Jove 2.0: DX11 Rendering System (Alpha Release)

@bac9-flcl
Jithers explanation is pretty much spot on. The specular texture sometimes used in a metalness workflow allows you to control the specularity between 0.02 and 0.08. In Jove this is instead hardcoded to 0.04. This was a design decision to limit the size of the GBuffer.

 

I was wondering about that!

I haven't used the metalness workflow before (used to the skyshop kinda thing), ive kept the metalness map mixes of black (for dialectric) and white(for metal), should there be other values?

 

You should rarely author textures with anything but pure black and white metallic textures. The only time you want grey scale values is when you blend two textures together, e.g "faking" that a pixel is half dirt half metal. Do not trust your intuition though, your intuition wants a smooth gradient, the falloff should be pretty harsh or the crossover between materials is gonna look funky.

 

Ahh yeah it's always been solid black or white, glad i picked up what id read properly

 

@lazygunn
Looking for something like this for your winter sunrise scene?

 

Looking to tease us with something we can't have yet?

 

Damn...

 

Love it! Been noting specific shots from Frozen for what to feed into World Machine to get the right maps going for the terrain, might have to butcher a more complex terrain shader to fit your proposed terrain shader's method but that and some trees and lovely snow and ice and we got magic, possibly. Been spending bunches of time looking up suitable shaders and wotnot to rewire hopefully to fit the update's shader authoring style

Totally forgot what a fecking pain getting lightmaps and AO maps can be when faffing about outside Unity but I finally have a set, so can get those into the apartment scene pretty soon hopefully

 

Ah yes, also might poke the fellow who got TrueSky kind of okay with this for some clouds to dapple the wintry sky

 

Clouds would be nice to have, True Sky clouds even more.. The fog looks great btw.

Now that I figured out a workflow for Jove Shading (and fixed my errors), this is getting better and better.

 

Yes quite excitied i am for volumetric stuff.
Perfect addition for my sci fi winter military base

 

will it be able to cast real time shadows with the volumetric point and spot lights?
please say yes

 

Yes, as soon as the point/spot light shadow mapping is done. For now you can only use cookies, but that works if you want to make say a spot light through a fan.

 

I'm loving this system, it looks amazing.

how do we adjust the fog?

 

How it's going with those 42 permutations you have mentioned earlier? Any estimates on when we'll be able to get our hands on the goodies?

 

If you are talking about the atmospheric scattering currently in the official version of Jove, you can control it under the "Scattering" tab of your JoveCamera. If you mean the fog in the pictures I've been posting that is the upcoming local fog, it is not in the version you currently have

It is down to 14 so it is more manageable now I am finally at the point where all the shader logic is done, past the point where unforeseen problems can rear their ugly heads. I can fairly confidently say that the patch is going to be out this week.

Here's a demonstration of the "Anisotropy" setting. It is perhaps the hardest to explain in words but thats what we have images for. The higher the anisotropy is, the scattering is "pulled towards" the light source. And in reverse, if it is low the light starts to scatter nearly equally instead.

 

I am wondering, in the current version, what if I have more than 8 local reflections in the scene camera? Is it going to render the ones on the front first, or how does it work?

 

Internally it stores them in a list, and when culling it simply stops as it reaches 8. They are culled in whatever order "Awake" are called on the scripts. This assumes 9+ probes pops into camera view at once though. A camera stores the probes that are in view, meaning that if you have 8 in view and a ninth enters the new one will be ignored. This is done both for performance and since it is less distracting if some reflections are simply missing (until that probe gets a slot), than if existing reflections just disappear (or worse, flicker in and out).

 

I see, thanks.

 

Hey Aieth, have you seen this? http://casual-effects.blogspot.com/2014/08/screen-space-ray-tracing.html#more
For when you get to ssr

 

Yes I've seen it
Thanks anyway, and keep sending me interesting links (the more obscure blogs are better, since the chance is higher I have not yet seen them)

 

lol I find the more obscure blogs on days when I'm having good luck
But have you seen epics siggraph presentation on temporal aa?
https://de45xmedrsdbp.cloudfront.net/Resources/files/TemporalAA_small-71938806.pptx
Also this might help with you virtual camera stuff later on, it's the post processing done in the next gen call of duty
http://www.iryoku.com/next-generation-post-processing-in-call-of-duty-advanced-warfare

 

This is pretty

 

I keep coming back to see what extra amazing advancements have been made! Love the new screen shots

 

Hi Aieth,

your Jove 2.0 looks great!
I really like to try it before buying it, will there be a demo version at some point?
Regards,
Chris

 

Thanks!
Yeah I've been meaning to put one together. I will create a demo as soon as I am done with the first patch, which should hopefully be this week

 

We are nearing the release of Alpha 0.2. All major features are in, what remains is a simple terrain shader and a cutout shader. I can fairly confidently say that it is going to be released this weekend. However, since the major features are done, those who want access to the current version can PM me their invoice (or if you have already done that before, just PM me) and I'll give out a download link to the near-finished patch (everything in it is polished and done).

