Fluid Seamless Portals - Full

SO, WHAT IS THIS ABOUT? _______________________________

Step into a realm where the boundaries of reality blur, and the fabric of space-time bends and contorts. :)

Now, for real: Portals are archways or frames that shows another place behind, and you can enter seamlessly into it, disrupting the logic of what should be there. And with this asset you can do exactly that: Just drag and drop a set of portals, place each one in different rooms and press play. You'll be able to see the other room as if it was actually right there.

You can go through a portal without noticing when you leave one room and enter the other, (that's why it's called "fluid" and "seamless"), creating an effect of impossible (or "non-eucledian") geometry. These portals only teleport from one side. From the other side they look like normal archs.

BASIC OR FULL? ____________________________

Is so vast what you can do with portals, that I have divided it in two different assets:

* Basic Version. It provides:

• Seamless perfect teleportation (any rotation, any direction, any speed)
• 3 different basic structures (wide, thin and ultra-thin, with no textures)
• Clones system (objects are visible in both sides while crossing)
• Advanced filters and complete setup
• Super clean code, with tooltips and comments
• Optimized (you can have hundreds of portals and only render the visible ones)
• Compatible with 1st and 3rd person controllers
• Frustrum clipping alignment (projections will align with the portal for perfect views)
• Includes 2 players in 1st person (1 rigidbody player, 1 character controller player)

* And a full version (this one), which includes:

• All the features of basic version, detailed above
• Recursive rendering (portals can face each other and create an infinite loop)
• Multi-gravity teleportation (like in a Escher painting, portals can lead seamlessly to walls and roof)
• Raycast teleportation (you can easily cast rays through portals)
• 5 additional archways (modeled and textured, ready to drag and play)
• 1 huge sci-fi portal 4K (in 2 versions, textured and plain colors)
• Placing dynamic surface portals (you can "shoot" dynamic portals to walls, like the "portal" games)
• Automatic static references (you can access the portal code from anywhere)
• Switches for activate / deactivate, timed and not
• Two modes (deployed/runtime)
• Nested portals (you can setup a portal to be seen through another portal)
• Compatibility for 1st and 3rd person controllers
• And other small aditions

HOW TO USE _________________________________

You can just drag the prefabs to your scene and press play. Portals will try to setup themselves automatically, but if you want to tweak things yourself, you have a lot of advanced options in the script. 

CHARACTER CONTROLLERS __________________

This asset comes with 2 different first person controllers, one with rigidbody and one with "character controller" component. These two simple players will always work with portals.

However, you can use your own controller. Portals are prepared to automatically manage most of cases by themselves, but if your controller is quirky or has special needs when crossing a portal or teleporting, don't worry:

1) in the online documentation you have a section about this

2) you can contact me and, free of charge, I will personally help you out

PIPELINES COMPATIBILITY _______________________

This asset is compatible with URP and HDRP. Both basic and full versions have packages inside to import materials to the desired pipeline.

However, keep in mind these limitations:

Limitations on URP:

These are very little. Portals in URP work very well. Keep in mind that the demo video was made using URP. The only limitations are related to some post-processing effects (or overrides), that works with the "distance" to the camera (think about "depth of field", things are more or less blurry when they are near or far). The thing is, these portals defy the notion of near and far, and "where" are the things you are actually seeing. So, if you use these portals with URP and HDRP, you may notice a slight bump (of lighting, shadows, or blur) the moment you cross. So, if you want 100% seamless experience, you'll have to sacrifice some effects like depth of field or fog. In the demo video, I used a little bloom, vignette, and tone mapping, and teleportation was almost 100% unnoticeable.

Limitations on HDRP:

HDRP is much more difficult to work with, since cameras work in a very different way.

1) Same limitation mentioned for URP, about volumes overrides, but more heavily, since more overrides work with distance.

2) Cameras in HDRP are expensive. Even though the system is optimized to only render the necessary cameras, having portals in HDRP will cause your performance to drop when you look directly to a portal. If you're planning to use this asset with HDRP, place the portals in a way that only one or two are visible at the same time, and refrain to use recursive portals, since they render multiple times.

3) Cameras in HDRP don't work with custom fustrum planes, so in HDRP, near objects may block the view.

My sincere closing thoughts on pipelines is:

* Built-in: works very fast and with no problems.

* URP: works perfectly and very fast too, plus you get better graphics, but you must sacrifice some post-processing effects. Very much recommended.

* HDRP: It works, but the 3 mentioned limitations can be very annoying and represent a problem, making development slow. Not recommended.

QUESTIONS? NEED HELP? __________________

In the online documentation you can find detailed information about both versions of the asset (basic and full), and up-to-date examples with videos.

I will keep the troubleshooting section updated with more common questions from the users.

But, whether you have questions before buying or you need help implementing the asset with your game, don't hesitate to contact me. I'll answer and we can work together on the best way to adapt this asset to your game.

TEST IT YOURSELF _______________________

Sure, you don't buy a car without a drive test! In the online documentation you'll find a PC build to test the general demo scene yourself. This is fully transparent: what you run is the same actual scene in the project, nothing more, nothing less, (the video is simply me playing that same build in URP), so you know exactly what the product is, no surprises.

LINKS _____________________________

ONLINE DOCUMENTATION | DEMO BUILDS | BASIC VERSION

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