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What would it take for Unity to become the go to engine of AAA developers?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Arowx, May 2, 2017.

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  1. Billy4184

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    That has got to be one of the best shots I've seen in Unity, for various reasons, but yes it has the same effect I am talking about, IMO.

    I couldn't find anything really similar in scene and lighting, but maybe this is a useful comparison:



    There's something much more solid and contrasting that makes me think it may have to do with shaders themselves, but I really don't have a clue where the difference lies. And there's just a sort of clarity and depth in UE scenes that for me is very impressive. I would very much like to see it become possible in Unity.
     
  2. Billy4184

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    @ShadowK actually, I think the best foliage pic I've seen in Unity is the one you posted on another thread. It seems really quite close to what I see in other engines:



    You mentioned it used some kind of custom lighting and shaders?

    Anyway, this is the best I've personally gotten out of Unity, the water was done by me in Designer, but the rest are either from the asset store or Quixel's free stuff ... and yeah to me it looks 'flat'. I also messed around with postfx a lot, trying to make it as good as I could:

    swamp.png
     
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  3. Deleted User

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    @Billy4184

    That looks great and yep, I remember what I did.. That pic you posted was from a far earlier version, is Unity using inverse square falloff now as part of its GGX shaders? Anywho, that's what I used and a custom version of Nvidia's TXAA that also supersampled the screen to 1.2X..

    If you have something like this: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/37214 try it and see what you think.!

    I'm guessing here as I can't remember, but I think I found out Unity scales the screen percentage (amount of pixels) for performance reasons.. If you use the scalability options in UE it looks the exact same.!
     
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  4. ShilohGames

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  5. Billy4184

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    Anyway, I think SEGI is somewhat of a breakthrough in Unity lighting, it definitely lends a much more impressive 'depth' to the scene, but I'm not really sure how performant it is and I would much prefer for Unity to integrate it themselves ( of course, not as default!):

    SEGI in Unity:



    (Presumably) vanilla Unity:




    @ShadowK, that asset definitely seems to remove the fuzz, but it does not fix the lighting problem IMO:



    VS.




    There's a whole different rendering system going on there.

    Anyway, apologies to OP for derailing the thread, I hope everyone enjoyed the eye candy!
     
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  6. neoshaman

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    I'm following segi and it seems that the voxelization is what is taking the perf out of the shader, ie if there is a way to bake the voxel and stream them it would be VR ready. Further Proven by a little script hack some user have done, ie do not revoxelized the scene if you haven't move x distance (generally size of a voxel) and the performance are pretty good every so often (when voxelization kick in) even on medium card. The problem of SEGI is range, it has a small range not suitable for open world game, the creator tried to implement cascade but then it introduced trade off.
     
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  7. neginfinity

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    It would be great if you linked to some examples that demonstrate your "Flat lighting" problem. This way people would be able to downlaod them and take a look at them.

    From a brief tinkering with the new effect processing stack, it looks like simply enabling automatic exposure and boosting sun brightness produces a higher contrast picture.

    In addition to that reducing ambient light intensity decreases skybox glow. It is also possible to set it to ambient color.
     
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  8. Deleted User

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    @Billy4184

    It could be, I believe things like inverse square falloff helps but Enlighten is the best compromise.. It is far from the best lighting system, I've seen it in Unreal and of course Lightmass is far more impressive which itself isn't that impressive for a baked lighting solution..

    SEGI looks great but from what I'm hearing it's still still conforming to the same issues that plague most voxel based illumination systems. CryEngine compromised and Nvidia wasn't able to crack it, although as this demo shows below besides Brigade VXGI it is one of the best lighting systems I've ever seen. Shame it's too heavy for big game use..

     
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  9. zenGarden

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    It's an old version of Unity ? The bloom is too strong not soft or natural, and lighting also is too strong it results in too lmuch brightness and white color on the scene.
    Anyway it would look better with Unity 5.6 and it's new post effects.

    UE4 can do almost the same quality but it's real time rendering. I don't see the interested showing Octane or VRay renders ?
     
