Unity's Enlighten - baked lighting a big step backward from Beast.

Unity currently uses Enlighten for both precomputed real time GI and baked GI.

Precomputed real time GI is for localized ambient lighting only. You can change the color, direction, and position of lights and the ambient lighting updates to reflect these changes. Enlighten is currently best in class for this, likely with a lot of help from DICE who's Battlefield 3 was the first big title to use it and beat it into usable shape. Generally the resolution of these ambient light maps are significantly lower resolution than your usual baked lightmaps in part because they are being updated in real time. The precomputed part of the system bakes out low resolution surface normals and surface colors that are used by the system that updates the ambient light maps. Because precomputed real time GI only deals with ambient lighting it relies heavily on the quality of the real time shadows, and in Unity's case these are currently somewhat behind what other engines are capable of.

Baked GI is all lighting and shadowing baked into light map textures. They don't react to changes to the lighting, but are much higher resolution and can be of much higher quality than real time GI and shadows. Currently Unity is using Enlighten's light mapper which is clearly not up to the same quality as Beast.

To the best of my knowledge no other engine has used Enlighten's light mapper and it clearly has not had the time put into it that their real time systems have had. Beast came out in 2002 and has had over a decade of work put into it keeping it a best in class tool. Unreal doesn't use Enlighten's light mapper either as they have their Lightmass system they've been working on for over a decade now as well and is close to quality with Beast. Epic started work on it sometime in 2003-2004 I think in response to Beast as many people were using Beast for UE3 game.

As for the future, Unity has already talked about and shown off a lightmapping system they were working on with PowerVR which appears to be similar to Beast and includes similar features that Beast has but Unity 4's integration never exposed like progressive updating back and it's been listed on their future roadmap, though perennially pushed back.
http://blog.imgtec.com/powervr-deve...cing-behind-the-lightmaps-in-the-unity-editor
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B11iL4IgOgWLUTJWU1ZXOXFheTA/view

I don't know if Unity and PowerVR are still working together on this, but I believe they've mentioned it more recently and I seem to remember one of their staff members posting a video of it working on twitter not too long ago but I can't track it down.

In short Unity devs seem overtly aware of the shortcomings of Enlighting's baked lighting and are making strides to both work with Enlighten to get it better in the short term and completely replace it with something better in the long term.

 

Power VR looks really good, but they need to get this up and going...

 

Hey bud, I think you had a point... i ended up closing up all of the holes in my geometry so it would cut down any chance of light leaking through (the model is very low res, just has a crapload of pieces) and a better bake. It will take longer, but I am willing to wait to ensure better quality.Also, I put a small bevel in the corners of my walls so light will not leak through (in the real world, there is no such thing as a sharp corner. It is still round, at micro levels)

I also created my own custom parameters to control the quality of the light map. Some people want fast bakes (I do too), but for the level I am working on, I am willing to wait the extra time. This also helped the issue I was having with the black parts of my model, by setting the mesh it its own lightmap index, and increasing irradiance quite a bit to get a smooth bake. Also if you have things like walls with hard edges, I manually split the uvs in these areas

EDIT: Also if there is no skybox in your scene, there is nothing to scatter... hence the black spots

 

Okay, more problems with the bakes... and this time it is on the realtime side of things... I am doing some bakes of my scene and i am noticing that I am getting a lot of inconsistent lighting and I have been checking my model OVER and OVER to make sure there is nothing fishy going on. I even made my own lightmap parameters so I can have control over the bake quality... you see the front wall... ? It is MUCH brighter than the parallel wall (I have my settings low so I can get a quicker bake) and that is weird considering the irradiance is the same.

I am also using my own UVs which is something I really stressed when I created my models... does anyone know why this is happening...?

Final:



Irradiance (using real time since the level is enclosed)
Albedo



I also have the bounces set pretty high because the defaults are too dark... and I have a light in the scene, the sun outside with a sky.

