Search Unity

  1. Megacity Metro Demo now available. Download now.
    Dismiss Notice
  2. Unity support for visionOS is now available. Learn more in our blog post.
    Dismiss Notice

How to make AAA graphics in Unity/Enlighten

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

  1. Deleted User

    Deleted User

    Guest

    Can't say I have a lot of faith in what Unity gives you by default, AFAIK it was used in republique and PAMELA.. So there's that.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: May 29, 2017
  2. nipoco

    nipoco

    Joined:
    Sep 1, 2011
    Posts:
    2,008
    I don't think SEGI is really ready for the actual use in games, unless you target gamer with the latest high-end machines.

    Not sure if someone already mentioned that here, but this looks more promising than SEGI IMO, because of the performance.
     
    Billy4184 likes this.
  3. Deleted User

    Deleted User

    Guest

    With my backing and forthing oh so.! I've noticed a little something.. Where's the fun? As I was lerping here and absolute world positioning there, having UE shout at me for degenerate tangent basis whilst the warp analysis tool in Maya crashed it.. Again I was thinking where's the fun?

    So I boot up Unity again for giggles, imported some of my meshes (which Unity calculated all these gubbins).. I mess around with some self shadowed POM I got from another project and slap some SD's on a mesh.. Which left me a lot of time to concern myself with the real stuff..

    Like why are all roads made of asphalt and brick? Why are tree's so "green", why not purple? Unity left me the time to find out about these oh so critical questions..

    Also I noticed this https://www.artstation.com/artwork/...YPE&utm_content=pod&utm_campaign=communitytab, can't say I've played Uncharted in a long while but if it's anything like the fandom version what are we thinking a month? Six weeks worth of work? I mean I wish I had time for that sorta thing.!

    So maybe I will have to accept the fact I won't be able to make the best looking game ever made, I might as well just do whatever the hell I want and have fun whilst doing it.. This is day one of a new project (built a road network hehe), from here on out I shall post in the "UNITY ;)" WIP section.

    Life is good, life is purple:

    screenshot8.jpg
     
    Last edited by a moderator: May 30, 2017
  4. Billy4184

    Billy4184

    Joined:
    Jul 7, 2014
    Posts:
    6,008
    That looks very good. Still not sure if the dev is planning to release it though.
     
  5. Stardog

    Stardog

    Joined:
    Jun 28, 2010
    Posts:
    1,910
    I've been doing some tests with some photoscanned models, and to get a photoreal look you have to adjust mipMapBias for every texture.

    Mip maps end up a blurry version of the texture, and adjusting mipMapBias to a negative number sharpens them. These get reset when exiting the editor.

    AA also blurs the scene, so FXAA is unusable, and Temporal will have to be sharpened from 0.3 to 1 at least. Too much sharpening and it ends up looking like Deus Ex: Mankind Divided's screen sharpening shader.

    Textures have to be 4k. 2k textures look too blurry. Even 4k textures look blurry up close, so you will need a detail normal map.

    From my tests, it seems like Unity could easily make a game that looks as good as Battlefront or better, especially the rocky levels.
     
    thelebaron and zenGarden like this.
  6. Deleted User

    Deleted User

    Guest

    Let's see it..!
     
    Martin_H and Peter77 like this.
  7. OCASM

    OCASM

    Joined:
    Jan 12, 2011
    Posts:
    328
    You're not wrong:

     
    cyberpunk and nipoco like this.
  8. Deleted User

    Deleted User

    Guest

    You think that overly orange / reddish horribly lit canyon looks anything near realistic and / or good? If you think that looks good in any sense then that's the real issue here. I'll post counter examples because at this stage I think I might be the one with a warped perspective.

    The main issue is from N00B's to pro's there's so many examples of decent looking screenies coming out of that forum. The community is far smaller, so why am I never seeing anything like that come out of Unity? There's millions of Unity users, I mean c'mon I should be seeing examples like below en mass, I should be sat here feeling rather inadequate like I do when browsing the Unreal forums..

