SpeedTree shader broken ?

Does this mean Lux includes a fixed SpeedTree shader that will work with SpeedTree LOD and billboarding?

 

lux supports real lambert lighting. that's it.
if a shader pretends to be lambert all specular highlight will be eliminated.
i does not do anything to the speedtree shaders but kills specular highlights on speedtrees as speedtrees pretend to use lambert lighting.

 

I haven't tried Lux since the Unity 4 days. Do you mean it includes a custom shader to put in Graphics -> Deferred to override the default, and that fixes the SpeedTree lighting?

 

yes

 

Yes . It works

 

That would mean that you are basically switching from Unity PBR deffered lighting to LUX deffered lighting for all objects?
Thanks

 

Lars is a god... the deferred linear speedtree problem has been fixed:

a quick example:

The directional light intensity is set to 5, and as you can see you get a beautiful green and some dark spots.



All you do is download the zip file here: https://github.com/larsbertram69/Lux-2.01

Unzip it into your Assets folder. Replace the default deferred shader with Lar's shader. And you're good to go.

 

Original

The lighted grass is not so good.

LUX Graphic Deferred

Trees and grass are rendered fine.
Thanks @larsbertram1

 

@sjm tech I have to admit both of the photos look absolutely fabulous, I can't even tell what was fixed

 

Could Unity check how is lux deferred rendering trees correctly and implement it? @dreyhal

 

Another comparison.

Unity Deferred


LUX Deferred

 

Much better... wow you can clearly see that nasty effect on the grass.

Do you have a video or more screenshots of what you have here? Is it a game? I'd love to know more. It looks awesome

 

Thank you lars. But this is still something Unity should fix. I can't switch the core deferred shader at the moment as I'm using UBER and I don't want to redo a million materials.

 

that is correct.
lux deferred lighting is based on unity 5.4. but adds support for area lights (if enabled) and real lambert lighting.
it is meant for pc, mac, linux and consoles as it does not come with cheaper approximations of the main brdf.

 

well, tom should be able to add a similar feature within a few minutes:

// take specColor.r as indicator for lambert materials (specColor.r == 0 is outside the pbr range)
half finalSpecMultiplier = (specColor.r == 0) ? 0 : 1;

then pass finalSpecMultiplier to the BRDF and apply it somewhere to the specular term e.g.:
half D = GGXTerm (nh, roughness) * finalSpecMultiplier;

on may add it to the deferred specular reflections as well.

 

[Off-topic]
I'm glad you like it...here more info!
Best
Max

 

Patch 5.3.5p5
Released: 23 June 2016

• (790798) - Terrain: Fixed backlit SpeedTree leaves not being correct in deferred shading.

Is this the official fix of the issues mentioned in this thread? (i'm still on 5.3.4)

 

Collaborative solutions & forums at their best . What a turnaround given that right up to Unity Europe it was possible for people like me to moan excessively about official Unity voices in regards to SpeedTree issues being completely absent from the forum.

Nice work UT and all that helped find solutions and workarounds

 

Nice

 

today i have come across a broken speedtree – right in front of our office:

 

i totally read this over.
does it mean unity will implement physically based translucent vegetation lighting? in both forward and deferred?

 

hmm, on sigle sided geometry with perturbed normals? that looks pretty weird i guess. as weird as it does now.
using vface will break the translucent lighting effect and still give you a "broken" specular due to the perturbed normals.

 

speedtree shader using vface and standard specular: no "translucency", broken specular:

 

less perturbed normals (using speed tree modeler), vface and lux deferred translucency:

 

Still getting this on 5.3.5p5


edit: on OSX, linear, deferred

 

@rstorm000 are you using Lars's deferred shader? Try that

 

Not yet, I figured it was fixed after reading the patch notes

 

The Issue is still present in the last patch (5.3.5p6) release.

5.2.3 (the reference and still the best visual for now ).


5.3.4p6


5.3.5p6


@dreyhal
UnityStandardBRDF now include some of your modifications but there is no effect in scene ...can you check please ?

Edit:
LUX still fix this.

5.3.5p6 + LUX

 

On top of this, is there any way to make the leaves much more translucent green in the first place. It would be nice to have some more intensity (but obviously not that white effect)

 

right ... infact i still prefer 5.2.3 look

 

I was thinking about this thread this morning and felt like I should post something. While I do appreciate the feeling of being listened to, I don't think I and the handful of random people in this thread should be determining the future of Unity's standard BRDF shading model. I'm going to be honest and say I mostly don't know what I'm talking about. I know I don't want white edges on tree leaves, but the particular pros and cons about Lambert vs Phong or tweaking normals vs not or zeroing specular in weird cases is a little beyond me. I feel like there must be specific white papers and expert theses out there by people much smarter than I am detailing how to make a good PBR shader, and really those are the ones that Unity should be listening to, rather than randomly inserting code into the shader and asking four people on a thread in a forum if it looks ok. If this was only specifically about the leaves on the trees it would be fine, but we're talking about changing the core PBR shading model, and that should go through more quality control than just me.

