UPGEN Lighting (Standard, HDRP, URP)

Hi!
First of all thanks for you buy!
It use only default packs, just install them from Package Manager window.
This is how it looks on my side:

 

Damn, I should have looked in Package Manager's category "Unity Registry" - there is 2.3 version.
To me, this Package Manager is still inconvinient…

Thank you, man.
Enjoing your perfomant lights now!

 

Hi,

On some of my shaders the light makes an opaque object behave as transparent. This is just a sample shader from Amplify Shader Editor. Any idea why this happens or what I could do to fix it?

 

Hi!
This is because that shader does not write to Z-Buffer.
UPGEN lighting just renders on top of the frame using DepthTexture.
So seems that cube shader needs to be updated, the should be an option in Amplify Shader for Z-Write.
For this shader you will also have same problems with SSAO and SSR effects, because they also use depth buffer information.

 

Looking forward to UPGEN for URP. Hope it works with AO somehow.

 

Thanks for the reply. I turned on Z-Write and it didn't fix it. I wonder if it is a problem with the Custom Lighting node in Amplify Shader Editor? I will try and ask their support.

 

Hello, I've been testing the GI Textures scene and noticed if I swap the texture source on the material during runtime the lighting colour doesn't update to reflect the change, is there a method to perform this update once the texture is swapped. Otherwise, everything is great so far thanks.

 

Hi!
Add this method to UL_Rays.cs somewhere in the end of that class:

Code (CSharp):

1. public static void ClearCache() => _cachedRendererColor.Clear();

And call it after you change material textures.

 

Just a little quality of life suggestion. Usually when you create a new object in Unity through menus, it gets selected after you create it.

Inside of eUL_MainMenu.CreateGameObject()

Code (CSharp):

1. Selection.activeObject = go;
2. return go;

 

Good point - will be added in next update.

 

Thanks

 

Hi, we bought the plugin a while back for HDRP but going back and forth between which render pipeline to use, so is it possible to access to Built-in version if we contact you with the Invoice number?

 

Hi, sure

 

Hi, I see in the description that UPGEN use physics collider for light bounce.
My game use the new ECS unity physics.
Does UPGEN support unity/havok physics?

 

Hi
Did not tested it with new physics.
UPGEN uses standard Physics.Raycast method to proceed bounced lighting.

 

before buy i want to know if it works with unity 2020 HDRP , and... SSS, all volums effects from hdrp( screen space reflections, screen space ao , screen space shadows, planar reflection probes) all that to render animations using unity recorder to render animations in both normal image formats and 360 monoscopic and stereoscopic , i was having problems with SSS shader from David miranda to render 360 stereoscopic images, cause i need a realtime GI workflow. so i was using legacy pipeline , but i dont have restritions to hdrp ( i like it more )

 

Hi!
In 2020 stereorendering is not supported for this assets.
But you can contact me via mail to clarify details of your project, maybe we can find a solution.

 

thx i will think about .

 

Hi I want to be able to change the material properties of the surfaces in Play mode, but the change doesn't gets updated on the light.

If I change the color in Edit mode, and enter play mode, the change gets taken into account, I assume you do some initialization in start or awake, so how can I trigger that manually everytime I make a change to my materials?

 

Hi!
Yes it does caching of renderer colors to improve performance.
If you change materials during runtime you need to reset cache.
To do this after changing material you should call UL_Rays.Ray.ClearCache()
But do not call this each frame if possible =)

To update it during edit-time you can add e.g. main menu command into eUL_MainMenu.cs

Code (CSharp):

1.     [MenuItem("GameObject/UPGEN Lighting/Clear Cache", false, 10)]
2.     public static void ClearCache() => UL_Rays.Ray.ClearCache();

 

Can you do both? Use a directional light with ray-traced GI and also place hundres of fast lights?

 

Thanks for your answer.

Just one small suggestion / request: It would be awesome if the Lighting manager had a button or something to change temporally all of the fast lights for unity's point lights.

This could be useful for me when rendering Reflection probes, and then turn it off again.

 

Sure, will add such function in next update.

 

Can the GI work in open forest areas? and is the GI as accurate as the enlighten Realtime GI which unity deprecated last year?

 

Yes it can work in forest.
It is very inaccurate, much more that enlighten was.