    Here's someone creating packs for Megascans (In UE) this one looks far more accurate in every way:



    He said this one is "still very much a WIP", I agree it doesn't look perfect but orders of magnitude better than that vid..

     
    Last edited by a moderator: May 30, 2017
  9. OCASM

    OCASM

    Joined:
    Jan 12, 2011
    Posts:
    328
    You need to go outside more:



    Your examples, while detailed, look totally fake.
     
    cyberpunk, nipoco and Jingle-Fett like this.
  10. Deleted User

    Deleted User

    Guest

    I go outside plenty thanks, that photo looks perfectly natural and realistic to me.. That video looks terribad.! Poor lighting / poor diffuse correlation / poor composition / poor post effects, it's not in the same stratosphere as any modern AAA game.. But hey, each to their own.!
     
  11. OCASM

    OCASM

    Joined:
    Jan 12, 2011
    Posts:
    328
    It's an asset import test, not a cinematic film, duh. Still beats your examples, though.
     
  12. Deleted User

    Deleted User

    Guest

    If it was something I'd made, I'd probably agree.. But you're no where near on the the same level as this artist (link below, you should check out his other stuff), a bit of humility goes a long way.. For a start, instead of getting twisted about it the first question should be how could I improve it?

    I'm not just trying to bash you (as it's irrelevant anyway, we all choose our own paths), I'm trying to understand the frustating part of why it constantly doesn't look "right".. Again with the amount of users Unity has I'd of thought we would be flooded in beautiful screenshot vistas like on the UE forums but alas it's a nay.!

    https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?102319-Striving-for-Photorealism-in-UE4/page5

    Although Criticism is part of the territory when it comes to stuff like this, we don't learn if we in our own little bubble believe whatever we make is magic (or actually any good).. I shall leave it at that.!

    P.S All games look fake.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: May 30, 2017
  13. Martin_H

    Martin_H

    Joined:
    Jul 11, 2015
    Posts:
    4,436
    I still don't know what it's good for though.

    Would be cool to know how exactly that photo was processed because it seems to have almost the same washed out bright spots that we complained about in the sponza scene from the Unity blog.

    I like that second one a lot because it captures the non-gamey varied and natural look of large scale environments very well imho. I find it quite hard to achieve that level of consistency.


    Showerthoughts: when adjusting the albedo brightness of all materials in a scene and compensating for the changes with camera exposure to maintain consistent luminance, would that result in changes in the bounce-light situation?
     
    frosted and Deleted User like this.
  14. Deleted User

    Deleted User

    Guest

    @Martin_H

    It should do, especially in radiosity as it uses diffuse values for bounce lighting..
     
    Martin_H likes this.
  15. OCASM

    OCASM

    Joined:
    Jan 12, 2011
    Posts:
    328
    It't not my video so criticism of it doesn't affect me. It's from an Unity employee and it is an early technical test for the Blacksmith demo.

    In terms of artistry, yes, you're examples are better. In terms of realism, no, this piece of programmer art looks more realistic.

    Without a very specific measureable criteria your judgements of what's good or not are pretty much useless.
     
  16. Deleted User

    Deleted User

    Guest

    You showed a photo compared it to the video you posted, so you made judgements / comparisons already.. The first megascans photo (with the plant) covers most variables.. Sub surface on the plants, photoscanned materials (about as accurate as you can get). Lighting and composition looks physically accurate (so does the post), reflections seem correct and so do the shadow penumbra's.. The only thing giving it away is the floor texture tiling which looks blurry and flat..!

    How anyone could believe that canyon looks anything like realistic is far beyond me.. Unless you lived on mars the colour composition for natural light balance is way off, forgetting the blue skybox in the background not adding any real IBL and the exposure looks flat as a pancake (too dark / low). The GI system is obviously reflecting too much of the diffuse transfer about exascerbating the issue.

    You see on your example picture, there's variance of lighting via midtones / highlights and shadows have colour transference. Dependant on how deep a specific rock cluster is the bounce intensity varies therefore removing that overly consistant blanket lighting.. I mean I could go on forever..

