SEGI (Fully Dynamic Global Illumination)

Can you be a bit more precise? Did you turn on the Volume Ray Casting or do you get this bright result when you use the Unity ShadowMap? I'm using Unity 2017.1.1f1 and SEGI Cascaded, I just reimported it into a new Unity Project and there were no errors at all, so maybe you have an old Unity version or you mixed it up with another SEGI version? Also the Unity shadows are currently only working when you set the shadows in the quality setting to "No cascades"... I need to fix that at some point.

Edit: I think you are using gamma color space? Try it with linear color space... also turning of infinite bounces for now might help... anyway very sad that this "It's broken as hell." is the only feedback... even so the 2D volume conversion should improve performance, because there is no clear compute shader needed anymore. I must admit the Volume Ray Casting is very buggy at the moment, but when you use the standard settings without it everything should be fine.

 

I can't give you more information at the moment, I replaced the SEGI folder with your version and didn't change anything. SEGI from the official repository works absolutely fine. I'm using Unity 2017.1.1p3.

 

I did some changes the brighten bug should be gone, it's currently not working correct with the infinite bounces.

 

Yep. It works now. The difference is about 0.5 ms compared to the original version, but I noticed that emissive materials don't contribute to the GI.

 

Is the volume ray casting 0.5 ms faster or slower on your pc? Currently it's missing some features, the problem is the voxelization must happen before the raycasting shadows, so I might have to split color, emission and sun light up in different channels can think of another way.

 

It's faster. Also, there's something wrong with the effect in the scene view.

 

Funny that's faster on your pc, currently the default settings (without raycast and unityShadows) are still the fastest for me, but maybe I can optimize it a bit further. I know there is a lot of stuff missing due to the "new" pipeline, I let you know when everything works as expected, then you can test it, if it's still faster...

 

What's your PC specs?

 

Are you testing on the same scene?

 

GTX 1080, 3,6Ghz 8Core, 32GB Ram, testing with the Low Poly Scene.

 

Interesting... Maybe it's just something different in Unity 2017.1.1f1 and Unity 2017.1.1p3?

 

btw. I think this is a better solution (when you don't use VoxelAA):

Code (CSharp):

1. void interlockedAddFloat4(RWTexture2D<uint> destination, uint2 coord, float4 value)
2. {
3.     uint writeValue = EncodeRGBAuint(value);
4.     InterlockedMax(destination[coord], writeValue);
5. }
6.  
7. void interlockedAddFloat4b(RWTexture2D<uint> destination, uint2 coord, float4 value)
8. {
9.     uint writeValue = EncodeRGBAuint(value);
10.     InterlockedAdd(destination[coord], writeValue);
11.     // InterlockedMax(destination[coord], writeValue); // could be used for brighter shadows
12. }

I think this is a clearer and faster approach as the for-loop or while(true).... what do you think?
( I don't need the VoxelAA feature, it didn't make a big visual impact in my test scenes.)

 

Well, the performance will be better, because the shader compiler will not produce a lot of garbage maths as it does now. But we need to test it.

https://www.diffchecker.com/R2tJb3jF

 

For all the fuss surrounding SEGI, I feel like I haven't seen much eye candy produced with this asset. Anybody have some amazing SEGI renders lying around?

 

@buttmatrix a couple from the project i've been working on - not really a game, but I'm using unity. These are done in realtime (ofcourse) on an i7, GTX 980 with 16gb ram. I get about 700 FPS in the editor, with Heavy Post Effects, NGSS and all quality settings maxed out. SEGI has been a game changer for my project.

 

I have uploaded the a new VolumeRayCasting-Shadow version, infinite bounces and emission are now working again, but it's still WIP. (Also the unity shadow map works with the Volume shadow method now!)

Nice pics Abuthar! Did you ever try https://github.com/TheMasonX/UnityPCSS ? I think it's more or less the same as NGSS, but the shadow softness is a bit more flexible... maybe combine both...

 

Could you explain what your volume ray tracing system accomplishes over the existing solution and what its pros and cons are? It's sounds interesting but I'm not actually sure what it does. Is it essentially a form of optimisation?

 

@Shinyclef: The system creates shadowmaps via volume ray casting, instead of using traditional shadowmap rendering (where each object gets rendered separately via forward rendering). the volume ray casting only renders one voxelVolume per frame and creates a shadowmap with this data. So it's basically a voxel shadow, the quality is not as good, but it's a bit faster or at least not slower (depending on hardware and scene complexity; On my pc it's now the same speed as the normal tech). Also Spot or point light shadows might be be possible in the future via this system.

