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Realtime shadow quick fix?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by forestjohnson, May 9, 2006.

  1. forestjohnson

    forestjohnson

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    Would it be possible to do realtime shadows by using a render texture on a shadow projector? It seems like this would have been done before if it was possible.
     
  2. Joachim_Ante

    Joachim_Ante

    Unity Technologies

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    Yes it is possible. You just have to do the setup yourself.
    Would be great to see a demo if you get this running.
     
  3. Martin

    Martin

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  4. Aras

    Aras

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    And adds a few problems on it's own, I might add! I tell ya, with shadows there is just no silver bullet :(
     
  5. Martin

    Martin

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    Oh I know that. Some time ago I also tried various real time shadowing algorithms and they all had weaknesses.
    But under the class of shadow mapping algorithms "Variance Shadow maps" looks like one of the better ones. Even although you still have serious limitations when rendering big scenes etc.

    By,
    Martin
     
  6. Venkman

    Venkman

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    On the topic of shadows and light, I keep reading about lightmaps being used for levels. Is there a way to integrate something like that into unity or is that merely juts a) a baked texture or (b) vertex baking (which we can now do in unity, thanks guys!).

    I've never really understood how relatively weaker consoles could pull off light maps in levels (like Halo 2), and this forum seems to have a lot of knowledgable people lurking about.
     
  7. Joachim_Ante

    Joachim_Ante

    Unity Technologies

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    Actually lightmaps are very cheap.
    If you are combinging dynamic lighting and lightmaps then it is even cheaper to do lightmaps instead of vertex baked lighting.
    And obviously lightmaps are a lot faster than doing dynamic lighting.

    The next Unity release will have support for multiple uv coordinates, so you can easily lightmap your level in maya using a high quality raytracer and then pull them into Unity.
     
  8. forestjohnson

    forestjohnson

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    Just an idea I had. I only have unity indy so I can't really test this.. If I had pro I bet I would be working on it.
     
  9. Venkman

    Venkman

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    W-O-W. You guys are implementing features before I can even understand them! Talk about fast!
     
  10. Sync1B

    Sync1B

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    Curious, cant you bind channels in the current version of unity? I thought this was already implemented?

    Bill
     
  11. Joachim_Ante

    Joachim_Ante

    Unity Technologies

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    Yes, you can bind channels but we didn't import secondary uv channels.
     
  12. Sync1B

    Sync1B

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    Ah, I see. heh, no wonder I was having trouble. Thanks for the clarification.

    Bill
     
  13. marty

    marty

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    So it's official, there will be true multitexturing in Unity 1.5!

    It would be great if you folks could release a tutorial with a sample Maya file with the release.