    The rocks look fake, you can tell by sharp polyginal drops that they aren't real. The floor looks like Unity terrain where there is nothing more than a diffuse / normal map channel and the rocks as well look somewhat blurry.

    There is not one single thing that looks in anyway realistic about that video, it is faked from the ground up.. Anyone should be able to tell..

    But in short lets agree to disagree on that one, looking forward to more examples.
     
  17. OCASM

    OCASM

    Joined:
    Jan 12, 2011
    Posts:
    328
    Your plants look like plastic.
     
  18. Deleted User

    Deleted User

    Guest

    No YOUR plants look like plastic, HAHA! At this point it's just getting silly.! Lets spend more time looking at how we can get the best out of Unity shall we?

    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    I was messing around with Uber, the little things stack up and I really like his implementation of POM which was cool and Playway looks fantastic.. Before I pressed the buy button (luckily) I noticed what could be essentially a rather large deal breaker.

    I originally thought it was V-Sync causing issues with stuttering, but I switched it off and noticed GFX.WaitForPresent kept popping up with a 100ms spike.. So I did some digging: https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/gfx-waitforpresent.211166/

    Seems there's quite few people having the same issue, so I created an empty scene with no lighting and the same issues occured. I also seem to remember this from Unity 4.1>!!

    Apparently it means the main thread is waiting for the last frame to render.. On a GTX 1080 in an empty scene I doubt it somehow, apparently some have fixed it by forcing openGL.. All that did for me is crash the Kernel, how many other people have noticed this issue with the rendering pipeline?
     
  19. iamthwee

    iamthwee

    Joined:
    Nov 27, 2015
    Posts:
    2,149
    Could it be... the most beautiful girl in the world... No what I meant could it be ... that unreal engine just attracts better artists.

    Or that the post effect stack on top of the materials just make enlighten look sub par compared to unreal?

    At the moment there's a lot of evidence stacked against enlighten and pro unreal engine. Evermotion that do archViz mainly say they use unreal. . . Well actually, I've yet to see an enlighten example.

    I've seen a few decent enlighten light mapped scenes, but there is bias in the texturing models and post effects.

    I'd like to see a few simple tests, like just plain old box scenes with a few primitive objects and observe the lightmapping qualities, much like the first few posts of 'let's make lightmass EPIC' which I'm sure you must have perused.

    I might setup a few scenes if I get some time and bake with enlighten.
     
    Last edited: May 30, 2017
    Deleted User likes this.
  20. iamthwee

    iamthwee

    Joined:
    Nov 27, 2015
    Posts:
    2,149
    @ShadowK any chance of releasing your corridor scene untextured for testing, out of curiousity I'd like to crank up the settings and test under englighten?
     
    frosted likes this.
  21. DominoM

    DominoM

    Joined:
    Nov 24, 2016
    Posts:
    460
    Just a random thought, does local real world light affect our biases on what looks good/right? I'm in the UK and our "soft" lighting inspired a lot of watercolour artists. In the Unreal pictures the lighting tends to look "hard" to me, more like I've seen in the USA. I see a similar trend comparing UK/USA photos. Maybe Unity's rendering reflects a stronger European influence in it's development than Unreal's?
     
    Martin_H likes this.
  22. Deleted User

    Deleted User

    Guest

    @iamthwee

    I don't have it now, but I can easily re-create it.. Give me a while and I'll send it, maybe UE does attract better artists in general but I seriously doubt there aren't at least a few graphics / artist guru's hanging around somewhere. In all fairness most of the stuff I've seen come out of SEGI is as impressive as anything else I've seen. Not sure how it looks realtime, but from screenies it looks great..

    I think we do need to be brutally honest though, because I'd like to get to the bottom of it.. If it's just a case of lighting then something can be done about it.

    I'm building this project side by side just in case something catches me out and becomes a deal breaker, the amount of actual issues it could be when you really get to know it is frankly massive.

    @DominoM

    I'm from Europe, so most likely not :)..!
     
