For those in U5 beta: Is PBR *REALLY* that good?

Seems Unity si not used for the whole game :
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/eve-online-using-unity.162494/

Where is the source showing they use Unity ?

 

I'm pretty sure ostrich160 was talking about EVE Online using PBR, not Unity

 

Yeah god forbid it would use unity. Only UE4 can do graphics, you know.

 

@hippocoder :
It was just a question on curiosity.
Don't tempt some people here to go down again on the eternal debate on the best engineS

 

I'm using the best engine. Why wouldn't I?

 

Nope

(Skip to 0:38 for PBS)

 

Daym you make me curious, seriously what did you do? if image is a no go at least you can describe it

 

It's not rocket science or some secret trick, but actually doing things right.

It'll be shown how in the up coming Unity 5 official sample scenes. Learn will also go over the entire process in detail, nothing will be left out. But to get good results you really need to do the whole linear hdr thing properly as per the manual. The biggest revelation was of course, using absolutely correct PB materials. You also need to have proper reflection probes, you can't just chuck a sphere in.

If it's all set up right, you know about it pretty much right away. Unfortunately, yes you need to load up on your post fx as well... but the results are really great, especially the specular workflow, where you can get results metallic can't.

Unity doesn't help much during beta because so much is subject to change, but it would be nice if there was a balls out option that showed it all as nature intended. I think partly, Unity don't want a cookie cutter look. So long as learn team delivers, all will be good.

 

Makes one curious if you also did things "right" in UE4.

 

This is true for any Pbr engine no ? i don't think this is specific to Unity.
Stating Unity will do better than UE4 is a good joke also

 

Is that on a roadmap for future versions 5.xx ?

 

If that is true, I really hope v 5 provides a pull down in the shader options with a basic set of material settings. There are things any photorealistic scene would need - various kinds of metals, glass and fabric. Other nice things would be skin, fur, feathers, stone, dirt, etc.

If not that, at least the ability to save commonly used materials. Any artist finds a palette of materials and reusues them all the time.

 

One can't not, with the samples. I have access (since last year) to infiltrator demo etc. Not sure if they're public but yes, UE4 makes it hard not to do it right it is set up right out of the box for it.

In fact I don't think you can get it wrong with UE4. I am saying *you* not me needs to get Unity right. UE4 is already set up perfectly out of the box. This is Unity's responsibility to demonstrate and teach though.

Hey. I like UE4 and Unity both. They're both bloody brilliant engines. But you know what? my game looks fantastic. Must be a funny joke, somehow eh?

 

Examples bring you only so far as they are certainly not a one fits all solution. But I get what you mean.

The environment or workflow details of one engine might work better with you. Since outside that PBR is pretty much PBR. I am getting near identical results with both engines. Which is awesome, but U5 completely destroying UE4? Thats a good one....

Say what?

 

Yeah I didn't manage to finish typing during an edit! fixed now. My general gist is... Unity can, but you need to set it up. And that responsibility really isn't the end user's but Unity's to demonstrate, or we'll get more zengardens running riot shouting how Unity's rubbish and UE4 is better than the best possible baked bread. Because he a) uses unity free b) probably hasn't actually even used Unity 5.

 

Well UE4 offers you great rendering without needing you to do anything special , you seems to tell Unity 5 will ask lot of work or more adjustement headaches to deliver good graphics ?

Yes i use Unity Free and never touched UT5 , and so ? well i will not start another debate, UT5 is not finished on graphics while UE4 or Crysis are already done for that part and they keep growing.

Let's wait until UT5 public release, until we don't have the hands on UT5 i just can't believe without a download demo or trying it that UT5 rendering will do as good as UE4 ( and many others using both on good projects are saying UE4 delivers better overall graphics and effect ?) Give us a demo insteador or let's wait for the public release

But the engines are not just graphics :
When UT5 will be out we will be able to look at the sky system, soft shadows, terrain shader and layers, AA method , time to bake GI , vertex paint tool, shader tool , curve editor, visual programming tool and perhaps slow workflow having to use Unity specific shader format using alpha instead of bitmaps and some other things.

And many things should be fixed in UT5 as simple exemple :
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/will-fps-improve-legacy-settings-dont-make-much-difference.284866/

I don't say UT5 will not rock, but it's not finished at all and release still not here, so we can't compare ourselves.