 

How's URP support development going? I'll be instantly buying when it comes out

 

Unfortunately it was postponed to the next year.

 

Ok I hope it comes out at some point, but that's ok! Thanks, I appreciate the quick response

 

Hi there, the plugin is decent for what its worth I like how it bounces and all, seems a bit too inaccurate for a raycast one, thought.

The issue I have mostly is the LUX values, so the light has to be way blown up for the GI to even act, which brakes the physics by quite a lot, for instance my "flashlight" of 1200 lumens (which is quite high) bearly makes reflection on intensity of 4.


Latest unity 2020.2.0f1

 

Hi!
Try to play with value of constant BOUNCED_LIGHT_BOOST (UL_RayTracedGI.cs)

 

Thanks for your reply! Seems better, however, I've noticed some stuff as well, if you could point me if I'm doing somethign wrong or not.

So if I point the light at the wall, it reflects the GI quite nicely, and smoothly, however if I push it to the ceilling it doesn't reflect almost anything (really dimmed).

Is this a natural limitation or?

 

No there is no such limitation, it shoud reflect lighting. Maybe your floor has no colliders?

 

All has a box colider thus I ask.

 

Maybe colliders layer is ignored by raycasting?
Also try to add Manager component to your scene and visualize bounced rays. Maybe they just too dark?

 

If you are experiencing "pink triangle" problem - this happens because Unity did not compiled shader code correctly, you need just reimport it .

 

v1.6
* Manager: new button to Create/Destroy set of Point Lights from internal rays
* Ray-Traced GI: Increased Maximum value of RaysMatrixSize from 15 to 25

Before baking reflection probes you can substitute UPGEN lighting with a set of Point Lights. To do this you should create a Manager component (somewhere in the scene) and press the “Generate Point Lights” button. After baking you can delete them by pressing the “Destroy Point Lights” button.

 

TLDR: Fast point lights leak light through 0-2+m walls, maximum number of fast point lights seem to be limited to ~100. Using more will start fading out lights far away (and cap nearby fast point light range?).

Hello, I'm trying to test an idea for a dynamic fake GI lighting solution and am enjoying the lighting speed but have issues with the range and relative camera position with fast point lights. Attached below is a picture where lights were spawned in a grid on awake, with only lights shown in green turned on. Lights color is same as default directional light color. This is inside a closed room with a door. Walls/ceiling are green, ground is white, standard material. All lights are spawned at least 0.2m from an object to try to avoid leaking. The green points at the top of the picture are lights outside the room.

The issues:
1. Increasing the range of all fast point lights past ~1.8 starts to shrink blob of white and green on the floor and wall, respectively. This is intensity independent. At the same time, strange lights appear at the corners of the room (see top right of the picture) and increase in size as the range further increases past ~1.8.
2. Backing up the camera by ~ 2m (still staying well inside the room) causes all three blobs in the picture to disappear. This is range and intensity independent. Moving the camera forward by ~1m causes a green light to appear at the edge where the front wall and ceiling meet. In other words, it seems that point lights get disabled at a certain distance.



Edit: Decided to try spawning lights that could only "see" the directional light and inside the room (aka no point lights above ceiling). Got a significantly more realistic scene and think I found the reasons for the two above issues:
1. Seems like fast point lights can go through walls at up to at least 2m thickness (haven't tested higher). This is independent of point 2 below. Explains the lights leaking near the ceiling in the above picture.
2. Seems to be a maximum number of fast point lights in the scene (100?). With more than ~100, seems like fast lights far away will start fading? Also, below ~100, range can be increased indefinitely too.



Please let me know if I'm somehow using the asset wrong... Otherwise, is it possible to get fast point lights that don't go through walls and increase maximum number/culling distance of point lights in the scene?

 

Hi!
What you are doing looks really interesting.

1. I can guess this this light "blobs" are result of sum of too many fast lights in small area (possibly because of numerical noises).

2. When you moving camera back more other fast lights will get to your frame, so some amount of fast lights that are producing "blobs" could get lower priority and because of that not rendering.


