[Coming Soon] SpectraGI Advanced Real Time Global Illumination For Unity from Livenda

This delay makes me feel uneasy

 

Its 9:15pm in Sydney, so it is quite late, but you never know, maybe they prefer working during the night
Anyway, things happen, it will be released when they are ready, just seems to take forever when you're really looking forward to something.

Also the number of views on this thread has grown by more than 1000 since yesterday, lots of anticipation here.

 

Same

 

I'm holding out hope something will happen today

 

Sometimes it has taken over a day to compress a 1 minute MP4 on my Pentium 3, i guess the hours worth of video recorded to demonstrate the effect on complex, subtle, real application scenarios rather than cars and sponza may explain an extra month or more for now

edit: cornell boxes pose a considerable quandary too

 

@ lazygunn : LOL

 

Hahaha...

 

I hear the drums.... the natives.... THE NATIVES!!!!

 

That's because lightmaps

That's because lightmaps are baked and not dynamic,baked lighting will always be superior in static scenes,but as soon as something moves,it breaks

 

Yeah, about the Lightmass vs Enlighten...

Of COURSE Lightmass looks better. It also takes probably many hundreds of times longer for big scenes than Enlighten does. Plus, it's completely static. Enlighten is dynamic, but is somewhat lower quality because of it.
That's the tradeoff you have to make in game development all the time. If you're not comfortable making that kind of tradeoff on a near daily basis, then you're in the wrong business.

 

I've also been waiting for this to see if its the answer we've all been waiting for. Eagerly awaiting the videos as well...

 

To be honest, I have my doubts about it. I'm certain that it really is a GI solution that Livenda is working very hard on, but I'm also certain that it won't be the magic bullet everyone is making it out to be. There's going to be at least some limitations on it.

Particularly, they've mentioned that light transport/visibility has to be precomputed. That screams "mostly static scenery" to me. Of course, they could prove me wrong, but the idea behind precomputation is that you know something isn't going to change so you can precompute it. Plus, they've mentioned "dynamic objects" before, which makes me think there's a distinction between dynamic and static objects.

 

My greatest concern is what the performance will be like.

 

There is a new video on the youtube channel but it's about area lights.

 

Hi Everyone,

Here is the first video in a series to introduce some of the features of the upcoming SpectraGI System.

Next Generation Dynamic Area Lights Included in SpectraGI for Unity :: OFF-LINE QUALITY GLOBAL ILLUMINATION & ADVANCED LIGHTING TOOLS.

SpectraGI Area Lights are available with almost no impact on performance whilst using textures for illumination, projection & real-time area shadows.

Please note this video only demonstrates SpectraGI Area Lights without Dynamic Global Illumination.

http://www.livenda.com

 

Very nice, if the impact in performance is so good for area lights, this system is very cool already

Some questions:

Are the reflections part of the pack ? Are they a screen space effect like SSRR ? Will this include SSRR or these reflections need SSRR ?

Are there any vague plans for release date and price ?

 

niiiice!!! you guys are amazing. it took a time but the result is ... release date and other info please?

 

Verry pretty, I wonder how the shadows are being done. But looking forward to the next videos

 

Really Cool Stuff - Livenda - Regards!
Waiting for the GI !

 

I don´t think there will be any shadows from area lights, or am I wrong. At least I didn´t see any option for shadows. At 4:31 you can see that the reflections are generated by the Livenda SSRR plugin.

 

Where? Do you mean that candela texture? That's just a texture.

The OP said earlier they have a 'total reflections' pack as well as a part of this GI solution, so I'm assuming that's what we're seeing.

Looking forward to the other videos

 

Another one bites the dust......
Rumor has it, there is a curse around GI.....

 

In the OP of this thread he says the area lights cast shadows, and then in that last post he says real time area shadows.

@mrbdrm what makes you say that?

 

having candela - and using it daily basis - i m SO sold - ..
and one of the most cool presentation video i ever watched...... music - objects - area lights - it was a treat ..
Thanks Livenda..

 

just take a look at the other two asset that started working on it. one of them stopped working with a broken unusable GI "and pissed off customers" the other showed area lights then stopped too.
they all promised none deliver.
believe me i wish they do, its the reason i am here.

 

There are cases in the reflections that can't be SSR since the source is off-screen

 

Amazing. Cant wait to get my hands on it. What about the GI though? Not ready to show yet?

 

Very impressive, like the rest of the people here, I can't wait to see/know more

 

Yes I believe it is SSR, off screen reflections is something they addressed in version 1.02 if I'm not mistaken...

 

As nice as it looks (kudos) it gives me very mixed feelings to see area lights being shown off with no GI.
That's what some or all of the other GI attempts did. I really hope you can get some actual GI videos up soon.
Or a webplayer demo if that's not impossible for technical reasons.

 

Pfff ok, I was waiting for pure GI stuff but have to admit that this is pure graphic porn._

There is something that seriously called my attention and it is that the reflections seem not constrained to screen space, at least the meshes of the area lights are reflected even when they are out of screen and this is absolutely great because my reflections where looking very poor in urban environments with tall buildings or tunnels. But in the other hand it is strange because the objets such as the headphones are not reflected. Only full reflection for area lights?.

But hey, whatever, the graphic cuality is trully superb. Whatching again!

 

I don't think area lights need ssr since their essentially just lights, so they might not be using ssr in this demo.

 

Will the GI video follow or is that one planned for a later date ?