 

Hey Hippo and others in the beta program!
How does the Unity 5 PB materials pick up their ambient reflections?
Do you need to give it a cube map as an input or does it do some magic automatically to pick cube maps from your current scene? Or are you perhaps expected to use screen space reflections? If yes, how do the materials look if you disable screen space reflections on your camera, does it fall back to something else?

Just trying to figure out and adapt to the future workflow here. I'd imagine an automatic cube map capture would be pretty handy and pretty cheap compared to SSR.

 

@PixelMind - I love 'em. Reflection probes auto bake and it just works by magic, once you fiddle with materials. Just drop down a bunch of reflection probes and stretch out the box. These can update in a number of ways for realtime reflections: every nth frame, or every frame or just prebaked. It doesn't require brains or ability to use, in classic Unity style. Thankfully. You can also supply your own if you're crazy or something.

Best of all, there's blending between reflection probes so you don't get any nasty popping.

What's the auto reflection probe get its reflection from? well you can choose, with layers, or just have it use the skybox, or whatever, it's all very open and well done.


@zenGarden, your text is full of spite for Unity. Sounds to me as though you really should move onto UE4. You say nothing hopeful or positive and know full well a lot of those features won't be available since Unity hasn't announced them. You do this with a clear bias and I think everyone just sees right through it. But anyway, done with that.

 

Yes i know , it's a tentative to make some Unity devs to realize they should make these helpfull tools.

Specially the vertex painter to mix materials on any surface( sand or water over stones, moss over wall) etc ...
This is the new way of detailling levels, giving you lot more freedom without glitches or memory problems like with decals.

This is too bad Unity not have that ESSENTIAL tool

Or Visual for any 3D artists to make gameplay inside a team or alone on a project etc ...
But ok i won't ask any more, let's Unity follow it's own road

Yes it was more some reaction when i hear somone saying UT5 can do better Pbr and global visual quality , when i see many poor examples on the Net.

I'm happy with UT4.6 Free and some tools i took on Asset Store to make it more complete , a great version as we don't seek last graphics with it.
For UT5 that whole different point of view i have seeing poor examples or it is unfinished and when i hear it could ask lot more work and headaches to make good graphics.


1 ) So will UT5 will allow to have great graphics without any special efforts out of the box ?

2) About soft shadows, AA and some others ones they will be needed , last visuals is not only Pbr or Enlighten, what about these with UT5 ?
Will that come later within some months or lot more later ?

I think theses questions are constructive.

 

Unity 5.0's PBR is bloody lovely.

I've had it a while but just haven't had the time to do anything other than copy over existing projects to see what it does with them to keep an eye on changes and progress, but a few weeks ago I spent an evening re-mapping one of our scenes from an in-development title and it blows chunks out of what we have right now in U4.

I did the same in UE4 before the 5.0 beta came to pre-order customers, and while it was looking very nice as well, the workflow for getting there (bear in mind this is bringing assets in, re-building everything in a game-ready setting), it was a real faff on and I pretty much just ran out of time and had to move on.

Not saying 5.0 has all the answers, or it's better, or worse, and there's always going to be something to pull a face over, but the important thing here is (I can't speak for anyone else, but for me anyway) it's in Unity, which is what I want. Grass is green on both sides of the fence now, and the only thing from stopping you from getting results, is you*.

*sod's law permitting.

 

I also did it in UE4 and it blown away any UT5 projects

Seriously, it's easy to say 'it's bets here" , anyone saying it looks gorgeous would have post a picture long time ago itf it was true

Anyway, good if UT5 is better than any industry engines like UE4 or Snowdrop engine, that's great ,amazing.

For people staying Unity for their own reasons, all is good UT5 will rock even for 1500$ + Asset Store to complete missing things, so discussion is not needed

For some people not using Unity only, it will be the following points when UT5 will be public that will matter when UT5 will be public :
- price for Pro version
- split features for the Free version
- visual quality when completed and public
- tools
- terrain
- effects (AA, shadows etc ...)

For that people category, above points when UT5 will be out will clearly and quickly make them take their decision for future projects (it's not PBR only)

 

Posting pictures is fine if you have permission; we don't all have that luxury (and, where are your pictures? ).

Looking through the thread, nobody appears to be saying either is better than the other. The point of PBR is that it's based off the same principles and math - it's the interface that counts, and choosing the one that does what you need to. But surely everyone understands that by now. If not, well...no point talking into the wind.