    Martin_H likes this.
  23. frosted

    frosted

    Joined:
    Jan 17, 2014
    Posts:
    4,044
    For the record, there are lots of problems with comparing screenshots and talking about lighting. I was clicking through some videos and saw a UE4 example vid with a beautiful scene, lighting looked great.



    This is a shot where he briefly showed the lighting rig... yeah.

    So ... yeah...

    Who knows what kind of setup different screenshots are using. Setting up realistic 'proper' lighting and comparing it to rigs like is just a waste of time.
     
    kB11, Peter77, neoshaman and 2 others like this.
  24. iamthwee

    iamthwee

    Joined:
    Nov 27, 2015
    Posts:
    2,149
    I'm trying to get to the bottom of it, I've put up another scene this time I cranked up the baked resolution to 100, still no final gather as I couldn't be bothered to wait for that to compute, perhaps if I have time I'll enable that option.

    I thought the GI was pretty nice, some of the subtle shadows you see in unreal with lightmass aren't there and I think some of the shadows under the box could be a lot stronger (and no not just applying screen space ambient occlusion), I'm not sure if enabling final gather will help so much, it does look better (slightly) but the time shoot up goes through the roof for baking.

    I couldn't help the cyan wall on the LHS, a true test should just be white materials all over.

    Another thing that caught my attention is the horrible artifacts in game mode. At first I thought, oh God maybe it is enlighten, but on closer inspection in scene view after zooming in a lot I realised it was the AA effect on the camera, it's not good enough, I'm not using deferred rendering either which exacerbates the antialiasing issue ... and in project quality setting I have anit- aliasing set to 8x multi sampling.

    I'm going to conduct more tests with, more holes in the walls to let more light penetrate. (You have to click to expand to see the artefact issue)

    room.jpg room2.jpg
     
    Last edited: May 30, 2017
    frosted and Deleted User like this.
  25. iamthwee

    iamthwee

    Joined:
    Nov 27, 2015
    Posts:
    2,149
    @ShadowK SEGI does look great indeed.

    This post illustrates what I find appealing in a lightmapper, of course it's SEGI but if I got that result in enlighten I'd be more than happy.

    https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/segi-fully-dynamic-global-illumination.410310/page-16#post-2891804

    However, on flip side to bake that in either unreal or unity requires a massive effort of making sure each mesh is properly uv unwrapped and optimized.

    So perhaps that is also another contributing factor why you don't see that many 'great' baked enlighten examples. If unity users are using SEGI there's not need to properly unwrap anything so they'll just be able to drop it into the scene and the GI will look great... explaining why there are a lot more 'pleasing SEGI examples' than enlighten ones?

    But then again unreal users must be properly uvunwrapping their light mapped scenes.
     
    OCASM and Deleted User like this.
  26. nipoco

    nipoco

    Joined:
    Sep 1, 2011
    Posts:
    2,008
    Yeah but SEGI has other issues that come with screen space effects. Problems with certain shaders that are not correctly displayed when SEGI is enabled. etc.
    It looks beautiful indeed. But the performance hit is also too big.

    There is a reason why Epic scrapped their voxelGI eventually :)
     
    frosted likes this.
  27. Deleted User

    Deleted User

    Guest

    It really does and UE is far more of a stickler than Unity is, if you have overlapping bounds you'll find issues with tangents (MikkT) causing incorrect shading.. But you never really know what you're getting with UE, some screenshots could be from VXGI / LPV / DFGI or one of the other half done GI solutions.. Now VXGI is the best global illumination system I've seen, for whatever odd reason it can look better than baked.

    Useless in a game.!

    That's also why I miss Beast, it never really seemed to care..

    @nipoco

    Still there is SVOTI so we know it's possible.. Then again if it was that easy we'd have 20 different versions available to us.
     
    iamthwee and Martin_H like this.
  28. neoshaman

    neoshaman

    Joined:
    Feb 11, 2011
    Posts:
    6,492
    Guys, maybe we need more stable reference.

    So far we have established a few stuff:

    - Segi looks nice in vanilla scene like sponza
    - Good artist can do a lot by cheating with a complete light rig to emulate real light

    So if someone can buy SEGI, use it on a scene to create a reference, then try to match it with other stuff like enlighten, we could compare the difference and see exactly what's missing.

