UPGEN Lighting (Standard, HDRP, URP)

Ok. As far as you already discovered UpgenLighting.shader =) .. you can use it to debug your scene.
There is few debug code lines at lines 72-74
// DEBUG
//return float4(cos(wpos * 100), 1);
//return float4(depth, depth, depth, 1);
//return float4(normal, 1);
Just uncomment to see what info you has in normals and depth buffers.
First commented line should draw regular grid to check if shader reconstruct world coordinates correctrly.

 

haha yeah, been using that already, wanted to make sure the models on my end was fine before complaining to you =)

The normal looks properly flat on the ground here as you can see: (not sure if normal is correct but at least it's properly flat)




I don't understand how to read it, but here's the results:



And strange, when I uncommented to debug Depth texture, it is pure solid white.

 

Ok that two screenshots looks correct. Seems problem is in the depth buffer, it should not be solid white.
Maybe you can send me your project with this scene or some other small scene, so I can try to reproduce your problem.

 

I just tested this in 2021.2.3f1, using the default test scene, added a red Fast light there. It's using ONLY upgen as the renderer feature, fresh install of Upgen.
You can see that it's hitting the side wall, and only half the floor.







The depth map returns at least, but it doesn't seem to be what's causing the issue.

 

hello, me again.
I'm trying to use UPGen built-in with my FPS project, in unity 2019.4 builtin deferred pipeline.
The outline shader is implemented along with a forward surface shader on the object, and it weirdly gets affected by UPGen, seems like these outline pixels get lighted by the gbuffer. But the forward base shader works right.
I thought it was due to the depthnormal texture because outline didn't write the depth. I try to custom the Internal-DepthNormalsTexture.shader and expand the vertex like the outline, but the problem is still here.

The ouline shader is something like below.

Code (CSharp):

1.         Tags{ "RenderType" = "Outline"  "Queue" = "Geometry+0" }
2.         ZWrite On
3.         Cull Front
4.         CGPROGRAM
5.         #pragma target 3.0
6.         #pragma surface outlineSurf Outline nofog  keepalpha noshadow noambient novertexlights nolightmap nodynlightmap nodirlightmap nometa noforwardadd vertex:outlineVertexDataFunc
7.      
8.         struct Input {
9.             half filler;
10.         };
11.         float4 _ASEOutlineColor;
12.         float _ASEOutlineWidth;
13.         void outlineVertexDataFunc( inout appdata_full v, out Input o )
14.         {
15.             UNITY_INITIALIZE_OUTPUT( Input, o );
16.             v.vertex.xyz += ( v.normal * _ASEOutlineWidth );
17.         }
18.         inline half4 LightingOutline( SurfaceOutput s, half3 lightDir, half atten ) { return half4 ( 0,0,0, s.Alpha); }
19.         void outlineSurf( Input i, inout SurfaceOutput o )
20.         {
21.             o.Emission = _ASEOutlineColor.rgb;
22.             o.Alpha = 1;
23.         }
24.         ENDCG

I've tried different geometry outline , write my own, ASE outline, Realtoon Shader outline and other toon shader outlines. It all have this problem. (I have postprocess outline and due to particle effect issue I can't let them affect forward rendered object)
This problem is probably out of the UPGen scale. But if you have ever met this issue, can you give me some direction how to let forward outline works good with UPGen?
@mm_ASH

 

Sounds like a problem. Will try to reproduce.

 

Hi there!
Forward geometry if a problem described in manual as not-supported. UPGEN Lighting as a screen space effect use GBuffer data to calculate lighting. Forward geometry does not write anything to GBuffer and enabling DepthNormal texture will not help - lighting will be writed on top of it. Easiest solution here is to use post effect based outline.

 

I kind of figured 2 ways to workaround.


1, I find that the shadowcast will affect depth at very ealy of frame debugger. So if the outline surface shader has a "addshadow" paramemter, it will write into the depth and work correct with UPGen. but will cast shadows. And adding shadow caster to a outline vertex/fragment should may not be so simple.

