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Marmoset Skyshop - Image-Based Lighting Tools [RELEASED]

Discussion in 'Assets and Asset Store' started by monkeyscience, May 31, 2013.

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  1. monkeyscience

    monkeyscience

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    The short answer:
    Skyshop is both a set of Unity tools for turning 360 degree sky panoramas into lighting data, and a set of shaders for rendering with this lighting data.

    Image-based lighting looks great because it captures all the natural, subtle tones of ambient light straight from an image of your scene or a photograph. This is why IBL is often used to composite CG in movies to match photos from the live set, for example. You are rendering with real-world lighting data instead of hand placed lights and hand-picked light colors.
     
  2. lod3

    lod3

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    Any chance of seeing this applied in a scene? Even screenshots...


     
  3. ronan-thibaudau

    ronan-thibaudau

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    There's a web player in the OP and there are screenshots elsewhere in the thread already
     
  4. monkeyscience

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    The cubemap assets are not built from texture assets as you would normally build a cubemap in Unity. The pixel data is stored in the .cubemap asset itself. It is the only way I could get custom mipmaps going. What are you trying to do?
     
  5. lod3

    lod3

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    Those are isolated objects. Unless that's all this tool is intended for? I was hoping to see this used in a game scene.
     
  6. ronan-thibaudau

    ronan-thibaudau

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    Well gamewise it's just a shader applied to an object, so it won't do anything to a scene, just to each individual object you use the shader on, so those objects would look the exact same in any scene as long as you apply the same panorama, or am i missunderstanding the question?
     
  7. lod3

    lod3

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    Possibly.

    I photoshopped an image real quick from Borderlands to illustrate what I mean. This is currently how the shaders in this package are being demonstrated (examples):

    $XjcTPZV.jpg

    Very nice shader! But it's an isolated object. Looking to see how these shaders would work in a game scene, like this:

    $d3jx4le.jpg

    Again, these are just examples, but hopefully they get my point across.
     
  8. mk1978

    mk1978

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    I am sorry but I also have to ask a newbie question. I am using Unity Indie version for making golf course animations. I would like to improve the lighting quality of my animations but I can’t afford pro version. In my scenes I am mainly using vegetation and there are hardly any reflective items/materials. Are there any benefits that I would get when using Marmoset Skyshop for kind of “nature scenes”?
     
  9. HunterPT

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    At this moments with the tools available in skyshop they would just reflect the sky, not the objects around the scene, for more information see my previous post, or for seeing the result in a nutshell go here http://www.marmoset.co/skyshop see the first unity demo and look at how the balls are not reflecting each other.

    P.S. I'm not sure if you intend to use it in a sort of cartoony look or not, but it isn't exactly what IBL is for.
     
    Last edited: Jun 1, 2013
  10. lod3

    lod3

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    No, the images were only examples to show how one image demonstrates functionality on an isolated object, where the second image demonstrates that functionality on a game scene (of multiple objects.) I'm particularly interested in the IBL, and how this lighting would look applied to a game scene, vs. just singular objects.

    Or is this tool not designed for that? Someone mentioned using this to showcase individual props for their portfolio. Is that what this tool is intended for? If so, that's fine, just haven't gotten a clear answer on that yet :)

    Thank you.
     
  11. crawler

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    Great work! Let me ask you a few questions:

    1) Does it support point-light spot-light shadows?

    2) Is it possible to make own HDR cubemaps for lighting specular from choose position in the scene by Skyshop tool?
     
  12. HunterPT

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    Ok, was just asking since IBL might not fit the cell shaded graphics very well.
    As for the rest of your questions, at this moment you would feed your skybox (for example, you can feed it any cubemap or panorama) and the objects would reflect said skybox depending on how reflective they are, so in the scene you showed for example, the metal containers would likely show a good bit of the sky reflected in them, since metal is reflective (depending on the metal and treatment OFC), while the rubber tires would barely reflect anything if at all, since rubber is not a very reflective material.

    At this moment with the tools that come with skyshop version 1.0, showcasing objects is one of the most reasonable uses of it yes, but you can still use it in games, as long as you go ahead knowing that as of right now, with the tools what come with it, the objects would only be reflecting the sky (for a more detailed explanation you will have to read the entire topic really).
    Once again I would like to point out that this is as of version 1.0, and I would be very surprised if it didn't evolve into a kickass IBL tool package, that can be used for all sorts of games.
     
  13. monkeyscience

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    1) Yes, all of Unity's dynamic lighting and shadows and cookies/light-gels work great with Skyshop's shaders.
    2) Right now Skyshop does not have a cubemap sampler feature. There are third party solutions to this on the asset store, and it is certainly something I hope to get into Skyshop as the next, logical step.
     
  14. crawler

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    @monkeyscience, thank you very much for your reply! I wish you good luck in development.
    And what about self-shadowing? Does it work with point-lights spotlights?
     
