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Terrible banding with baked lights in Unity 5.3.0 B5

Discussion in '5.3 Beta' started by nickpappas, Nov 3, 2015.

  1. nickpappas

    nickpappas

    Joined:
    Mar 19, 2013
    Posts:
    18
    Testing lighting in in the latest Unity 5.3.0 beta 5. I noticed horrible banding in the baked results. Its not very noticeable in the brighter scenes but in darks its awful. Its baked like this at even very high resolutions and GI settings. Anyone else seeing this?

    banding.png

    -Nick Pappas
    3d Tech Artist at Playful
     
    nickpappas, Nov 3, 2015
    #1

  2. AcidArrow

    AcidArrow

    Joined:
    May 20, 2010
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    11,741
    It generally improves a lot if you are using HDR.
     
    AcidArrow, Nov 4, 2015
    #2

  3. nickpappas

    nickpappas

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    Mar 19, 2013
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    Not sure what you mean. this is baked into the texture. at default settings.

    Notice that the banding is mostly in the mid values of the light. This is a simple baked point light casting shadows.It's not just banding, its gradating between each band. Yeah if i push the light past one i can blow it out but that's not really a good solution. Image 036.png
     
    nickpappas, Nov 4, 2015
    #3

  4. KEngelstoft

    KEngelstoft

    Unity Technologies

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    Aug 13, 2013
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    1,366
    Is this a regression compared to earlier betas?
     
    KEngelstoft, Nov 5, 2015
    #4

  5. nickpappas

    nickpappas

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    Yes this is a new issue that doesn't appear to be in earlier betas.

    I filed a bug report for it.
    Case 742156
     
    nickpappas, Nov 5, 2015
    #5
    ImpossibleRobert likes this.

  6. nickpappas

    nickpappas

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    Mar 19, 2013
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    So I looked at the actual generated lightmap and it does not have this banding issue. However the display of the lightmap in the unity editor and in builds behaves this way out of the box. I double checked the texture settings and didnt see any red flags, Its uncompressed and I disabled mipmaps. banding_display.png
     
    nickpappas, Nov 5, 2015
    #6

  7. Gokcan

    Gokcan

    Joined:
    Aug 15, 2013
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    289
    I always have these types of bandings and I could not solve why it happens in dark scenes. Then I said I think it is about monitor not unity!
     
    Gokcan, Nov 6, 2015
    #7

  8. Deleted User

    Deleted User

    Guest

    From what I'm seeing, this may be caused by texture compression. Is the banding still present if you choose "Truecolor" in the texture's import settings? (See attached screenshot).
     

    Attached Files:

    Deleted User, Nov 6, 2015
    #8

  9. AcidArrow

    AcidArrow

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    Also, to expand on my first post, I believe having hdr enabled on the camera changes the way the lightmaps are decoded (it definitely happens for the precompute, I'm not 100% sure if it's the same for the baked lightmaps), so it could reduce banding.
     
    AcidArrow, Nov 6, 2015
    #9

  10. nickpappas

    nickpappas

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    Mar 19, 2013
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    This is not the monitor, Video card nor Texture compression. Have you guys even looked at this in Unity beta5 before replying? This does not happen in Beta 4 or any Beta version before that. It's a bug. And its a really nasty one.
     
    nickpappas, Nov 9, 2015
    #10

  11. Alex-Lian

    Alex-Lian

    Guest

    The bug is in our processing queue for evaluating the repro...
     
    Alex-Lian, Nov 9, 2015
    #11

  12. SpiriTx

    SpiriTx

    Graphics QA

    Joined:
    Apr 12, 2012
    Posts:
    252
    Great catch, repro'ed and forwarded to devs
     
    SpiriTx, Nov 10, 2015
    #12