I also added another feature, I called it "Use Unity Shadow Map(s)" (currently it's not working with unity shadow cascades but with a single unity shadow, I'm working on that) it adds the high quality shadowmap generated from unity to the voxel volume, without extra performance costs (maybe only noticeable on very old machines.)

I also optimized the general SEGI code a bit, so maybe SonicEther wants to merge some part of it, I'm not sure if I should pull request my stuff, because it's still in an early stage, even so it's already working. Also I didn't fix the VoxelAA feature, I think it's not useful for me anyway.

 

I've never seen any visual changes with this enabled !

 

Could I summarise this as "It lets you create shadow maps dynamically where previously you had to bake them"?

 

No, sorry I thought you might have some tech/coder background...ok I give it another try, it replaces the internal shadowmap technique of SEGI, both are dynamically, but the volume tech renders one cube that traces stuff that creates shadows, the other (standard) tech renders all shadow casting objects... hope that helps.

 

Right I think i get it. Yeah I am a programmer, but I've not dealt with shadow maps before. In fact, I've not dealt with shadows in any form yet.

 

From the User Guide.pdf:

 

Good point, I need to test it further, maybe it helps with moving objects, but currently I'm happy with the results.

 

I am dancing with joy to see the community work on this. Now if you guys excuse me I am going to go dance and sing a bit more.

Good job guys and thank you Sonic!

 

This outdoor scene is using segi. Much more believable lighting than i was getting before.

 

I recall @BruceJRBarratt posting some images of a nature scene using SEGI. Still don't know how he did that, but amazing stuff.

 

Too bad you're getting a solid 16 fps

 

SEGI requires you set up your scenes specially for it, it's not a silver bullet. The author gives tips earlier in the thread for dealing with open doors and so forth.

edit: open world, no idea why I wrote open doors. Senile fart.

 

Couple of mine of SEGI in action

 

to be fair that has more to do with the 100,00k plus grass/foliage and trees in the scene but of course there is no optimisation at the moment. I was getting a solid 40-70fps recently until some demon infected my scene.

 

I think the bigger point is, SEGI simply frees you from having to bake anything, that's (pretty much) it. So if your lighting setup, or the composition / mood you create with that lighting is really poor, your visuals are gonna be really poor. That being said, people seem to rely a lot on SEGI + point lights, which isn't really the point (ba dum dum tss). Lighting things with emissive objects is about the only thing that'll instantly improves results, because then you get some really nice soft shadows, and it replaces the hack that are point lights with an actual, physical, light source.

Anyway, my point is, people clamour over the next lighting solution thinking it'll give them AAA graphics, when really they should spend the time learning how lighting affects composition, colour and atmosphere etc etc. Lighting is, imo, the most significant factor in what makes or breaks an image. Poor modelling + texturing can be masked with excellent lighting, and excellent modelling + texturing can be wholly ruined by poor lighting. I just like SEGI for how quickly I can iterate through lighting designs.


@Abuthar Some of those dragon shots are particularly nice. Great example of how much difference good post makes too.

 

Anyone aware of any movement forward on this for single pass rendering (ie VR) ?

 

I don't think there is any movement forward at the moment, and SEGI is still deferred only, so TAA or nothing.

 

One of the example images show an apartment interior that looks nice, but I can't get anything that resembles that quality in my simple text interior. I get a blurry, splotchy mess no matter what I do. Are there any unity scenes that I can download and dissect?

 

In my experience, SEGI really benefits from a directional light, so if you have an interior scene that has windows open to sunlight, you can include a directional light and then place light cards (emissive quads) in the windows to further enhance the light distribution of the scene. Using the debug features, especially the 'visualize GI' can be helpful to ensure that an appropriate amount of occlusion appears in the right places. Of course, posting screenshots or sharing a sample scene can sometimes help - someone on the forum may feel compelled to have a go at improving your scene.

 

(I have no idea why i wrote "text interior", I don't even know what a text interior is. I meant just "interior").

Yes, I might have to do that. I work in archviz and putting area lights in windows is an old trick, but I try to avoid it since you often need to crank up the intensity to "propel" the light to the back of the room and get unnaturally bright areas near the windows. But I do have a patch of trees outside the window, so the light is relatively dim when it reaches the window. It might be that this particular scene just isn't optimal for this. Good tip about the debug feature, thanks. Can't share the project, but here's an image of the space.

 

Hi everybody,

I have finally have a time to try SEGI in my project. I have to say I haven't really checked the code yet but my assumptions about how the SEGI works were probably wrong.

Is SEGI working in a screen/camera space ?

I am posting a video showing how the lighting is changing quite rapidly depending on the camera view direction. I thought that SEGI voxelize the scene around the camera position in the world space not really a camera/view space. Why is that ? .. or I do I have set up something wrong ? Do any of you guys have the same issues ? .. or its normal ?