Here is another bake with just Directional... the problem GOES AWAY!! So Directional Specular screws up my lightmapping... and I am logging this as a bug


Here is the bug report and I would look into this as this is a crippling bug... and it stick out like a sore thumb.
(Case 793974) Enlighten: Directional Specular glitch

 

@KRGraphics
That's weird, on your final screenshot you said it baked with directional specular, but the lightmap status are non directional

 

I baked it first with Directional Specular and it messes up the lighting... and once I switched to Directional, the problem goes away.

 

There should be a warning about compatibility when you turn on specular saying something about no fallback if hardware doesn't support it.


Enlighten is bugged and requires very high resources to get decent results, no matter how much I and my team messed with it, we could not get anywhere near the results that for example the Blacksmith demo got, and this was in part due to how much of a cluster mess it was and the absence of any decent tutorials especially on the baked GI part which was bugged for ages....literally.

However recently In 5.4 they are coming out with this tool which will be used to properly bake lightmaps:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B11iL4IgOgWLUTJWU1ZXOXFheTA/view

There is another demonstration of it here [Jump to 35:30 minutes/seconds in]:

While I see Elighten mostly used for Sci-Fi lightings due to it's ability to reflect and stuff, I am not sure Beast or this new one can do that, we will see.

Meanwhile I am having the time of my life in 4.6 with Beast, sub 30 second bake times haha and full bake resolution control.

 

Maybe you should release the model for us to look at, or try lighting a basic scene made from cubes and see what happens.

 

I saw this event and while it's cool, I heard it won't even be fully complete for 5.4... and I am getting on just fine with realtime GI.

I get that warning on my laptop, and it renders just fine too... just weird...

 

I've done all of the basic stuff... cubed scenes and the like and it looked fine. My laptop is running with a GTX 670m, with SM 5.0 support...

Here are the shots from Enlighten using realtime GI:

 

Have you tried to increase the resolution or perhaps there may be hidden gaps in the geometry corners. If there is a gap due to Unity's sheet unit system then odds are that there might be a tiny gap there if you zoom in close enough.

There's always per object settings to mess with....lightmap parameters....just too much garbage man....even generate lightmap uvw on that object, is static etc.

 

I am going to try and crank up the res on this... though on my laptop, it will take hours... I will save that for the final level... also, I am having issues with rays not reaching certain objects. I have a skybox outside the room but some of the screens are black... like this:



I ended up using an 3d cube and setting that as my sky, where I can control it's intensity...

 

Hmm that render appears to be correct as far as I know, the light is bouncing from the top diagonally downwards. Unless I am missing something. Try changing the number of bounces to affect more dim areas.

- That error in the console about the fallback....might be related to the directional specular.

- In the middle right of the walls I can see a seam with light blotches coming in, that's a gap in the geometry I think.

- That scene looks very simple, it shouldn't take hours to render so I would assume the scene geometry is scaled very high, reduce the scene scale by 10 times and try to bake again with the same settings. It should bake much faster now. Scaling down may produce low shadow res but that can be addressed too.

- Finally, the real time GI should only take a minute to render at most, it's the baked GI that takes ages since it's bugged and affected by your geometries scale. If you leave the real time GI at default resolution and disable the baked GI while disabling Auto-Baking how does that turn out?

 

why not upload the mesh anyway, just "the mesh" so we can help you check it? it's hard to find out the problem in your scene just without looking at the actuall files

 

This level is modelled to real world scale... it also takes a lot of time because I made a parameter with some insane parameters... it actually looks really clean... the gap in the geometry I am not too worried about that since it will not be seen in game... I have the Realtime GI res set to 4...

 

1 Unit in Unity 5 is 1 meter in the real world. So if after all that you are still having trouble then it's probably a Bug, you should be contacting support for your issue.

 

Great news ... I downloaded a patch for the editor and it looks like the issue with Directional Specular has been fixed. Yay. But I wish the things in the custom parameters where explained a bit more clearly... what does the blocker parameter do when used with Precomputed GI? Does it only work with Baked GI?

 

The lightmap paramters Is just another can of worms, baking the GI takes so long that any tweaks you could make would not be feasible to test due to the length of bake times.

