Official Adaptive Probe Volumes (APVs) experimental release for HDRP in 2021.2

checking in again re light leaks and switching scenes in 2022.1.13. I can do a bake and the scene will look great, no leaks, I switch to a scene in another baking set, then when I come back to the first scene, then I will find leaks when there were none before. I can mitigate this to a large degree but increase probe density (like .2 metres min distance as compared 1 m default), and increase the thickness of wall, and most leaks will not reappear, some still do. Wondering still what is it that causes this leaking when I return to a scene that had already baked without leaks. hopefully I'm explaining the problem well enough.

 

Hey,

i see that baking two Probe Volumes during Sunset leads to bright lit probes.

Using only main probe volume works

 

If the sun are already below the horizon try to reduce the intensity multiplier

 

still on my quest to track down ways to deal with light leaks. I already asked this, but no answer. the HDRP 14 docs mention a Leak Reduction Mode checkbox in the volume override. I cant see this in 2022.3.13 (I do see the override), is it somewhere else? or in a another editor version? I couldn't see it see it in 2023.1.19.

 

It's in 2022.2, not 2022.1.
Unfortunately, even with the light leak mode, depending on your scene you can still have light leaks.

 

typo on my part re unity version, meant to write 2022.2.13, some many numbers! but still cant find the Leak Reduction Mode. oh well. re leaks in general, leaks are perhaps part of the deep rabbit-hole of lightmapping. with either progressive or bakery workflows, I'm spending a lot more time and attention on uv mapping and the way meshes are made. more times than not, at least for me, that's the smoking gun when bake catastrophes occur. still a puzzle why or how a bake changes when returning to it from another scene.

 

I experienced a similar issue, with custom probe volume adjustment volumes I fix most of the leaks, but increasing samples creates new leaks in different areas.

- You possibly don't have the show additional options enabled, which I believe the light leak paramater is hidden behind.

How to show it:

Video has some weird issue since I forgot to disable some windows, but it gets the point across

 

yes! thanks for this, fell a bit stupid for missing this in the first place, but most appreciated. will give it a spin

 

does the trick for now, a shot with static and dynamic objects together, a bit more ungarbled then before.

 

I've been facing an issue where APV sometimes automatically disables itself permanently, even though it's enabled in the HDRP asset and was working fine for multiple bakes.

Report: IN-24907
(More info in comments)

 

This is so weird, On unity 2022.2.0b16.112.5806

Lighting bake is stuck on 0% when i have the probe volume component in my scene, but when i remove or disable it, it it bakes :/

 

I noticed HDRP now has APV documentation, nice.
I do think it's missing mentions of the importance of "light probe sample multiplier" and in general sample count for probe volume.
Many issues mentioned in the doc page "fix issues with probe volume" can also be caused by low sample counts.
Maybe give a recommended value as well.

 

totally agree

 

That would be great! Additionally it would be great to ask the editor to generate the Volume asset without actually computing colors, i.e. generate the structure, but with empty bricks (so custom colors can be set instead).

 

Is it possible to integrate this into the new batchrendergroup without this? Sounds like a big need!
https://forum.unity.com/threads/new-batchrenderergroup-api-for-2022-1.1230669/

 

having a larger terrain scene, editor is stuck on "Hold on (busy for ....)" which can take easily 10 minutes.
In this time the editor is in ProbeGIBaking.VirtualOffset and it's in 'Physics.RaycastAll'. This process cannot be canceled. also the "Hold on" window just shows that it's handling the "MouseUp" event.

Also this reveals a possible ... limitation: what if my mesh renderer has no collider? or just a pretty approximated collider? wouldn't it result in bad probe placements?



Another issue we encountered: We had a scene without baked light, that scene looked different in the build than in the editor. this issue went away when disabling the adaptive probe volumes in the graphic settings.

 

I'm curious what causing black probes in empty space?

 

I've tried both. I'll try to create a repro project

 

Our game has (partial) destruction of certain objects, is apv still feasible here?

So for example a large bridge asset, or some houses, can be destroyed. It seems possible to bake our scene once with everything intact, and another time with everything destroyed.

But i cant find a way to load partial datasets, e.g. only load probe volumes in a certain bounds, overwrititng them. So once a building is destroyed we'd like to overwrite the existing probe volume within a bounds, with that from another bake-set.


https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/c...l/probevolumes-use.html#configure-baking-sets

 

You could use APV, but only if you keep contribute to GI disabled since they aren't static, otherwise APV will treat them as static and when they move or are destroyed, things will look off
that way they will only receive lighting

 

welp trying to create repro project now all i get is dark probes


so it seems the probes are under exposed, i have to crank the indirect multiplier to a high value. . . do you still want a repro project?

Edit : @francescoc_unity CASE IN-26148

 

Some possible bugs in 2022.2.1:
Reflection probe normalization is not working - no bug report
Probe volumes cause reflection probes to work incorrectly - IN-26395, can be reproduced in HDRP's 3D sample template

Probe volume can add a lot to an outdoor scene lighting just by ticking contribute to GI for the terrain, all other objects only receive lighting.