100% In editor screenshot
​

Patch notes

• Volumetric scattering replaces the previous analytic scattering (dynamic light shafts, fog, anything relating to light scattering)
• Refactored shader code, support for custom lighting models (two examples included in the shaders folder)
• Reusing a light cookie no longer counts towards the light cookie limit (aka you can reuse cookies)
• Improved performance for reflection probes
• Translucent ambient light
• Improved performance for transparent shadows
• Transparent objects should now properly cast solid shadows when solid
• Many other minor fixes

 

Quick questions Aieth,

What are your plans for unity 5? Will this system be integrated into unity 5 or will it stay unity 4?

Also, when is that webplayer coming out? This is looking really cool but I would love to see it actually in action as screenshots probably can't do it justice.

I know someone might have mentioned this before, but please Livenda's spectra gi is looking amazing so for from the two videos, hope you guys could combine this rendering system and their gi together. Probably would make everything look even more awesome

Cheers and thanks,

 

Livenda has not released any videos of their GI (only of their SSR, area lights and After Effects skills), so I'm not sure if it's possible to ascertain yet whether that system will work together with Jove. (or whether it exists at all)

Aieth has commented before that he considers integration with Enlighten GI, so that's not off the table. Obviously, this asset is not going to stay in Unity 4 only.

If you are talking about area lights and not GI, then those are already in Jove (if you want spherical area lights), or those will be added in the coming releases (if you want rectangular lights). There is also nice upside of those area lights having far smaller performance cost by virtue of being integrated into the lighting pipeline instead of relying on completely isolated set of shaders, image effect code and helper components. Performance aside, I could not help but notice this awkward component required in area lights video in question:


(by the way, why isn't that an array? only 4 are supported at a time?)

That can work for a small archviz scene, but a workflow requiring you to set up those references for every light and every object would be very inconvenient in a real production environment. Having area lights directly integrated into the lighting pipeline makes helper components like that unnecessary.

 

This is just for the Video, the Area Light System in SpectraGI does not require any helper shaders or any other scripts on any objects. It is completely a no-brainer solution and can handle hundreds of lights. They also work with all custom (and default unity) shaders with no modification.

Cheers

 

Hopefully I can get this and Candela very soon since I will need it for a showcase in a few weeks.

 

We're yet to see a demo of the asset in that state. But sure, that sounds like a better standard.

 

jove on my list however i have been bitten before with unfinished asset and abandoned promises.
will hit the buy button as soon as it ready

 

The webplayer is coming now
I fully intend on supporting Unity 5. Whether or not I will support Enlighten depends on Unitys implementation, but so far I see no issues. Except for the GI there does not seem to be any major Unity 5 features that are interesting for Jove, so Jove is most probably going to be supported both for Unity 4 and Unity 5 for the foreseeable future.
As for SpectraGI, I cannot tell without more information.

I am following what I believe to be the actual definition of software alpha/beta, that I do not enter beta before Jove is feature complete. So if you want to wait for that you're gonna have to wait well into the next year




Here is demo of Alpha patch 0.2!
Requires DX11
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/233290703/Alpha02Demo.html
(move with WASD, hold right click to rotate)

 

The system looks very good, i would like to see some pics with more controlled glow though, is there a way to lower the overall glow in everything ?

Or is there an option that can be turned off ?

 

Great work on shared light cookie support, @Aieth!

If you are talking about bloom and not emissive objects, then yes, bloom can be disabled. It is a natural effect though, and usually should not be disabled if you are going for physically correct look.

 

You have a slider that goes from 0 to 1, where 0 is off and 1 on. So yeah, you can control just as much as you want to

 

Excellent choice of the word "natural" Can't help commenting slightly OT (and obnoxiously), sorry. It's a "natural" effect, yes - wouldn't say it's "physically correct", though. "Unless you're a sentient camera on a murder spree" to quote the now immortal words (in my mind, at least) of Anton Hand. He said that about "realism" and lens flares - but it also applies to bloom. Bit of a philosophical debate, but it's only a natural effect in a camera - and "we've" decided that "photorealistic", even in first person games, is to be taken quite literally: Realistic representation of photographed images - not of the world as we actually see it through our eyes. Which doesn't make bloom - or lens flares - undesirable (after all, Jove looks really, really good - with or without it) - it just isn't really "realistic", at least in first person games.