2, I add a command buffer to CameraEvent.AfterGBuffer to save the depth into my own renderer texture. (Tried to Blit the internal _CameraDepthTexture, but can't get it out, i don't know why, so I have to save the depth by my own)
And add an custom "OutLine" render type to Internal-DepthNormalsTexture.shader to write depth. But this only affects _CameraDepthNormalsTexture.
Then in the UPGen post shader, compare the two depth texture to see if there is difference. the pixel with difference means it's behind an forward opaque object and will be ignored. Something like below

Code (CSharp):

1. float depth4= tex2D(_CameraDepthNormalsTexture, uv);
2.         float3 decodedNormal;
3.         float decodedDepth;
4.         DecodeDepthNormal(depth4, decodedDepth, decodedNormal);
5.         float realDepth = Linear01Depth(decodedDepth);
6.  
7. float4 deferredDepth = SAMPLE_DEPTH_TEXTURE(_LastDepthTexture, sampler_LastDepthTexture, uv);
8.    
9. float offset = abs(realDepth - deferredDepth.r);
10. float hasColor = step(offset, 0.01);
11.  
12. float3 targetColor = color.rgb + albedo.rgb * light * albedo.a * _Intensity;
13.   float3 result = lerp(color.rgb, targetColor.rgb, hasColor);
14.  
15. return float4(result.rgb, 1);

It works correctly like this, with UPGen working. But I still need to check the GPU cost and review the workflow to make it tiny and clean.

 

Sounds interesting but screen space outline will be 100% faster than rendering to GBuffer and then DepthNormalsTexture

 

Yeah but post process outline has its own issue with forward objects. like a smoke or a fire, you could draw the smoke's outline or ignore it and draw the deferred object outline behind the smoke. both ain't exact correct.
Post outline also needs a lot detailed workaround

 

Thanks ASH, your latest hot fix works now in URP 12.1 Unity 2021.2.4f1, looking great!

 

I got the same error, Has anyone managed to fix this?

Unity 2020.3.23f1
XR Plugin 4.0.1
Oculus XR Plugin 1.11.0
Stereo Rendering Mode : Multi Pass

Running on Oculus Quest 2

 

just to remind - with URP unity 2020 is not supported, you need 2021.1

 

I would like to mention that while it is not supported and it looks more washed out since it doesn't take normals into account (still good for some toon style/simpler games), but it still worked for me in 2020.3 Unity.

 

I'm on Unity 2021.2, URP 12, trying to use this tool along with materials using jbooth's Better Lit Shaders, and am seeing some weird shadow artifacts:

I'm using BLS's 'fastest texture packing' mode, so the material's PBR data is packed into two textures: one for albedo/height, one for normal/smoothness/ao. The artifacting seems to have something to do with that second packed texture—in the gif above I'm adjusting the nsao map's strength up and down, which is why the artifacting is expanding and contracting.

Do you know of any fixes for this?

 

Hi! Unfortunately I never used this pack of shaders, but I know it is awesome, maybe will try it a bit later =)

UPGEN lighting applyes all effects on later stages of the rendering pipeline (after all scene is rendered) and use already rendered buffers to reconstruct lighting. So you can use any shaders with it, if they provide all necessary outputs (colur buffer + depth buffer + normals buffer). Just check information in that buffers. Usually they forget to write output to normals or depth.

 

Hello everyone!

For those who want to try URP + Deferred + UPGEN Lighting:
Just replace this file in your assets to check this mode.

Warning: this shader version works only with URP Deferred and does not works with URP Forward. So if you dont need deferred rendering support just use old one.

Looking forward for your feedback.

 

Oh you added deferred support now? Will this support objects lit in forward as well? Or only deferred rendered objects.

 

For URP deferred it supports only opaque and cutout geometry (forwad transparent geometry is still not supported in this mode)

 

I have opaque objects forced to be rendered in forward for some special custom lighting is why. Def excited to try this out tho.

 

Okay noted,
Thanks

 

Hi!
Tried looking through the documentation but no luck.
I use a dynamic day/night cycle and one directional sun light in the scene.

Would there be any benefit/is there any way to turn that unity directional light into one of your Upgen lights?
Would it somehow improve performance alongside it?

 

Hi. It will give some benefits in your case only if you ready to do some coding to adopt code for you needs.
Automatic ray-tracing for directional light is not supported, so you will need to place many fast lights and interpolate their colors during time of a day.

 

Hello!
We bought the asset for the fast lights, as your description on the asset store states:
"Under the hood, solution is based on the idea of making ultra-fast type of point light sources (10 times faster than standard ones) and using thousands of them to approximate light propagation for the scene in realtime."

However when I actually looked at using them as light LODs, I quickly ran into the 95 light limitation.

You cite performance which is fair for trying to draw every light on every pixel no matter where it is.
Do you plan to implement any form of tiled lighting?

This may not be your intended use, but the description of the asset clearly states a capability that doesn't exist. :\

 

Hi!
Nice idea about light LODs.

95 lights limit is only per frame not per scene. Your scene could have as much fast lights as you want. So, description of asset is correct. If you need some special behavior you can adopt for your needs function which prioritize fast lights for current frame.