    With reality we can use a mcbeth, it is a color card whose reflectance is known that allow to perfectly calibrate the data. SO having a scene rendered with a mcbeth match to a real world reference could be interesting.


     
    Last edited: May 31, 2017
    Martin_H and frosted like this.
  29. frosted

    frosted

    Joined:
    Jan 17, 2014
    Posts:
    4,044
    Even here I wonder what the light rig he's using looks like.

    That's not a single directional, for sure. The orange is from point lights offscreen?

    I really think @neoshaman is right - promotional images and stuff are just misleading. Actually looking at the same shot with and without are really needed.
     
    Last edited: May 31, 2017
    Martin_H likes this.
  30. Deleted User

    Deleted User

    Guest

    @frosted

    Hmmm, I see what you mean because a directional wouldn't have that amount of orange contrast bounce back upon itself.. You can see on the fence it's travelling in one direction then on the scaffolds at the back it's travelling in another direction.. Still looks good, shadows look really good for some reason? (Area lights?)..

    Sorry to go off topic and I know this is a Unity forum but I had to bite my lip when I came across this: https://store.speedtree.com/speedtree-for-lumberyard/

    The effects of PBR and gorgeous lighting, I'd only have the skill to get a character walking around in the next six months but I mean who cares? Just look at it :D..
     
    Billy4184 likes this.
  31. OCASM

    OCASM

    Joined:
    Jan 12, 2011
    Posts:
    328
    Just use a cornell box.

    Edit: About the viking village, the blue soft lighting is from the skylight and the orange lighting is bounced lighting from the sunlight. No direct lighting in that shot.
     
  32. Deleted User

    Deleted User

    Guest

    @iamthwee

    Before I send this off, I thought I might as well have a crack at it (as I had to make the scene again anyway).. Went about this one completely differently. For a start no ACES, I manually controlled every aspect of the neutral tonemapper.. I over-emphasised the reflection probes and placed two of them at an intensity of two at every junction where the light directly hit (so it could reflect the light to darker areas)..

    I messed around the the directional normal bias so the shadows would sit right, I only used Enlighten in this screenshot set to a texel count of 4 (realtime only). I used parallax mapping and inverse square lighting where I could, I spent quite a bit modifying the histogram of the auto exposure setup and also carefully configured the colour graders logarithimic slope parameters (colour grading made the most difference TBH)..

    Here are the results FWIW.!

    screenshot2.png
     
  33. frosted

    frosted

    Joined:
    Jan 17, 2014
    Posts:
    4,044

    Here's another shot showing what is likely the rig he's using.


    Orange light are point lights...

    Look at the untextured shot - it can't be 'bounce from sun' - it's from light sources placed off screen. For one thinig - it shines from left on left side and shines from right on right side.
     
  34. iamthwee

    iamthwee

    Joined:
    Nov 27, 2015
    Posts:
    2,149
    I just remembered why I don't do static rendering anymore. I remember a time when I used to love getting the perfect setup inside blender cycles, tweaking lights and watching it render. And the tweaking used to take ages, trialling different light sources different intensities, different positions different sample sizes.

    Baking in game engines reminds of all this but worse. I have to keep reminding myself, is it worth all that time, all that tweaking just to have a walking simulator at best?
     
    Deleted User and frosted like this.
  35. frosted

    frosted

    Joined:
    Jan 17, 2014
    Posts:
    4,044
    In general, no.

    The thing is, there's way, way more 'bang for your buck' elsewhere, so until you can max out the rest of your production then it's really not worth lavishing attention on this stuff in practice.

    For example: improving scene composition will have much, much larger payoff in general.

    But every now and then there's a shot you may want to make as close to perfect as possible. Maybe like a title graphic, or a shot you want for promotional reasons.

    In terms of general gameplay stuff, I think that it's generally better to just work from a good solid foundation and skip the immensely time consuming smaller gains beyond that.