  10. Frpmta

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    That looks INSANE.

    On top of the much easier high quality lighting baking workflow of Lightmass compared to Enlighten, I think it has to do with Epic having some kind of superior secret underrated sharpening post effect akin to the Unity asset Beautify. Plus TXAA of course.


    I made this thread once:
    https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/c...ctly-what-is-the-beautify-asset-doing.457547/

    There's also this post in that thread:
    The original image reference of that image funnily looks blurry but still more realistic for obvious reasons :D
     
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  11. Deleted User

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    Lol!.. It IS Unreal, using a completely dynamic GI system called VXGI..! :p
     
  12. zenGarden

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    It doesn't look good , thje lighting and post effect needs tweaking lol

    What i see is a scene with a very strong lighting and the same scene with very different lighting set up that allows more shadowing.
    You can only compare using the same lighting set up for Enlighten or SEGI, this is not a fair comparison.
     
  13. Deleted User

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    At this point I've not a clue what you're talking about..
     
  14. zenGarden

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    The lighting tweaking to make it look better, it doesn't look UE4 to me or i seen better like your other pictures (or perhaps it's my artistic point of view ?)
     
    Last edited: May 8, 2017
  15. Deleted User

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    Oh I get ya, yeah it's Unity bloom on those pictures (early 5.X I believe)? The arch viz pictures are the one that was done in UE4 (by a talented arch viz dude) shows off VXGI well though.. Its been a while since I've done anything custom / modified..

    I've a new project in mind that I REALLY want to do and it's a lot less ambitious than my last one, so I might build them along side each other in both Unity and Unreal... See where it goes.
     
  16. Billy4184

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    I will see if I can put together something.
     
  17. Frpmta

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    If we analyze this video, I think we can find what is exactly going up that gives Unity that 'flat feel' while Unreal at times also feels excessively blurry and spongy.
    The difference between both engines rendering capabilities are currently definitely about small rendering implementation details.
    Unity only has to provide a default preset that looks like Unreal 4 :D


    Main suspects: GGX light falloff and PBR implementation.
    At 2:05, notice how the desk lamp looks more volumetric in Unity and flatter in Unreal.
    But the stuff on the table looks less flat in Unreal compared to Unity even when they are clearly low poly assets.
    Unreal also definitely has some blur from TXAA contributing to the volumetric look in that comparison, but it seems that it can be avoided by using the sharpening filter that comes with TXAA.

    There's also this: https://blogs.unity3d.com/2016/01/25/ggx-in-unity-5-3/

    Unity claim that the visuals are similar, but there is a distinctive difference.
    The same as Unreal vs Unity even if subtle. [that or the Unity AA is really good at killing IQ rather than enhancing it]

    And no, Billy is not crazy about that 'flat' Source Engine look. Youtube comment:

    Also, I would like to add how it cannot be stated enough the importance of an 'AAA' Preset like Unreal 4 considering even AAA devs have trouble getting the proper image effect composition whenever they try to go beyond the basics.
    As seen in this thread:
    https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/m...comfortable-graphics-or-is-it-just-me.470223/
    Would also help knowing what specific display model was used to calibrate the image of said scene.
     
    Last edited: May 9, 2017
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  18. neginfinity

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    It still would be nice to have unity/unreal examples people can download, test and convert to another engine.

    From my experience Unreal is picky when it comes to normal maps - meaning improperly done normalmap is instantly noticeable in Unreal 4, while you might not spot the problem in unity.
     
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  19. Billy4184

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    That video has an interesting comparison, but the UE one is blurred like crazy. That's not something I often notice in UE4.

    There's certainly nothing blurry about this:



    So I think neginfinity is right, we need a test case so that we can eliminate obvious differences in the graphics tune-up itself.
     
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  20. zombiegorilla

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    Distinctive? The difference is exceptionally minor, the shadows are a little better on the unity side, and there has better AA, which does soften the parts of the texture, but also improves it in areas. Substance painter isn't a game engine, but for the exercise of comparing tool output to engine display, it does a good job.
     
