SEGI (Fully Dynamic Global Illumination)

See, the thing with DivergenceOnline is that he already knows everything, now and into the future. There's no possible way anyone could do anything(even sonicether) to fix SEGI or make it work. Even if you post a sample scene, he'll just come back with "not viable for 200m+ scenes." Don't respond to his bait.

 

1. What type of game is the one you're making that you were referring to if you don't mind me asking?
2. Would it also be possible to get a couple images of this same scene by from a closer-up view such as if you had a player walking on/near them in a typical FPS/TPS?
3. Did you accomplish this by crushing the "near GI" and boosting the "near occlusion" or is my guess wrong? Because this looks very similar to "the closest ive been able to get to usable" in both the good and bad ways and i'd like to know if you're using the same method if you have time to share.

Thanks!

 

That's not how these forums are, and people help each other here, so don't stop coming here

Keep sharing your work, because it looks amazing! Any tips you have for us to get to that level of quality is always appreciated!

 

Oh, is this what you're trying to do? because all I see is you making unwarranted accusations and being an overall joykill for everyone who posts in this thread. I do agree though that using the word "stupid" is harsh and unwarranted, even in this case... I shall discuss this extreme choice of words with Mr.Twain next time I see him. Good luck with your game development! Your success will be in spite of your combative attitude, not because of it.

 

Other than some minor changes in distances, I am running a basic SEGI setup in our Unicorn project. I am not running any blockers or anything special.

Spoiler

You can see the rest of the gallery here:
http://imgur.com/a/1BPrQ

 

That ship is an example of why SEGI is usable in some circumstances even without a range beyond 200 meters or whatever it is. Currently building interiors, or in this case, ship interiors, are the best use for SEGI. If someone wants to complain about the short range, maybe read the last couple pages of the thread and notice that sonicether has been working quite hard on that aspect to add cascades. He's also working on methods of cutting down the light leaking, such as spherical harmonics, so it's not easy to complain about that either.

Yes, there's light leaking. Yes, SEGI is short range. No, it's not staying that way. And even with its issues, the pictures above prove that SEGI is entirely usable already for some situations. For the others, all that's needed is waiting. SEGI is in beta, after all. Sonicether is fully aware of all the problems, and that's why it's in beta. Any project should be just fine without SEGI for now. If a project is designed in such a way that it needs SEGI, then that's a design flaw. One's project really shouldn't depend on a single piece of graphics so new that it's only barely possible; in fact, no game should depend on the graphics to be successful.

As I mentioned in my last post, SEGI should really be an extra touch; a nice shine added to the game. The game's graphical bling should not depend entirely on SEGI. I'm a fan of slightly older games (read: 2000-2010) simply because those are the kind I happened to grow up on. None of them have GI, yet some have such impressive lighting that I wonder how anyone could even produce better. If you want a newer example, look at Anno 2070 from 2011. No GI, yet the lighting is truly astounding.

I for one simply wish sonicether all the best in producing this new piece of technology. I'd also love to see more beautiful pictures from the people tinkering with it. I also can't believe how long this post got.

Edited for spacing paragraphs for easier reading.

--IronDuke

 

Even if SEGI ran under 0.1ms and reproduced GI in a way that put vray (hai, long time vray user) to shame there's no polishing a t...

 

We are all adults here, so please drop the accusations on all sides. This thread should be to share knowledge with other users and the developer, not harass or accuse them of lying. Put the thread back on this track.

Regarding the issue of light leaking and not getting results you are fond of, remember this isn't a final product and you were warned before purchase.

 

So, all of this aside, how's it going @sonicether? Quick update, even it's a bit of slog right now and not much is going on?

 

Sure!

