[Official] 5.0 - Feedback request for Reflection Probes

That is correct. I usually add two more exposures for artistic taste, specifically to get the brightest spots in the scene. When you do a baked reflection probe, you cannot edit them directly unless you do a custom bake. Coming from Skyshop, those exposure settings are helpful sometimes. You would have to have a well lit scene and great texture work to take advantage it. And the visual difference is very obvious if you use HDR externally vs. captured in engine. Most likely, the only external HDR people will use is a sky HDR...

Having exposures on imported HDRs will be good, especially if they are initially dark. I will have to do some tests.

 

I second the float field. Way more control... and the reason for wanting exposure is for artistic taste, such as for having brighter hotspots.

 

would be nice to have an exposure setting on images as well as on probes. this would allow brightening certain areas where i want more bright reflections than would be natural. also i know its not directly related but it would be nice to have an invert green channel on normal maps. would really help when importing textures from different programs. even if this isn't the place to ask this it would be awesome if you could pass the request on to whoever has that job =3.

 

Go with float value....no limitation please

 

hi there,
working on a completely lightmapped environment for mobile i stepped across the low quality of the built in reflection probes again. so a gave lux a quick try to see if it would give me better results (far longer baking times but i just have to do it once ;-)).
this is how it looks like:

unity built in reflection probe:


lux baked and convolved reflection probe attached to unity’s probe component:



so there is definitely some space to improve the quality of the built in probes – at least as an option for baked ones...

lars

 

Reflection probes are only giving me a glitched results. I posted a separate topic for this but maybe I should have put it here? http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/flickering-and-buggy-reflections.290487

It has a video of the issue I have.

 

Who are you?
Keith Boshoff, Developer at RetroEpic Software.

What kind of game are you trying to build or would like to build?
Not at liberty to say

How does Reflection Probes fit into that? What use-cases do you have?
Mostly for IBL, some reflections. The world can change dramatically at the user's request, so the probes change to reflect that (no pun intended), which was pretty easy to set up.

What are the GOOD things about Reflection Probes that you like?
Easy to use and little implementation overhead.

What are the BAD things about Reflection Probes that you dislike?
The shape is always a cube, custom shapes would be nice.

How can we make it BETTER?
This is the main reason for this post, Planar reflection probes would be great for reflective floors, walls, etc. I doubt that it will be something that could actually make it into the standard flow, but as it stands adding a planar reflections to Standard Shader is a bit f a pain.

Do you like the Reflection Probes workflow?
Yes, but a build in uniform grid would be nice too, maybe use occlusion culling to kill unused probes.

How do you spend most of your time working with our Reflection Probes features? Anything bogging you down?
I spend very little time on them, it's very simple.

When you learned to use our Reflection Probes, what stumped you or had a steep learning curve?
Nope.

Long story short, an easy, integrated method of adding planar reflections would be lovely

 

You can refresh probes ingame via script.

 

Like so?:

public GameObject reflProbe;

void poop () {

reflProbe.GetComponent<ReflectionProbe>().RenderProbe ();

}

How exactly does this work?

 

Well... it would be better to actually store

public ReflectionProbe reflProbe;

And save yourself an unnecessary GetComponent.

 

The problem isn't efficiency. I can't get it to work at all.

 

can anyone get decent reflections to work at all? I can't get correct reflection for an empty room? the reflections are only correct when your camera is at the same spot as the reflection probe, the reflections will be incorrect if the camera is in anywhere else...

 

You might need to use "box projection" and remember, probes are here for an approximate result: your job is to use them properly so you can fool the player into seeing real reflection without the render cost.

 

I did use box projection and it seems that it doesn't make a difference for baked probes [it seems like all the baked probes are box projected already], and I want to do some test scenes and figure out how they work, but i can't get anything to work correctly at all...

 

I suggest you open a topic for that with screenshots showing your issues.

 

Well, that's how reflection probes work. That's why they're not really suited for precision. You want SSRR for that.

 

I mean who doesn't want SSRR, but the reflection probes should be good for something...

 

I think they work great for anything that you don't pay close attention to. If you have a flat, mirror-like surface then yeah, you'll notice that reflection isn't right. If you have an old rusty dumspter, a manhole cover, or a steel sword with plate armor, than you'll most definitely won't notice any issues.

 

There are 4 things I would like to see happen with the reflection probes which I deem very important for performance.

