Search Unity

  1. Megacity Metro Demo now available. Download now.
    Dismiss Notice
  2. Unity support for visionOS is now available. Learn more in our blog post.
    Dismiss Notice

Unity Realtime Reflections and GI and realism Exploration

Discussion in 'Made With Unity' started by HeliosDoubleSix, Sep 2, 2014.

  1. shkar-noori

    shkar-noori

    Joined:
    Jun 10, 2013
    Posts:
    833
    @FuzzyQuills well hell, cause I used Unity 4.x on Windows 8 [Workplace] and it never actually crashed, only a few times with out of memory, other than that, it never crashed. I guess I'm a lucky guy :D
     
  2. HeliosDoubleSix

    HeliosDoubleSix

    Joined:
    Jun 30, 2013
    Posts:
    148
    Clearly you are not doing incredibly stupid things with it like I am, that it was never intended to do ;-P

    Like say... spending 5.5 hours rendering 13 cubes ( Realtime so those lights are actually bright cubes and can be turned on and off and change colour etc, but it does take a few seconds to update at this resolution ), it is a bit glitchy but I rendered it with a low Irrad Quality of 2048 and low Irrad Budget of 96 but I am not sure if higher res would fix that or not as I am not willing to find out!

    Tadda a video, at crummy low FPS video capture though:


    Screen Shot 2014-09-20 at 09.27.30 am.png

    And you change Material so make the floor red and the light white with no rebake: Screen Shot 2014-09-20 at 09.43.42 am.png
     
    Last edited: Sep 20, 2014
    shkar-noori likes this.
  3. shkar-noori

    shkar-noori

    Joined:
    Jun 10, 2013
    Posts:
    833
    Brighten the floor and enlighten my way :D, this looks Unreal, I hope they do something with their own ImageEffects and give us another quality boost.

    I mostly test the Standard shader, Enlighten and the reflection probes, alongside PhysX and Profiler.
     
  4. FuzzyQuills

    FuzzyQuills

    Joined:
    Jun 8, 2013
    Posts:
    2,871
    shkar-noori and HeliosDoubleSix like this.
  5. Zeblote

    Zeblote

    Joined:
    Feb 8, 2013
    Posts:
    1,102


    What's with this light checker pattern on the floor?
     
  6. TrollHachem

    TrollHachem

    Joined:
    Dec 25, 2012
    Posts:
    65
    You mean you're removing "realtime" that is ... i suppose old Unity lightning system? Does that mean we'll have realtime GI in free? Or you're actually removing Dynamic Lightning from Unity Free (i hope not) o_O?
     
  7. shkar-noori

    shkar-noori

    Joined:
    Jun 10, 2013
    Posts:
    833
    you either use:
    1. Dynamic GI
    2. Static GI and Realtime.

    I guess they'll leave those two options.
     
  8. macdude2

    macdude2

    Joined:
    Sep 22, 2010
    Posts:
    686
    Did you already say somewhere what your computer specs were? It doesn't look like the system is quite fast enough for real-time rendering on your computer…
     
    shkar-noori likes this.
  9. TrollHachem

    TrollHachem

    Joined:
    Dec 25, 2012
    Posts:
    65
    @Shkarface Noori well , i read in there that you use Static for completely baked light , or dynamic for actual light , that means static & realtime , and realtime are going to be removed. I might be wrong but we'll have to wait.
     
  10. Pulov

    Pulov

    Joined:
    Feb 20, 2010
    Posts:
    824
    Shame that the precompute is that ridiculously long even for a cybic scene. Otherwise the results are pretty interesting.
     
    shkar-noori likes this.
  11. shkar-noori

    shkar-noori

    Joined:
    Jun 10, 2013
    Posts:
    833
    It's still in beta, on my side the precomputation never took more than 10 minutes.
     
  12. HeliosDoubleSix

    HeliosDoubleSix

    Joined:
    Jun 30, 2013
    Posts:
    148
    I said I shot the video at low FPS and it is at ridiculously high resolution for realtime, it is not meant to run this high really, also the way I have it updating the camera to match my editor scene views camera makes it slow as hell for some reason. That aside a 2008 2.8ghz x 8 cores GTX 670

    You can mix dynamic and baked, dynamic is the realtime GI, static is the realtime GI baked with ability to use area shadows

    The precompute was probably longer than it needed to be, I got similar results after an hour, and they haven't added complete multi threading yet so for most of that it was sad using 1 out of 8 of my cores. Again don't pay too much attention to performance it is early beta still :p and they are going to add even more settings in the next beta update.