I did a benchmark thread to test whether or not Baked GI was in a functional state for serious use, I could use your help to test it out with a snapshot or two:

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/un...me-test-our-your-results.404657/#post-2636507

 

Well, guys. Unity 5.4.1 is out and still no sign of this Power VR that has been floating about. It's September and I'm still dealing with painful baking issues with Enlighten, so much so that I've said the hell with it and not do any kind of lighting with GI.

I have levels that are modeled as light as possible, generated my own UVs, and the lighting is absolutely horrendous on interior levels (I have screens that are supposed to diffuse the light and it looks really bad. I'm using a single directional light as a sun)! So bad that I don't want a screenshot it. So has anyone else given up on enlighten just for this reason?

This should not be hard at all.

 

Hi there I am part of the beta testers for PowerVR and I can tell you it is absolutely amazing! It is a really good blend between beast and enlighten in terms of results. Most important of all it is fast and very easy to learn, you don't need to spend hours with lightmap parameters or anything it just works.

I cannot give an estimate on release date however and have mentioned to delay the official 5.5 release so that we can include it in there but even if it does come out then it will only be able to render diffuse lightmaps. It currently does not support normal or specular so in all honesty it still might be a while. That's just my opinion though and as much I like you are sick of waiting years for a usable lightmapper there isn't much that can be done but at least this time the lightmapper they have is comparable to beast and personally I think it might top it . It already is leagues beyond enlighten in rendering time and usability.

I mean this thing can render scenes in seconds with the right settings!

 

I'm at a point where I have stopped futzing around with Enlighten just to get my levels lit the way I want... it has also halted my development a bit where I need the lighting to look decent. I am doing a test on a small room with nothing but the damn sky and sun, and it is behaving like it should... realistically spilling into the room. This means that when modeling levels for use with Enlighten, try not to have holes in your mesh. And hand author your own UVs. It should not take faking this with an area light like it's usually in Arch Viz... I am already at my wits end trying to get my OWN levels to look this good. And after seeing that outdoor demo with GI, maybe it is something I am doing wrong in regards to set up... or the fact that I may have open meshes in my scene... I will need to look into this... But the fact that the bakes are very inconsistent is not helpful

 

Don't waste your time on this, you will only make it worse - as I have learned the hard way. I do have a script that allows me to export lightmaps from beast but as the author said it is not worth the effort but if you want I can send it.

There are a few plugins that are in development too that might *shrugs* offer you a workaround:

Hx Volumetric Lighting: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/67665
(Gives nice real volumetric lighting)
POLM Lightmap Baker: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/55406
(allows you to bake AO per object. You can also look up worn edges which does AO and worn edge effects.
The forum thread has a video of the author working on a full on lightmap baker just like beast)
Vertex Tools Pro: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/55649
(You may be able to hand paint the edges and borders of the walls to do much more, try out their videos)

You will probably also need this for cutscnes (you need this plugin and the other guys plugin (all free) to allow you to animate and record entire scene changes using only 1 animation file:
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/19622
Yes you can record any changes as animations including physics simulations.

There are other options you can avoid or workaround lighting and these can come in the form of image effects too.
With the right image effects the players eyes will not be drawn to notice those details.

Of course last and not least we have another *shrugs* work in progress:
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/64763

Ultimately though if you want PowerVR then you will need to wait for it. But if you really need to get something going my advice is for you to avoid it completely. With the right tools you can make great looking lights without any of the GI at all. Just need to use your imagination a bit, after all most of the awesome visuals of a game come from the right shaders.

I recommend Shader Sandwitch, the author is working on a *shrugs* realtime AO shader and check out the forum thread to see all the goodies. https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/41290

So ultimately my advice is to take your focus on all the other aspects of your game. By the time you have done those the new systems will be ready.

 

If you have light from outside to inside, you'll need thick'ish walls, outside walls/shell, and a high enough precomputed resolution like 6.

 

Now that is beautiful... and yes, my walls are pretty thick... is that room all one piece or separate meshes? That is something I couldn't do with my dojo level.

