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How to make AAA graphics in Unity/Enlighten

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Billy4184, May 18, 2017.

  1. Deleted User

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    I've just posted a new file with added "bounce" ;).. Nah probably not chief, it does get a bit frustating after a while.. Although personally I think the Unity one looks pretty good all things considering..
     
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  2. Frpmta

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    For all my talk I think I now prefer the default box mipmapping :D
     
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  3. Billy4184

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    @ShadowK was the original image you posted from UE4? I thought it was Unity given that you didn't specify anything else, I was quite impressed!

    I can't find the original image you posted to compare, but I do thing there's a significant difference in the quality. A couple of things that stand out from memory was the grass in the original image looked fantastic by comparison, and the overall aesthetic in the previous one was very rich and reminded me almost of something like Ryse.

    The new image looks great, but overall it has a far less 'solid' look imo (here we go with another term). In terms of the lighting, just at first glance nothing strikes me as looking out of place, except perhaps for the left-facing parts on the right-hand wall coming of a bit overexposed considering they are facing away from the main light source.

    Anyway what happened to the other image?
     
  4. Deleted User

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    Ok, enough...I shall do nooo more on this :).>!

    Final Unity Screen:

    UnityNew.jpg

    To be worked on UE4 scene:

    UEOld.jpg
     
    Last edited by a moderator: May 20, 2017
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  5. Billy4184

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    OK thanks for the comparison, but is it just me or is there something not quite right with the bottom image? It looks as if it has been run through a low pass filter or something.

    If the original image you posted on the previous page was from UE, I think it would be great to see it again.
     
    Last edited: May 20, 2017
  6. neoshaman

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    At a first glance the unity one looks better this time, but I'm confused by one spot, the bathtub transition to ground furthest point as a weird light below him when it should be in the shadow ... Looks like an artefact of low resolution baking, the shadow on the ground is super smooth.
     
  7. Deleted User

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    Yeah somethings gone rather weird with my materials, I've had to do a "lightroom" bounce to see what's going on with the lighting.. In all fairness standard substance materials aren't the best for "showing" off anyway, so I might get round to sorting out some better materials for both..

    But not this weekend, need to relax..! Looking forward to seeing what you come up with..
     
  8. Billy4184

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    OK just to clarify, what exactly was the original image you posted a couple pages back (can't find it anymore), which engine was it? Because whatever it was it looked fantastic to me.

    Still working on my scene, I'll be putting up some more shots soon!
     
  9. Adam-Bailey

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    It's default Unity sky and the ground is just a terrain with a single texture on it.

    The LPPV is actually being used for all the reflected light in the scene. It was a test at trying baking GI information into light probes where I created a low poly block out of the cliffs + ground and then set that as the only thing that is lightmap static to calculate realtime GI based on it.

    The sunlight is quite bright (around 2 IIRC) and then tone-mapping and colour correction is used to get it decently exposed.
     
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  10. Billy4184

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    OK a random attempt at a photorealistic landscape. Just 1 texture on a terrain. Tried to give it a bit of a harsh look.

    Untitled.png
     
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  11. iamthwee

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    I love it when people talk about direct/ near as damn it comparisons in different engines and an extra tree branch or burning torch accidentally creeps into the scene ;)
     
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  12. Martin_H

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    You should use a photo reference if you want photorealism. Imho the shadows are too dark, the fog too green and intense, and you should be able to see further into the distance. Otherwise it looks like the fog hides all distant objects and such thick fog seems out of place for a desert type landscape.

    How practical do you find the approach to use a small offscreen "fake" setup to render realtime lightprobe information? What were the biggest problems? It sounds like it might be a useful thing to try for me too.
     
  13. Billy4184

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    It's not meant to necessarily look like a place on earth, I had in mind some other planet actually. Photorealism doesn't have to mean something that we're already familiar with.

    Untitled2.png
     
  14. Adam-Bailey

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    Right now it's very impractical since it requires you to create simplified 3d geometry that approximately matches the large strokes of your environment. You could do it just setting the high detail geometry to lightmap static at the cost of increased bake time, which is just the standard Unity 5 realtime GI approach. I haven't properly checked tests in the profiler to see what the performance gains/losses are from the approach of using simplified dummy geometry.

    I suspect however that if we had the ability to purely bake probes and no geometry it would have a benefit. There's a reason ReCore apparently did it that way, and The Division used Irradiance Transfer Probes which as far as I can tell are just their engines equivalent of Lightprobes + Light Probe Proxy Volumes.
     
  15. Adam-Bailey

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    This shot doesn't have as many of the same issues due to framing, but I agree with the comments about your previous screenshot.

