We’re making an architectural visualization application, we don’t have real dynamic (animated/moving) parts but we have both prefabs models to instantiate in run time and procedurally generated walls, doors and windows.
Many users asked about making the precomputation while the game is loading, so they generate the model and then bake all GI in-game.
I know Enlighten engine has two engines, one that precomputes GI for static meshes and another that updates lighting realtime.
The fact is that if I mark my geometry as non-static and use light probes, I’m only getting the right tint on the faces of my object but not a chance to see light bounces on those meshes.
And the other thing is that if I move a mesh (say a big cube) that drops a big shadow all over a group of static precomputed cubes, the GI is not updated on those cubes.
So, I’m starting to think that to have the full GI solution, and we don’t care if it’s not realtime, we need the whole Enlighten baking system to be available in game. Any chance for this in Unity 5.0?
Anyone got better results with light probes?
I’m still wondering how to apply what’s described in the Unity 5 GI blog post:
Sorry for highjacking your post, but I am a bit desparated with the new lightingsystem concerning prebaked
shadows coming from 3dsmax: I have asked for help on other places here but don´t get any answer.
All I want is to use a lightmap (baked in Max/VRay onto UV2) with the new standard shader.
Perhaps you can help?
@neoUFO
Unfortunetly no chance in 5.0 maybe in 5.1 unity staff mentioned several times that they are working on api that allow rebake on demand part of gi in any time (scene is splitted into several systems internally which allow avoid rebake all scene). However u need procedural content - these content are fully procedural (generated from scratch in code) or u have premade chunks and u simply mix these chunks on start? First approach will be impossible for looong time (unity staff mentioned that enlighten isnt designed for fully procedural world but they think on solution for that case) while last will be possible in 5.1 maybe thanks to new api
@Breyer
I’ve both kinds of content, walls are generated procedurally in code and other objects are placed in run time but can be pre-baked.
The fact is that if Unity could integrate the baking API in-game, everything would be perfect, specially for high-end PCs and simple scenes where baking takes just a few seconds.
With all the geometry constrained to be static to get real lightmapped results, this Unity 5 Enlighting novelty reduces just to dynamic lights (i.e. moving lights around is the only thing that is updated in real time).
The worst thing is that while the realtime GI correctly recalculates lighting when you move a light (I.E. change the angle of a directional light), it won’t correctly update lighting when a non-static object shades a part of the static model.
@Kuba mentioned a caveat to get better results, here, but I’m not able to obtain better results.
Edit:
Playing with it a little bit more and getting nice results using SSAO post effect to non-static meshes.
