Realtime GI System - Indirect Ilumination (WIP)

And please, please don't forget to support deferred render

 

Only thing keeping me from going back to cryengine is no indie license, they won't let me put up a video on kickstarter even with 100% custom assets.

So this here would be a dream come true no matter the price. If its possible for 1 man to implement this, why can't unity devs do it themselves to compete with unreal 4 cryengine ?

Even if it requires rewriting alot of unity, the other players are coming for the mobile spot as well. So saying Unity is mainly specializing in mobile and not as much into next gen PC / console to avoid the amount of work necessary to stay in the spotlight is simply bonkers!

 

I agree, I also don't understand why can't unity devs do a simple Global illumination system, unity are far more easy and dynamic than Cryengine, I think unity is the only engine that lacks of GI, it seams the only thing they care about is mobile games, and unity can offer so much more...
the only reason i will move to unity is Global illumination, and a lot of people are like me, they will not move until they have a proper light system

If CKahler succeed on making a proper GI to unity, it will show us that numbers doesn't matter, one guy can make a difference and some unity devs are in the wrong job, some devs are occupying job places where CKahler and others like him should be.

Come on unity devs, Global illumination is old tech already, almost every other engine already has this ages ago, even the one-guy dev S2 free engine have it, one guy!? come one!!! Why you don't want to keep up with others, why?

 

@Almaj "the only reason i will not move to unity is Global illumination"
so what are you doing here?

FYI you are here already lol

 

The fact that i'm follow unity forum and learning unity workflow, doesn't mean that I have moved to Unity,
I'm evaluating engines, like Cryengine, UDK, Unity, C4, Torque3D and Unigine.
you must know what is out there, before jumping on the wrong wagon.

FYI I'm everywhere

 

Definitely think implementing lpv will help, it looks excellent right now.

 

Hi guys!
I am focusing on DX11 right now, adding the Rasterized Voxel Based Dynamic Global Illumination technique, it's like lpv with point lights support. I'm working on it full-time to finish it soon.

 

If you don't know which.. do them all. Definitely way to go, but do you plan to support reflections as well? You could count me into beta test, if you plan to make some.

 

Does this mean that the first version will be available soon? Are you finished with the DX9/DX10 version? This thing's just too cool to not release ASAP!

 

I would pay 200 or even 300 ... or even more.

Some EST for version release dates would be welcome.

 

Is something like this what you mean by rasterizer voxel global illumination http://m.neogaf.com/showthread.php?t=656961

 

- The RVBDGI tech is from http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466567436
- I'm planing reflections support, don't know if it gets in the first version.
- The first release will be ASAP, can't say right now, I set the dx9 version on hold and worked on the dx11 stuff to finish the important parts like GPU voxelation. Tomorrow I will continue the dx9 version, so hopefully next week I can show you my process and release a demo version.

 

this is just too amazing to believe it, keep it on! i would paid more than just 200 to have that tech!! if you make a beta stage, i want to be apart of it!!

Cheers!

 

Let me chime in since it looks like you're taking requests for features
First of all, congrats.
We could absolutely use a GI system for our software, and we'd be glad to pay 200 (or even double that) to get it.
Maybe different versions (with different techniques/requirements) could come at different price points.
Anyway, I'm eagerly awaiting for something that I can download and implement.

As far as my wish list goes (might be a little different from others):
-Definitely SSreflections
-Adjustable voxel grid size at runtime as option (even if it would freeze the game while it rebuilds the voxel grid)
-Push DX11 version as best as you can as we don't have different deployment on lots of hardware (yay! )
-Add spot lights support or some kind of arealight approximation
-And give the best support you can to the buyers

As I said this is a wishlist of dreams so I know some of it it's going to take much more time...but I'll get the first version anyway as soon as it comes out

Please keep on giving us updates and good job!

(To jump on the bandwagon on "why doesn't unity give us GI solution": I guess it has to do with Beast. Creating a GI system would probably make the Beast investment go down in value a lot, so it will come...but laaaaate. Oh marketing and money...)

 

I love how this is shaping up, Ace... and please, I am "begging" you to see if you can get this working with Skyshop ... I definitely need a real time GI solution... also would we be able to bake it down if we like the results?

 

Great, nice to hear that you are making progress.
are you thinking to make a TOD (time of day) tool? like cryengine? That would be great!

