When is Mixed mode lighting going to be fixed?

It is unfortunate that light probe code isn't exposed to developer. Otherwise it could be possible to write a replacement for standard shader, sans the bugs.

The issue is something like that ideally needs support on engine level.

 

While doing some experiments with lightmaps under Unity 5.4.0b12, I discovered there's still a hope with directional specular. Look at the attachement : mixed shadows are there, but they are like vanished by the enlightened part of the lightmap... It's clearly visible with low quality lightmaps, realtime shadows appears at the edge of the static shadows.

 

Sorry, but that's not what it is supposed to look like... I could post unreal 4 screen for comparison.

 

I'm just saying it's not 100% broken. I thought they just disabled the realtime shadows for directional specular mode, but it seems that they're "just" wrongly drawn. It could be a shader problem... I'm just trying to understand...

 

What matters is when will it work fully ?

 

The issue is marked as fixed here : https://issuetracker.unity3d.com/is...ic-objects-in-scenes-with-lights-set-to-mixed
But I can't make it work on 5.4.0b16 (latest beta). Am I doing something wrong ? Does someone achieved to get mixed mode working ?

 

I think i will go full baked for mobile and full real time lights for PC games using some custom lights occlusion system like Ghost Of a Tale game.
http://www.ghostofatale.com/

 

Still not working properly in b17 ....

only with directional light I can get some effect but those are shadow on shadow. No realtime shadows from spot or point on static surfaces (mixed mode light).

 

I don't believe mixed mode is supposed to work for spot or point lights. Only directional lights.
It isn't clear if it will ever be supported for point or spot lights. No one knows because Unity refuses to communicate with people using Unity regarding this issue.

 

It would be nice to inform us what is going on - so we can start working on another solution for our shadows. We have indoor scene with only point/spot lights + emmisives.

 

If you believe this : https://issuetracker.unity3d.com/is...ic-objects-in-scenes-with-lights-set-to-mixed, the issue is fixed. It is available in the latest beta : 5.4.0b19.
But as you can see in the attached screenshot, this is still broken... at least the shadows are rendered, but the mixing is just wrong...

 

Appears to be a side effect of the forward renderer not blending shadows correctly. If you check the "Known issues" part of the release notes there is a line about objects being rendered in Forward with Mixed Mode lighting enabled.

Adding to that part, if you bake GI lighting only and have the light as real time using real time shadows in forward, the shadows are very dark, and have to be adjusted but this also effects the lightmap intensity for some reason.

There are already bug reports for these things, I even did a bug report for mixed mode not working across Deferred and Forward back in the 5.0 beta. I even found a new bug related where in forward the objects no longer receive real time shadows if lightprobes are enabled. Not even sure it is new, so will have to test across a couple versions.

Lightprobes are broken if direct lighting is added... which is a known issue... at this point baked lighting is a complete mess

 

There I was hoping to have Directional+Spec levels/Realtime shadow for characters, looks like it's back to GLES 2.0 for me

 

So is Mixed mode working in 5.4 Beta ?
Or should we drop this feature and wait for something better like real time GI aka CryEngine Svogi ?

 

Seeing that this thread was made almost one year ago and at that time the feature has been broken for many months, I believe it is unreasonable to expect mixed mode lighting to be ever fixed.

 

I believe Unity is well aware that mixed lighting, and the lighting system in general, is too important to be ignored. It is very disheartening that so little has been done thus far, at least as far as we can tell, but it will come in time, I'm sure. Though I know that is of little comfort to those waiting for the feature now. Some more open communication on the matter by Unity would be most welcome.

 

Then SVOGI or similar solution for outdoors ?

 

At this point I'm starting to doubt that.

No. The point of mixed mode lighting is to allow use of realtime shadows WHILE still being able to use baked lightmaps. It is a feature that was in very old games. SVOGI and other realtime GI solutions do not address that problem. At all.

 

I agree, we could have great levels lightmaps and combine with real time characters lightening. That's sad it won't happen.
Anyway for the game "Ghost of a Tale" the author juts used real time lightening with it's own light culling system, i think it's one way to go.

 

I reported the new problems about the mixed mode "fix" and they created a new entry in the issue tracker.
https://issuetracker.unity3d.com/is...-properly-between-static-and-realtime-shadows
Don't forget to vote for this new issue !

 

Done.

 

voted

 

so i guess mixed lightmap will skip 5.4 isn't?
dangit :/

 

Still has this issue in 5.4.0f1

 

Still broken in 5.4.0f2

 

Since Unity's not answered this, I figure I might as well go out on a limb and state that mixed mode will pretty much only work in forward (if it does) and you'll have to wait for implementation in 5.x

Unity didn't consider this ever broken in 5x btw - it just wasn't there, as a feature. I read that comment from Unity staff on these forums somewhere.