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  21. zenGarden

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    With Unity most users seeking good quality knows you must buy Alloy PBR, this is not very new, like Unity Bloom that is overriding too much the scene and should be like UE4 lot more subtle and more natural.
     
  22. neginfinity

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    This scene has very low amount of specular lights. It wouldn't be blurry, even if you plugged it into unity. Unity seems to have something odd going on with specular highlights, which has specific feeling to them, that's how you can usually spot the differences.

    It might be a good idea to use "Unity"/"UNreal" instead of UE and UE.

    Perhaps a graphic collab would be a good idea? I mean - model an indoor scene with a window, texture it in substance designer and then plug into both engines. Then let people download it and plug in either engine. See/compare results. I've been thinking about this kind of scene in the past, but I wouldn't be too good at this kind of work. I was thinking about fantasy alchemist workbench, pretty much - a castle room with table near window, a chair, some odd tools and mechanisms, and bunch of clutter in the room. It is a fairly big project, though.
     
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  23. Billy4184

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    @neginfinity I'm working on something:

    Untitled.png


    It's loosely based on the Stirling castle, although I'm going to go for a less busy look:



    Should be a good lighting study with plenty of room and light entry points. Also I want to make something that's realistic but dramatic enough to be relevant. Mainly stone, wood and some metal here and there.

    I'm making the materials from scratch myself, and they will be simple, and anyone who thinks it's not relevant unless your screen is crawling with nodes can go and make something better:

    Untitled2.png

    Anyway, I'm not in a hurry as I have a lot of other things to do at the moment, but when I have enough of it done I'll start a thread and make it available to everyone.
     
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  24. neginfinity

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    If the idea is to compare engines, try not to use complicated node setups or node-based materials in unity. Pretty much plain albedo + metallic/specular + smoothness maps.

    The photo looks like something that should be simple enough to block out. HOwever, fine detail and texturing work will take a lot of time.
     
  25. Billy4184

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    Yep, it'll probably be a week or two until I finish with it as I have a bunch of stuff going on. I'm going to try to keep the scene visually efficient but still interesting and varied.
     
  26. frosted

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    I absolutely agree with @zombiegorilla here. The differences in these are so minor.

    In all honesty, I think that Billy just wants to unsharp mask to 'unflatten' (like beautify). I would guess that in a blind taste test, users (even our toughest screenshot critic @Billy4184) would be wrong about which engine was which given various screenshots.

    I really like the video comparison @Frpmta shared above.

    What the video shows, at least to me, is that Unity is capable of producing equal quality visuals to Unreal. The difference is in the FPS. Some of those scenes Unreal almost doubled the framerate of Unity.

    There was a single scene where Unity outperformed Unreal (the garage door opener). So in some cases Unity's performance can match Unreal's. Clearly though, at least in interior scenes, Unreal's optimization is dramatically better.

    Honestly though, is the "flat" problem just lack of contrast enhancement in Unity's stock setup? The "Beautify" plugin gets rave reviews for essentially adding contrast enhancement - to the point where people have believed that Beautify was fixing some kind of inherent problem in Unity. If you just slap some additional contrast enhancement into the post chain, can you fool Billy into thinking Unity is Unreal?

    ____________________________________________
    EDIT: It also seems to me that (perhaps more important than raw FPS) Unreal's performance seems far more stable. Unity's FPS bounces up and down dramatically from scene to scene whereas Unreal's FPS seems far flatter.

    As a gamer, I tend to not notice differences in raw FPS nearly as much as I notice spikes and sudden changes. If Unreal's performance profile is flatter, then it may have a big impact on player perception (even if, on average, the two are equal). I wonder if this flat / spikey performance profile is part of the reason gamers complain about Unity's performance.

    As a dev, a flatter performance profile is also far easier to work with and optimize. If rendering has sudden sensitivity to very specific arrangements, it can be a nightmare to do scene optimization, especially if it's unclear what exactly is causing the performance drop.

    Just a thought/observation, I'm eyeballing these numbers, so who knows if that's accurate.
     