To me this is far bigger problem then a light leakage, also I had a hard time to get enough light in the dark areas. I have infinite bounces turned on and indirect lighting gain is set to 1, however it doesn't seems that the light is getting far.

The link to the video (temporary);

 

If you're aiming for realism, SEGI may not be the way to go. Of the very impressive archviz proejcts I've seen in Unity (e.g. 1, 2, 3 - to name a few), none of them use SEGI, but instead rely on Unity's default lightmapping tools. Enlighten can be a nightmare to work with, but the new mixed mode with precomputed realtime GI + baked GI with Shadowmask is probably your best bet for achieving high quality indirect lighting plus specular reflections for smooth surfaces; fully baked lighting with Progressive Lightmapper is great, but doesn't respect normal maps.

 

Some eye adaptation might help with those dark corners, otherwise maybe try fidgeting with the settings some more. I'm not sure about your light instability issue, also not sure what version of SEGI you are running or if it is related to the new features that have been implemented.

 

I took the master yesterday. Watch the video to see what kind of light instability I am talking about.

Cascaded version looks the same but it somehow has lower resolution, so I don't use it. It would be nice to have ability to specify voxel resolution manually.

Regarding setting I tried everything .. Eye adaptation is not really a solution, it's just too dark in contrast with the light up parts .. the relative amount of light is too low to look anywhere near natural. As I am writing this I have an Idea why is this .. I don't use Linear space. For the simple reason .. doing lighting and shading in linear space is correct but you should always convert result into gamma / sRGB space otherwise your contrast will be incorrect and image will look bad and that's what actually happened .. I need to google a bit about how this works in unity.

 

Inclusion Layers on 2 causes a lot of AO and shadow issues. It's better on 1. Also you don't have a transform attached to segi so it will just follow your camera, which can cause issues when the GI updates since it's not always in the same position. A small tip as well, but at the cost of performance, Voxel AA and Mip Filter go a long way to improve accuracy and remove artifacts. And if the corners are too dark, turn down near occlusion and maybe turn up secondary bounce gain. Hope this helps.

 

Thanks to the snap comment re the frame rate I've been tweaking. Getting a reasonable 30fps now. Some nice lighting at around 1m 30secs.

 

Thanks for tips. I didn't saw much difference before but I got some light leakage I set it back to 1. The Linear mode was the cause of brightness issue, however it's screwed lighting for my terrain, but at least I know what was the problem.
The lighting instability is still there, I set up the "Follow Transform" to a empty transform at 0,0,0 .. however the lighting is still dependent on the camera view. I need to fix this light instability somehow.

 

Edit. It was just my settings reset so FPS wen through the floor. All back now. Thanks for the tips. Any gems directed at outdoor scenes with just realtime Sunlight (and moon but i have that as basic realtime shadowless light)

Also I wonder why the camera needed. I tried to set it up as a public camera so I could hook up my player camera but it did not like that.

 

Hi Everybody,

so I have figured out the cause of the lighting inconsistency and view-like dependency (check my post above). It looks like it only happens when I use motion-blur in the my Post Processing Profile. When I turn it off the weird flickering and highlight flowing just disappears.

However I have realized that with "Soft Sunlight" set up to zero I have zero contribution from the sun ! .. I am not sure if this is normal behavior but this is in the user guide :

"Soft Sunlight: This adds cone-traced soft sunlight to the scene. This can be useful for partially cloudy environment lighting or just to add a soft look to the outdoor lighting. It is particularly effective for sunset lighting."

So I am not sure if that is sun light contribution slider or this add something additional to the scene. However without using "Soft Sunlight" I have no sun contribution to the GI .. all GI is just from sky. When I set the "Sky Intensity" to zero I have no GI .. all black.

Just to point out my sun reference is set up.

Is this normal ?

Why is GI interfering with motion blur ?

 

@drednac: There should be also indirect light with "soft sunlight" at 0, are you using SEGI Cascaded? Maybe test with the lowPoly Demo scene first to see if it works there... Also to find the reason for wrong GI behaviour is by turning on the Debug Tools -> "Visualize Voxels". If you use infinite bounces the shadow area should be lit, if not, the shadow area should be black like in the original poly scene.

 

I don't know how it fixed it self (maybe after exiting Unity) but the only problem that I suffer at this point is motion blur interference. I would like to have a motion blur in my project, but when turned on the GI highlights starts to change depending on the camera angle .. it's weird. You can see it in the video I have posted above before.

 

I have crash problem too with this new version of SEGI. then I must restart my PC after crash.

 

Getting better, but could still improve I'm sure.