1. It's a simple FPS with robots and maps generated like in binding of isaac (so I keep a lot of control on it).
2. I am currently modeling my environments now that my tests (the one I showed) have been probant and that I know how I have to do my geometry to get the best of SEGI. However there are some closer pictures on my previous post did you looked at it? You can also see on them that the light leaking you're pointing are due to the dynamic light, not SEGI itself.
3. Now I think you are asking the wrong question, so here's my way of proceeding :
The most important thing to keep in mind, is that SEGI is a voxel based process. It has some really precise rules and if you don't comply to them, it won't do good stuff. To put it simple : you can't make SEGI work with your game, you have to make your game work with SEGI.

So the most important things I did in my setup, is to put SEGI on low (128x128x128), put it's length to 128, and deffine its position by an empty game object that follows the player while always staying on a multiple of 64. This way the voxels precisely match the unity geommetry grid, as well as unity's scales (each voxel is exactly 1x1x1m). I also put Inner occlusion layer to 0 because I have full control on my meshes (I make them myself to behave correctly).

Now, when I do my walls, I always make sure that both sides are triggering different voxels, (basically, I put its center on the grid, and make each side go it's own way). This way, each side will get it's illumination from a different voxel than it's back, preventing (mostly) light leaking. Then you can start to change the other parameters to have better results, but alway keep in mind that if you want an occlusion source to be really taken in account by segi, you have to put it at the intersection of the voxels. Light sources are however an other topic, and don't behave the same way. I'll do further investigation on them later.

Hope it helps!

 

Hello, I have a game scene that has more than 510 terrains , Unfortunately Unity's default light mapping cannot apply lightmapping for whole scene and keeps crashing, I was wondering if your lightmapper can lightmap the scene or not?.
Thanks in advance.

 

Hi!

Not so far, and I doubt it'll ever be able to. The voxelisation works in a rather short range, and even when we'll have cascades, using it on more than 500m seems like a very bad idea performance wise (it rerender the whole scene the whole time!). It is alone multiple times more ressource hungry than unity's dynamic shadows.

I'm sorry but AFAIK this shader is really not the solution you're looking for. :-/

 

Ahhhhh okay.

Hopefully it is not a spam here but If anyone know how to bake lightmaps for a huge scene, then please comment.

 

Yeah that's not really fair for Sonic...
PM me, maybe I can help

 

My game world is procedurally generated at runtime so this asset is essential for me. I could survive without constant runtime GI updates. I would like to be able to cache as much GI data as possible and do a small update when new static features are added (i.e.) when someone builds a shelter or house or the terrain changes. Ofcourse to be able to smoothly scale up to constant GI for max settings would be great.

Anyway before this asset I didn't have a GI solution at all.

Big fan of your work so far Sonic Ether!

 

How do you apply a lightmap to your infinit game world with this asset and would you give me some hint? How SEGI can be used in this subject? Thanks for reading.

Apparently sending PM to your profile is not possible.

 

So right now I have a script next to my segi component that turns on GI.Update for 0.5 seconds and then turns it off for 7 seconds. I also have the voxel size etc set to 200. This way I'm able to run around at about 20fps plus a 0.5 sec slowdown every 7 seconds on my HD5500 integrated graphics. Speedtrees are more of a performance concern to me although hopefully the Unity 5.5 changes will fix that.

I would not release my game until there are low res shadows in distance and lazy updating to update over several frames but I have no doubt this will be achieved.

There is also the problem that I either have to choose dodgy character closeups or wavering tree leaves. Again this is a noted bug and I'm sure will be fixed in one way or another.

The thing that I really wanted with GI was deep and dark forest environments and I think SEGI already produces nice results there.

 

What BruceJRBarratt probably uses is this script (or a similar one), which has been posted a while ago. It's not a Lightmapper per se, but close to it. Basically, it updates the GI every second (standard value, but can be cranked up/down manually).

 

Any updates from Sonic?

 

^Yea was just thinking the same thing Castor...

...didn't see any change to the Roadmap percentages.

Btw have you had any further luck improving VR performance with SEGI? I get 'decent' framerates on my 980ti, but I can't help but feel it can be faster.

SPSR doens't work...tanks me down to 2 fps (from a stable 50).