    I also tend to think that anything that avoids glitches is more important than raising the bar overall. Glitches catch the eye - especially in motion - and can be immensely distracting.
     
    TeagansDad, iamthwee and Deleted User like this.
  36. Deleted User

    Deleted User

    Guest

    I suppose once you have a workflow that's it, you just mimic it.. So what do we recon to that final one, it's really up to @Billy4184 is it "AAA" worthy? :D

    If so, I'll do a complete breakdown of every little step.
     
  37. Billy4184

    Billy4184

    Joined:
    Jul 7, 2014
    Posts:
    6,008
    If you're happy with it then that's what's important. To me it doesn't have the lighting subtlety of something like the test scene in UE4 you posted, but it looks good and solid.

    To be honest, I don't think it's worth trying to get enlighten to look like lightmass, it's just not the same by any account. But enlighten looks fine in its own way, and it's probably best just to apply the skill you have to get the best result possible out of it, and get on with the game :)
     
    TeagansDad and iamthwee like this.
  38. Deleted User

    Deleted User

    Guest

    Well it's a test and as the OP it's more beneficial if you're happy with it :).. It'll get binned when this is finished and I'll go do whatever, personally I believe graphics aren't Unity's main issue.

    Like the bug I mentioned earlier, I'm not willing to compromise on stuff like that.. I'm seeing issues I had in 4.X, sure a lot of people would just release their game anyway. But I'd rather travel the hard road, I'd even rather spend the next 5 years building my own engine than compromise like that.. I did move on for a reason.

    Again, I got a lot more out of this thread than I was expecting as I seem to have an issue with being indecisive.. Anyway, that last screenie is probably about the best I can do in Unity without swapping out the lighting system. If it's not good enough you may be in the same position about compromising?

    No matter what happens, demo > Xmas.. It will get done..!!

    Anywho, again wasted too much time.. LOL!
     
    Last edited by a moderator: May 31, 2017
    Billy4184 likes this.
  39. Billy4184

    Billy4184

    Joined:
    Jul 7, 2014
    Posts:
    6,008
    My games will probably always have a procedural element (probably not full-blown mesh building, but at least procedural assembly of objects) which kind of rules out enlighten anyway.

    I'm probably going to either wait for some proper realtime GI, make it myself eventually or just move to lumberyard/SVOGI or something at some point (don't know if that's even a sane proposition since I haven't looked at it). I really don't want to have to bake anything at all if I can help it. If I did have to bake lighting, I probably wouldn't do it in Unity.

    Basically I'll stay with Unity if I end up with a good realtime GI, otherwise who knows.
     
    Deleted User likes this.
  40. iamthwee

    iamthwee

    Joined:
    Nov 27, 2015
    Posts:
    2,149
    I think everyone goes through that evolution... 'I wish graphics were better in unity.'

    Then you consider all other engines, like unreal and lumberyard, I downloaded both when I was on my windows box, but I always keep coming back to unity, it's the light UI, scripting quick prototypes and gameplay that trumps everything else.

    I just assumed EVERYONE went through those phases.

    Plus I couldn't live without my mac mini, as it sits so quietly in my room and doesn't take any space. :/
     
    Deleted User likes this.
  41. iamthwee

    iamthwee

    Joined:
    Nov 27, 2015
    Posts:
    2,149
    This thread also reminds, stay away from general forums as it totally saps your time, ShadowK, I think you meant three xmas's after this one ;)
     
    Deleted User likes this.
  42. Billy4184

    Billy4184

    Joined:
    Jul 7, 2014
    Posts:
    6,008
    Well, everyone goes through the same phases, it's what you do when you're in them that counts ;)
     
  43. iamthwee

    iamthwee

    Joined:
    Nov 27, 2015
    Posts:
    2,149
    Yeah I like the overall look of this, but if I was being picky, I'd say the strength of the light is too oversaturated. Also I'm not sure if it is the model but the light cascading on the wall splits right near one of the edges.

