Light/Exposure Adjusting Automatically - SOLVED

I've searched all over, but haven't been able to figure out what's going on. Possibly because I don't have the right terminology. Depending on where the camera is focused, the light level or contrast or saturation or I don't know what else changes dramatically. I'd like that to stop.

I'm using HDRP in Unity 2019.3.9f1. I've been hesitant to update versions because so often there's a lot of recoding and retexturing when you do that.

video of the problem: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JBdrtpoTn8w5hxpOexZ2JuSScR-LLfyE/view?usp=sharing

(if there's a way to imbed videos, let me know and I'll clean this up).

 

Change exposure to fixed on your effects volume (or in HDRP Default settings)

 

It makes sense that it would be that. I don't think I've got any scene-specific post-processing, so I searched up the HDRP settings in my assets, and adjusted the default to fixed with no visible effect. In fact, I went through every post processing effect in that folder and turned them off, also without visible effect, which suggests to me I might not be hitting the ones affecting the scene. Am I in the wrong place? Is there a way I could tell for sure?

 

Make sure you have a global volume in your scene with that settings asset applied. Also, exposure is set to automatic in screenshot. (I know it's irrelevant, but if you use HDRP maybe DO update to latest editor? 8} )

 

Yeah, this is after I put the settings back, I was just checking that it's the right place. Exposure in Global Volume is definitely the right feature, props jmancoder. "Fixed" made it all white and (so far) my experiments with different values haven't changed that, but by changing the adaptation speeds on automatic, I can easily tell that this is the feature that's triggering. I'd certainly take some advice on any preset ideas, but now that I know what I'm dealing with I can also experiment.

 

Adjusting the exposure of the HDRP is very difficult
I spent a lot of time finding the right settings:
2020.2 HDRP 10.x is better than 2019 HDRP 7.x



Value limits:
Limit Min : use between -6 to 0
Limit Max: use between -2 to 1

Color Grading Effects:
Post Exposure: use between 0 to 3

Notes:
Limit Min is when you are looking the dark area
Limit Max is when you are looking the bright area

If your scene is completely white, try to disable reflection probes
Also check the sky exposure

For now try the Min -4 and the Max -2

 

Nice! Thanks. For now, I ended up switching to "Physical Camera" exposure mode, which seems to be giving me what I want, but I'll keep this in mind if I find I end up needing to adjust exposure.

 

I had a lot of headaches with the exposure in HDRP

 

Yeah, it seems like something that needs a dedicated team member (at least) to do right. If I had any kind of budget and project timeline, I'd consider just hiring you, but this is a passion project. Trying to get a customizable 3d environment for tabletop RPGs.

 

Thank you for your video. This is most complete guide to HDRP lighting
But i have a question
In the real world, we have only a simple sky light (ambient) and a simple sun light
What is the reason for all these hard settings in HDRP?
We can achieve a realistic result with a simple ambient color and sun color in the Built-in pipeline and other software

Finding a simple adjustment of exposure in HDRP causes headaches

In VRay you can easily achieve the best and most realistic result by choosing the color of the sky light and the time of day.
I advise you to focus on simplifying unity, not complicating it
Currently, users get the best result in Unreal and Cry with the default settings

The only reason users use UE4 is because of its simplicity of lighting
You must prepare the default Unity settings for novice users
But apparently the current HDRP settings are for physics and mathematics engineers

The creators of Unreal and V-Ray are among the best engineers in mathematics and physics, but their users only see one skylight and one sunlight and one time of the day settings

 

Thank you for clean reply
so i need to work a bit more on HDRP settings to find a proper way to use it

 

Thanks for this very detailed explanation
I got better results working with HDRP 10
Another problem I encountered was the value 0 in HDRI sky exposure, which causes the sky to disappear when activated. The default value must be 1

I also have another question, why does Bloom not behave properly in HDRP? Like all other Bloom effects in Built-In or other engines

 

Another question. My other problem was using :

Code (CSharp):

1.             GetComponent<Light>().intensity = intensity;

o control to change light intensity in my Day Night cycle script.
But now I realize that is wrong and I have to use this:

Code (CSharp):

1.             GetComponent<HDAdditionalLightData>().intensity = intensity;
2.  

What is the difference between the two?
I know the second one is correct. But what happens when using the first code?

 

I understood 90% of the work and now I can adjust the exposure of the scene based on the physical settings in HDRP without any problems. Thank you

I will post tutorials soon to better teach new users

About Bloom:
Bloom just make the scene blurry when increasing intensity. Also does not works on emissive materials
Watch this video:

 

Your continued input on this and work on this @pierred_unity honestly amazes me. firstly well done.

Secondly, i can't help but feel that a lot of users that have never dealt with physical properties; cameras, lighting etc tend to not correlate between unity lighting steps and what you mentioned here.

indirect lighting process/baking vs Realtime especially, seem to confuse many, even with somewhat ignoring important words almost Post-process and the difference between a directional light and an HDRI and what each effects, mostly because they're eye balling several different processses over direct/indirect and pp, hence your mention of doing more than you need to.

Coming from a film and lighting background, i've personally found it difficult to not use a physcially based process, prior Pipelines and RPs of unity would go way over my head when translating my base lighting knowlegde, so there may be this discrepency with previous version users as well but in an opposite manner.