Also, I notice an 'jutter' at regular intervals though I believe that's the SEGI Helper script.

 

Hey guys. So for the past few weeks, I've been dealing with some health problems in the family. I don't really know what's going to happen, but that's why I've been absent recently. This may slow the development of SEGI depending on how everything turns out. Just know that I'm doing as much as I can. Thanks for understanding.

 

Hi. Sonic.

We understand. It's ok for the development to be stalled because of various reasons. You just need to pop in more frequently to let us know how your things are. It doesn't have to have SEGI updates or anything, just let us know how things are on your side and what you think the future schedule / plan is going to be.

 

Erm, pretty sure he just did that.

--IronDuke

 

Sorry about that SE. Hope the best for you and your family.

 

Hey everyone, I just read that the developer is having some personal issues. I am sorry to hear. I have a question for the others if anyone would be able to help me. I am making an emergency simulator called EmergeNYC. We are using Sonic Ether as our lighting solution for our emergency lights and it works perfectly. The only issue we would like to fix is the lighting effects at a distance. We want the lighting effects to remain as strong or still be visible at a distance just as they are in real life. Thats what they are for. Our latest gameplay video shows the lighting up close and at a distance:

at 3:39 you can see how weak the lights are when in reality they stand out.

Here you can see in real life how strong the lights stand out:

Any ideas on how we can increase the range on the lighting and bloom effects without having to turn up the emission gain?

 

Has anyone been able to get Screen Space Reflections to work? SEGI Reflections aren't quite 'free' (they look wonderful though), and at least in VR, I see an odd jitter when looking directly at certain objects that have reasonably reflective surfaces.

Could be just a coincidence but at the very least I'd like to see if that's indeed the case.

 

Nm I got it working...didn't realize that smoothing had to be quite high and that Fresnel was handled in the actual SSR script!

 

Hey everyone, Thanks to Sonic for his excellent plugin. I recently upgraded to the Unity 5.5.0b1 beta from Unity.5.4.0b24, and so far as I can tell, SEGI is no longer working correctly. At the very least emmissive materials no longer cast light into the scene. The soft sunlight still does cast light as does the sky light, but I am not sure everything is being voxelized correctly. So if you upgrade to 5.5, (which also does break other shaders), and have any thoughts please let me know. Otherwise I would avoid 5.5 beta at this time. Thanks again Sonic.

 

With my experience, the first thing I would check is your Voxel Space Size (not Voxel Resolution though that helps of course too) and turn on Visualize Voxels under Debug Tools. You want to ensure you're getting decent detail there first before assessing what else it could be.

That said, it could also simply be the new 5.5 beta, which I can't speak to.

 

Thanks SteveB, I will check it out.

 

Hi,

Will SEGI Beta work with the Personal version of Unity?

 

Yes it will.
Feature wise, Unity's personal version is exactly the same as the pro version. There's no more feature differences between these two versions like there was before.
Edit: check the differences here if you're not up to date with Unity https://store.unity.com/

 

It did look like it should from the package differences - Thank you.

 

Yeah like @eskovas said there are no engine feature differences. I use the Personal Edition and SEGI works great.

 

Will be possible to use SEGI with other ComputingShaders intensive plugin such as liquid simulation, i.e. Fluvio?

 

Just started working on my first test clip (no game creation goal, just clips) and using Viking test scene and some assets I created this very simple scene (red face for posting this into this thread populated with gifted experts!)


Illumination and shading is really unnatural and I was unable to obtain anything better, render quality is already maxed and "realtime" GI is enabled, the house on the left it's a static object.
SEGI will be an easy way to improve the general appearance, or need I to focus on something else? There is any trial mode?

 

I'm using standard assets and shaders, so I suppose something better is needed.
Thanks for the hint.

 

What skntm1215 said is nonsense. Even SEGI's LowPoly Demo Scene uses Standard Materials without any Textures and it looks good.