    I would have like to have seen this baked, rather than using real time GI, that way you can really crank up the settings. I assumed real time GI was only useful if you wanna rotate the direction light in game, I assume why it takes so long to cook when you take up the texel count beyond 4 is it is trying to calculate and save every possible angle the directional light might be rotated - at least that's what I understood anyway.

    Also I would have preferred a totally white untextured shot so we can really compare what the light mapper is doing, textures can mask a lot of issues. I would also be nice to see a side by side one inside unreal engine (untextured again) for comparison as it is a new scene. You really need to save and keep your work ;)

    Things that can't be kept inside a control test is the post pro effects, it's kinda like maybe that setting you put on the color grading could be improved or changed, but we'll never know, because there are so many options.

    When I get to my email I'll try with your scene, if I get some time.
     
  44. neoshaman

    neoshaman

    Joined:
    Feb 11, 2011
    Posts:
    6,492
    Cornell box was design to show case light bounces, here it seem we have a problem with light behavior hi frequency, cornell box won't show that.

    Yes and no, white albedo but keep at least normal map (maybe roughness too), comparing how they behave in different engine might be the key. These are the hi frequency, that's what I want to keep an eye on.
     
    iamthwee likes this.
  45. iamthwee

    iamthwee

    Joined:
    Nov 27, 2015
    Posts:
    2,149
    Perhaps, although the thread title is using enlighten, which is lightmapping.

    How unity renders materials is IMO another separate matter. Otherwise this thread would be entitled 'how to create AAA materials in unity' and then you get users like twik who harp on about GI and putting their money where their mouth is only to post a material study LOL.

    Even post effects should probably be taken out of the equation IMO, but then as unreal has them on by default if we're comparing one would be biased.
     
  46. OCASM

    OCASM

    Joined:
    Jan 12, 2011
    Posts:
    328
    Yeah, you're right.
    Except it will, just bounce a spotlight with a small radius off a wall. Or use a high frequency emissive texture.
     
  47. neoshaman

    neoshaman

    Joined:
    Feb 11, 2011
    Posts:
    6,492
    You are confused, material IS lighting, that's how light response, it's not separate.

    I mean hi frequency geometry as it has an impact on how light bounce and what impression it makes.

    Which lead to testing enlighten as the implicit idea. Knowing how light bounce and react is the key to get good result with enlighten and how to compensate its weakness, other tool are just there as reference to check if one property is key, or not, in the difference, which would allow to test for specific visual target. Given that bounce light is reflection, knowing if and how enlighten take material into account, and how, is key. If it doesn't and consider any surface flat homogeneous material, then it tells you why the render looks so flat to begin with. Removing the color from the equation remove distraction for the human.

    Damn I which I could start unit test on that but alas
     
    Last edited: May 31, 2017
    daxiongmao and Martin_H like this.
  48. Deleted User

    Deleted User

    Guest

    If you ask you shall recieve:

    Unity Progressive Lightmapper:

    BakedLightmap.png
    BakedNoMatLightmapper.png

    Enlighten Fully Baked (Not sure what was going on with those odd artifacts??):

    BakedEnlighten.png

    BakedNoMatEnl.png

    UE4 Lightmass (Fully Baked):

    UETextured.jpg
     
    kB11, Billy4184, iamthwee and 2 others like this.
  49. Deleted User

    Deleted User

    Guest

    UE (Fully Baked No Materials):

    UELightmap.jpg
     
  50. neoshaman

    neoshaman

    Joined:
    Feb 11, 2011
    Posts:
    6,492
    That last image isn't at the same size :(

    But immediatly, the enlighten and progressive lightmapper are actually close, enlighten has less range in the brightness and come out as lighter, maybe adjusting the curve here can help match the light mapper., but the difference is minimal with texture.

    Now the unreal one have the normal popping up so it does compose with normal, while unity are basically flat, no hi frequency lighting from normal, gave them an old console gen look. ALSO the unreal light has a cool to warm brightness that isn't present on unity's lighting, which match how we paint stuff and natural light (ie warm sun and atmosphere diffusion have this yellow/blue distribution too).

    Artifacts looks like what I got with blender when overlapping UV happen :O
     
    Martin_H and Deleted User like this.