    The hill in the background is heavily fogged. That's fine, but it implies there is a lot of fog scattering light in this atmosphere. If that much light is getting scattered about then I wouldn't expect the shadows up close to be so dark, but would expect the shadow to be softer and the darkness to be lit up by light from the sky. It's like the difference between photos on the Earth and on the Moon.
     
  16. Billy4184

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    Dar Lang Ahn on the quest to preserve knowledge across the universe!

    Untitled2.png

    @Adam-Bailey good point about the shadows

    PS switched to Photographic tonemapping from ACES
     
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  17. frosted

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    From a lighting standpoint the Unreal is in a different class. How much of that is trickery, only the Shadow knows.

    From a mood point, the Unreal one has a sense of mood and story whereas the Unity one doesn't (blue at the end of the hallway, and soft lighting give a melancholy feeling, accented by the decay of the space).

    In terms of overall quality, Unity's feels sharper largely due to the reflections on the ground being crisp the floor tiles look much more intense in the Unity version. The Unreal version looks far more cohesive and softer.

    The archways in the Unity version really bother me, the weird normal map make the arches a completely different material from the rest of the scene, which adds to the disjointed feeling.

    I think that in terms of gaming experience, mood, by far, is the most valuable goal for most game graphics. The Unreal one provides much more story and is simply far superior by that benchmark.
     
    Last edited: May 20, 2017
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  18. Arowx

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    Last edited: May 20, 2017
  19. frosted

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    @Arowx,
    I think it looks pretty good man!

    One thing to note - I think this kind of cartoony style really needs to have bright vivid color. If you look at blizzard's work, this is always a core element. Everything is very bright and crisp.

    Here's the original:


    Just compare the color balance in the blizzard version against either the blender or unity render.

    Bright Colors = Happy Colors = Happy Feeling while Playing

    Just try not to increase the contrast too much in the process.

    I think the work looks great btw. Good job!
     
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  20. hippocoder

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    You guys can't even match the blizzard concept shot with 3D rendering packages let alone realtime so it's pretty clear the issue is PEBCAK so I would go back to grass roots and learn some art direction ;)
     
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  21. Billy4184

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    Needs some textures and postfx, at a minimum, unless you just want to look at lightmaps. Looking good so far.
     
  22. iamthwee

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    @Arowx Great job man, thanks for the scene.
     
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  23. Adam-Bailey

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    Able to share that blender scene as fbx or similar files? Agree with @hippocoder, there is too much different right now to do an engine comparison, however it would be interesting to see people play with your models and see what sort of compositions they could up with.
     
  24. frosted

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    That's the point of this thread. To learn more...

    Don't be a douche :p

    Although yes, engine comparison is pointless. But, this is going to be true regardless. Too many variables to control for unless we strip things down to very bare elements and do very specific, controlled tests... and that's no fun. This is just a silly screenshot sharing thread.
     
  25. Thomas-Pasieka

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    It takes years to train your eye on form/colors/texture/lighting. It will take more than re-creating one scene. It will take 10.000 hours and plenty of "doing". Don't compare tech against each other. Compare your current skillset to that of other artists. That's what it is all about. Learn from others who are better than you. Study their work/composition/everything.

    This thread shows that some are trying, but don't expect nailing it over night.
     
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  26. hippocoder

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    But art direction is actually the whole real problem here, so I guess it makes me a douche pointing that out in a way people will read it and discuss it ;)
     
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  27. frosted

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    Any practical suggestions on how to start?

    I think @Arowx's work here is actually doing exactly what both of you suggest. He's using a world class example and trying to recreate it. In the process he'll certainly learn some tricks and refine his skillset.

    No?

    The engine comparison thing is kinda a red herring, and yes, that's going to be very difficult to do properly. But working to replicate Blizzard's example in reasonable detail is a great approach IMO.
     
  28. Deleted User

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    Y'know what, looking back I think I disagree..! Internally at least the Unity one looks better, with a hint of colour grading it's somewhat realistic whilst still being stylistic. Unless you need glasses the world is relatively clear and sharp, but it still retains elements of soft lighting, like the area light style torches.

    Although as @iamthwee completely missed the words explaining, the UE4 one is still to be finished and properly graded etc.

    Although, I will say the UE one looks far better in motion and as a rendering pipeline it is very well thought out (unlike Unity and lets face it quite a few other things in Unity). It's easy to attain a level of consistancy across the board and some of the basics like shadows are much better in UE.

    When it comes to games the particle system is in a different class and there are a lot of features which most are default in a lot of engines.

    You also got to understand the premise here isn't just the best graphics possible, if you want that I'll turn it into a lightroom example with arch viz materials (it's easy enough to do).. It's how easy is it to achieve in terms of a game and what's the performance impact or using things like procedural materials etc.
     