 

Are point lights going to be able to have global illumination or just directional lights?

 

My goal is to support any type of light source, even the sky! At the moment the lpv dx9 version only supports directional light, the dx11 version point/spot/directional. Here is a quick preview of the first dx11 tech:

 

Do i see reflections? Yes i see. Nicely done man. It looks amazing as it is right now. Do you plan to release all three methods for 200 in one package or each one independently?


Edit: I was mistaken, the actual "reflections" was not seen in the demo, just GI lights around.

 

That is looking impressive... maybe it's my screen but the inner hall is looking dark at the moment in the test... I am kind of expecting some light to be bouncing around in there... but nonetheless i am very impressed.

 

Yes one package,
the price is not set yet. I think I will start with a keen price and when I add more techs like voxel cone tracing it will get a little bit more expensive, so if you buy an early version you get all the latest updates for free, of couse. The first version will have an improved tech included, here is a preview (no final yet):

@Neptune_Imaging: you can edit the light settings via parameters.

 

Wonderful!

I'll tell ya, I can't wait to create my own GI scenes that are not Sponza! Haha

Good work man!

-Steve

 

Sweeet...and that preview is OUT OF THIS WORLD! I GOTTA HAVE THIS FOR MY GAME. Now will this be in Unity 3.5.7 as well... if so, this is a DEFINITE purchase... also need to find out if this will work with light probes and skinned meshes... don't want to leave that out And can we bake down the results?

EDIT: And this will be a great component to use with Skyshop...

 

What's the frame rate for the lpv gi?

 

Hi guys, sorry to keep you waiting, but I have some small issues to fix, before I can release anything. I will test the system with the bootcamp demo next, can't see sponza anymore ;-). The framerate was over 300fps (2-3ms processing) with my gtx680, which broke so i'm working with a gt630 right now.

 

Can you post a video with the BootCamp demo?

 

Greetings. Nice work.

Resolution?

 

It seems that crytek uses lpv only for their sun. Do you know why since you've managed to achieve such high frame rate?

 

the crytek paper says, that they are using this tech also with point lights, spot lights and with environment maps. They have 3 cascades for the sun. I'm going to add these cascades too and test it with the bootcamp. I fixed some issues and it looks better now, almost like the rendering from mental ray as you can see I exaggerated the color bleeding... and shadow occlusion is still missing (which I will add soon).



But that's enough sponza for now, I will fix the small graphical issues later.

@EvilFox: the resolution wasn't that high, but it doesn't matter, we should talk about the fps later, because nothing is optimized yet.

 

Looks amazing, i'll definitely consider buying this when it comes out, would be perfect for my game.
Can you do some tests and share with us the results? Like making a comparison between low-medium-high quality, showing how it looks with each setting and what FPS you are getting with it. Maybe it's too early for tests like that, but i would really like to see these statistics.

Looking forward to see how the bootcamp demo looks with this tech.

Do you have an ETA for the asset?

 

It definitely does look better! Also since your more active then the kurtloefler guy and also plan on doing some voxel cone tracing, can you tell me why was it that the creator of this tech was able to get 75 fps on a gtx 480 but epic was only able to get 30 fps on a gtx 680 with all their optimizations?

Epic:http://www.unrealengine.com/files/misc/The_Technology_Behind_the_Elemental_Demo_16x9_(2).pdf

creator:http://graphics.tudelft.nl/~eisemann/publications/Crassin2011VoxelGlobalPG/VoxelGI_EG-pg2011-sub.pdf

 

Hi blueivy,
I think it is the combination of all the other shaders and effects that affects the fps. In the tests of the creator he only has a "small" scene and no extra effects... the effects (lighting, particles, post effects, shading) eat up a lot of the gpu power, so maybe this is the reason why epic canceled the voxel tracing tech. We will see if it's worth using it, if it's too slow you can choose one of other techs of the package, but I think you can optimize it e.g. other voxel scaling. As far as I can tell, the LPV and the other DX11 tech will be faster. My website www.next4unity.com is coming up soon, where all customers get full support... so I'm more active, yes! ;-)

 

Thanks for that! I really appreciate your support even though your product is not even officially out yet, it really instills confidence in me about your asset! You're definitely going to swimming in gold after you see how much people buy your asset!

edit: do you plan on implementing glossy reflections using lpv?

