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

This is strange what resolution test was you running ?

This is what i am saying lol
I am ok with a good looking lighting for a game that does not need baking whatever it is Svogi or faster solution like Witcher 3 uses.

 

I looked this up, hysterical:



I agree. If there aren't actual examples, and we aren't looking at details, then it's all nonsense.

 

"Pop" seems very clear to me, it mean it's well define against the background noise, my first impression on that side by side image is that there is more "contact shadows" on the reference, also more subtle shadow on material. Basically look at teh walls, in unity the material is just a plane, in the reference you have many subtle shadowing and variation of angles, the drawer is not the same material and more metallic in the reference, the corner on the left of the elevator has ambient occlusion like shadow, the library on the ground seems to be floating because of a lack of contact shadow (not the shader techniques). Overall things don't look grounded and light and shadows don't seem to have a volume that would clearly separate plans like in teh source.

 

You guys do realize that the source is real life right?

As in a professional photograph of a real hallway.

The giveaway is the paper towel roll and the debris on the ground. The paper towel roll's cardboard isn't a pure cylinder, it's been flattened slightly and the debris in the back has started to dissolve into the water. These are not meshes, these are real objects.

 

In my experience, this is what frequently happens when people start talking about "AAA".

 

Does that makes the lighting less flat? It's not like those aren't things outside of what can be accomplished and hasn't yet ... The wall need a better normal map and maybe some roughness and occlusion variation, the other stuff can be faked in a various way, etc ...

Also the goal is to narrow down the difference in a way we can act on it.

 

One thing I do think is interesting... Here's what the hallway looked like without post.


In many ways, I think this image looks better than in the final product.

Another angle including post:


You can see a bit here that the bloom is cranked way up. The color grading is also very high contrast. I think in some ways the artist is trying to compensate for the slightly dull (washed out) colors by using post that cranks up the contrast a bit too much.

You end up losing a lot of the subtlety in the lighting.

Also - forgive a bit of the blurriness in the "no post" image. Whenever I upload images they get scaled for some reason and end up blurry. That's not the render, thats my screenshot uploader.

Artists original post/no post comparison is here:

Spoiler

 

Hey mipmap level can really kill a lighting in a scene, maybe that's one culprit I haven't thought off

 

Look close enough and you will notice it is as if the Unity one had no detail texture and the Unreal one does. Not that any of the shots is using a detail texture, but the way it seems the AA blurs all of the sharp closeup detail definitely makes it feels like that. FXAA on Unreal doesn't do that.

Surprisingly, It is pretty noticeable on objects from close but not far away ones.
Deus Ex Unreal scene:


On the other hand, Unity game Pamela is damn beautiful even if the game still has that 'flat' look:



Also, I didn't know Pamela has already been released!

 

End of day, Unity is capable of some pretty spectacular screenshots these days.

I think people exaggerate the "flat" problem with Unity, I personally think it's because the Standard shader just prefers a flatter, lower contrast color range. It's also a bit tempting to overcompensate the slightly duller colors by using a bit too much contrast in post.

I think the same thing happens in the Pamela screens Frpmta just put up. Everything in Pamela is glowing and radiant, I think this a result of slightly overcompensating with tonemapping/color grading.

Tons of HDR/Bloom as well. Cranking the lighting up is another compensation that ends up washing out color while trying to brighten/sharpen.

 

Might also be how normal are compressed, store and process? Do we have smart mipmap generation for normal? Also unreal use a sophisticated format internally for normal I think.

I wonder if that's the grazing angle of normal that give flat looks.

 

Zengarden would not be happy with that bloom..

 

Unfortunatelly ... another too early access game
There is some not so great reviews on Steam , confusing gameplay, lacks tutorials, too buggy , poorly optimized etc ...

I personnaly find everything is too bright and flashy everywhere, is this something wanted ?
In the game "Prey" lighting and post effects are better used in a way it looks more natural and less exagerated. I am not sure over done effects or reflections is something that really sells a game.