Make sure you run the Unity Editor in DX11 mode and deactivate Unity's own GI completely in the Lighting settings (Window > Lighting). Then place SEGI (Component > Image Effects > Sonic Ether > SEGI) on your Camera and play with the settings a bit. There should be Presets, so choose one from the list and hit the "Load" button.

To test SEGI, place a standard Unity Cube with an Emission only Material on it near the house.

 

I still didn't purchased SEGI since want to first learn better Unity, so wanted to know if SEGI will make any difference in this really simple scene. I'm far from an expert to recognize problems.
Just to understand: SEGI is the ultimate solution for dynamic scenes, but nothing is moving in mine. Unity own GI is so bad that even in this case will produce such unnatural results?

 

It should make a difference in your scene. Since you're using the Viking test scene, check this link out:
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/fully-dynamic-diffuse-global-illumination.314748/

SEGI can be used for static scenes just fine. However, you also have to understand that SEGI is far from being perfect. The performance is quite a problem and there are other limitations as stated on the first page of this thread. You shouldn't use it for a game just yet. Unity's GI isn't really realtime as it uses precomputation. It can achieve good results (again, playing with the settings is the key), but depending on your machine, the precompute/bake time can be quite long. This is where SEGI steps in.

 

Didn't develop games but video clips so performance it's not a problem as far I can work in the viewport. Really nice the Viking scene, I need to test it.

 

Purchased SEGI, applied to my camera but seems not to work. No voxel is displayed checking "Visualize Voxel", and I can't go in play mode since state "All compiler errors have to be fixed before you can enter in play mode". (Edit: relaunchiung the editor this error is gone). I applied all the settings asked in the Manual. Unity 5.3.6f1.
Searching in the Editor log I find these entreies, not sure if apply
- Shader warning in 'Hidden/Dof/DepthOfFieldHdr': gradient-based operations must be moved out of flow control to prevent divergence. Performance may improve by using a non-gradient operation at line 97 (on d3d11)
- Can't load custom inspector BloomAndFlaresEditor because the inspected type is null.
- Binary to YAML conversion: type unsigned int is unsupported
Attached current conf

 

I took SEGI for a little walk around the marketplace in Ludus. At 'High' quality with a reasonably complex real game scene and all systems running it's still going just over 35 fps for me on an nVidia 980M when doing full screen 1080p, so this is actually already quite a plausible GI solution for moddable/procedural type games that don't have the luxury of baking lights.

 

It is looking pretty cool and if you boost the bounce light just a bit will look even better though...

 

Deleting some effects from the scene I was able to enter in Play mode. But still I'm unable to see any SEGI effect. I'ts working since in play mode my GPU load is substantially increased, but no voxel is visible.
Here my conf

 

Well your Voxel Space Size is very tiny, and remember GI only occurs inside this volume. Depending on scene complexity and computing power, this would be anywhere from 50 to 200.

Personally 50 is a great size as then the voxels are smaller (the Voxel Space Size just determines the area of effect, but you still have the same number of voxels (low 128 or high 256). In other words, 256 voxels packed into a cozy 50 unity volume are going to have a greater fidelity than those same 256 voxels are much larger in a roomy 200 unity volume.

 

I tired to push Voxel Space Size and Shadow Space Size up to 50 and 70 but nothing changes.
The transparent red cube show the space size, but display also the space localization? The fact it's in the far corner of my terrain does prevent SEGI to voxelize my assets?
I set Follow Transform as the Main Camera or also as the visible house but again no voxel is visible and no GI is working.

 

That's strange, did you checked if your camera was in deffered mode? (Also, you probably know it, but just in case, the effect will only occur in the game window, not the scene window).

 

The camera was in Player Settings, already deferred. Tried to set explicitly as defferred, to increase Voxel Space Size to 200, increase cones to 128, disable half resolution, set Follow Transform back to Main camera: nothing change.
I tested always in play mode.
The voxel space size cube is now big enough to cover most of the terrain and comprehend my assets, still wondering if need to be centered into one of my assets or this is just a representation not connected with the position.