Also I don’t think that asset needs tiling functionality - the approach how you optimize regular lights is not applicable here - any attempt to make it tiled will dramatically kill performance which is main feature.

 

"95 lights limit is only per frame not per scene."

And 95 isn't thousands, my point is that it is not even possible for this asset to show thousands of lights like it claims.
That's like advertising you can handle 1 million disabled light components.

Until I read the code, I assumed from "thousands of fast lights" that I could just use them like regular lights.
The fast lights are only useful at very short range, and only optimal when they cover a large pixel area.
They're hideously inefficient if they're small, or further than 20 feet away, hence why you have a hard cap on the light count.

I get the asset is focused on approximating GI and that's cool, but you should clearly spell out that 'fast lights' have very serious limitations and are not interchangeable with regular lights.


"Also I don’t think that asset needs tiling functionality - the approach how you optimize regular lights is not applicable here - any attempt to make it tiled will dramatically kill performance which is main feature."

Using a tiling approach with a compute shader ought to allow you to draw 10s of thousands of small or distant 'fast lights', which is your current worst case scenario and reason for adding the 95 hard limit.

Either way, I understand I'll have to write a solution myself, as what I'm trying to do has nothing to do with GI.

 

Considering buying it. Does this work with the Apollo URP Shaders asset? And will it work in the Editor 2020 version?

 

I haven't tested it with Apollo shaders.
As for Unity version for UPGEN Lighting URP - minimum is a 2021.1

 

Seems SSS material in HDRP lightened by fast light isn't right...

 

Ensure that it writes to all required buffers (normals, depth and so on).

 

Hello, it was working but now RayTraced point light demo (standard) gives an error:

NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
UL_RayTracedGI.GenerateRenderData () (at Assets/UPGEN/Lighting/Scripts/UL_RayTracedGI.cs:83)
UL_Renderer.SetupForCamera (UnityEngine.Camera camera, UnityEngine.MaterialPropertyBlock properties) (at Assets/UPGEN/Lighting/Scripts/Utils/UL_Renderer.cs:85)
UPGEN_Lighting_Renderer.Render (UnityEngine.Rendering.PostProcessing.PostProcessRenderContext context) (at Assets/UPGEN/Lighting/Scripts/UPGEN_Lighting.cs:30)
UnityEngine.Rendering.PostProcessing.PostProcessLayer.RenderList (System.Collections.Generic.List`1[T] list, UnityEngine.Rendering.PostProcessing.PostProcessRenderContext context, System.String marker) (at Library/PackageCache/com.unity.postprocessing@2.3.0/PostProcessing/Runtime/PostProcessLayer.cs:1110)
UnityEngine.Rendering.PostProcessing.PostProcessLayer.RenderOpaqueOnly (UnityEngine.Rendering.PostProcessing.PostProcessRenderContext context) (at Library/PackageCache/com.unity.postprocessing@2.3.0/PostProcessing/Runtime/PostProcessLayer.cs:916)
UnityEngine.Rendering.PostProcessing.PostProcessLayer.BuildCommandBuffers () (at Library/PackageCache/com.unity.postprocessing@2.3.0/PostProcessing/Runtime/PostProcessLayer.cs:615)
UnityEngine.Rendering.PostProcessing.PostProcessLayer.OnPreCull () (at Library/PackageCache/com.unity.postprocessing@2.3.0/PostProcessing/Runtime/PostProcessLayer.cs:462)
UnityEngine.GUIUtilityrocessEvent(Int32, IntPtr)

Reimporting doesn't help. Fast point lights still work. I did all the installation steps (linear color space, deferred, etc.).

Edit: I ran some of non-raytraced examples a few times. Then, the raytraced example magically works again.

 

[Bug Report] Title: Problem with transparent rendering using Unity Recorder
OS: Windows 10
Unity: 2020.3.23f1
UPGEN: v2.0
Recorder: v3.0.3

How to reproduce:
- Create an outdoor scene in HDRP with a cube.
- Change Camera background type to Color.

- Add UPGEN_Lighting to Sky and fog volume, Enable and set intensity to 1

- Add a fast light to the scene. (left side of the cube in below render is lit by fast light)
- Add a recorder to render single frame with target frame 1, source to targeted camera and MainCamera, Media format to PNG and include alpha:

- Render results:


- Render without FastLight or disabling UPGEN_Lighting in sky and fog volume:

Is there any temporary workaround to have UPGEN with transparent background? We have some detailed scene already lit by UPGEN and I need to render transparent version of them.

 

Hi! To be hones I have no experience with recorder. But maye it is possible to render image with transparency and use it's alpha channel with non-transparent image with correct lighting? It seems that this effect is just not included by recorder or some frame-buffer texture is not rendered correctly (there is no any camera-type filters inside UPGEN Lighting to provoke this situation).

