Lightmapping Extended - advanced lightmapping settings editor

hi there! well first off all your beast-extension is awesome!.. i did not have the time to test it fully, but it feals now more like vray or a real renderer and not just 10 options and thats it

i also found some nice hdri panoramas , mostly austrian outdoor on openfootage.net

im doing usually vray rendering stuff in 3dsmax and i hope i can tweak more with your extension

seeya, daniel

 

Yep, it should work the same in 3.5 and 4.0.

 

Are there any more options for Beast? And how does this work with reflections?

 

Beast does have a few minor options that I didn't include because they have no apparent effect in Unity. These are still included in the code, I've just commented them out until they become available:

• Tile Scheme - Different ways for Beast to distribute tiles over the image plane.
• Tile Size - A smaller tile gives better ray tracing coherence.
• Background Color - The color of the lightmap image background, used to hide seams by more closely matching the light color.
• Edge Dilation - Expands the lightmap with the number of pixels specified to avoid black borders.
• Premultiply - If this box is checked the alpha channel value is pre multiplied into the color channel of the pixel.
• Premultiply Threshold - This is the alpha threshold for pixels to be considered opaque enough to be 'un multiplied' when using premultiply alpha.

When Unity converts its materials to a Beast-compatible format, it seems to use the specular intensity of the material as the amount of light reflected from the surface.

 

I've added support for configuration presets. Grab the latest code here:

https://github.com/mstevenson/Lightmapping-Extended

The presets UI at the top of the LM Extended editor window will allow you to create, delete, and overwrite preset config files.

Preset files are stored in Lightmapping Extended/Presets any may be checked into source control. Presets are available per-project rather than per-scene, making them easier to re-use throughout large projects. You may also organize presets into folders for easier navigation in the Presets selection menu.

 

Swweet... now the only thing really missing is Bake Selected and Bake Probes... is that already in code?

 

As of Unity 4, there also appears to be a 64bit executable for Beast on Windows.

 

I just finished reverse engineering Unity's bake selection dropdown button and have pushed it to the repository.

 

yay!

 

And with that, I think it's feature complete!

I'll hold off a bit for additional testing and feature requests to make sure there's nothing major I've missed, then I'll submit a v1.0 to the Asset Store.

You can download a zip file of the release candidate here:
https://github.com/mstevenson/Lightmapping-Extended/tags

 

I think this is pretty much the complete Beast setup... and I will test the hell out of this...

 

As the finishing touch, I've added undo functionality. You can grab v1.0 RC3 here:
https://github.com/mstevenson/Lightmapping-Extended/tags

I'm in the process of submitting to the Asset Store now and will update the thread once it becomes available for download.

 

This is brilliant mstevenson! I was waiting for UT to expose some more features/options for way too long! Great to see you exposing these features. Had a little playtime with it. Created this scene today and saw this thread (which I haven't noticed before!) so I had to test it out right away. Thanks again! Loving it so far!

Thomas P.

PS: This was just a test render using the standard settings in High Quality (there are a few issues I know...)

 

This is very impressive... how long were the render times?

 

Sweet deal man... this is getting better and better... You, sir, are the Beast Master...

 

Looking very nice, even with default settings!

As I was building this tool, I saw quite a few references in Autodesk's documentation to the suppression of white haloes. I assume this is referring to the bright seams shown in your image at geometry intersections. I'm very curious to know if anyone can figure out how to effectively solve this problem with the available settings.

 

Can anyone guide me How can i achieve best results using this tool..

 

In the past I added some "padding" when I saw haloes or white edges at such intersections and that worked pretty good in most cases. However, am I missing something? I don't see a padding option anywhere in the settings.
I used 2000 rays with an Intensity of 1.25 and 4 Bounces and a bit of AO as well. No secondary Integrator used here just Primary "Final Gather" method.

In the video you can clearly see the white fringe/edge/splotch/halo/whatever

Video: CLICK TO PLAY


Mind you, the video has compression artifacts.

 

Here is a new rendering with higher settings. A tad brighter now as it needed a bit more bounce light.

 

The reason for spotty renders is because your ray count is too low

 

This is beautiful man... in my project, it is my mission to show that Unity can do the impressive graphics too... as for the white halo, I usually use blockers under the objects... such as in my Salem level, the light leaks thru, so I use blocker objects

 

Thanks for this, looks like I have something else to play around with

Anyone have any presets they don't mind sharing?

 

I can try and make a few but they are specific to my in game levels

 

"Padding" seems to be handled outside of the lightmapper, possibly as a pre-processing step before Unity submits the bake to Beast. This setting can still be changed in Unity's built-in lightmapping window even when an XML config file is present.

