Mixed Mode Fixes and Lighting window preview 1 - Try it!

Have you even checked experimental build? That's what shadowmask mode does, and honestly casting static shadow onto moveable objects always worked in mixed mode lights (reverse order was causing issues till the experimental build - when a shadow from a dynamic object is should be cast on a static object for a baked light source).

 

Yep, I've been playing with this all day long. Still, I can't make Shadowmask mode to cast baked shadows on dynamic objects. I just can't. Another bug perhaps?

 

For what it's worth, I can't either.

 

Worked for me. See my previous post with attachment.

 

Yep, it's a bug alright. Your sample is not working for me, too.

 

You haven't answered my previous question as to when the incremental path tracer will be available for testing. In any case, is this incremental path tracer an in-house production or a middle-ware solution much like Enlighten?

 

Some info here : https://www.google.gr/url?sa=t&rct=...qMIhjyifDXnBdATXg&sig2=YhlUd_iEQ-o9AIKPFKvpZA

(no release date or anything though)

Also afaik, it's their own custom solution that was built upon imgtec's pathtracing tech.

I am intrigued by the prospects of being able to accelerate baking with imgtec hardware, assuming it's affordable, but there's next to no info on this (apart from that it's possible)

 

if you read all my post above, i can't either.

 

Okay, done. Here are the case number and a spare screenshot.

823035

 

@Joachim_Ante just curious is this an expected behaviour for dynamic object (Ethan and Sphere) to not receive any shadow for ShadowMask Mode?

 

Awesome! Thanks for the update on that Jesper. Very much looking forward to getting my hands on the progressive lightmapper!. Glad to hear that it's an in house production!

Thomas

 

Despite the fact that dev's already told us that this IS a bug. And "LightProbes with shadowmask" are not the same thing. Shadowmask mode should cast baked shadows on dynamic objects as if it's a realtime shadow and LightProbes must gather the indirect lighting. This is the point of this mode while the substractive mode explicintly removes overshadowing and shadowing of dynamic objects. This is the mode where you must place lightprobes for directional light.

 

The description for Shadowmask mode says that shadows from static objects to dynamic objects is 'approximate' and is received from light probes. I don't think it's a bug and there seems to be a misunderstanding between the developers involved. I've tried this myself and it seems to work as advertised so long as you set up your light probes correctly:


The characters that are completely covered by light or shadow look correct, but the one caught in the middle looks wrong. This is because the values are being approximated, and it's the best result you can get for the best performance.

That being said, it would be nice if there was an option to enable real-time shadows from static objects to dynamic objects in Shadowmask mode, at least from the directional light. It'll be very inefficient and technically you're better off using Distance Shadowsmask mode, but sometimes baked shadows can look better and have less issues than real-time shadows, especially with interiors.

 

By the way, LODs seem to be excluded from light maps which creates inconsistent visuals:

EDIT: Actually, they seem to be included, they're just not receiving indirect light. Light probes aren't helping.

 

Yep lightmaps only get baked for LOD0 because some genius decided that LOD>0 can be lit with lightprobes, I'm not making this up! Except for the genius part.

Workaround Hack: setup lightprobes and add to your LOD>0 a component called "light probe proxy array" (or any combination of these words, genius in naming, also)

 

We will often light the same level in discrete scenarios. Eg attached picture shows 'evening', 'day' and 'night'.

Would be awesome if discrete scenarios were supported in the new lighting window

 

I'd like the switch at runtime, and the ability to bake light maps for each preset in the editor. My use case doesn't require interpolation.

A slight complication is that we turn lights (and gameobjects) off/on in different presets, not sure how best to accomplish that.

Thanks

 

I hope all this is going to be thoroughly documented with a "use cases" section. Use cases would be a valuable addition to the manual. So you'd use it like this, or use it like that, don't just throw us all into walls of text.