    Just working on this now, The Worlds Most High Maintenance Hallway this shows the use of Box Projection reflections, perfect for hallways if not much else right now:
    boggle.jpg
     
    Last edited: Sep 20, 2014
    Zomby138 and shkar-noori like this.
  13. Pulov

    Pulov

    Joined:
    Feb 20, 2010
    Posts:
    824
    Kmon this is porn.
     
    TrollHachem and HeliosDoubleSix like this.
  14. HeliosDoubleSix

    HeliosDoubleSix

    Joined:
    Jun 30, 2013
    Posts:
    148
    Now this.. is porn, low res render, waiting for high res but Unity keeps crashing because it is just too shiny to be comprehended:
    shiny.png
     
    shkar-noori likes this.
  15. Zeblote

    Zeblote

    Joined:
    Feb 8, 2013
    Posts:
    1,102
    1885*1071 wtf is that resolution :?

    You could have at least made a 1920x1080 one :(
     
  16. HeliosDoubleSix

    HeliosDoubleSix

    Joined:
    Jun 30, 2013
    Posts:
    148
    Haha, I am just screen grabbing them, I will use the special ultra gigapixel high resolution screenshot option built into Unity when it is finished rendering high res, and you can have it whatever size you want :p
     
  17. Zeblote

    Zeblote

    Joined:
    Feb 8, 2013
    Posts:
    1,102
    Can we have 3840*2160 ?
     
  18. HeliosDoubleSix

    HeliosDoubleSix

    Joined:
    Jun 30, 2013
    Posts:
    148
    You can pay with me a tweet or whatever it is people do these days ;-P
    Huage.jpg
     
    Last edited: Sep 20, 2014
    Jingle-Fett, Zomby138 and shkar-noori like this.
  19. shkar-noori

    shkar-noori

    Joined:
    Jun 10, 2013
    Posts:
    833
    I think it would be great if you could do one of these scenes in Unity 5.
     
  20. Pulov

    Pulov

    Joined:
    Feb 20, 2010
    Posts:
    824
    wow and a thousand times wow. Do you expect from your talks that the precoupute will drop to a something reasonable and usable for large scale scenarios?
     
    shkar-noori likes this.
  21. HeliosDoubleSix

    HeliosDoubleSix

    Joined:
    Jun 30, 2013
    Posts:
    148
    I already did, was the first thing I opened :) I don't find them particularly interesting though, Geomeric's have already shown Enligthen in that kind of scene, and I don't think 'Sponza' is particularly taxing on a lighting system... this has however given me an idea... *ponders*

    I expect GI calculations will always be unreasonable as soon as it gets faster I will demand more quality of it, because I am unreasonable. It all depends what you are comparing it to and how you define acceptable. Given you can change the precompute quality on a per object basis you can easily do a huge city size scene at lower quality and then have an interior at high, you can also use additive loading to join multiple separate parts of your level together and have the GI some how flow between them ( this I have not tried yet so may misunderstand ) but sounds like this would allow you to bake separate isolated parts of your scene individually without having to rebake everything. Also they are going to add LAN and Cloud rendering for it so you can subscribe to a service and have a huge server farm render your GI for you. And it will get faster, and then they will at some point add in PowerVR ( based on Brazil render ) support for baking which should round it all off ( as it will be faster / higher quality at baking the static stuff than Enlighten and I think uses GPU and CPU? ) and then they will add GPU support to Enlighten in a year or two? for real realtime GI without any precompute at all... in theory, so really you can work in low res and then every night leave it doing a high quality pass either on your machine or on the Cloud/Lan, at least now after spending a long time baking you can still play with materials and lights without re baking, which is incredibly useful.
     
    shkar-noori likes this.
  22. kurylo3d

    kurylo3d

    Joined:
    Nov 7, 2009
    Posts:
    1,123
    Hey helios, I am just curious, but those screen space reflections. I havent tried em yet, but is there a way to make them stronger depending on the angle u view them at? Like a puddle or car paint would have. I'm talkn about the ones from livenda.
     
  23. Realsmile

    Realsmile

    Joined:
    Sep 2, 2014
    Posts:
    8
    Very nice work, you could do some awesome wallpapers! Full HD please. :D
     
  24. FuzzyQuills

    FuzzyQuills

    Joined:
    Jun 8, 2013
    Posts:
    2,871
    @Realsmile: Now there is a nice idea! :) Of course, once U5 comes out, we can make our own wallpapers... ;)
     
  25. Reanimate_L

    Reanimate_L

    Joined:
    Oct 10, 2009
    Posts:
    2,788
    What....!!!???
     