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  29. Billy4184

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    Guys, how about we look at this a different way: how would you set up simple daytime lighting in an empty scene, such that anything you put in it that was properly made with PBR looked good?

    Imagine that you're setting up the lighting for some photorealistic No Mans Sky remake, how would you do it?
     
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  30. Thomas-Pasieka

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    That's why I said this is a start :) But again, it takes countless "starts" and countless hours to get better. One will have to put a lot of effort and time into it so just keep practicing.
     
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  31. hippocoder

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    No.

    You guys weren't even aware you were discussing art direction, you were just blindly copying without understanding. That isn't helping, that's copying.

    You guys up to this point were doing the how, and ignoring the why. But the why is the most important thing to start talking about. Once you know why things are being arranged in a certain way, you understand how to do it, no matter if it's in a different engine, a 3D package or a painting.

    Last I checked you guys didn't give a hoot about that, and just (imho mistakenly) believed you'd learn anything of value copying a picture in another format. All that does is make you familiar with the tool. It doesn't make you understand why you'd want to do that in case you were not copying but making your own scenes.

    Here's an example:
    For example why does blizzard use that camera angle and how does it affect the shot? Why is it low to the ground? what major difference or impact is it having on the lighting result and impact? answer: a LOT. And that's just camera height. It's affecting the entire image lighting result too thanks our friend Fresnel.

    Just a few things to discuss and think beyond just copying, think about instead, why those decisions were made that led to such great graphics. I'm out. I wasn't trolling or being a douche, but you're welcome.
     
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  32. Adam-Bailey

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    Directional light - Around 1.3-1.4 brightness.
    HDR photo skybox.
    Post: Tonemapping, SSR, mild bloom with a high threshold.
     
  33. frosted

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    Firstly, there are multiple people participating in the thread, and each has different motivations, goals and skill sets. So it's quite unfair to clump everyone together.

    Secondly, if you want to criticize, fine, but please, try to be more constructive.

    After all, this is your forum, and this is a potentially useful and fun thread in that forum. Don't just poop on it cuz it has AAA in the title and you hate that (honestly, I hate it too, it's click bait).

    Finally, I disagree, I think it's a worthwhile exercise to copy excellent work to the best of your ability. In the process of learning "how" you often start to understand the "why". YMMV, but different people learn differently.

    ^^ This is much more useful. These are also interesting questions and insights. Maybe it's worth sticking around and sharing more....
     
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  34. Billy4184

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    I was kind of hoping not to go down the road of stylization and art direction, actually. I'm perfectly aware how essentual that is to games and even to films, but really what I was hoping to discuss was simply the quality of a result in terms of proximity to realism (since everything else is a matter of taste).

    I mean, think of it like this, in real life you have the sun and you have reflective surfaces. No matter what you take a picture of, whether it's the Grand Canyon or your driveway, it's going to look real and nobody is going to have any problem seeing the 'realism factor' in it.

    So really (for me at least) the point is, how to set up GI so that it's as close as possible to real life, not just for a particular beauty shot but for any kind of shot.

    Of course, art and scenes in games speak in many other ways besides the fidelity of the lighting itself, but I was kind of hoping to keep the thread focused on the core quality of lighting in a way that could be shared across a lot of different games, regardless of style or the intent of the designer.

    Great! I think this kind of thing is what we need. Maybe we can even set up a scene and pass it around showing off different things in it, trying to make it as good as possible in a general way.
     
  35. Deleted User

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    You're going to have to be more specific who you're giving this advice to Thomas, if it's me then I'd happily accept a challenge where I don't hack something together in the space of a couple of hours, actually spend a couple of weeks on a scene doing it all properly.. You use Unity, I use Unreal.

    We'll put a $100.00 on it and give both scenes screenies to both the Unity and Unreal community, whoever gets the most votes wins ;)..
     
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  36. frosted

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    Competition with money on the line? Now that's fun stuff.

    I'll kick in $20 to a pool, but I also wanna run an entry. I'll smoke both of you...

    (ps, yes, I also know this will never actually happen)
     
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  37. Billy4184

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    OK so what we need to do is focus on simple, unstylized, non-hero shots. Just to try to squeeze out some great lighting on some simple objects.

    I am putting out a challenge to everybody (including myself) to re-create something similar to this shot, using the free quixel assets, this weekend - in whatever engine works best for you.

    It doesn't have to be exactly the same, just whatever you can do with the assets. But it needs to have some direct sun and shadow.



    Your time starts now!
     
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  38. Elzean

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    Make the screens anonymous and don't tell which engine is used until final vote result, that would be interesting.
     
