Unity For Architectural Visualisations and Design

Hello everyone!
I've been learning unity for a couple of months and I really like it. I'm trying to use Unity for Architectural interactive walkthroughs, and I'm getting somewhat good results. My Background is Architectural visualisations with Vray and 3ds Max - I've been doing it for 5 years.The Cinematic Image Effects asset is great and with proper post processing brings the image to a production level. However there are a couple of limitations that I've come up to and I can't Get them through.
1.More Settings for GI
There aren't enough settings which allow the global illumination to be boosted. In architectural design the global illumination is very important, and it is more important than the frame rate. Unity's GI is good for games, but what I've found is that it cannot be brought to ArchViz production quality.
In the featured unity tutorial, they say that Realtime resolution of below 1 texel per unit is ok for most cases, but for interiors, the level of detail for GI has to be below 1 centimeter, which to my understanding is equivalent to 100 texels per unit. Also is there a way to directly control the quality of the GI, except setting the texel resolution higher? Setting the baked and realtime resolution high makes a difference - the GI is better, but it still isn't quite what it should be for architecture.
I've messed with the per object settings and managed to get rid of light leaks, but I'm not sure is this actually improving the quality of the GI.

Raising the Backface Tollerance to One seems to get rid of lightleaks. Is raising the Irradiance Quality actually making the GI better?
2.Implementing an estimate time left bar.
I've tried raising the resolution to 100 texels per unit and it looks like the bake would take forever. I'm not actually concerned about the baking time - it can be even days. What concerns me though is that there is no guarantee that Unity is actually baking and is not hanged, Thus implementing a bar that shows an estimated time left would be great.
3. Color correcting a texture.
I like the simplicity of Unity's shaders, but a great feature for design and Archviz would be to have the possibility to adjust a texture's color (hue, or RGB values) directly in the editor, without having to use Photoshop and overwriting the file.
4. Photometric light implementation.
Implementation of IES light profiles would be a huge improvement of Unity's workflow for architecture.
5. Better screen space reflections
The Image effects is great, but it has room for improvement too - the screenspace reflections add alot of realism, but they have quite a bit of artifacts, mainly that they disappear close to the edge of the screen. I think the issue with SSR, that they don't reflect anything that is not directly seen by the camera ( like for example the underside of a chair is not reflected on the floor) is universal and nothing can be done, is this correct?
6. limit for mesh polygons to be raised.
Now the limit for polycount in a single mesh is 65k. This is not enough for soft furnitures with detailed geometry, and the meshes get split. This isn't a big issue, but it would make the workflow simpler.
As I said, I thing Unity is a very good tool for making games, but if you have an intention to be used more for architecture, this tips would make unity so much better. The main difference is that for architecture, you won't be that concerned about frame rate and bake time, but instead you MUST get rid of all the artifacts and have the cleanest GI possible.
here's what I've got so far:

It would be great to get any feedback from others, trying to Use Unity for Architecture and from the Developers, thanks.

 

Hey, isn't anyone experiencing the same problems?
Forget about the rest - the most important thing I think is the GI.
I have to ask, is it possible at all to have detail in the Indirect illumination for this small detail under the handle :

I've been struggling to achive this kind of precision in the Indirect Illumination, maybe I'm missing something.

Also any more suggestions on cleaning the light leaks? I guess if I manage to increase the GI resolution they will dissapear anyway.
What I've found also, is that if I enable "Preserve UVs" in the lighing - object tab, the artifacts tend to be less, but the rendering time increases exponentially - is this observation correct?
Anyone using Unity for architecture professionally? I think it's possible, but really, there aren't many good examples of interiors made with unity.
This Unity Tech demo is actually the most proffesional Interior, made with Unity that I've seen. It is really nice, but again it doesn't look photo realistic enough, mainly because of the GI I think. Here, they've used only realtime GI, obviously, in order to be able to change the sun position, and the realtime GI effect is very impressive. However for many types of design and architectural work, photo realism is more important.
So I'm actually wondering, is Unity's GI system able to handle such levels of detail?

 

FWIW, you might want to take a look at Unity 5.6 (I haven't yet) but it does have a new optional progressive GI component which may solve some of the issues you're having. Also, you might consider trying some post AI effects as they can add just a tad (and colored) AI to a scene.

 

Also, tone mapping may help your quest for photoreal-- and you might try setting your lightmap resolution to something higher than 1.

 

Hey, thanks for the suggestions. What exactly do you mean by AI effects? I have tone mapping, screen space reflections and anti aliasing applied to these images. My Baked GI is at 100 texel per unit and Precomputed realtime GI is at 30 texels per unit. I'm using precomputed realtime GI in order to have the ability to switch on a light in the room.

 

In your scene, the volumes are rather large. I'm trying to get a good GI on very small details - like the window frames and the handles, have you tried that? Actually when you open a baked lightmap with 100 texels per unit density, you can clearly see that there is not enough detail on small serfices. So to achieve that I think the density has to be higher - and then comes the problem - I haven't managed to bake anything with a resolution higher than 50 texels per unit for the Indirect Illumination. It just stays on light transport forever. With a resolution of 50 texels per unit you have like one pixel for the whole area of the handle, so I don't see how it would work.

 

Actually now, when I reopened my scene, the baked resolution of the above images is 250 texels per unit for "Baked GI" and 25 texels per unit for "Realtime Resolution".
this is a 100 percent crop of the atlas for the chair. You can see that there isn't enough detail to get the lighting right.

 

AI meant to say AO. Sorry, typo. My bad. Let me know if you've discovered anything more on how to get better lightmaps.

 

Hey guys, i'm on the same road nowadays. Did you find a solution to your issue @Kalata8662 ?

Also i have another question: How do you manage your prefabs after you imported .skp file? I import my .skp file but they are not proper prefabs (not instancing. Or there is no prefab to tweak/adjust parameters). So i need to create a prefab myself which breaks .skp file connection itself. Thus i can't update my model via auto-refresh feature. How do you tackle this?

 

For small details like a door knob use light/reflection probes. It makes no sense to put the texel count that high just for a door knob, so exclude it from your baked maps.
10-20 texels per unit then is fine for indirect lighting on larger faces or baking of area lights. If you need, use on top of that realtime shadows for direct lighting and a settle bit of AO in post. Then a bit color grading and settle depth of field and you are fine.

With enlighten/progressive lightmapper you can't render on multi machines and so on, so don't handle it like you would do in vray/arnold etc. Realtime is all about good faking.

 

How you get vray material to unity, and did you reduce the number of polygons when you exported modeles from 3d-max?