  15. monkeyscience

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    On the topic of IBL in games, a good example case would be an expansive outdoor game like a racing game, a flight simulator, or this screenshot from Overgrowth by Wolfire:


    In an outdoor setting, the ambient light is mostly cast by a persistent sky and reflected back by the ground and vegetation. Having an accurate representation of all nearby objects in the lighting data is less important than in, say, an FPS hallway roamer. Typically, as long as the ground is reflecting something greenish-brownish onto the underside of models, the lighting looks great.

    And once you get into blending between IBL probes dynamically (something we hope to bring to Skyshop in the future), you get into the territory of Metal Gear Solid 5 and the Fox Engine (youtube tech demo):
     
    Last edited: Jun 1, 2013
  16. cl-apps

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    $slr.jpg

    Just messing around with Skyshop and seeing what it can do. Very impressed so far. Seems very capable at creating the lighting for a game. I've been playing around on iOS and everything seems to work very fast on iPhone 5. The above piccy is from a little walk around / explore the scene style game taken by MegaGrab.

    Very cool indeed

    $slr2.jpg

    $slr3.jpg
     
    Last edited: Jun 1, 2013
  17. HunterPT

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    It should also be mentioned that most objects don't reflect enough for most people to even notice the lack of other objects in the reflection, or even if you do have such objects you can not use real values for them, so they don't reflect as much, granted it won't be realistic, but it will still beat the less than bright specular highlights alternative.
     
  18. monkeyscience

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    Very nice pics! Also glad to hear the mobile shaders are working well for you.
     
  19. lod3

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    Thank you for the replies, monkeyscience and HunterPT. Sounds like this probably won't suit my needs, however, I'll keep my eyes on this thread to watch its development. Nice work, guys!
     
  20. janpec

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    @monkeyscience Overgrowth is for sure good example, pretty much with reflection of ambient light you can improve scene quallity a lot no matter if shadows are used or how good quallity of dirrectional lighting is.
     
  21. nukeD

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    Have them for later use or Photoshopping.

    Anyway here is how my LOW POLY (3K polys) ingame cars look with SkyShop and some panos from HDRlabs.com

    web player link 12Mb

     
    Last edited: Jun 3, 2013
  22. -FP

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    I have set up 2 skies with different maps, obviously, but when I change from one sky to the other, the lighting on my objects do not seem to change. What could this be due to?
     
  23. crawler

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    What about self-shadowing? Does it work with point-lights spotlights? Thanks.
     
  24. janpec

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    @nukeD awesome cars! Really fantastic job on shader use aswell as texturing!
     
  25. aiab_animech

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    Spent about 2 hours on a little car demo myself. Used a car-asset that we, at our company, has used for an ipad/iphone app so it has pretty low tesselation, but anyways:
    http://www.animechtechnologies.com/carskyshoptest/

    It uses camera motion blur and 4x AA so if you have troubles with performance or something, thats probably why. I really like Skyshop. Damn good job, author.

    /Sebastian
     
  26. ronan-thibaudau

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    For me the webplayer default to integrated intel graphics, and it's running fast with that so i doubt it would be slow for anyone, however it do is buggy for me (and the demo scenes from the OP aren't)

    Screenshot (black dots everywhere, they also move even when the camera isn't moving) :
    $CarIssue.JPG
     
  27. aiab_animech

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    Im pretty sure thats the camera motion blur, causing artifacts. Have had problems with it on intel integrated before
     
  28. ronan-thibaudau

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    It's likely, correlates with the fact the OP's link works just fine. I just wish the webplayer wouldn't default to it for me, nothing i do seems to change it :( (yes the other card is set as system defaults, and unity standalone uses the correct card, drives me nuts!)
     
  29. cl-apps

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    A bit of abstract artwork created with the help of Skyshop. Not exactly traditional IBL stuff but I thought it was worth a share...

    $spaceCity.jpg
     
  30. ronan-thibaudau

    ronan-thibaudau

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    Wait what? this is amazing!
     
  31. lod3

    lod3

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    Very nice! This is what I wanted to see :) Thank you for posting!

     
  32. monkeyscience

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    Skyshop and IBL is a great candidate for lighting your golf course scene, as a golf course is lit by an open sky, and reflected light in the scene comes primarily from the uniformly green grass below your feet. Outdoor scenes can get away with very low variance in environment lighting which is where IBL excels.

    Consider a real sky, even a mid-day clear blue sky is not uniformly blue. There are variations in brightness and tone, often the horizon is greener and lighter, and areas away from the sun are darker. The traditional approach of picking one color of blue for ambient light and a yellow direct light for the sun falls flat, especially in an open, outdoor environment with no artificial lights present.

    tl;dr: IBL was practically invented to make renders of golf courses look great :)
     
  33. monkeyscience

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    In addressing this, I'd like to link a blog we've run across at Marmoset, and reference often.

    John Hable at Filmic Games has built a little polarized filter rig to take photographs of household items and split the specular and diffuse terms so you can see exactly what part of a brick or a pair of scissors is shiny, and what part diffuse.