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  39. Deleted User

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    Here's the thing that compounds stuff.. I'm not playing to each engines strengths and trying to tackle specific issues like indoor / outdoor. As well as making sure it's performant and THEN trying to convert it like for like, this isn't how I have or ever do things.. This time I'll re-create the scene in UE, but for UE only.

    Although a lot of the principles are the same, so you can follow the basic steps.. One of the biggest issues is how each engines GI systems / reflections react to materials and colour / then getting the post to nicely finish it off.. First step is lightboxing with uber basic materials, if your scene does not look nearly as good as your lightbox initially you've gone screwed up somewhere.

    It took me quite a while to learn how to get the lightmass settings right alone, so Thomas is right about experimenting and lots of it.

    Lightbox.jpg
     
    Last edited by a moderator: May 20, 2017
  40. frosted

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    This example is running in UE right - it has same lighting as the Unreal screenshot, very different from the Unity one.

    Can you share this untextured scene? I'd love to try messing around with it (understand if you can't share it though). If not, maybe tomorrow night I will try to just box out a similar space.

    The color on the arches and ceiling compared to the indirect light on the left wall. This is really interesting to me, and I want to see how it works and if it's possible to get same results in Unity.

    Is that color different a product of lighting engine, or different materials?
     
    Last edited: May 20, 2017
  41. Deleted User

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    Yes it's Unreal.

    I will do at some point, instead of rushing I'm going to turn it into a proper scene and I'll dropbox it or something.. Then I'll post the final proof and lets see if someone can match / beat it in Unity..

    Y'know it might be prudent if I made the scene apply to my actual game, I'll still share the untextured version so I'm not just wasting time :)..
     
    Last edited by a moderator: May 20, 2017
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  42. Arowx

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  43. Martin_H

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    When I read that I got a flashback of the creepy puppet from Saw


    Anyway, here it is:


    Anyone wanna guess what light setup I used?
     
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  44. Billy4184

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    Looking good! No need to put it in spoilers, the thread needs more actually relevant images! :D

    I actually like the subdued lighting, but do you reckon you could give it a more sunset/brighter look to better compare to the original? I feel like the shadows are crunched too hard to really distinguish the quality of details.

    I think perhaps also there's too much of a blue tone to it that kills the warmth of the highlights and makes the darks look a bit netherworldly, again it might look great for a particular scene, but in this case I think it's probably useful to try to replicate the original as closely as possible for testing purposes.

    In terms of the lighting setup - I hope you used some direct sunlight? Otherwise I'd say that it seems possible you did it mainly with reflections and SSAO/tonemapping?

    Just started on mine now!
     
  45. Martin_H

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    I actually had a really dumb mistake in the first setup. The camera wasn't HDR so the "ambient only" option of the SSAO didn't work. I agree on the too blue shadows, already had it fixed in v2:


    And here it is without all the distracting textures:


    As a light-cookie I used a slightly modified version of this image:
    https://www.textures.com/download/bokehnature0031/113814?q=tree+bokeh
    Could use some more blur now that I see it in the textureless render.
     
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  46. Billy4184

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    Looks much better, and really quite nice! I might give the same setup a go.

    I think it's really useful to try to make a scene look good without textures first, it's still perfectly possible (and easier probably) to read the quality of the lighting.
     
  47. GarBenjamin

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    I just went through some of the photos I've taken over the years on my random mini road trips. Just throwing these out here so that if any are useful from a lighting study pov or if one serves as a reference image or perhaps a texture they are available. I took all of these myself with either my camera or cell phone so no worries about them being some copyrighted crap you have to watch out for. On the other hand, I took all of these myself and sometimes that might be on cell phone through truck windshield so don't expect pro quality. lol I don't think any of these are windshield shots though.

    If you actually need a reference of something let me know and I will keep my eye out when I am out driving around or doing a hike. Just be sure to also let me now if it should be cloudy overcast, rainy or bright & sunny day, etc.









     
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  48. Billy4184

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    Those look like they would be really useful, thanks! Especially the cliff one, would be perfect for lighting the rocks for my battlefront scene.

    Very nice shots.
     
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  49. GarBenjamin

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    I'm glad you appreciate them. I wasn't sure if anyone would think maybe it was just a wasted post in here. lol

    I do think it would be very interesting to see a Unity scene along these lines.


    I'm not sure a game would ever look like this though. Nature is super detailed. And look at how clear the water is here you can very easily the "floor" is covered with weeds. In fact, IIRC there is a fish or two visible in this photo some place.

    Alright I won't fill those up with more of my random photos. lol
     
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  50. Billy4184

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    Yeah I think a swamp is probably the hardest environment to make, there's a lot of subtle reflection that can easily go wrong.

    Don't worry, I think a thread about lighting should be filled with images, or otherwise what's the point..?
     
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