Historica Fantasia, Development Blog 06, ShaderForge Character Shader

@OtakuEatMama : @HistoricaFantasiaDevBlog : Zenneth@zodiac-alliance.com 1
By Matumit Sombunjaroen V1.1 2017/04/17
Historica Fantasia Dev Blog
Chapter6:
Character Shader Hypothesis

The Reason this is done before Programming
Historica Fantasia will field
Up 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: Full3D
Just put everyone on the field like in TotalWars
Worst Case Scenario: Cut-in Battle
Only 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 Rendering
Can field vast amount of Characters with Shared Materials
Cons:
Cannot use Normal or Occlusion Map
Need 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 Shader
With Maximum of 3 Ramps for
Shadow => Base => Highlight
The Shader will also receive Lighting from Environment.

Toon Metallic Shading
Gloss
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 1
Faction Color

Issues
Player 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 Effect
As 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 UV
This Script successfully allocate the 1st 50UVs
To 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 – Relocating UV 1.1FIXED
This will get Tri index Arrays from Submesh
UV Index is the same as Triangle

Experiment – Multiple Objects
By increasing the exact same objects.
Batches & SetPass Calls do not get increase.
Adding another Material to same Object
Increase Batches & SetPass.
Adding a different Object with same Material
Increase Batches,
But do not increase SetPass.
Therefore, it is preferable to
Increase Object Count,
than to Increase Material.

Experiment – SubMesh
This 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 2
Multiple Shader Material

Issues
Using Masking in ShaderForge,
Is it possible to obtain different Shadings in different Color Slot
In 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 3
Shader Setup

Toon Ramp
This part of the Shader will create Toon Ramp
The Color is affected by Environmental Light
Ramp is created by Multiplying a Gradient Texture
-----------
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 V02
A 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.
-----------
The Process is made by Unity’s Kobayashi-San
You can reference his shader from here
https://www.slideshare.net/nyaakobayashi/unity-14-
shader-forge-102-shaderforge

Experiment 4
Try Mass Field Units

Characters to use
I 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

Setup
In the case of a Single Character,
FPS: 124.4
Tri: 52k
Batches: 22
SetPass Calls: 7
After Filling in the Scene with 200 Characters,
FPS: 76.1
Tri: 4.8M
Batches: 2062
SetPass Calls: 8

…..Try Animating
Using Walking Motion from Blendshape & Tails
FPS: 56.7
Tri: 4.8M
Batches: 2062
SetPass Calls: 8
….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 Model
5k*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 Selection
But 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
FPS: 24.7
Tri: 12.8M
Batches: 5458
SetPass Calls: 8
As a Side note, this is my PC Spec

Try the Original
Try Animating 200 Characters
w/10 Different Base Models + Original Materials
FPS: 95.8
Tri: 168k
Batches: 71
SetPass Calls: 71
FPS: 39.6
Tri: 3.3M
Batches: 1401
SetPass Calls: 1401
There’s a really big differences
when compared to using a Single Material

One Final Try
Originally, each Model has Submeshes with 4 Materials
We tried using one Material per Model instead
FPS: 92.5
Tri: 188.6k
Batches: 81
SetPass Calls: 23
FPS: 39.3
Tri: 3.7M
Batches: 1601
SetPass Calls: 441
Even if the Models do have Submeshes,
Assigning them with the same Material lower it down

Final Comparison
Single Material
FPS: 56.7
Tri: 4.8M
Batches: 2062
SetPass Calls: 8
10 Materials
FPS: 39.3
Tri: 3.7M
Batches: 1601
SetPass Calls: 441
Original
FPS: 39.6
Tri: 3.3M
Batches: 1401
SetPass Calls: 1401

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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