First, the 'resolution' you can set it to doesn't affect the performance at all. It seems like its rendered in the full resolution but then scaled down. So what would really improve performance would be to render the probe in the actual resolution that is set.

Second, I would like to see the option to render objects starting at a certain LOD. Rendering trees on my scene takes ages at LOD0, so starting at LOD1 or 2 would greatly improve performance.

Third, due to having to have low render ranges like say cull 30 to achieve playable realtime performance, everything beyond 30 is the sky color and inside buildings this sucks having everything color properly in front but then in the back be blue... A way to combat this would be to have the last couple meters like say the 28-30 be stretched out into the distance of setting x. This setting could be called stretch to background distance or something and it would be located after the far culling. This would rock, one would have somewhat accurate scene coloring in the distance even with the cull distance being only 15-20.

And fourth, a slicing mode that that renders the 'back and sides' first and then the 'top and bottom' in the next frame(s) and then the 'front'. This way the most important sides which are the back and sides , which have the most movement in them are basically rendered like 'No Timeslicing' and the top and bottom like 'All Faces at Once' and then the 'front' after all that. I'm not exactly sure how this would look, but it would definitely improve performance and it should look somewhat smooth. Another thing that might improve performance is to have the 'Individual Faces' render mode run twice but the second one started half way through the first and have these two blend, it should look smooth and kind of motion blurred like in a 30fps film. This might improve the performance over 'No Timeslicing'.

PS: I was wondering, are objects even LOD'ing and Mipmapping in the probe? It would suck if things are being rendered at their full resolution all the way into the back.

 

I have a question about reflection probes. I havent tested yet, but marmoset skyshop does some amazing stuff with HDR cubemaps.. so bright lights.. are bright in the reflection while the rest of the reflection stays dim.. Sort of like intensity of parts of the reflection depending on what is really bright.. not just a reflected blurred image. Does unity 5 do this sort of thing right now? also How can i tell unity what is a bright light like a car headlight.

 

I don't think Unity does exactly as you suggest, if I'm correctly interpreting you.
However, it is an interesting point and I think this article I just stumbled upon raises some more interesting things to think about regarding realistic scenes and lighting:

http://www.reedbeta.com/blog/2014/06/04/artist-friendly-hdr-with-exposure-values/

I don't know how helpful that is regarding Unity, but there's plenty to think about regarding HDR and lighting for sure.

 

Well if i remember correctly.. it just seems like the reflection would fade equally with unity 5. In skyshop with hdr images... which as you lower a reflection amount .. it lowers, but a spot like a bright light or the sun in that reflection would still look bright and blown out in the reflection.

Its like saying a white color for a reflection... vs ... that white color being a light source. (bright white wall vs an actual white light source) The wall reflection amount will reflect the wall, but the lightsource would have a brighter highlight. Even though technically in an image format they are both the same color...


As for setting things up.. i really dont have a the time to do all that. Sorry.

its sort of like in real life when you stare at the sun. if you use a camera you can take a picture of the sun and its a picture... teh sun looks like a bright white circle, but its visible.. with your eye however its so bright it hurts.. Its not just white that your eye sees because its doing more then reflecting light... its emitting light. Which in reflections you notice... like a cars head lights in the paint job of another car... the car itself isnt reflected much from a straight on view, but the headlights are reflected heavily.

 

Are you talking about HDR reflection probes? I believe there is a checkbox in the reflection probe inspector to make it HDR.

 

honestly i have no idea. hdr checkboxes can mean camera shader related or can actually do what skyshop does.. who knows.. no one says anything.

 

Yes, it can do it.

An HDR cube map stores it's colour values in such a way that they can go outside the zero to one range, so an extremely bright spot, say from the sun, will have a much brighter value than a white wall.

Why haven't you just tried it?

 

Cause i dont have the time to. I am a very busy man. But eventually ill probably have to use that. And if its not in there, its a good idea to ask if it is to see if we can raise it as an issue. Easier to ask then set up a project around it.

Also raises another question, are the probes generated by unity 5 capable of HDR cube maps? Things that are emitting lights... skys... etc etc...

 

Yes.

 

I can attest to this... it is extremely easy to setup... once you have really good textures... you are in good hands. Though, the differences between photographed HDR and Unity captured is clear as night and day. I would love to get very close to photograph quality of cubemaps

 

Yes, to questions 1 and 2 . For 3, I am working on an interior shot. I can usually get it looking pretty good... right now though, I am trying to use box projection on a cornell box and it looks really messed up. I posted the image in another thread in regards to best practises.