    And his findings? Everything is Shiny! http://filmicgames.com/archives/547
    His process, in case you are interested: http://filmicgames.com/archives/233





    Turns out most all materials have specular reflections, including tree leaves, cloth, brick, and cardboard. And more-so, these specular reflections vary much more in their gloss terms than reflection intensity, meaning most specular map detail probably belongs in the gloss map instead.

    Materials also vary greatly in their fresnel falloff term, as demonstrated by his post:
    Everything has Fresnel! http://filmicgames.com/archives/557


     
    Last edited: Jun 2, 2013
  34. cl-apps

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    Starting to get used to this IBL lark...

    $greencar.jpg

    Another one, this time with a few slight Bloom / Glow and Bleach filters on the camera...

    $greencarfront.jpg
     
    Last edited: Jun 2, 2013
  35. KRGraphics

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    I always take this approach to every design I make...and Skyshop completely caters to this...
     
  36. monkeyscience

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    Good news everyone! We have just put up an introductory Skyshop tutorial on our website.

    Introduction to Skyshop

    More to come...
     
  37. KRGraphics

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    What a good read!
     
  38. Deleted User

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    Looks good! Picked it up today and look forward to using it. Does this work best for exterior scenes, or is there a good way to set it up for an interior setting? I'm currently working on an apartment interior scene. So the "skybox" would really only be what you saw outside the windows.

    However I don't want objects reflecting the blue sky when they're sitting inside.
     
  39. monkeyscience

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    We put together a little alley scene for our blue vespa to chill in. The scene is baked with single lightmaps using a direct light and a white ambient sky for basic AO.





     
  40. lod3

    lod3

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    Nice! Thank you for posting this. Was the white ambient sky to keep the render time short? How long did it take the bake the scene?

     
  41. monkeyscience

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    It was a fairly quick bake, maybe a minute. I used the white sky to show solely the dynamic IBL doing its thing. Plus this way I can change out the skies since no ambient color is baked into the lightmaps.
     
  42. lod3

    lod3

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    Render time's not bad. Could you possibly do a render of that same scene using light from a sky that would be used in the environment (for ambient color)?

    And actually, if it's no bother, maybe a regular version using only Unity lighting, for comparison between the three of them?


     
  43. aiab_animech

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    Would it be possible for you to post the settings for all materials used in your example scenes? I think a lot of people, me included, really likes the look on some of those materials, but having tweaked a bit with the Marmoset shaders I have a hard time reaching the same kind of look. I either get a very dark look or a very emissive look when I try to mimic that vespa blue for example.

    Thank you very much.
     
  44. janpec

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    Just amazing. Muddy/brick wall looks so well defined by material, doors and pavement aswell. So simple scene yet pinched out to perfection in terms of materials.
     
  45. HunterPT

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    He is more than likely using default shaders, with the reflectance values of the equivalent real world materials, it was probably textured using quixel dDo which "automatically" puts the reflectance value on the specular map so you can download the trial and check the material values there, and OFC make your own awesome looking textures, you can even check how it would look in skyshop, since dDo render is skyshop.
     
    Last edited: Jun 3, 2013
  46. aiab_animech

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    Yes, if by default shaders you mean default marmoset shaders, yes I would definitely believe he uses them. But still, seeing the materials in Unity would a great learning experience. For example, there is a huge difference between 7.5 and 7.6 specular sharpness in Marmoset, and seeing how the author thinks when he sets up his materials would be very nice.

    I downloaded the dDo trial but I'm honestly having a hard time understanding how to use it. It installed 2 executable files, one of them launches a Unity application that is empty; just a skybox, and no GUI to import anything. The other launches a funky window that needs normals generated by another software of theirs; nDo, as far as I can tell. Some, perhaps Win8-related, bug caused that application to always jump into the background aswell, and force me to click in the taskbar to bring it up again.
     
  47. bigzer

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    Hi,

    Have you noticed the self illumination shader don't work under DX11?
    We're going to showcase our game during ChinaJoy end of next month and I hoped to demonstrate it with skyshop, do you think it will be fixed by then?
     
    Last edited: Jun 3, 2013
  48. Thomas-Pasieka

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    This sure looks like a great extension to Unity! Will we perhaps see "Toolbag" in Unity at some point?
     
  49. cl-apps

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    Does anyone know a way to make the Sky cubemap higher resolution than it is at the moment? Or is there a planned feature to make it 'crisper'?
     
  50. monkeyscience

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    The output is rendered at the resolution of the cubemap in the output slot. If you want a 512x512x6 spec cubemap, change the cubemap asset face size to 512 and recompute.

    Quick note: scaling RGBM cubemaps up or down after they've been computed introduces banding and RGBM artifacts. Always recompute. You generally don't want to blend or filter or resize RGBM data before it is decoded, interpolating between two nonsense RGBM pixels leads to more nonsense.
     
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