Dynamic GI and Point Lights

Hello, I have a simple question: Does dynamic GI in Unity 5 work with point lights? I hear a lot of things about using a dirrectional light for outdoor environments lit by a sun-like source, but I'm also interested in interiors. Which in my case means torch-lights (using point lights) and other fire-based sources...

 

I asked this question some time ago, it won't be in 5.0 but they want to implement it, so it's in the plans. Im looking forward for this, too.

 

It does work. Some GI coming from it though goes through objects and depending on the situtation it might look weird.

 

They not implemented it, but hey, F*** it, it works for ya <lol>

 

What are you talking about?

What doesn't work is "Indirect bounce light shadowing" which is very different from "GI doesn't work".

 

And it DOES.

The only thing that doesn't is "Indirect bounce light shadowing" which means some GI might go through an object.

 

Thank for your replies, guys...

So point lights do produce indirect lighting (bounce light) but it leaks through the meshes. Which is of course an undesirable effect.

Does this mean that dynamic GI is only currently fully supported for directional lights? In other words is it possible to have GI with light sources other than the sun (an no bounce-light-going-through-meshes artifacts)?

 

To be perfectly clear. What happens is this:



You can clearly see on the left side that there is bounced light, hence GI is working, but you also see light on the right side, when there should be (almost) darkness.

Subsequent bounces of light are fine. So if for example, you have a spotlight hitting a wall at an angle, there might be leaks to the other room (assuming there is another room behind that wall), but otherwise it will look just fine.

So, with knowing what happens, you can work around it. In most cases it really isn't that noticeable (if you are not making a scene specifically to showcase the problem, chances are, there should be light bouncing everywhere, so in reality there will just be more light in some areas than what there should be).

And Kuba said that they will fix it, just not for 5.0.

Directional lights and emmissive meshes don't have this problem.

 

Thank you @AcidArrow for taking the time to explain with a picture. That's very clear indeed. Would you mind quickly adding let's say an emissive cube instead of the spotlight, just to see the difference, please?

 

Sorry, I originally made that image a while ago for a different thread so I don't have that scene handy. And I'm doing something else right now.

 

Thanks for weighting in Joachim. I am interested in GI for the game's torches (within dark dungeons).



Their point light flickers and trembles, inducing nice dancing shadows on the stony walls and cobwebs. In the case of this picture a dark cell lies on the other side of this wall. So I guess it would get lit by the bounce light from this torch. That's obviously an issue.

It seems that what you describe as not being supported (point lights with non-leaking bounce light and shadows) is exactly what I need...

And if I understand correctly using the emissive property of a mesh's material would indeed work as a source of light but it wouldn't cast any shadows. So I'm not sure how to bypass that limitation.

Or could there be a way to somehow dissociate light source and shadows (different methods/objects), while still keeping them in sync?

I'm sorry if my questions seem very naive but to port Ghost of a Tale to Unity 5.0 is going to probably require some work and I would like to understand as much as possible before I attempt to do this. Thanks...

 

Thank you @KEngelstoft. Yes, that's what I'll have to do for now. I hope you guys can get to this fairly soon as proper shadowing for point lights really is important (I believe directional lights are already working in that regard)...

 

Hi,
What could be great, is to replace our pointLight with lowpoly spheres, with high emissive, but hiding the mesh off the renderer.
Did anyone know a method to do that ?
Right now, if I disable the mesh renderer component, the material also is ignored and then the emissive light disapear...
Thanks for any help !

 

@cosmogonies.net At a guess I think you could do that by putting your spheres on a special layer, and having your main camera ignore that layer in it's rendering mask. Personally I would rather use a real point light with GI turned off plus one of these invisible GI spheres. I think that combination should look pretty good.

 

Pardon for me saying there is no support for point lights GI, for me lights other than directional always means dynamic lights, not static baked. I was thinking dynamic point lights for GI.