 

You trick people by cleverly mixing up the facts.
We already know that mesh-to-sdf is used for skills used in enemy and lion.
Because it was released on your company's demoteam.
We already know that we can get GI and AO from SDF. This is because Unreal has already told many people about it.

 

Where did lightning scenarios go in 2023 alpha? Window->Rendering->Lightning does not have it, neither does baking set.

 

any info on why APV baking stuck on 50% and the remaining timer are keep increasing?

 

I tested the latest HDRP package from the master branch and there might an issue with virtual offset, I noticed one commit related to it, virtual offset wasn't running at all even when enabled, even for probes inside of geo, at least the debugger didn't show it

It's been backported to 2022.2 Internal/2022.2/staging by UnityAljosha · Pull Request #7772 · Unity-Technologies/Graphics (github.com)

so the issue might still be there for the backport, unless it's related to other changes in the master branch, you likely know about this but thought I'd mention it just in case

 

Hi. Are there already some infos or example scenes showing the
Lighting Scenario Blending
mentioned here in this blogpost?
https://blog.unity.com/technology/global-illumination-updates-in-2022-2

 

I am a bit confused about "bake active scene" in a multi scene scenario.

I have a huge level split into about 10 scenes. My runtime scenario is that all my scenes get loaded additively (or at least, for visibility reasons, I will have a subset of three scenes loading at any given time).

I can't bake it all at once, so creating a baking set and using "bake active scene" seems like the solution for this.
However, I ran a very simple test, with two scenes, each once with a plane an a spot light, spacially side by side.

Here is what i tried:
1. set both lights to green, and save both scenes, bake the whole set. Works fine, I can see that each scene ends up with one lightmap showing green color. My probe volumes are fine too.
2. set both lights to red, save both scenes.
3. load both scenes, set first one as active. Press "bake active scene"

As a result, I can see that both scenes have been modified, and both lightmaps now show red, meaning that not only Scene 1 has been baked, but also - apparently - Scene 2.

My question: if "bake active scene" actually bakes both my scenes, what's the point compared to "bake loaded scenes" ?

[Edit] To rephrase this: From my test, my understanding is that "bake active scene" will actually rebake the whole set of scenes and move the data to the active scene folder. It seems like the wording of that button led me to believe that we could actually bake scenes in a set one by one (to prevent very long baking times). Now I feel that this is not possible.

If I go bake to the previous workflow (that is, generate lighting for each scenes separately and load scenes additively), I get all my lightmaps loaded correctly but I only get a probe volume for the last loaded scene.

Is there any solution to my problem ? (getting all lightmaps and all probe volumes loaded). RIght now the only one I see is baking the whole set at once, which very likely will crash the lightmapper due to the size of my level

 

Is it possible to bake probe volumes without lightbaking the scene at all?

 

what do you mean by light baking? Do you mean without baking at all, so realtime? if so no
if you mean without baking lightmaps, it's possible you just have to mark all objects to receive light probes

 

I mean just baking the probes without generating lightmap UVs for all the static meshes and baking the traditional lightmaps on the meshes first. I can't get it to bake any probe volumes on their own unless there is a lightmap baked first.

 

I experience blending lighting scenarios every frame as a huge bottleneck.


Any ideas how to reduce processing time despite only calling it every x frames? I guess this would also lead to unwanted spikes.

I see it correlates with the scenario blending memory budget. Lowering this increases performance. Setting it to low breaks blending. setting it to medium is faster then high.

DX12 in this case is much slower than DX11.

Any chance for compression of APV data? This could help decreasing GPU memory needs and framerate drops during blend. As far as I remember Bakery has implemented Texture3D compression.

The only way to have no spikes is with low memory profiles and streaming. but then, i have to face this:




For streaming it might be better to have more smaller tiles unloaded and loaded at the border so the player does not see it.

Any suggestions?

Kind Regards

 

By the way, @francescoc_unity
my assumption on the reason unity's demo could get very good results from APV is due to the open nature of the level, due to large windows letting in light from outside, if it was completely (or close to) closed off from outside lighting you would start noticing an increase in leaking.

For example take this scene:
(0.5 probe density, 2k env/indir samples, dilation & virtual offset)

Looks clean, no big issues.

Same level but closed off almost completely (except the doors):


Big difference, this is where APV struggles for static lighting, I've also tried many different probe densities & samples, although 0.5 & 2k is already a lot and takes a while to bake even though the level is fairly small.

View/normal bias can help but increasing it to a large value can lead to noticeable lighting changes when moving which is tough to accept.

 

Yeah, although it's hard to pinpoint the problematic probes with so many, the new probe debug option in 2023.1 helps a lot, not in 2022 though.

Increasing density beyond 0.2 is tough, this one room already takes a while to bake, there's also the sample issue, which really starts showing in dark environments/closed interiors like in the second picture. And with so many probes, increasing the samples adds a lot to bake times. Size on disk is also starting to get pretty big considering the level size.