As for the rest, that's going a bit off topic. Anyone would think you're an alias to Ken M.

 

I don't know who is Ken M and i presume he was using other engines than Unity only.


For pictures, i don't see the problem it's pbr why should it be forbidden ? it's not Nasa super secrets

Yes some UT5 users was stating graphics are better in UT5 , something i heavy heavy doubt, specially today when UT5 is far from finished.

 

Some game developers using U5 may be working on things that aren't announced/have NDA'd content in them and just don't want to break contract or annoy their employers by posting screenshots or content.

 

Hey, just curious, from what you guys have but can't show, can it match something like this?

 

Not for the reflections,effects I'm afraid...

 

Not seeing what's impressive with that demo. I see good artwork, standard reflections. It doesn't even demonstrate UE4 properly, let alone Unity.

 

Exactly, where are Unity's *standard* reflections? [not talking about the probes, I mean SSR]

 

Well this is a thread about PBR, so mainly graphics. I was just asking if what you've got (since you can't show it yet), looks as good as this.
I'm not trying to promote U4 (I personally prefer Unity, no idea who made this video), but I would like to get a good idea of what i can expect so far. That's why I am looking through youtube for some exvironment examples from both engines.

 

I can safely say what I've got looks nothing remotely like that, since it's a totally different graphics style
As I've said earlier, if you're not subbed or you've not purchased Unity 5 yet then you'll have to wait for Unity's demos or whatever people see fit to release.

@Shkarface Noori - They said SSR is on the cards soon, how soon is probably up to whenever the staff can manage to fit it in while fixing all the beta bug reports

In the meantime you can get same results if you use box projection on your reflection probes, but obviously, it's not the same thing (for any angle).

 

@hippocoder been waiting since beta 1, and ready to wait another 17 betas for it to arrive .

 

We have a copy of U5 at work, I have tested things out. However, there is a lot of talk of a possible U4 switch. What people see for U4 is that it's ready to go, U5 is up an coming but not a sure thing when it comes to matching the level of realistic PC graphics.

We've used Unity for a couple years, so I'm happy to stick with it, but I must be able to justify it.
We don't make full games, or use it full time for all projects, but if we expand what we do in this area, we would like to make the best looking choice (if the difference between U4 and Unity5 is something noticeable).

-Since I'm searching, I might as well share what I find, so people can analyze and comment-
Some random Unity 5 examples

Another video

This seems to be more of a complete game example.

another...

 

There is too much specular ont the buckets ; also on the garbage green plaster that don't look plaster bur metal when light is over. The overal scene don't look PBR and don't look so good.

When shadows are on the green garbage plaster the specular is too high on the top even with shadows on , overall UE4 materials and lightening looks lot more natural, there not must be some math equations.

I don't know but i hope it's a not so good example , just a test scene ?

 

I would say they are just test scenes, it is still Beta, so things will probably improve.

Anyway, I just want to see what those who are heavily involved in the Beta, can get so far.

 

A lot of the complaints seem to be about the art assets in demonstrations, rather than technical potential.

 

Hm, those videos look pretty ugly. Are people even using linear/tonemapping etc?

 

I have no idea, but that's why it is so important to be able to talk openly and constructively about these kinda things.

Are you free to share any details of what workflow, settings, effects etc you use to get the kinda fantastic results you would expect from Unity 5? Even if its just a couple of essential dos and donts?

 

If they look bad, clearly they just use poor maps and dont fully understand how the pbr workflow works.

 

Avenging angel seems like a real good game, but materials looks very standard and not PBR.

The russian level is overbright and llok bland, it don't look Pbr and has same problem as UT5 pirate beach scene video ; UDK3 by default has same problem like as sort of brightness

UDK3 brigther scene


UE4 corrected shaders with GI




Also is there some global illumination in videos above ? because it changes the lightening over materials and should make the scenes look better if it was more Pbr than specular and normal maps.

 

Unity5.



This is something I've been doing:

 

These are some shots of my first unity5 test scenes...



Here you can see some cool stuff made with unity5 => http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/unity-realtime-reflections-and-gi-and-realism-exploration.266258/

I did not have much time to test unity5 yet, but in my opinion PBR and Unity is THAT GOOD!

