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Using realtime GI for turning lights on and off.

Discussion in 'Global Illumination' started by wojwen, Feb 14, 2018.

  1. wojwen

    wojwen

    Joined:
    Feb 13, 2018
    Posts:
    38
    I'm prototyping a VR stealth game which is based on lights and shadows(like the original Thief). Many of the lights are stationary but need to be turned on and off. Can this be handled by precomputed realtime GI? It needs to be quite quick, otherwise it wont work. I tested it myself, but I don't have much experience with lighting in Unity and I can't tell if it's using precomputed realtime GI or regular realtime lights.
     
    Last edited: Feb 14, 2018
    wojwen, Feb 14, 2018
    #1

  2. YouDesign

    YouDesign

    Joined:
    Jun 21, 2017
    Posts:
    55
    Yes, you can. But quality of precomputed GI not good and you must optimize most of objects manualy for best result.
     
    YouDesign, Feb 19, 2018
    #2

  3. Stardog

    Stardog

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    Jun 28, 2010
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    1,913
    You can tell if GI is working by selecting a light and changing the Indirect Multiplier.

    The problem will be detecting if you are in the light. I don't think there will be an easy way to figure that out. I know you can do it with basic lightmaps, but not so sure about GI. I'm not sure light probes have a good enough API to give you that data.

    You can do Thief with basic direct lights too, like Thief 3.
     
    Stardog, Feb 22, 2018
    #3

  4. kemalakay

    kemalakay

    Unity Technologies

    Joined:
    Jul 12, 2016
    Posts:
    224
    Realtime GI for VR is overkill, if the scene is subtle, either use baked indirect mixed mode (where indirect is baked only and direct is still realtime so you can sort of get away with the indirect part), or just use realtime direct lights without indirect. Certainly, it depends on your setup but especially in VR, it's hard to get a good performance with realtime lightmaps.

    Thanks
     
    kemalakay, Mar 3, 2018
    #4

  5. ekergraphics

    ekergraphics

    Joined:
    Feb 22, 2017
    Posts:
    257
    Well, this rather flies in the face of today's CAD import announcement, doesn't it?

    My guess is that quite a significant amount of enterprise users will use this feature to runtime import models into a VR environment, and I don't know of any 3D models more complex than CAD models and runtime importing means no baking.
     
    Last edited: Mar 7, 2018
    ekergraphics, Mar 7, 2018
    #5

  6. FirstTimeCreator

    FirstTimeCreator

    Joined:
    Sep 28, 2016
    Posts:
    768
    Sure you can.. think about it this way.. in 2-3 years the "low end" gpu will probably nearly as good as today's Titan.

    Optimize the charts with as many solid components as possible.

    I have a question and no one will seem to answer me.

    I need to access UV chart controls via C# script. I need to disable "Optimize UV Charts" which causes artifacts and is enabled by default when a mesh is imported. Some of my models have 20-100 components and on most things curved i need to disable the UV optimization because it causes dark spots and it is really really REALLY annoying that it is enabled by default and i cant find any documentation anywhere on how to access uv chart control on the mesh renderer..

    I really needed to make an extension that will allow me to modify the uv chart controls via script across an entire model.

    Thanks.
     
    FirstTimeCreator, Mar 8, 2018
    #6