 

Hmmm, this seems to be a good workaround, Thank you very much for the great asset and support!
Have a great journey ✌

 

Hello!
Looks like I have the same shading/normal problems like iceb_
Problems appeared after updating to 2021.2 and URP 12.1 (forward)
If "Apply SSAO" it is even more broken and lights turn green

According to iceb_ there is a hotfix? - i would love to try that




regards

 

Thank you for reaching out - unfortunately that does not seem to help.

Does this image help to illustrate my problem?
I cranked up the intensity and Range here because we need a bigger value range in our project.
The light source is above the ground. Something seems to be wrong with the normals. When applying SSAO it also seems to affect the color.

 

My scenes are typical large scenes with 2 to 8 large buildings and the camera is aerial views, so I would need good sun light for this situation, but the camera also come very close to the buildings at times and I need to see great interior lighting from the outside of the building, and also from the inside look out and have great interior light and exterior light.

Is this asset suitable for my needs?

 

If sun lighting is not changes - yes. Otherwise it will be tricky.

 

Can this asset be used together with Magic Lightmaps asset?

 

yep

 

Any chance to support directional light in urp?

 

After experimenting a lot by problem disappeared at some point.
I am not sure what happenend. I made a fresh project to test it but had the same bug. Did a lot of switiching around URP packages and unity versions. at some point it suddenly looked ok again.

Fixed my main project with just a new fresh UPGen Folder...

Sorry for not being able to give more hints.. maybe a unity bug somewhere.. I am confused

 

not now, sorry

 

Is there any fast way to convert a point light to fast light? I can write my own convertor but I thought maybe there already is a way to do that.

 

There is a code which generates point lights from fast lights, you could take it and just reverse.

 

In case anyone else needed this, put this code in Editor folder somewhere in your Asset directory:

Code (CSharp):

1. using UnityEditor;
2. using UnityEditor.SceneManagement;
3. using UnityEngine;
4.  
5. public class FastLightConvertor : MonoBehaviour
6. {
7.     [MenuItem("LeMoonade/Convertor to FastLight")]
8.     static void ConvertToFastLight()
9.     {
10.         var currentLight = Selection.activeGameObject.GetComponent<Light>();
11.         var hdAdditionalLightData = Selection.activeGameObject.GetComponent<UnityEngine.Rendering.HighDefinition.HDAdditionalLightData>();
12.         if (currentLight == null)
13.         {
14.             Debug.LogError("No light selected");
15.             return;
16.         }
17.         if (currentLight.type != LightType.Point)
18.         {
19.             Debug.LogError("Light is not a point light");
20.             return;
21.         }
22.  
23.  
24.         var fastLight = Undo.AddComponent<UL_FastLight>(currentLight.gameObject);
25.         fastLight.color = currentLight.color;
26.         fastLight.range = currentLight.range;
27.         fastLight.subtractive = currentLight.bounceIntensity < 0;
28.         fastLight.colorTemperature = currentLight.colorTemperature;
29.         fastLight.unit = UnityEngine.Rendering.HighDefinition.LightUnit.Lumen;
30.         // fastLight.intensity = currentLight.intensity;
31.         fastLight.intensity = hdAdditionalLightData.intensity;
32.         Undo.DestroyObjectImmediate(hdAdditionalLightData);
33.         DestroyImmediate(hdAdditionalLightData);
34.         Undo.DestroyObjectImmediate(currentLight);
35.         DestroyImmediate(currentLight);
36.         EditorSceneManager.MarkSceneDirty(EditorSceneManager.GetActiveScene());
37.     }
38. }
39.  

Just select the point light and from LeMoonade menu, choose Convert to FastLight.

PS. As the light intensity of the point light differs from FastLight, you may need to tweak intensity to get closer to what you really want.

 

Hi!

The UPGEN Shader does not seem to work on Android at the moment (2021.2, URP 12.1.2)
Can you confirm that?
Any ideas why that could be the case?

the screen is just pure pink (shader error color)

 

I noticed in "UPGEN Lighting.shader" the #pragma only_renderers list does not contain gles3, so no wonder it is not working on Android. However, if I add gles3 the pink screen disappears, however fast point lights still do not work.
Any ideas?

 

Hi!
Pink square means that shader is not compiled and has errors. Which means that some shading features on this platform are not supported by hardware.

 

No ideas, sorry. Just select the shader in editor and make a screenshot of errors (if any). Then will come ideas =)
If you will see no errors, than you should investigate what information is stored in buffers.
(To do this you can use disabled parts of the shader)