I found a suggestion in the Beast docs for reducing halos - it says to lower the "gradient threshold":

 

Hmm I tried everything but just can't get rid of those artifacts (light leaks) at the intersections. I gave it padding, fiddled with second uv set settings, changed rays and resolution to higher numbers. Gradient Treshold is set to 0. Artifacts are still pretty visible. Will have to do some more research on this problem.

 

Isn't the "padding" option is in the Bake tab on the old lightmapping Window, just below the "resolution" option.
But speaking about light leaks, there is an option to reduce the lightleaking in the Path Tracer integrator isn't?

 

Yes it is and I am using it (the padding). Gradient Treshold is also set to 0 as stated before. Light leaks are still present however and I am not really sure to get avoid them at this point. Only thing I can do is to get rid of them manually in Photoshop (not really the best solution now is it).

 

In Unity's own doc, did you check :

"Check Visibility and Light Leakage reduction are expensive operations and should only be used to remedy actual light leakage problems. These settings will only help if the light leakage is caused by the Global Illumination calculations. A very common light leakage situation occurs with a wall as a single plane with no thickness. The light leaking through in that situation does not come from GI."

So, maybe give your walls a thickness? There is also another solution which I saw a lot back in the early days of GI in CG - which is to put a "cage" around your mesh so rays will be forced to bounce back. This is due to the low photon accuracy (or lack of photons) in the early GI engines.

 

Lightmapping Extended is now available on the Asset Store.

 

Thanks! looks great. Cant wait to give it a go.>

 

Awesome sauce!!!!
Going to give it a go very soon.

 

I can't test this right now but does this support normal maps influencing the lightmap bake? I'm not talking about directional lightmaps but having the normal of an object affecting the lightmap shadows.

 

I didn't see any reference to this in the Beast docs, so unless this behavior is already supported by Unity's lightmapping then I doubt it is supported.

 

Thanks ever so much for this mstevenson!

I am trying to get coloured shadows working in the standard Cornell box, but think I must be doing something wrong

I duplicated the Cornell White Material and renamed it - changed the colour to green and set the shader to Trasparent/Transmissive/Diffuse. Then for the Transmissive colour and for the Base there are only Texture slots, no colour selections? - so not sure what I am meant to do here to get green shadows.

Anyway after applying to object 5, the small cube in the front, it appears transparent green, but the shadows are still the same.

Could you possibly shed some light on what I am doing wrong?

Sorry if this is a noob question.

Nalin

 

Just out of curiousity, where do you get those BEAST docs? I wouldn't mind take a peek myself.....

 

Unity 4 supports this, so it shouldn't be a problem.

 

sorry if out of the topic, but can any one help me know how can I use HDR for reflection?
I want to make a reflective material for an object and want to use HDR as a reflection.
thanks in advance
rahuxx

 

Find 6 sided HDR (lat-long format) like some listed in this thread
eg.
http://dativ.at/lightprobes/
https://www.moofe.com/#/free

Then chop it up in Photoshop into individual images then follow :

http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/Components/class-Cubemap.html

 

Yup, you will need 6 separate images for the cubemap...and to use the IBL in Beast, the HDR must be like this:

This is lat-long.

 

Ops, did I say LatLong? I meant Vertical Cross/Cubic (the one on the far right).



Like these ones:


Once you chop up the HDR into 6 seperate images (front, back, left, right, top, bottom) you can just load them into the Cubemap Texture.


http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/Components/class-Cubemap.html

 

I just came across a thread that someone found a solution to this light leak problem as well :

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/13...sing-single-sided-planes-for-geometry-any-fix

So basically, its like I thought, Beast is still fairly inaccurate. I think Beast don't like single sided geometry, so you either create a cage to collect the remaining photons and force it to bounce back, or using yahodahan's method - setting back-sides lightmap scale to 0 so it blocks light and don't receive any - essentially it collects all errand photons like a blackhole.

 

The transmissive property can only be defined using a texture, so to create a solid green transmission you would need to provide a solid green texture. You can think of it like a transparency map where each of the three color channels defines a separate transparency value for each color of light.

 

They're very difficult to come by, but I uploaded the two I was able to find:
https://github.com/mstevenson/Lightmapping-Extended/tree/master/Documentation

 

Excellent! Thanks Michael!

 

Many thanks for this.

I will have a play and see if I can get coloured shadows up and running

N

 

hii,

i am evaluating , i copied the lightmap extended folder, added 4 cubes in my scene, marked them static and baked...but they are not taking effect

see the image, what can be the reason ?? i am there is no result at all

 

What kind of materials are you using...?

 

It doesn't look like you have any lights in your scene...

 

ersaurabh101 - it looks like you are trying to use emissive material. Did you make sure to use the proper shader for that?