 

I'm with forward rendering, doesnt work, neither with deferred. I got dynamic objects casting shadows on static objects, the problem is that the static geometry doesn't occlude the shadows from the dynamic geometry (meaning, a dynamic flag cast shadow in a static wall AND on the floor behind it, like there was no wall whatsoever)

 

Small example of the above, flag shadow should be clipped by the mid section object (ceiling) and its not, you can still see the tip of the shadow on the wall below the ceiling.

 

Hippo, there's no reason to think this will work in ANY rendering path, forward or deferred.

To properly blend shadows, you need multi-layer lightmaps, where lighting information for each individual light can be extracted from the lightmap. If you can't extract shadow data for individual lights, you can't properly blend dynamic shadows with it.

And judging by behavior of baked lighting in unity, there's no such information in unity lightmaps. So, it simply can't work.

It is kinda amazing that unity forgot about a "must have" feature and have been ignoring it for over a year, but that's just how it is.

 

They didn't forget it, they simply didn't do it (yet).

 

To make it simple : Mixed mode will not happen in Unity.

 

or just considered it's not exist

 

I wouldn't be so sure.

There's a non-zero possibility that unity technologies will implement it in a century or two.

 

so mixed mode lighting basically trapped in valve time. . .

 

This is sad, if you want large open worlds in VR@90 FPS baked lighting is the only way

 

That's the thing, I just had to explain to my client he will have to deal with lower FPS (and possible some motion sickness) because Mixed lighting does not work properly......

 

The question I have is "why not"?
Is it because of the limitations of Enlighten, or the internals of Unity, or resources, etc.
I also assumed that mixed mode was never going to be implemented, simply because Unity stopped responding to inquiries and the fact that no one could answer the question of whether or not it was going to be implemented for spot / point lights.
Also, Unity completely removed it from the Roadmap. It used to be on the roadmap for 5.3, then they completely removed it.
So I kind of gave up waiting for it to happen.
I don't know much of anything of lightbaking, but I don't see how it could even be possible for a dynamic object to receive a baked shadow without a complete overhaul of lighting system.
As of 5.2.3, light biases are still not working correctly for point lights.

 

This part giving me a deja vu, i feel like i'm already asking the same question before, just don't remember where and when.
Edit : now i remember, i was asking it in the new forum before the rollback

 

It is about static object properly receiving shadow from a dynamic object mixed-mode light in such way that the dynamic shadow will properly blend with static one precomputed shadow from that light. See "stationary" lights in unreal engine.

As for dynamic object receiving static shadow, that's what lightprobes are for (although resolution of that shadow will be quite low and the shadow will be blurred).

 

I apologize if I have missed some some vital info, but basically this would imply that an essential core feature that has been part of unity for years has been silently removed and swept under carpet?

Two questions will arise:

1. The engine got more limited and less competitive compared to other engines. Are everyone perfectly ok with that?
2. Do you think they (the Unity) could get away with it as a feasible business plan?

 

AFAIK, it was always broken in version 5, starting with version 5.0. I never used unity 4, so I don't know if it ever worked before that.

Okay or not, what exactly can you do about that?

Yes. They would get plenty of income from 2d games or from games with fully-dynamic lighting.

 

And some games like Pamela are still beautifull without mixed lightening mode.

 

The point of mixed-mode is having better performance (while retaining ability to blend shadows), not "being more beautiful".

 

Many who are not ok with that would consider changing engine. To me, personally, to purposefully cripple Unity because they can't get something working properly sounds really bad business. But of course I'm not expert of this, so it may as well be the opposite some strange way...

In my opinion Unity pursues to become a high tech engine, based on the efforts they have put into presentations like the Adam demo. In that light it would seem very strange decision to drop mixed mode support. I doubt many serious game dev studios would see that a favorable point when choosing an engine.

 

What's baffling is why the option's there, from the beginning. If the lights in the dropdown never had mixed mode as an option there would be far less complaining. People would still ask for it (or a feature like it), but it would just be another enlighten shortcoming instead of a broken feature.

 

I know right? I had a right moan about that. But I guess it's just a stub as it was available in 4.

 

Did "mixed mode" work when Unity was using Beast?

 

Beast doesn't have mixed mode, they use dual lightmap

 

We do need some kind of shadows for dynamic objects in a baked scene. Can't they just rip off the HL2 way of doing it?

 

Long time ago in the galaxy far far away, someone make mixed mode in unity already.
http://blogs.unity3d.com/2013/01/15/bladeslinger-pushing-the-boundaries-part-i/