 

Sorry but you can post all you want.. still think that people (ah zenGarden) will always find fault in them. It is just how people are sometimes.

 

+1

 

Sorry but it's not there yet, not to say it can't be and a lot of the OMG GFX upgrades will probably come from the asset store once it's been generally released. It's only as strong as the sum of it's parts and UE4 heavily relies on great post / lighting and VFX to look good, also these PBR shaders will probably need tweaking. Enlighten whether in UE4 / or Unity seems to need color grading afterwards, it seems to over-saturate and doesn't look as natural as lightmass.

For outdoor scenes, I still think CryEngine looks better than both of them put together due to various reasons. But personal preference and all that..

But seriously, I'm not sure how much it matters. How many people are wanting to make a cutting edge AAA graphical FPS / RPG here?


@MS80 that third picture looks familiar :

 

I personally would not doubt Hippo on his claims. Not that my opinion will mean much but he is certainly a source you can trust imo.

 

Outlandish statements are still outlandish statements(U5 PBR "completely destroying" UE4 PBR), no matter how credible a source is otherwise.

 

Yes. My point is that you(meaning you shadow) know what is involved in making things look awesome! Most indie people do not. We see the games coming out and say "holy S*** that looks awesome I wanna make one that looks like that!" Without any clue on the process and what it takes to do it. But we wanna make it look like that is all we know.
And again unreal has been doing this AAA S*** for a long time. They know what is involved and what it takes cause they have been doing it! Unity on the other hand hasnt. They apparently have hired the very talented people to make it happen but they haven't sat down and done it.
But indie developers just see the fancy graphics and stuff and get all googly eyed and dreamy. With no concept of what it takes to do it.
heck I'll model a turd and put it in both.. guess what cause I do not know the process that turd will look like a shiny turd in ue4 and look like a dull turd in unity. But it is still a turd.

 

Also the skylight global illumination makes a good difference, i don't know if UT5 and Enlighten already incorpore that ?
Without it


With Skylight GI

It's any fault, is just asking a minimum quality, if UT5 will not bring it than it's ok we can't do anything in our side.
The example from ShadowK , just shows the visible difference of quality.

No, the picture below look good better than viking village lightening it seems but something is missing (Gi Skylight ? materials ? ) , it's not as pushed as UE4 or Crysis simply , if we will see screnshots at same level i will not say anything more , and our critics can just help Unity to improve

UT5 actually will look looks great and awesome for people that don't have tested or seen UE4 or Crysis difference
I will perhaps not criticize too much more now, and let some people keep thinking UT5 is the best, without bringing points that should be improved (it helps Unity at final not me).




But you can find also not so good materials looking almost specualr and normap map , and not so good lightening in UE4 also :



I'm not worried , i know UT5 will bring up graphics available out of the box before the public realease and it will look great compared to today.
And i think like always the solutions will come from the Asset Store simply :
- better Pbr shaders
- GI add features ( skylight)
- Sub surface scattering
- things like AO distance field ad others additions enhancing the visuals
etc ...
Could that take some time to see them appear..

Yes, it looks lot better than UT5 scenes made wihtout that plugin, looks great , it's it, definitively what UT5 should produce in terms of visuals
My questions are :
-Will it work on Unity 5 Free ?
-When will it be finished ?
-Will it be really finished ?
-What will be the price ?

This plugin make me think it can produce as good visuals as this one

 

Yeah I agree, I've seen some great stuff in both forums and some err not so good and for example our base terrain shader has 121 different components. Blended colour maps / terrain normal maps / pbr textures / pixel depth modulation / texture based perlin noise / macro variations / distance mapping and various camera tricks. Unity won't give you that out the box, you need to roll up them sleeves.

This is all before the rest of the additions like: Film based contrast, vignetting, bloom, ambient cubemaps, colour grading, slight dof, ambient lighting post, slight dirt mask, auto exposure, SSDO, motion blur, screen space reflections, volumetric clouds, photon mapping based GI, TXAA and I could keep going on and on.

Point being, whoever thinks the engine doesn't make a difference out the box is off their rocker (IMO). Also they're all based upon DX and GL renderers so whatever you can do in one should technically be possible in any engine.

It really comes down to how much work it is.

 

Unity must surely be aware of the pressing need to look good but remember - looking good fast is better than looking good at 1fps.

The PS4 doesn't have unlimited processing power and that's dreadfully important to me.