Slightly more on topic - yes, I really need to have a proper look at this - when I have the money (and my shiny new DX11 GPU).

 

There has been research done on what affects percieved image quality. Admittedly, the redearch has been nearly solely focused on offline renderings, but the same principles should by all means apply to real time rendering as well. We as humans experience higher percieved image quality when what we see resembles the appearance of a typical Hollywood movie.
Whether this is stupid or not is another debate for another time In a patch or two I will start working on what I dubbed virtual camera. Simply put it is the common effects such as motion and DoF, only configured in a different way. Instead of arbitrary computer related variables like for example "blur factor", you instead get "shutter speed". The bloom is already based on this, the radius of it is decided by focal length and aperture diameter.

 

Yeah, that's what I was getting at with "which doesn't make [these effects] undesirable". To be safe, I believe that was Anton Hand's point too. It may not be "realism", but we still want it - lens flares, over-emphasized highlights, bloom, uber-contrast, DoF, motion blur, HDR tonemapping with gradual exposure adjustments etc.

Liking the amount of thought that seems to have gone into this - I'm tempted to throw money at it before I can even use it.

 

To be fair, dof (without naturally noticed bokeh) , bloom, motion blur etc ARE naturally occuring effects as our eye contains a lens, and the mentioned effects occur in that lens by virtue of it being a lens. The retina obviously doesn't recreate these (Although it's signal is modulated analogous to a camera sensor/film's ISO rating) but it's only receiving information via the lens. So if 'physically correct' can be taken as 'what humans perceive' (And that indeed is a very deep philosophical and theoretical science subject) rather than raw electromagnetic information captured without any element that can cause aberrations (no lens as we identify physical lenses) or purely simulated (computer generated) then it's physically correct.

Interestingly in a philosophical sense whatever the image generated might be, it still undergoes the idiosyncracies of the human eye to be processed currently, rendering things we perceive 'non-perfect' anyway, and in a simulated environment have to occur to counteract that we are not seeing the generated world properly as we aren't actually there (Although modern VR is increasingly effective at tricking you)

 

Love the update, the scattering really doe add a lot, even to scenes where you only notice it when moving around, there's a proper sense of space and atmosphere. Cant notice it obviously in this shot but its adding a lot (And its very fast, the only thing slowing this scene down are the skinned meshes which is nothing to do with Jove)

 

To me, it's pretty simple. Recreating literal reality may be OK for some things, but for entertainment, it can be pretty boring. A heightened/stylized look can simply be more interesting to look at.

 

seriously... your frog just scare me...

 

There is no frog on that screenshot, just an empty kitchen. What are you talking about?

 

Haha why so? He's quite realistic at times maybe, Jove's shaders and integration can often place an object completely within a scene, but i suppose an anthropomorphised walking frog is quite a scary prospect in general

I mean.. there is no frog *frog bends*

 

Your scene looks good,its just crying out for some global illumination though....wink wink @Aieth

 

I've got the prebaked GI maps (wit hextra AO in the alpha channel) ready actually just need a shader to apply them. They will look fine until there is some 'proper' GI but I think Enlighten would be perfectly up to the job after tweaking it to work with Jove

The GI would without a doubt provide the 'missing link' in the scene (along with better tweaking and some AA) and is relatively easy to bake in max and probably not hard in blender either. I'd be willing to make a guide although that said, I have already written a guide on this forum some years ago, ill get a link. If any of you wish to see this approach in action and Aieth doesn't mind I can post here, and you can see dynamic GI is not necessary at all in scenes like this

 

I find it incredibly refreshing that the hardware has finally reached a level where instead of mimicking physical phenomena you can actually start to (at least a little bit) replicate it. I mean, instead of looking at what kind of effect depth of field produces and mimicking that, you read up on the actual optical phenomena and replicate the math instead. At least that makes more sense to me coming from an engineering background than just coming up with effects that kind of look like what you were attempting to model.

I'm going to add support for indirect lightmaps soon, mainly for use in archviz scenes as it is going to be hard to extend the functionality for dynamic objects. A semi dynamic system is coming later.

 

Small thing:

Going full screen in your latest demo apparently kills your rendering; screen goes black except for the particle system. Of course in the browser it looks great!

Alienware M17x R3
16 gigs mem
Nvidia 580m (DX11 of course)

Cheers!

-Steven