  26. TrollHachem

    TrollHachem

    Joined:
    Dec 25, 2012
    Posts:
    65
    @rea Application.CaptureScreenshot("Name of file",Supersampling factor); for example , you have a 1920X1080 window running and you put 4 in Supersampling , you'll get a 7680X4320 Screenshot
     
    shkar-noori likes this.
  27. Reanimate_L

    Reanimate_L

    Joined:
    Oct 10, 2009
    Posts:
    2,788
    Oohhh....that's new...is it unity 5 only???
     
    shkar-noori likes this.
  28. TrollHachem

    TrollHachem

    Joined:
    Dec 25, 2012
    Posts:
    65
  29. HeliosDoubleSix

    HeliosDoubleSix

    Joined:
    Jun 30, 2013
    Posts:
    148
    No it was in 4, but sadly it did not work with my scene as I use a lot of Post Effects which kinda break it. So I had to just make my Editor window as big as possible and screen grab it :-D

    The effect you are talking about would be Fresnel effect, I have not noticed any built in control for that actually, though the whole thing doesn't work properly in the Unity 5 beta so I have not spent any time calibrating it. FYI The hallway render I did did not use Candela at all, just standard shader stuff.
     
    shkar-noori likes this.
  30. kurylo3d

    kurylo3d

    Joined:
    Nov 7, 2009
    Posts:
    1,123
    I realize this... i guess i was just curious about candela since i plan on using it and have been to busy to try. I have heard that it goess off the specularity of objects, but im curious if that means a shader with fresnal would react to candela based on that shaders specularity from an angle. If you know what i mean...

    Either that or it was alpha of the scene.. i dont know.
     
    Last edited: Sep 22, 2014
    shkar-noori likes this.
  31. HeliosDoubleSix

    HeliosDoubleSix

    Joined:
    Jun 30, 2013
    Posts:
    148
    Ok that's hall security sorted out
    I need to start taking the textures and scuffing / dirtying them up now and adding built in Ambient Occlusion so it self shadows basically. Oh and yes a reflection on the floor, but Candela refuses to work at all right now in the beta. Phew
    Tall.jpg
    roboto.jpg

    ( The robot is treated like a normal dynamic object and can move around like it would in a game using light probes to light it from the GI )
     
  32. Reanimate_L

    Reanimate_L

    Joined:
    Oct 10, 2009
    Posts:
    2,788
    Dayum......dude...that was pretty cool. When unity 5 public beta released we need a sticky thread where people can post and share Tips Trick and Picture of Hi Quality Rendering....
     
  33. Zeblote

    Zeblote

    Joined:
    Feb 8, 2013
    Posts:
    1,102
    The reflection on the ceiling looks wrong.
     
  34. FuzzyQuills

    FuzzyQuills

    Joined:
    Jun 8, 2013
    Posts:
    2,871
    @Zeblote: Looks right to me... :D

    @HeliosDoubleSix: That would have to be the most amazing gun-bot I have ever seen! :eek: Looks like something off portal though... :D
     
  35. Zomby138

    Zomby138

    Joined:
    Nov 3, 2009
    Posts:
    659
    The reflections obviously don't look 100 percent accurate, but the overall impression is incredibly beautiful.

    Is that light an area light behind a geometry mesh? Looks like it's casting very impressive real time shadows.

    the reflection of the wall light in the bottom right corner has a really strange shape occluding it. Any idea what's causing this? Maybe something like the robot was in the way when you baked the reflection probe?
     
  36. FuzzyQuills

    FuzzyQuills

    Joined:
    Jun 8, 2013
    Posts:
    2,871
    @Zomby138: as for your last assumption, it is probably a glitch in U5 beta, but I di agree with the weird shape. dat shadow... is too ominous! :D

    As for the rest of it... again, it gets... this! vv
    View attachment 113103

    On second thought, though, this WHOLE THREAD deserves the above link, alongside Unity 5!
     
  37. shkar-noori

    shkar-noori

    Joined:
    Jun 10, 2013
    Posts:
    833
    *SPEECHLESS*...

    I hope they do something about the reflection probes in the next beta.... cause if they fix the reflections.... it's the go-go engine to me.
     
  38. HeliosDoubleSix

    HeliosDoubleSix

    Joined:
    Jun 30, 2013
    Posts:
    148
    Please do elaborate, It seems a bit LDR/dull on the right hand side I think

    Yes I had noticed that, it is clearly a malevolent force of some kind...

    The Area light is outside and casting "realtime" shadows in, though Unity cannot do this normally, I cheated using 12 duplicated direct lights at different angles so they all contribute together and form a soft shadow and completely destroy the frame rate, but Unity are going to impving the shadow system. Failing that I could have baked an area light and got the same result but then that won't affect dynamic objects.
     