Indeed i don't like it lol
(is too much exagerated almost like a common indie games mistake).

 

Funny how opinions work.
We have got a recent thread that starts with Prey's horrible use post processing which is an opinion being echoed across many internet forums :
https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/m...raphics-or-is-it-just-me.470223/#post-3063942

 

Hell no. When something goes wrong, blame the lack of dark skin with unity personal.

 

Any AAA team could get the same look out of either Unreal or Unity given the time, I really don't think that's the problem. It's most likely scale-ability of team size and perception.

 

I just watched the videos on the Steam page for P.A.M.E.L.A. It looks very good to me certainly above average for Unity and perhaps Indie games in general. I guess it is an Indie game (or one of those 15 to 50+ person Indies anyway).

But it also looks so incredibly boring. I skimmed through the 3 videos waiting for something... ANYTHING... to happen other than the devs continually trying to show off the pretty graphics. I mean truly what I got out of the videos more than anything is they are very proud of how the game looks (and probably rightly so) so they focused on that almost to the exclusion of everything else. Which to me is completely pointless in a game.

I think they really need to make a video that shows what the game actually is, has, etc... show some action... anything other than this scene of lighting stuff, that scene of the characters hands, etc. It actually looks more to me like an artist showcase reel than a game in fact. Some people will love it for that I am sure but I just can't see it connecting majorly with actual real GAMERS.

Regarding the graphics thing in general. Yeah... spend less time making pretty pictures and more time making ya know actual games that can be played.

As far as getting AAA game development teams to use Unity... well I think that all comes down to there has to be a reason for them to do it. What reason do they have to use Unity? They are clearly already making games. So Unity would need to save them time, offer features they need, do not currently have and cannot efficiently add, etc.

I guess the graphics discussion is because everyone just naturally thinks graphics quality is the reason the AAA teams are not swarming in to get Unity. But... it could just be that has nothing to do with it.

 

If you mean AAA programmers, then yes ... no doubt.

 

The game is getting praised for 'innovative gameplay' and only criticized for Unity performance issues such as the famous stutter when changing areas. Some reviewers also mention that its performance has been greatly improved a month after release.

 

No I mean a AAA team which would consist of ~300 people. Obviously programmers would be there.

 

Bethesda must not be a "AAA" team then. They were definitely below 300 with Skyrim.

According to an interview back in September 2015 they had a development team of six.

https://www.polygon.com/features/20...-blends-bioshock-with-stalker-coming-to-steam

 

I didn't bother reading reviews. Just went back and read them. What I see in the negatives is a combo of both bugs and game design issues.

I also see it is actually in Early Access so people should expect both of those by this point.

It may well have some cool innovative gameplay. I just went by the videos and I couldn't see much of anything in terms of gameplay. I did see a lot of showing off lighting fx, reflections and so forth.

Maybe it's doing much better than I'd expect based on those videos. Couldn't see anything enticing me to check it out.

 

Here's the thing though - if you're an artist with decent skill and enough time, it's not very hard to produce 'AAA-level' art assets, put together a scene and show it off. Especially hardsurface stuff is mainly a question of textures, planes, and a decent sense of style. People do it on polycount all the time - if you look at the "What are you working on" thread over there, there are more 'AAA-level' assets than not.

FYI, the picture I posted most recently of the corridor in Unity 5, is by an artist at Ubisoft.

Anyway, about PAMELA I'm not personally really a fan of the aesthetic. It looks to me like it is caught halfway between archviz and a VFX demo, and the visual information is not as comfortable as it might be. Regardless of whether anyone agrees with me, I think it's fair to say that it does not have the 'standard' AAA aesthetic which is pretty uniform IMO all the way from custom AAA engines through to most of the the third-party choices out there - and which in my view is the industry standard for good reason.

Whether they deviated from that by choice, I'm not entirely sure but my guess would be that they were going for the best look they could get, and that's where they ended up.

 

I've decided not to do the comparison. Those who want to fix the problem, know what they can do.