    Last edited: May 10, 2017
  27. Billy4184

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    Actually there was a blind test not long ago, and I was one of only two people who got it right, even though it was a picture of the inner corner of a ceiling taken from a meter or two away, in dubious lighting conditions.

    Unity is capable of producing better visuals than unreal, if someone doesn't really know what they're doing in the engine. It's entirely possible to make unreal look like crap.

    But in any case, if you're impressed by that character comparison, have you ever seen something like this:




    Well, the reason why we need a test case is so anyone can come along and prove whether or not the comparison is actually the best it can possibly be. I wasn't very impressed by it - I've already shown a lot of pics on this thread that are in a completely different class.

    How about you find the best looking Unity screenshot you can, and we will see how it stacks up? I've already shown a bunch of images throughout the thread that I don't think Unity could even approach.

    Sadly no, that's not the problem at all, it's a completely different one. I can tell the difference between contrast enhancement and good lighting, it's not the same thing at all - but you're welcome to crank it up and see if anything good happens.
     
    Last edited: May 10, 2017
  28. frosted

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    I know, you already know this is Unity and beautify so your brain will automatically assume the right image is just crappy high contrast.

    If you look carefully though, a lot of your problem with "flatness" aren't present in the images on the right. Everything pops, even the hay on the roof seems to have more texture and variation in depth. The corners and edges of the crates seem sharper, shadows are more pronounced giving the impression of depth.

    Is there really a "flat" problem at all, or is it just that Unity's standard shader is relatively low contrast out of the box?
     
  29. frosted

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    When I first upgraded from Unity 4 to Unity 5, I noticed that the standard shader kind of washed colors out. So I worked out a couple dirty hacks for putting more color back into the shader.

    Here are a couple screenshots of "stock" standard shader and my hack.





    This is not a 'contrast' enhancement or a post effect. The textures are exactly the same, the setup is identical.

    It's just a hack to make the colors wash out less.
     
  30. neginfinity

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    https://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials/topics/graphics/choosing-color-space

    ^^^ Maybe this is the problem?
    "Gamma color space" nicely demonstrates the kind of highlights I dislike.

    As far as I can tell "Gamma" is the default.
     
  31. Billy4184

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    Not sure why you want my answer, then.

    That's not what I mean by flatness. As I said before, the flatness as best I can describe it, is like a smaller range of luminance values that reduces the sense of depth and distance. It has nothing to do with sharpness whatsoever. The Adam demo to me has this sense - there's something very realistic, but at the same time it is as if the lighting information reduces my ability to assess the range toward any of the objects in the scene. It reminds me of CGI made with not-so-recent technology.
     
  32. Billy4184

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    I'm not sure if this is in reference to what I've been talking about, but it has nothing to do with it, although it's great that you found a way to correct something.
     
  33. Deleted User

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    I actually don't agree, mainly because UE4's constantly in a state of flux.. In 4.15 they've just released a physically based bloom post effect system (which some aren't happy about).. They've integrated things like distance field ambient occlusion and DFGI. There's all sorts of graphics tech that Unity doesn't have and it has a shader framework which allows you to achieve decent results quickly.

    The main issue is you pull up a picture from Unreal and you never really know what you're looking at, the arch viz pictures I posted were from a relatively recent version. Before that I'd never really seen anything come out of Unreal that looked anywhere near that good.

    It should be obvious for anyone with graphics experience that Enlighten isn't up to par with VXGI, Lightmass and SVOTI but none of these bar the baked solution have chance of running on mobile (also they have other restrictions). Enlighten is what we call a decent compromise..

    In fringe top end comparisons Unreal is still far more capable, but I kind of feel like we're missing the point by a country mile.. I recently played Nier Automata, in terms of graphics Unity would wipe the floor with it and there's some indie projects going on that to me look better than MGS5. So if we're fronting ahead of AA / AAA projects it's not really something one should be worrying about..