 

I'd like more game related stuff, not something so staged and not-gameish, it's no indication of its practical use. The amount of completely shiny, clean, almost completely static things I ever work on is zero

 

The area light reflections are just the specular of the area lights,they are like this because they have a physical size instead of being infinitely small like unity's lights

 

Architectural viz will benefit of the static features of this. And arch viz is really focused to superb graphics.

 

You can see the SSRR component logo at around 4:31 for about a second or so. Looks exactly like the component that is in the SSRR-plugin/asset. Only guessing, of course..

 

I see what you mean, did not think of that

 

We need some sort of a real-time production type level to really judge if we will be able to use this in real production type level. I love the horse demo showing off all the cool stuff it can do but how many of us will do that or even need to do that. Please Livenda we need a practical walk-thru showing a real production type level to really judge this and how its gonna run. Of course everyone loves and appreciates all the hard work you guys are doing just as an indie developer making levels in unity for a living I need to know if I can use this for all my practical real world levels. Thanks.

 

I guess that's Unity's core userbase catered to then. I'm only being mildly facetious there, mind, as I have a possibly large eventual interest in that feld

 

Looking forward to seeing this after playing with Enlighten all week, for those curious about how far you ( I ) can push Enligthen baked or realtime:



Loads of work in progress, details on post effects and methods here:
http://www.shadowood.uk/Store/?u=2014-09-02

My thread on it here:
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/unity-realtime-reflections-and-gi-and-realism-exploration.266258/

 

That`s a well-though-out review I haven`t seen in a while. Thanks for the useful information. HeliosDoubleSi.
Unity5`s Enlighten does work. And it looks good, when certain lighting coditions and mesh design criterions are met.
The way is see it, the main problem is the modelling task has to be doen in such a way that would minimize the possilbe lighting and shadow-related issues, which, in many cases, regardless of your modelling skills, forces you to limit yourself in the specific mesh design that works well with Enlighten. Which is OK for primitive geometry type objects like the ones you put in your blogs. But for something organic or complex with lots of seperate polygon islands and uvs, it quickly becomes PITA. Much more so t han the lightmass.
As you mentioned, Unity5 Enlighten`s baked lighting looks terrible.Currently, Realtime GI produces best results.
But it`s low quality by nature, as it has to run in real-time. The larger the scene and the more objects you have, the heavier it gets.
Baking time is really long,,, at least 10 times more than Lightmass(production setting). And it increases exponentially as the number of objects goes up.
Someone above mentioned "trade-off" between visuals and performance. It`s true.
But when you actually compare it to the same scene built in UE4, you will think differently as the difference is like day and night.
I wish they would improve the baking method.
Dynamic GI is good for a game where the light movements are important.

 

HeliosDoubleSix very robust and quite detailed review, i like it thanks for sharing. Images with GI look quite nice however, but the errors you pointed out are rather big, lets hope they get fixed along 5 release.

Livenda do current area lights work in big outdoor scenes? For example using only 1 light source for area light as sun in nature is this solution fit for it?

 

Well if Livenda's spectra gi is anywhere close to the quality of UE4's, I will be very, very happy!

On that note, not wanting to compare or anything, but how good is the quality of Spectra gi compared to UE4?

Cheers,

 

Only Livenda knows the answer to that question

 

Wish we knew what the hold up was.

 

We are busy finalizing the upcoming videos for GI and should be up before the weekend. We have a number of videos that will follow in series.

Hi, can you be more specific, are you asking for a comparison with UE4 Lightmass or their LPV implementation? Thanks!

Certainly can, they can be any size you wish, however the dynamic shadows cast by the Area Light system are not suitable for large scale. SpectraGI is the ideal solution for this as it will use illumination from any environment/sky/sun in the scene.

 

Ok, hm i was afraid of that. So this means i am looking forward to GI solution then. As Helios posted Enlighten baking is massacre to nerves i hope Spectra will have bit better solution there, though to be honest baking time is the last thing most users worry about probably. Quallity and performance on first place obviously.Will be interesting to compare it to Enlighten too.

 

Um I am not very knowledgeable when it comes to UE4. I watched Helios's videos, he posted links on unity 5 enlighten and UE4 architectural real-time renders. I saw a big difference between enlighten and UE4 lighting. I was just wondering if you maxed out Spectra Gi and made a video of an architectural rendering and watched it side by side with UE4 what the differences in quality would be, I am not too worried about performance, I am just wondering about strictly the quality of the global illumination. Could we see Spectra Gi being comparable to UE4, as seen in the architectural renders Helios posted.

Thanks, Sorry if I was unclear before.

Cheers,

 

Yeah its really cool,you can fake reflections from objects by puuting

The reason why a lot of the ue4 stuff looks "superior" is mainly because it uses baked lighting i.e lightmaps,these look good in static scenes but the illusion is broken as soon as a light source or static object is used,unity's implementation is partially dynamic,static objects contribute to and receive global illumination but dynamic objects only receive, unreal also has a dynamic solution but its far more expensive than unity's technique and doesn't work with more than a few lights although it does include a very low resolution indirect specular i.e reflections while unity relies on updating cubemaps which are slow but the indirect diffuse is quite low quality. At the end of the day its a trade off between performance and quality and which one suits your game the most. Graphics should never be the overwhelming factor when choosing an engine,its functionality in terms of actually making a game(unless you are doing arch-viz) is far more important.