Your words here and the unity video are just so useful for people and have immense learning value i still feel there is a moment waiting to happen for them to litterally ping a light bulb above their head.

That being said, i feel like a small but full A-Z lighting proceess video would help people move in a more production thought process when it comes to lighting in HDRP ( or anything that uses physically based properties), the new demo scene would be perfect for this, as it's center focuses most certainly include the volume framework exposure for indoor/out

-- the whys--
lighting PBS HDRI
Exposure
Direct / Indirect
RT vs Baked ( probes)
post process and when
-- and the the creative options, like you dont have to follow these as rules, BUT be aware of them--

I feel like that Would full circle reinforce your words here and the high fidelity lighting video that covers just so much as well, would aid to cover where shadows and the rest of the detailed expsoure explination would go.

It would probably brings many things upto date as far as an intuitave single place to get a high fidelity breakdown for what will be a very similar process for some time in unity editor flow too.

i know it sounds silly to A-Z it since it's not always the case, but it's the only thing i can personally see when people aren't graspong the process as easily.
i feel i can almost here your worlds saying " why are people not grasping this yet ?!"

I do hope that helps some.
all the best and keep up the fantastic efforts.

 

I realized
HDRP is completely physical and no personal settings can be used
In Built in everything worked in the range of 0-1
And in HDRP, each part has its own settings based on physical range

 

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Hey @UnityLighting
sorry to continue to jump in here but
one super important thing mentioned above

ignoring the bloom post process for a second, your emission is set to ~6nits
this is 6 LUX m2

in the scene that you have, you're very unlikely to see emissions in that kind of out door light.
a modern phone outside in daylight probably around 700 nits at it's absolute best so firstly set your emissions occordinaly to what the object is too.
You're in the shade so that should also apply that the 700nits would take some effect if you were for example making a phone screen glow.

onto bloom post process
the value have always reactive that way

Threshold being tied to the law of conservation of energy which is a physics and chemestry law. ( mentioned in tooltip)
this filters pixels under darker than it's bright point
Itensity, this is essentially a full screen blur.
imagine you breathing on a camera lens and then taking a photo, similar effect.

this has a physical baseline to create and simulate an effect found in lens', but it is also still a post effect, a creative touch if you like.

Hope that helps some.

EDIT: i realised you both wrote back before i even finished.

 

@pierred_unity
I really enjoy reading your posts. Please keep going teaching us I wonder your next video

 

I never really accomplished satisfying day/night cycles in combination with the PBSky, regardless how I mix and match different volumes and exposures. It leads back to an exposue/luminosity issue in the PBS implementation itself, which becomes obviously visible at dawn/dusk when the sun is a few degrees below the horizon.
An example for the said issue can be found here; https://forum.unity.com/threads/physically-based-sky-issues.1048391/#post-6782045

Is there any attempt to fix it in the near future?
Otherwise it's impossible to implement a proper time of day system, unless you roll out your own sky renderer or use a third party one.

 

@SebLazyWizard i've seen your input elsewhere in pbs, really impressive inputs.

At this current time trying to simulate dusk/dawn blue hour, has been are hardest challenge too.
more often than not if you're taking stills of this you'll be doing long exposures for the most part ( especially at blue hour).

This is probably the main area that i may use exposure compensation to fine tune or limit the directional, just like when taking photos of scenes like this, i would be using expsoure compensation and exposure bracketing, to keep control of this.

now this is obviously not a still so i've let a few things be flexible there as you could compare video/timelapse/photo all day in this and get a vastly different experience from them all.

im guessing from your other post that your screen shot was roughly -12 <> -4 for the sun horizon position?

 

It's fine to about -6 degrees, after that the bright "blob" around the sun starts to appear and finally disappears at about -14. This all depends on the camera elevation too ofc.

 

Yeah that is certainly as Pierred had mentioned.
Nautical twilight period.
If I remember, when PBS first came out it treated < 0° axis a lot differently, I'm guessing this was with the idea that a night sky would replace a day sky differently, maybe hemispherical rather than 360 for whatever technical limit might have been in place there.

I'd certainly feather just beyond your sun rise/set volumes a little more than physically at this point just to compensate.

Again back to photography, it's super common to use longer exposure times here anyway, to be more creative and impactful on what essentially is just too much dynamic range for a camera.

Blob orange it is! Heh.

 

Could you please share the settings for this scene, would love to create something like this, when I try this I'm not really sure about how low the light intensity and what the exposure of the sky emission should be?

 

I recorded a short video about how to quickly set up exposure settings for HDRP scenes.
This video is the result of the above discussion, which helps you adjust the exposure settings in HDRP without any hassle:

The used asset free
Amazing free hdri sky box

The logic:
You must add 4 components to the volume and balance them for every scene :
- Visual Environment
- HDRI Sky
- Indirect Lighting Controller
- Exposure

In the future i will upload another video to show you how to use other components in HDRP (volumetric Fog, Color grading settings)

 

Isn't that HDRI exposure and indirect diffuse light multiplier a bit high?

 

The settings on the above image is during tutorial
The correct values are:
Sky exposure: 10~14
Indirect 1~5

 

This fixed my problem thanks!