    Also I would happily trade some fidelity for a decent real-time GI solution, as it's handy for my project.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: May 10, 2017
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  34. zenGarden

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    Yep this is one Unity issues noticeable and not so minor.

    Enlighten would need to be replaced by a new lightmapping system, Octane ?

    Dive in Cryteck Svogi code and bring it to Unity lol
    Still i am not sure this would be do able without Unity source code if there is some specific modifications needed elsewhere.
     
  35. frosted

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    My question is, are you actually responding to differences in lighting, or are you responding to differences in color treatment. If you look at those two screenshots - the top image has the "unity flat" problem right? The bottom image doesn't.

    You posted shot after shot of Unity scenes where the colors are washed out, compared to far higher contrast scenes in Unreal.

    The question is, is there really a "lighting" problem, or is there a problem with the standard shader just prefering a flatter color pallet, that tends to make people feel that things are flat.
     
  36. neginfinity

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    Unity 5 switched to PBR workflow. Unity 4, as far as I know, used non-pbr lighting system.
    So lighting would be different.

    Does this image demonstrate the "flatness"?

    This is from article I linked in previous post:
    https://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials/topics/graphics/choosing-color-space
     
  37. Billy4184

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    Well this is the key - and I have no doubt that this is a wise decision by Unity. It's not like I want them to put in VXGI and blow up everyone's phones running flappy bird.

    But the problem is that when aiming for desktop, the lack of high-end graphics is an issue. I have good reason to think that it's better for an indie to aim at the PC market right now, and with the combination of Unreal's great performance and high-end graphics capability it's very hard to ignore the problem.

    Also given that indie projects are often much smaller than AAA ones, the ability to go to town with graphics features is a huge opportunity. Beautiful looking, short and sweet VR projects are something that I have been seriously considering for a while.

    And as always, if there's a way to produce the graphics that I would like in Unity, I would be very happy since it's in many ways a fantastic engine. For example I was pretty shocked at the compile time I read about in UE4, since I take it as a given that I can just tweak something and go.

    For an openworld game, I would not hesitate for a moment to just use Enlighten, it would not be anywhere near worth the baking trouble just to try and make it look a bit better.
     
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  38. Deleted User

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    I actually thought Unity was creating a new lightmapping solution? Some raytracing thingy? Well isn't SEGI pretty much following down the same footsteps? I know the creator hit a few limitations initially (not been following it since)..

    Some seem to believe SVOTI floats on a bed of roses with little to no impact to performance, but it does have an impact.. Although gotta admit it is very impressive.

    End of the day I still believe voxel based global illumination systems are just practically too heavy, whilst they generally look great they aren't particularily useful for games. CryTek, Nvidia and Epic (SVOGI) have all had a crack at it and none have made it a must have.
     
  39. Billy4184

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    It's not color treatment, it's lighting and quite possibly some shader influence too.

    I've used Unity's tonemapping quite a bit and it does not fix the problem I'm talking about.

    Too difficult to tell, most of those images are over or underexposed, and a single object is not really a viable test.
     
  40. frosted

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    I'm not talking about tonemapping, I'm talking about the color range of the standard shader and it's treatment of normals.

    In all honesty, I think @neginfinity and I are both pointing toward your problem. It's more about color treatment and less about lighting than you think.

    Although I don't think your problem is gamma vs linear, I do think that this kind of contrast treatment is what separates almost all the screenshot comparisons you've complained about.
     
  41. Billy4184

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    Please reference one of them, so we can be specific. Because I don't think it has much to do with it at all. I've tried both of those color spaces in my own tests, and it does not affect the issue.

    Here's an example of something that to me, clearly shows the issue I'm talking about. First of all, I think this is a fantastic work and I'm certainly not criticizing it at all, I am quite sure what I am talking about is related to Unity's lighting.



    Now on each image, start with your eyes on the right-middle, and move them toward the center. I have no idea where the reference image is from, but it shows a much more readable transition of depth, than the one on the left. And especially at the far end, the right image 'pops' (especially if you 'unfocus' your eyes a bit) because all of the lighting information together makes greater sense, whereas there are somewhat harsh transitions between objects at different ranges, in the one on the left. The sink stands out as something that does not quite transition smoothly from the wall it emerges from.

