Feedback More Lighting & Shader tutorials / demos

Lighting is an area that used to get a lot of love, via Live sessions, talks, and demos/tutorials, and then that sort of declined, even though there have been some significant changes (e.g. Enlighten -> Progressive [GPU] Lightmapper).

Really enjoyed the Lighting tutorial from last year's Unite, and planning to check out this year's GDC one on Adaptive Probe Volumes.

Just a request to put some more resources & guidance out for lighting across various platforms (esp. mobile), including profiling tips & optimization concerns, shader/pragma gotchas, etc. Videos are welcomed, given the subject matter, but one of those "real world advice" case-study eBooks could be quite useful as well.

Note: I'm still happily rocking the Built-in RP, so no SRP complaints here. Built-in seems to afford more flexibility, even if I have to upgrade shaders to HLSL for better longevity / forward-compatibility.

Happy to make the switch once the pace of updates settles down, and the documentation/APIs have better coverage.

 

I second this, tutorial made by Pierre 's quality are one of the best. we need more video like that.

I do hope Unity can constantly provide guide/tutorials such as Lighting & rendering tutorial for HDRP in terms of quality/editing.

This video explains lighting concepts very well and also teaches users how to use the engine's tools, rather than just random video of saying, "Hey, let's create a shield effect in Unity."

I'm not saying that other tutorials are bad, but recent videos from Unity's YouTube channel certainly lack a lot of in-depth guidance and quality editing. (I really don't want to watch an interview for 50 minutes only to get some niche tips).

Unity-Japan's YouTube channel certainly has more in-depth guides on graphics/visuals compared to the English one.

 

Some suggestion for mobile(URP) :

1. An in-depth lighting tutorial about shadowmask, bake lighting and post processing feature that will greatly affect visual quality such as Color grading/LUT. I know these functions is out there for decades. But a good quality guide would always help user getting into Unity.

2.Explain/Showcase rendering path(forward+ vs deferred shading). I mean if you guys want to push the usage of forward+. Then you should showcase the benefit of using it more often.

3.Showcase how to do shader variant collection before build and warm up shader at runtime properly.


Lasty . the video quality

I mean the GDC APV talk is a great example of good presentation but lack of formal editing.
The background crowd noise is annoy as hell.

Please release tutorial in more formal way such
like Kejiro's video or tutorials like this one and this one. So users can enjoy learning Unity.

Thanks!

 

You're welcome! This thread encapsulates my main issue - there are already a lot of resources out there, but it's not always easy/straightforward to "catch 'em all". I do track those ebook releases, am subscribed to both Unity's & GDC's Youtube channels, and used to closely follow the Unity blog as well, but only had/watched about 1/3 of the links above.

I've also found great info in past versions of the Manual, and in older talks online (GDC, Unite, couple SIGGRAPH), but it's not immediately obvious when older content is outdated vs "less-fresh". I recognize that your team can't collect/maintain a database of all Unity resources, everywhere (esp the 3rd party ones).

But how about a categorized unified lookup of Unity-produced resources, across Learn, eBooks, the blog, the Youtube channel. Could have maybe 3-5 Key Resource links that you call out up-top, then the rest could just be useful internal/external search queries, like "YouTube: gdc unity lighting". The key links could focus on "evergreen" subject content, including some of those Manual or Learn topic-overviews, or they could be few enough to review annually for outdated/gotcha content.

Including some search queries prevents the need for open-ended maintenance, but also helps people find what they're looking for, since even knowing the correct terminology on a new topic can be a barrier-to-entry (even for pros!).

Lastly, I'll second @echu33 on a request for a quick rundown on the different lighting modes (when to use which, pros/cons - the Manual has good points, but one of those quick 10min videos would be :chef's kiss: ). Also +1 for discussion of shader-variants & the new material variants, as well as cross-region content. A lot of the mobile stuff has better coverage in the Asia feeds, but even when there are English subs, those aren't always surfaced by search.

Hope that helps! Feel free to reach out for clarification/follow-up