 

I agree, but I feel like they should give us much more choice (multiple types of shader styles, or vastly more options). It is still limited to that one style, with few settings.

Vegetation is the lifeblood of some visuals. Unity could far surpass UE4 if they can get this right.

 

No, we're not talking about changing the core shading model. We are talking about getting SpeedTree to work properly with the core shading model. Ergo it's about actually fixing something that's out of place. Right now the workaround is just to kill specularity, that's not "randomly inserting code". Unity is however working on adding proper specular highlights to SpeedTree which should bring it more inline with the rest of the deferred pipeline. And that will go through QA, so I don't see how any one of us are dictating the future of lighting in Unity. Also, a lot of PBR experts work for Unity now. There was a white paper written just recently about some of the graphical features in the Adam demo for instance.

 

I think you haven't read the actual thread. Changing UnityStandardBRDF.cginc changes the entire core shading model, not just SpeedTree. The current workaround is not killing specularity; that's what Lars's shader replacement does, which, again, replaces the entire core shading model. The first Unity workaround is changing the way normals are tweaked and the second is cutting specular when the normals are at certain angles, again, for the entire shader model, not just for trees.

 

Look, I'm not going to argue over semantics. The workarounds cut off or "kill" specularity at some point. Weather at an angle or completely was irrelevant to my point. It's not "randomly inserting code". I'm well aware that this affects the entire deferred renderer which is why I pointed out that Unity are working to make it compatible with standard specular as you know because you've read the thread and apparently I haven't. That means the lighting on your other objects wouldn't be affected. In fact, I've seen no noticeable effect with the workaround on other objects because their backfaces aren't visible. I'm failing to see this big change you go on about. Regardless, I've said my fill. Agree to disagree.

 

i agree that not only a few people discussing speed tree shaders should determine the way unity's standard brdf looks like.
but we haven't been discussing the brdf. we have only been talking about how to implement "correct" lambert lighting within the deferred lighting shader. these are 2 completely different things.

it does not. it only makes it "correct".
and you pretty much know how things evolve if you rely on unity: things may improve in one direction but get worse in another.
so unity will need our feedback as it does not run its own game development studio. and the fixes provided by unity so far have proven that they are not ground tested.
as well as my quick shader hack should have proven that speedtrees will not work using standard specular lighting.
i just remember that neither unity nor speed tree engineers ever seemed to notice that speedtrees got imported using a wrong handiness thus showing up completely corrupted normal map based lighting.
and unfortunately this is an ongoing story.

 

Well, I trust you to know what correct Lambert lighting looks like, since you've proven you're very knowledgeable about shaders. I was more saying that I don't trust myself to know what correct Lambert lighting looks like, and that me saying "Yeah I guess those leaves look better?" should not be considered a final test pass before releasing a change to the core shader.

 

I discovered that changing BRDF model to BRDF2 via #define UNITY_BRDF_PBS BRDF2_Unity_PBS in UnityStandardConfig.cginc fixes this issue and do not affect any visuals besides it (I assume). You should set Custom-DeferredShading shader in Project Settings - Graphics Settings - Build-in shader settings - Deferred field. All it does is defines BRDF2_Unity_PBS method instead of BRDF1_Unity_PBS.

 

Good catch, thanks!

Comparison:


@rstorm000: this can be near your request.

 

well, doing so REALLY changes the BRDF as instead of using GGX (> Unity 5.3.x) BRDF2 uses BlinnPhong (like Unity 5.2.x), no Disney diffuse and only an approximated Kelemen visibility and Fresnel term.
And it will effect all materials...

 

great stuff for the trees! question about Lux... can it mix and match with any other shaders we already using for other things? at the moment I would just want Lux's proper tree and grass shading support and to use my current shaders for the rest

 

lux works properly with all kind of other shaders – but you can't use it along with Alloy or Uber as all three use their custom deferred lighting shaders.
according to the latest posts in the Uber thread tom is going to add a similar fix to Uber too.

lars

 

Given that RC 1 was just announced, and the SpeedTree changes aren't in, does that mean that the shader fix and instancing support are being pushed back to 5.5?

 

Actually, changes landed just shy of RC1. So, they're in RC2.

 

What about Unity 5.3.5?

 

Which changes? Will instancing work, or is this just the white leaves shader fix? And is it the lambert-diffuse fix, or the no-backwards-normals fix?