 

Nice update, i have some more questions
What is GPU, CPU, memory requierements for RVBGDI and LPV and do you see some big graphics differences between these two?
In GPU PRO 4 page 168, title 7.4 i read that single voxel grid can't deal with large game environments and several nested voxel grid should be used. My point is if you consider that problem, because power requirements increase exponentially ( they use 32x32x32 grid and according to your video you too). The papers says that proper solutions is to use multiple grids and lineary blend between them. Do you experiment with different voxel sizes, numbers or multiple grids to handle large environments?

 

Yes!

I don't see much differences in quality, in fact Rasterized Voxel-based Dynamic Global Illumination is based on the LPV technique. RVBDGI will be a bit faster if you have a strong gpu, however I like to answer the memory requierements question a bit later after the optimization process, because there will be some changes.

Yes, I'm working with 2 voxel grids (each 32x32x32, one small, one large) but my tests are not final, so stay tuned, more infos will come. By the way, LPV also uses a 32x32x32 voxel grid, that collects the light data form virtual point lights. RVBDGI gets the light data directly from the exposed grid.

 

So, how are you dealing with light probes and animated models with this?

 

Curious about this as well.

 

I wouldn't think you'd need light probes, since light probes are just a way of faking GI on dynamic objects. And since the lighting is fully dynamic, the lighting should be the same for dynamic and static objects

 

I hope the next demo can have a skinned character, moving in the level...

 

*fingers crossed*

I really hope that you can get this up, running and commercially available.

 

Hi guys,
I finished the setup for the voxel grids blending (now you can use up to three different voxel sizes) for large scenes. I'm thinking about releasing a little web demo (if it works with the web player ), however the performance could be better, so I am still working on the optimization part. But maybe tomorrow or on wednesday, so that you could give me some feedback how I runs on your machines.

 

Awesome! cant wait to see it in action!!

 

Does the voxel grid sit inside view frustum or inside full scene? Perhaps you should allow interactive voxel grid placement (tool to take voxel grid, change dimension, resolution and place it whatever we want, in FPS type of game we don't really need square grid if we mostly move in z and x). -i just thinking about optimalizations

Do you make some progress with ss reflections?

 

Hi CKAHLER, crytek just posted this publication and I just happened to skim through it and noticed they're doing some manual darkening and manual light bounces, while their gi only contributes to diffuse color bounce. So it appears that their indirect lighting is heavily manually modified but in the latest two pictures you posted the indirect lighting looks phenomenal w/out all of that. Is your lpv technique different some how or am I misunderstanding something?

crytek:http://www.crytek.com/download/gdce2013_shining_the_light_on_crysis_3_donzallaz_final_plus_bonus.pdf

 

This is a pretty good read... and the little smileys are hilarious lol

 

@Seikan1: the voxel grids are fully dynamic and move with the view frustum, like cascaded shadow maps do. I already have made a ss reflection shader some time ago, but I had no time to integrate it, but will be soon added.
@blueivy: My method is a bit different, I managed to increase the bouncing of the light, so it looks more realistic, but it also costs a little bit more gpu power, I will add an option where you can switch between the normal and the advanced indirect lighting. By the way, the bottom one of the latest two pictures is a mental ray rendering, so you can compare my tech with it. Thanks for the pdf, very interesting!

I'm building together a small demo level for the web demo tomorrow, I think I will present it in the evening, if nothing goes wrong...

 

And I am kinda of hoping you could place an animated character in there to see if this real time will affect them without the need for light probes... that will be a high selling point for me...

 

That's really cool, can't wait. It'll be really exciting to be able to have consistent lighting between dynamic and static objects and be able to do lots of moving objects with high-quality lighting. (and not have to build lighting)

 

@CKahler: I must say that this project sounds extremely promising! Looking forward to seeing the demo.

I have a question though: Is it going to be possible to use existing materials and shaders (ie: parallax, tessellation, fur, cubemaps, etc...), or is this only going to work with special shaders? Thanks...

 

Hi guys, I like to add a sky system to my demo, so there will be some delay... tomorrow it should be fine!

Edit: I found out that some of the sky scripts I'm using are not working with the web player, so I'm building a standalone app.