The scene had an increased view bias, which helps, without the increase the leaking is worse, but when moving in-game you can notice the light changing which looks a bit off, even though it's only at 0.43 view bias.

 

Do you have plans to implement a baking api for different lighting scenarios? This way one could change the time of day and bake all lighting scenarios one after another with one click.

Kind regards

 

hi,are there any code examples to change baking sets via code during run-time?

 

I'm trying to learn using Probe Volumes by converting the sample scene, but there is a massive problem with the reflections. They look fine in the first room, the second one already looks off and the third one is a complete nightmare. I can't even fix this by adjusting the exposure override for that volume, the reflections are still way too strong. I read the entire section on probe volumes in the HDRP documentation, but other than enabling reflection probe normalization in the global HDRP settings and the occlusion only reflections volume override I found nothing related to reflections. In fact toggling probe normalization seems to make no difference at all even after baking everything again, is the feature just broken in 2022.2? Even if it worked the example picture in the documentation shows it making only a slight difference, so there must be more wrong than just that.

 

Nevermind, I didn't see that there is a separate section for baked reflections in the global HDRP settings where you also need to enable Prove Volumes.

 

Another thing I found to be a problem ist the hard coded limit of 64 reflection probes at the same time. If you want to place reflection probes on terrain you can either only place an 8*8 grid or use one realtime reflection probe at camera position. Can you remove this limit?

Kind regards

 

can already do that through some code (example from my game), but this currently crashes during a second bake (also when done manually, without any error unity just closes) in 2023 beta/alpha, used to work fine with 2022, possibly cuz scenes became bigger.

Code (CSharp):

1. public void BakeAll()
2.         {
3.             float time = Time.realtimeSinceStartup;
4.  
5.             BakeDay();
6.             BakeMidDay();
7.             BakeNight();
8.  
9.             float seconds = (Time.realtimeSinceStartup - time);
10.             Debug.Log("Baking Completed In: " + TimeSpan.FromSeconds(seconds).Days + "d. " + TimeSpan.FromSeconds(seconds).Hours + ":" + TimeSpan.FromSeconds(seconds).Minutes + ":" + TimeSpan.FromSeconds(seconds).Seconds);
11.         }
12.  
13.         public void BakeDay()
14.         {
15.             ProbeReferenceVolume.instance.lightingScenario = "Day";
16.             WeatherAndSkyManager.Get.SetWeatherAndTime(0.0f, Game.WeatherType.Sparse);
17.  
18.             bool baked = Lightmapping.Bake();
19.             if (baked)
20.                 Debug.Log("[Day] baked succesfully!");
21.         }
22.  
23.         public void BakeMidDay()
24.         {
25.             ProbeReferenceVolume.instance.lightingScenario = "Mid-Day";
26.             WeatherAndSkyManager.Get.SetWeatherAndTime(0.5f, Game.WeatherType.Sparse);
27.            
28.             bool baked = Lightmapping.Bake();
29.             if (baked)
30.                 Debug.Log("[Mid-Day] baked succesfully!");
31.         }
32.  
33.         public void BakeNight()
34.         {
35.             ProbeReferenceVolume.instance.lightingScenario = "Night";
36.             WeatherAndSkyManager.Get.SetWeatherAndTime(1.0f, Game.WeatherType.Sparse);
37.  
38.             bool baked = Lightmapping.Bake();
39.             if (baked)
40.                 Debug.Log("[Night] baked succesfully!");
41.         }

 

bumping this, sorry, still needing to know if there are there any code examples to change baking sets via code during run-time? or can we even do that, or is there some sort of work around to a problem I'm running into, if a scene is loaded, but not activated, then activated, and still keeping the baking set from the first scene. hope my explanation makes sense

 

@francescoc_unity
I'm not sure If i misunderstood layer masks for APV, but it doesn't seem to be working as I expected:
I have two volumes, one at 0.45m density, the other at 1.35m. The volume with 0.45 is intended just for the walls, using a layer called wall that only walls have.

When I'm using just the "wall" Probe volume, it works as expected. Look at this pic:


But when I enable the second probe volume, which has all layers ticked except walls, considering the second volume has 1.35m density, this happens:



Doesn't look like 1.35m, to make sure I tried the second volume with 4.05m but same result.
Is this working as expected, maybe some limitation in how placement is done for the probe volume?

Both probe volumes cover the building entirely.
Video of layer setup:

Spoiler: video

 

Hello, I'd like to ask for some clarification about the possibility of real-time global illumination : if I understand the first post correctly, the APV system does not currently support real-time global illumination, for that we should use either SSGI and/or the now legacy light probes system. My question is : will real-time global illumination be implemented in the future for APV ? If so, do we have an estimated date of release for that ? Lastly, I'd like to add that marking the light probe system as legacy when it possess a major feature the APV system doesn't have seems wrong in my opinion.

 

Sure thing - IN-30979

 

I am using 2022.2 and I am unable to see probes from apv in the scene view. In the Lighting Window I have Light Proble Visualization set to All Probes with Cells + display weights, occlusion enabled. Gizmos are active in scene view but still no probes are rendered. Did I miss something obvious?