 

It's all one mesh.

 

Yeah I've found you want a solid mesh for good lighting to bake on interiors. Edge vertices all merged/sewn up, no floating or embedded geometry, walls and doors with thickness to them.

 

Not very easy to do unfortunately... my background is in CG and a lot of room modelling is done like in the real world... I would HATE to have to go back to remodel parts of that room because it is already textured. I was looking into this option called a blocker mesh... sadly, that is NEVER explained how it is used.

 

Yeah sucks if you've already done the modeling in a way that isn't good for light baking. I like to think of it was a similar way to modeling for 3D printing. In that case the 3D meshes have to be "airtight" or "watertight", no embedding geometry into pieces of other geometry, etc. The blocker mesh approach is kind a hack to fix geometry that is "light leaking" in bakes. You basically insert geometry in-between walls and junctions that will block any light from passing through geometry seams. So if you have an edge where a wall meets the roof and it's showing a small sliver of light leaking through to the interior, you would insert an L-shaped piece of geometry within the wall to "block" any light leaking through that wall/roof junction.

 

Thank you for that explanation, dude. Now I can just add blocking meshes in my interiors, though each separate piece is watertight. Not optimal, but I always approach level like an architect. Going forward, I'll have to make sure that all of my geometry is tight but I won't have any rooms like the dojo.

I cranked up the resolution to ten for precomputed baking (which I think is stupid tbh) and I've been waiting since 11am for it. I hope the blocker meshes work (they will be separate pieces)

 

Cool man. Seems like this would be an issue for designers who snap together kit pieces in the editor too, which doesn't quite make sense to me.

 

And the fact that I have to waiting THIS long and it DOESN'T look good is a cause for alarm... can't put an unlit level in a gameplay demo...

 

UPDATE: So after waiting a few minutes I managed to get off a nice bake before Unity crashed again... and it is intermittently too. And with a small bake res of 2. I can already see it now with high detail... though I would have to wait overnight for it. #lesigh I miss Beast

 

Hello Lads, I am checking on where this is I read through the entire thread again from last I looked at it I have spent the last year using Unreal 4 and am hoping to see that this latest version of Unity 5.5 has finally fixed this back to at least the same quality as Unity 4 had. What is the word?

 

Not a whole lot has changed on the lightmapping front in 5.5 I'm afraid.

 

Supposedly, that is coming in 5.6...

 

I too have had a frustrating time working with Enlighten. Mostly working with baked lightmaps. Many of my issues are about the workflow and feedback. If anyone from Unity is listening here are some suggestions.

1) It is difficult to know if my baked lightmaps are valid or not. Some scene changes invalidate the current bake, others do not. I am optimizing and can never tell if a performance drop is due to my changes or some renderers quietly switching from using lightmaps to lightprobes. Currently I am baking everytime I tweak anything in order to have confidence in my results. This makes progress very slow. It would be great to have some feedback about whether the lightmaps are valid or not and find objects that are no longer lightmapped. Several times I have checked code into git thinking everything was lightmapped (because it looks correct in my scene and game window) only to hear another dev complain that things are not lightmapped.

2) I would love to see what the UV charts look like. They are displayed in the lighting window Object tab, but only if I have just baked. Unity should be able to display these without requiring a multi hour full bake. It is frustrating to wait hours only to discover I need more padding for the UV charts of a model. These charts seem to disappear shortly after baking.

3) It would be nice to know how many lightmaps will be generated for particular Resolution, Padding and Scale In Lightmap settings. This is important information for performance. Currently, I tweak these settings, bake. Look at the results, tweak... bake look until things are correct. It would be nice to get this information without requiring a full multi-hour bake for each iteration. Unity must know this information very early in the baking process. The solution could be as simple as printing a debug.log statement to the console as soon as Unity knows how many lightmaps will be generated.

 

5.6 beta out suppose to have the new "joy" we have been waiting for? Anybody take the dive and run a test yet? I read this Beta is the last version of Unity 5 and I guess Unity 6 is coming at some point. I am in a constant state of disbelief that this still hasn't been resolved.

