerfal & all those doom port shaders how they do it.

    One basic way to play “idle” animations per direction could be placing the frames below (in Y direction) and then display those frames at given speed..

    Reply
• 
  mgear 27/04/2015 at 10:41

  notch’ doom sprite shader:
  https://github.com/xNotch/dark/tree/master/web/shader

  Reply
• 
  Mike 21/06/2015 at 22:08

  Hey mGear I’ve been looking into making some doom styled billboard enemies in my game I’ve been looking at many options and from what I can tell using a shader would be best for performance related issues.

  However I’ve never experimented or played with making shaders before. Can this be used to make animated enemies or does it just only work for objects?

  I will of course not wait on your answer alone to figure this out, but just wondering if you have any recommendations for where I should go to learn more about making shaders/shaders for unity/improving on this shader.

  Reply
  • 
    mgear 22/06/2015 at 01:11

    I would first look how its done in that unity daggerfall package, since they seem to have animated billboard enemies.

    I think theres also some package in asset store for doom style sprites, cant remember the name though..

    Reply
• 
  mgear 19/07/2015 at 17:36

  Billboard Shader
  “Includes a powerful geometry shader billboard system for rendering vast forests of retro-styled trees and other billboards. It even supports animated billboards like animals and flickering torches.”
  http://www.dfworkshop.net/daggerfall-tools-for-unity/features/

  Reply
• 
  Neurological 20/08/2015 at 02:20

  Not sure if you check this anymore but I will try. I’m trying to achieve this same thing as you do with the difference that I just need the billboard in shader, the rest I do trough a custom animation system.

  I wanted to ask if your shader is batched correctly when more than 1 of the same sprites are on screen or if every single new sprite will generate a new drawcall.

  I have beeen trying to solve this problem by ages and I would like to keep batching while having the billboard on a shader isntead of forcing things by script, which can be performance demanding with too mcuh stuff on screen.

  Thanks for your time.

  Reply
  • 
    mgear 20/08/2015 at 09:39

    Yes, it seems to batch with [x] Dynamic Batching enabled.

    tested just by duplicating the example billboard multiple times:
    http://unitycoder.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/doomspritebatching1.jpg

    Reply
    • 
      Neurological 20/08/2015 at 15:24

      Then thiss is perfect. Would you mind If I adapt your shader to work with Unity SpriteRenderer?

      One note, it seems in Deferred the dynamic batching is broken, not sure if is a unity 5 thing or has anything to do with the shader.

      Reply
      • 
        mgear 20/08/2015 at 17:08

        yeah go ahead. hmm.. yes batching seems to work only in Forward, would be nice to know why.

        tried:
        – Disable transparency from shader
        – Disable shadows and light
        – Set object scale to 1,1,1
        – Decrease Quality settings
        – Disabling most of the code from shader
        – Setting renderqueue : http://www.scrapsgame.com/scraps-performance-draw-call-batching/
        – DX11/DX9

        Reply
        • 
          Neurological 22/08/2015 at 12:34

          Checking Daggerfall tools to see what they did to batch in deferred, honestly there is stuff there I never saw, it will be a trial and error work.
• 
  mgear 08/09/2015 at 00:23

  added animated frames test to github

  Reply
• 
  mgear 06/12/2015 at 01:12

  Fixed several issues and added optimized shaders, see latest version here:
  https://github.com/unitycoder/DoomStyleBillboardTest

  Reply
• 
  Gekigengar 12/07/2016 at 03:00

  Hello, I tried the project with the newest Unity, and I got this problem.

  http://s785.photobucket.com/user/razor21xyz/media/braerbeab.png.html

  I am not sure what caused it, any clues how to fix?

  Reply
  • 
    mgear 12/07/2016 at 22:02

    Tested with 5.4b24, didn’t have the same problem.. maybe you can export unitypackage for testing.

    Reply
    • 
      Gekigengar 17/07/2016 at 02:53

      I managed to fix this by a simple re-importing, thanks!

      Is there a further plan to improve this system?

      I rotated the front facing of the object, and it didn’t change the sprite’s view in relation to the object’s facing, which I find quite weird.

      And animation is currently very complicated to do, as there is no dynamic way to figure out how many frames do you have for each animation.

      For example, attack have 12 frames, and death have 6 frames.

      I hope this project will get more love and practical implementation method!

      Reply
      • 
        mgear 17/07/2016 at 15:18

        Yes, definitely want to improve it, just no time at the moment. Also adding the new 5.4 instancing support would be great, if want to have hundreds of sprites.. feel free to post issues/requests here also, so they will stay noticed: https://github.com/unitycoder/DoomStyleBillboardTest/issues

        Reply
        • 
          Gekigengar 17/07/2016 at 17:04

          Can I open up a link to this blog post in the Unity forums?
          It might be a good idea as it will open up a whole new possible range of solutions from the community.

          For example, this thread gain a huge popularity, and is now the best open source node editor solution out there, with a lot of contributors.

          http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/simple-node-editor.189230/
          https://github.com/Baste-RainGames/Node_Editor

          I wanted to see this project into a success, people interested in the same result might work better when rallied into one project.
        • 
          Gekigengar 17/07/2016 at 17:08

          More examples of people looking for the same results :

          This one have a working animation solution
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlAmrJUAcIk

          This one have a working object facing solution
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwwjTPA03R4

          Others
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ki2p8fk1HM
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PF0Yx_Z-SSc
          
      • 
        mgear 17/07/2016 at 18:28

        yes go ahead posting it

        Reply