  39. J_Moller

    J_Moller

    Joined:
    Jan 24, 2012
    Posts:
    7
    That looks really good Helios. What image effects are you using?
     
  40. Pulov

    Pulov

    Joined:
    Feb 20, 2010
    Posts:
    824
    Hmm awesomic.

    I asume that the reflections occur only for the area light elements. Same as happens with the livendas area lights, I wonder if the area lights are so cheap to render, wouldnt it be a good idea to have the main elements set as area lights with very low emiting value in order to have the main shapes reflected in real time even if the elements ro be reflected are hidden and this way get rid of the screen space limitations.
     
  41. 0tacun

    0tacun

    Joined:
    Jun 23, 2013
    Posts:
    245
    Looks pretty cool! Could you make some scenes which use more rough bump maps and show them?
     
  42. HeliosDoubleSix

    HeliosDoubleSix

    Joined:
    Jun 30, 2013
    Posts:
    148
    Indeed very awesomic all the reflection in the hall render are from Box Projection no lights are being reflected, I talk about what box projection is a bit in my blog post along with what image effects I am using. On top of what I already mentioned I am using 2 kinds of Ambient Occlusion and about 4 Anti Aliasing post effects on top of one another :p

    That is the plan, to dirt it up, scuff marks and such
     
  43. Zeblote

    Zeblote

    Joined:
    Feb 8, 2013
    Posts:
    1,102


    The circled area makes no sense.
     
  44. HeliosDoubleSix

    HeliosDoubleSix

    Joined:
    Jun 30, 2013
    Posts:
    148
    Yah that's a fault in Unity's system, I have complained about it a couple of times, basically the reflection's do not align up. Theres no reason why they cannot, it just will not allow walls with any thickness as all reflective objects must be completely inside the probe bounding box, which is daft
     
    shkar-noori likes this.
  45. kurylo3d

    kurylo3d

    Joined:
    Nov 7, 2009
    Posts:
    1,123
    Do they have a way to blend between probes cubemaps yet like that game remember me? With weights per cube map and all that? Based on location...

    http://www.fxguide.com/featured/game-environments-parta-remember-me-rendering/

    Scroll down to the section passed the middle of the page titled "Reflection System"

    Would be kind of retarded if poof the cubemap changes instantly... plus this method also would remove cubemap seems from room to room.
     
  46. HeliosDoubleSix

    HeliosDoubleSix

    Joined:
    Jun 30, 2013
    Posts:
    148
    Yah it is pretty crap right now in that regard, but they are working on it, and I think the source for it is going to be open source so.

    They will end up with around 5 different reflection technoliges from probes, box projection, Unity SSR, Enlighten powered reflections using the GI data, PowerVR doing full ray traced reflections and they will be blending between some of those to get the best result depending on the situation. And then theres using Area lights in reflections as the guy from ShaderForge is working on and Candela are working on, and then theres basically duplicating your scene upside down / using camera tricks to reflect your whole scene in a floor and such which I don;t know how to do in Unity actually, would be perfect for the hall scene. So what is that now... 7 kinds of reflection? 8? Shiny!
     
    shkar-noori likes this.
  47. kurylo3d

    kurylo3d

    Joined:
    Nov 7, 2009
    Posts:
    1,123
    Would be cool to have rain drops that reflect/refract lol with the upside down view in each rain drop :p... better then this transparent additive crap we get all over the asset store.
     
  48. HeliosDoubleSix

    HeliosDoubleSix

    Joined:
    Jun 30, 2013
    Posts:
    148
    You should be able to do that with screen space effects / special shaders, I have seen Koola do this with UE4. Though the standard shader in Unity has no refraction setting yet, though I know they are working on some special shaders to add to 5 for car paint and such, so we shall see. Though nothing is stopping you from adding it yourself, the very first Game Unity made pre v1 was goo ball and that did refraction :) Shader Forge does refraction but I have not used it yet, something I need to look into.
     
    shkar-noori likes this.
  49. kurylo3d

    kurylo3d

    Joined:
    Nov 7, 2009
    Posts:
    1,123
    lol yea, but i dont write shaders and am just thinking out loud. In either case... I just hope the guys over at unity get the message and following a winning method for the probe stuff.. not something that sounds cool technically but looks like S*** in practice.
     
    shkar-noori likes this.
  50. Red Spark

    Red Spark

    Joined:
    Jun 7, 2014
    Posts:
    13
    What tone mapper are you using, if any? I've been playing with Unity 4 GI and HDR rendering before and noticed that certain tone mappers coupled with some bleaching and depth of field can produce VERY cinematic look (namely Optimized Heji Dawson, as far as I remember). Try it out if you haven't yet.