 

I think unity (and you) need to stop using the words "receiving shadows from probes" as it's not correct. It's just dumbing down what you are saying for a primitive audience. What you should be saying is that "using lightprobes will compensate visually for missing shadows" cos probes really don't apply shadows in any sense - they're just spherical harmonic based shading.

The way I read it from unity is "we've added some faux shadow pass to lightprobes" and that's wrong.

Unless I'm sorely mistaken of course! But these things need to be very de-mystified. We're not afraid of accurate explanation.

Great vid though, very helpful!

 

In my understanding, each light probe stores occlusion data for a light (basically one shadow value).
This value is used to occlude that light, like shadowmaps.
So it is indeed "real" shadow, just not as high freqency as shadowmaps.

 

It is not a "real" shadow, just an approximation.

After reading uy3d's explantion, I initially wanted to write "this is not what I'd like to see", but after thinking about it, I decided it is usable.

Primary use of mixed model light I see is statically lit corridor with dynamic characters in it, or something similar. Meaning you have overhead light, and often nothing static between the light and character. So, as long as two dynamic characters lit by that light can cast shadows onto environment AND onto each other, it is good enough - in areas where there are additional shadows, it'll be possible to just stick a dynamic light....

However I'm not quite sure if it'll work well in outdoor environment.

Either way, even though it would be nice to have better alternative (static shadows onto dynamic objects, with baked light), what is available in experimental build is improvement compared to what is available in non-experimental unity.

 

Seconded. I'm absolutely dying to get my hands on the new light mapper - I've got 30 levels made now, and the prospect of spending several days lighting each one is... not pleasant. I'm overall super-duper happy with the lighting changes from this thread, and the sooner this is available in a non-beta build so I can ship it with my current and future games, the better!

 

Yep, the new lighting system is really cool. I really like that you don't need to use enlighten for the realtime GI anymore in several cases. It boosts the performance a lot (got like 10-30 FPS boost in some places in my project, currently got around 90-100 FPS in my project in most places). And the fact that a new lightmapper is on it's way makes us all really happy.

 

@willgoldstone , is there any chance that I could use this experimental build to compile a standalone windows executable?

Currently, it says that there's no standalone module ("No PC, Mac & Linux Standalone module loaded"), and if I click on the download button, I get redirected to this page, which contains a "Not found" message.

 

Just dropping by to know if this also mean we will finally get some shadows on transparent objects ?

 

Probably not. I tried to get something like this working in the past, as far as I can tell, transparent objects with shadows would need additional queue or something like that.

 

well i guess i stay with Distance Shadow then, really hope that we have static/baked shadow casting though.
Just curious what is the limit of lightprobe in the scene that we can use?

 

Will there be any projected shadow system implemented ever? After all, it would be nice if Unity could achieve graphics circa 2004 (Half-life 2)... All these mixed settings seem useless to me and not great for performance.

 

Projected shadows haven't been used in a decade? Last time I used them was on the PS2. I've no idea why you'd want to, shadow maps are a lot nicer.

 

@uy3d just curious, how about for shadowmask mode Dynamic object still receiving realtime shadow?
I like the baked shadow quality for static object, just. . . one nitpick about the dynamic object shadow receive

 

Thanks for the explanation guys. In future don't be afraid to tell us what is happening! when you make changes to things and don't tell us, hippos get things wrong and that, basically means the end of the whole world and so forth

 

Eagerly waiting for this since we internally use our inhouse level editor on top of standalone nightly builds. That way, level designers and visual artists can participate without getting their minds boggled with the overwhelmingly large main project.

With new lighting modes, things started to look just like what we expected to see. Visuals are improving day by day. Thanks for your hard work.

 

That would be great

 

@uy3d That sounds great! Can you estimate in any way when this new update will be made available?

 

Ha cool, good to know (any additional information about the Scriptable Rendering Pipeline ? Like an ETA ? )

 

I think the download links are broken. Would it be possible to get new links for this build on Windows?