 

Tell me if one of these have that 'depth feel':

 

The assets of Republique remind me of The Order 1886:

 

@Frpmta don't get me wrong, if I figure out what the problem is I'm going to share it. But I'm not about to invest a couple of weeks into making something just to add more confusion to the mix. I think more clarification is needed, not the other way around.

In regards to your images in the first post, I don't know what the deal is with the first couple, but obviously the bottom image looks the best. However the problem I think is somewhat of a different sort.

I'm not sure if you and I are on the same page with regards to the 'depth' thing, but to describe it a different way, it's sort of like a perception of ambience that comes when the lighting makes sense, of a real 3D space in front of you when you look at the picture. Like you could reach inside and it would make sense.

Here's a picture where my eyes feel perfectly comfortable because the sense of the way the depth (distance along the pixel to an object in the scene) moves smoothly and correctly from one pixel to the next.

EDIT: even better one




If I just sort of look at it in my peripheral vision I still feel the space inside it.

Here's an image with a 'depth' problem (some horrible movie CGI from a long time ago). Although each of the images looks quite realistic, they do not fit together in a readable way.



In the same sense, I feel that the Adam demo looks very realistic in some aspects but some of the images make my eyes somewhat uncomfortable in the same way as the picture above (although not as much obviously!)

Whereas in many UE scenes, it all stays very readable all the way across and down the screen, and not only is the relative depth readable, but also the absolute depth, the absolute sense of distance.

 

I do understand what you mean. And also do not know how to define it.

But I will keep looking.

 

This kinda sounds like a camera lens as in focus / focal point problem. I'm not into the graphics stuff much especially 3D but have been into photography for quite a while. It sounds like you are saying UE and AAA games do a better job of focusing (as in camera lens) compared to the Unity camera / rendering system.

 

Same here, but hopefully the next time I bring up this topic, it will be with a technical answer.

Not at all, that image just happens to have DOF. It has nothing to do with what I mean.

Tell me, does one of these seem more comfortable and pleasant to look at than the other?





I know they aren't of the same kind, but I'm tired of looking up images.

 

Well yeah... one displays an interesting scene. The other displays only a red X.

EDIT: Now the second image appears.

Well ya know I'm not into the graphics thing really. For me a game is a GAME meant to be played / experienced not looked at so take this with a grain of salt...

To me they are basically the same. Different environments of course. Different lighting. But they both appear to drop off get fuzzy around the same depth. If the Unity scene had that back wall much closer it would be more comparable to the other scene. Another thing that makes a difference is the color palette. The first one sticks pretty close to a base palette almost like monochrome as in values of the same color although subtly adjusted. The Unity scene has more clashing color going on.

That is all I really get from the comparison. It'd be interesting to see the Unity scene where camera has moved about half the distance between where it is currently and that back wall.

 

:-\

Well, in this case the problem will remain unsolved.

 

Humans don't really see "depth" from single image -> there's no stereoscopic effect.


The issue with CG graphics you linked is incorrect lighting formula that does not match the rest of the scene -> Blinn/phong lighting which usually creates plastic feeling for objects.

If you don't wanna build a big scene, at least try to demonstrate the issue with simple shapes.

 

Well, someone who knows what they are doing with shaders and lighting programming needs to figure it out (maybe me when I know enough). In the meantime, I think it's probably just contributing to confusion about what the problem is. I mean, for me the problem is obvious, but I have no idea how to go about finding it technically, and I don't want to just perpetuate some kind of mythical "now you see it, now you don't" thing about the graphics in Unity.

 

@Billy4184 sorry I edited my post. Originally I couldn't see the second image.

 

Fair enough. To me, the Adam picture looks really great - as long as you're not looking at the whole lot at once. It's the same with PAMELA imo, the entire scene is not all that cohesive, despite the individual parts looking great. Recore as well has the effect - I want to like the graphics, but something jars me a bit.

Anyway, just for the sake of something different, here's something that looks more like the competition:



Even though it's basically textureless. It's using SEGI, from the WIP art thread. And it looks fantastic to me, it does not have any 'depth problem'.