Just to clarify few things:
* 100 fast lights is not a scene limit, it`s a frame limit
* fast lights goes through the walls - they are just a post effect, so they do not know about geometry of the scene

Also you can make your own implementation of lighting, which will spawn Fast Lights directy for effect rendering on the fly, not MonoBehaviour wrappers (aka Fast Point Light) which are more memory and performance consuming. If you need more help with that, contact me in discrod (Anton Tril#2467) or by a mail.

 

Thank you for the reply. I see. Performance is not an issue so far. Actually, most fps loss is from all the raycasting/math.

Is it possible to work around the frame limit by spawning fast lights directly like you mentioned? Right now, that's the only major issue. Is the "#define MAX_LIGHTS_COUNT 96" in the shader code related?

I'll probably move everything to compute shader and probably draw on the mesh directly if this idea is any good. At the very least, your asset helped me prototype quickly

 

No, it`s just a faster way to spawn list of all fast lights (for each frame), from which any way renderer will take 96 most important. Changing this constant to higher value should linearly decrease rendering speed of this post effect.
Yes, computing shader could make any thing better I am happy that you found it helpful. Initially I`ve published this asset to inspire other developers and share my humble idea with fast postprocessed lighting

 

Hi!
Is there a way to spawn more than 96 lights or increase the ray matrix size for Ray-traced GI at the cost of performance?

I'm testing it with a simple two-room box. One has a window and a point light to fake some sunlight (I can't use a directional light for a number of reasons that will be off-topic here). The first room receives GI nicely, the walls of the second room either receive it as well or just receive some light leaks from the first room. But the front wall with the entrance is completely dark, so, no bounced lighting. The debug gizmos show me that the majority of the upgen fast lights are spawned inside the first room and only a couple of them get inside the second one:



I've tried to play with BOUNCED_LIGHT_RANGE and BOUNCED_LIGHT_BOOST, but this doesn't help a lot. So I figured I need more lights.

Here's a baked GI for comparison:


I know that it's not supposed to look like a baked variant, but I'm sure something can be done to give this dark wall some bounced lighting.

Thanks!

 

Hi!
You can as many GI lights in the world as you need, 96 is a limit for one frame.
For your situation you should just place one fast light manually in the center of small room to achieve good visuals (same to baked image) and good performance.

 

I'm planning to close and open doors to such rooms in runtime. Ray-traced GI acts accordingly to these changes and cuts off fast light spawning in the room if the door is closed. It also does it procedurally, so when the door is opening, GI effect is growing according to the widening door gap. If I had a light already inside the room, then increasing and decreasing its intensity with the door movement would look strange.

 

Hello! I have been using UPGEN standard and I finally got it to work. What I have noticed is that I am using Toony Shaders 2 Pro ( this asset here https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/vfx/shaders/toony-colors-pro-2-8105) and for some reason UPGEN doesn't work with it. If I use the standard shader the UPGEN fast lights show up but not on gameobjects that use the toony colors shader.

My question is, is there any way to get the UPGEN fast lights working with custom shaders?

Any information would be amazing. Thank you!

 

hi!
It works pretty well with other shaders if they output all needed information to G-Buffer.
Maybe you can provide some screenshots?

 

Hello!

Thank you so much for your reply. I took some screenshots for your reference:

Here you can see an UPGEN Fast Light over the floor tiles not lighting up the scene with the Toony Shader.



And here is the exact same scene but with the Standard shader applied to the gameObjects.



Is there any way I can fix this so that it also works with the Toony Shader?
I am guessing the issue lies in what you stated about the G-buffer?

Thanks again and I hope to get this fixed!

 

Hi! Thank you for screen shots.
Yes you should check what information is written from this Toony Shader in G-Buffer, first of all it should output Albedo, Normals and Depth values. Seems now it does not provide anything from that. I am not familiar with that shader but maybe it has some settings to customize output for deferred rendering path?

 

Hello!
Thank you so much for the answer and the information!
To be honest, I am terrible with shaders and I would have no idea on how to even begin checking for information regarding G-buffer and its output to albedo, normals and depth values

I will try reach out to the developer of the shader to see if maybe they can help me with that!
Thank you for your help and pointing me in the right direction

 

Hello there!
I really love your asset!
Two features that I would like to see in the future:
1) Ignoring trigger colliders.
2) Work with unity's culling system.

Keep it up!

 

Hi!
Thanks for the feedback =)
Keep working!