    The left image certainly does not have any problem with color range, in fact IMO the right one is too saturated with green. But the relative lighting information makes more sense.

    Anyway, I think it can't really be communicated verbally any better than that. I guess it's something you either see or you don't.
     
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  42. frosted

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    Throwing down the gauntlet: Provide a fairly simple scene with side by side comparison in Unreal and Unity where Unity has a "flat" problem.

    Post the Unity version of the scene somewhere. I bet you that it's fairly easy to resolve the 'flatness' problem by tweeking the color treatment.

    Enough with random screenshots.
     
  43. zenGarden

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    Yes it has some impact, but this should not be an issue in already optimized 3D engines.

    I don't agree, baking hours some open world map, or rebaking again because you made some changes, it's not what i really like. At least Svoti looks really good and it's fully real time, any change you make in the editor is what you get in game whatever the level is big or small.
    If Unity had this option i would choose that instead of Enlighten, for action games you don't need top notch real time GI.
     
  44. Billy4184

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    Far better than random words ;)
     
  45. frosted

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    Yes, let's take two scenes side by side in detail and look at the differences and how those differences can be reworked.

    Everything else is kind of bullshit.
     
  46. Deleted User

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    When it comes to what actually happens in an engine, it's always best to test it out yourself.. With hot reload it takes me seconds (although I don't use a "PC" as such it's a work station (Xeon)), on top of that there's BP's which are instant and there's scripting languages like Skookum. Material compilation takes a fair while though..

    End of the day, it's all the same.. Pick what has the features you need, make sure there aren't any game breaking limitations and stick with it to the bitter end.. Hindsight is a beautiful thing.
     
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  47. Deleted User

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    It's not about what you like, it's about how useful it is in context so both the game creators and the manufacturers can earn money. I tried SVOTI in CE5 via their landscape demo and it was hitting around 45 - 55 FPS on a GTX 980, whilst VXGI can't come anywhere near it ain't exactly useful for consoles..

    Hell Witcher 3 didn't use GI (just dynamic lights, IBL, decent post and a lot of artistic skill) their game looked perfectly fine to me..

    Not all games have to look like they're arch viz demo's..
     
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  48. neginfinity

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    I'm not seeing it. Also the word "pops" reminds me of "client translation monkey" from certain webcomic.

    The one obvious issue on the unity screen is low quality of reflections, which are especially bad on the ceiling. Aside from that, I'd say that unity picture has higher contrast range than reference photo.

    One more thing: Have you experienced the same "flat" effect on a different computers? It might be a good idea to check if the issue exists on different monitors/computers, and check if your own monitor has been configured correclty. For example, incorrectly configured color range setting on nvidia cards can create a very washed out picture.
     
    frosted likes this.
  49. LaneFox

    LaneFox

    Joined:
    Jun 29, 2011
    Posts:
    7,462
    If you want something to look amazing in Unity, then make something that looks amazing and put it in Unity. Same goes for Unreal. You can't make crap look good without taking unacceptable liberties in the rendering path. Each engine looks slightly different in their rendering, but the difference is not disputably 'more realistic' than the other.

    That's the vast majority of the solution. Bickering about how things compare to in Unity vs Unreal is literally useless without side-by-side comparison of the same content - which has already been done numerous times in the last few years and the differences are negligible. People often couldn't even tell which engine made which image. Quality potential is equal between Unity and Unreal.

    Content Quality is king. The content creators make the difference now, not the engine. It's time to start taking responsibility.
     
    Last edited: May 10, 2017
    nirvanajie and zombiegorilla like this.
  50. Rodolfo-Rubens

    Rodolfo-Rubens

    Joined:
    Nov 17, 2012
    Posts:
    1,197
    Wow, the op was "What would it take for Unity to become the go to engine of AAA developers" but the thread quickly became one of those Unity vs Unreal and about graphics in general.
     
    ZJP and frosted like this.
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