 

To me the difference here again is in the palette. Basically monochrome ranges. Two base colors. And that helps to tie it all together into a cohesive whole. But again I am not an artist just sharing what I see.

I think if the robot prisoners scene had the bots looking more like storm troopers as far as colors... basically white and grays... and maybe some green... the scene would look much better as a whole. And at the same time if you stuck a bright red robot into that alleyway monochromish scene it would clash. Although not as much as the Unity scene because the red fits better to that monochromatic range than it does in the Unity scene. And the robots would likely fit better into that corridor because again the red would "blend" in better. Just my 2 cents.

 

There was one thing I noticed, you seem to get a lot more FOV warping with Unity.. Like at either sides of the camera objects enlarge / bend. Sure I know it's a common issue for all games, but I can't say I've ever noticed it to that extent in another engine.

Also looking back and forth, the main issue I see is depth perception.. It's almost orthographic in nature, I kind of like Unity's lighting though.. As others have said it doesn't "pop" as such lighting is somewhat linear, although it doesn't really pop like a UE4 example in real life..

Then again I'm also a fan of "hyper-realism", in terms of a somewhat over extended effects if it doesn't mess with the eye.. I'd rather it look like a surreal fantasy than a boring day out to the shops..

I suppose it just depends..

 

I'm not sure if it's the same thing but : Lightmapping in Unity 5 (and it's true for the progressive lightmapper as well, although to a somewhat lesser degree), does not produce nice gradients easily. (and SEGI does)

I think it has to do with inv^2 light falloffs not being implemented. They are introducing some stuff for direct light in Unity 2017, but I'm not sure if it applies to bounced light as well. (or I don't even know if that's the issue, I'm just guessing here).

 

My guess is that it's something to do with the light falloffs, it would explain 'wrong' values at different distances. However Unity seems to have implemented GGX as of 5.3, so not really sure.

 

GGX has to do with how the speculars are rendered and has little to do with Light Falloffs.

 

can someone just hack a atten*atten quickly?

 

Ah, got confused. I thought ShadowK referred to the light falloff as being called GGX, but it wasn't so. There you go, that's how much I know about the background of this ...

 

Indeed.

I think you simply expect better and more correct lighting.
It can be done in Unity some plugins like Segi or other plugins with some real work and adjustements.

It's surprising Unity let quality be done in plugins like "Beautify", instead of improving how Unity looks out of the box. This plugin for example sharpens, gives better correct colors and removes the basic over exposed Bloom issues.

 

Sure, but that will do nothing for lightmapping. Support for inv^2 falloffs for direct lights is coming in 2017, but again, that doesn't include indirect light. (although, I don't know what kind of math indirect light does, maybe it's already inv^2? but I'm guessing no)

 

One of the reasons I don't get into all of this graphics stuff is I don't think it is an absolute thing in any way. Of these two the original image on the right looks much better to me and closer to the "good" references Billy has posted. It is cleaner, sharper and does not have the foggy look of the image on the left. Yet I am sure many people will prefer the image on the left. There is no way to "win" such a thing when people like different things and even literally see things differently.

 

That's exactly why I'm more interested in finding a technical answer than creating another comparison.

 

By the way, I think we should download the Adam assets and try to make it look even better, most of those pics are probably from early on before they polished up the image effects and so on. And if someone has SEGI it would also be fun to see how it all looks with that.

 

A comparison is necessary to give that technical answer, though.

 

If you are making a game that you want realistic, it's inevitable some people will exepect top notch lighting.
While games like "Prey" desn't claim the best realistic graphics, it's some more stylish and it works, it's stays beautifull and the game interest is lot more on gameplay, story and content.

It's sometimes a matter of taste.

It would be cool to compare Unity lightmapping and Segi indeed, seeing some Segi screenshots, i think it will be better on Segi as a tech demo. As a game Enlighten wins, because it's still good and performance is indeed better and it is sometimes what matters for some people.