 

No, not yet. Presumably it will come in a later beta. Same goes for the mixed mode stuff.

Also there isn't going to be a Unity 6. They are going the 2017.x route (kinda like autodesk )

 

I am doing some testing right now and there is no way to bake IBL to lightmaps, especially for prefabs... is there a workaround?

 

In case you aren't aware yet, the new lighting modes and most likely the new progressive lightmapper will be coming in the next Unity 5.6 beta release (b2).

 

Set an IBL skybox as scene skybox and set Ambient Source to skybox and build your scene (bake). It's IBL light mapped scene.

Spoiler: Screenshots

 

I know that part... but I need the lightmaps for a prefab level (using UFE) and it is not sticking. There is NO WAY now to bake down lightmaps to prefabs

 

I'm looking at creating some assets for the asset store and was poking around at some others I have in this context of baked lighting (and even baked AO). This one is a perfect example (I think) of what you are saying. Below is from Maya, showing how they setup their UV shell, notice how the orange corner face below is an island and not seamed with the rest of that concave area. If it were, you wouldn't get the light bleeding through (light coming from behind the crate) in the second image below.

Not to trivialize the problem, but I'm shocked that this is so broken in 5 where it was fine in 4. I wonder how many 5 star assets in the store right now were great in Unity 4 but now worthless (when baking light) in Unity 5....especially the ones that claim "mobile friendly". It's 2017 and we still have to (and maybe forever) be meticulous with UV.

 

You can read Unreal Engine UV unwrapping tutorials to solve these problems.

 

Looking at your attachments...the issue resembles a lightmap with too poor resolution to properly shade the edges of those UV shells. It might also be a poor UV unwrap where the UV shell may have very small space within the overall texture map. I'm sure this can be diagnosed and repaired. I will agree that back with Beast, you could kind of set it and forget it and get darned nice bakes right out of the box. You didn't have to tweak many settings or fiddle with UV layouts as much. The auto UV options also worked really well.

 

I found a few things in a model I made that are probably the same as what I posted earlier. The UV's and normals are all perfect, but, a seam was still showing (below on the wall). All I had to do was to set on the Mesh Render for the gameobject, "Cast Shadows" to two sided.

Another solution (since apparently two sided has a perf hit according to the docs) is to "address it in your modelling program. Just select all of the triangles you want to be double-sided, duplicate them, and then flip their normals.".
http://danielbrauer.com/files/rendering-double-sided-geometry.html

 

I have been going at it for almost 2 weeks trying to bake this ship:
https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/mo...im-Industries-210CR-Fortified-Blockade-Runner

I am using realtime GI only just to get the missive lights in the interior to work. I have cranked up the resolution to 10/.7 Cluster size and there is **** ****** ***** Artifacts no matter what I do around the corners of floors.

I have tried everything, changing the scale, max distance, backface tolerance... modeling tolerance.. cluster size, resolution... scaling the entire model ..

I have also Monochromed everything all normals facing player and removed all excess backface geometry and materials. All normals are correct.

I can't get rid of the God Da*** ******* ******* Artifacts no matter what I do and it is driving me insane. I have spent over 500 hours on my prototype space sim engine and the ship interiors look like total S*** without emission lighting.

I have wasted way to much time trying to lightmap this model. I am wanting to release a video on my youtube channel of the past 500 hours of my work including the best pathfinding system ever created for a space sim.

But I can't do it with this S*** lit interior and enlighten makes me want to go on a rampage.

 

How will the ship move if it has static lighting?

It also looks too detailed for baked lighting.

 

I have no issues with that, the interior of the ship does not move technical, the parent moves which is the ships RB.

Im baking it anyway with artifacts and all im going to post a video soon. I'm tired of messing with the lighting, just going to continue programming.

I will post a video here when it is uploaded.

Here is a video from like 500 hours ago. I've done over 500 hours of work since this just havnt posted a new video yet because I was trying to get the lightmap right.