[RELEASED] - Screen Space Area Lights (SSAL)

Hi,

the redLights illumination package for Unity is now available in the assetstore. Shape up your scene illumination with Screen Space Area lights (SSAL)!

Get it now in the Assetstore!

Live demos and videos

What does it do?

Supported emitter types
The redLights package supports rectangular light emitters (monochrome, textured and animated) as well as monochrome spherical light emitters. All emitter types provide correct diffuse and specular lighting.

Spherical emitters are advantageous over the standard point lights, because they are volumetric and actually generate a circular specular reflection.

Falloff options
The lights support several types of falloff types. You can choose between standard constant, linear, quadratic falloff or custom falloff functions, that can be adjusted via the builtin graph editor. You can also go crazy and use completely animated falloff functions.

Advanced editor for animated falloff curves

Proper integration into the editor

IES light profile support
The redLights package supports basic IES profiles for point emitter. We support input data, that has been exported by the iesgen 4 tool, that can be downloaded from:

http://rip3d.net/Downloadmodels/iesgen_4.rar

Oculus Rift support

SSAL redLights can be used in multi camera setups. For example the Oculus Rift.

Some more screenshots

Videos

https://vimeo.com/65383798

https://vimeo.com/75500299

What else?

Full artist control
All properties are exposed to the user and can be adjusted completely at runtime. This includes color, intensity, emitter textures, falloff parameters as well as transformation settings such as translation, rotation and scaling. All parameters can be controlled either manually in the editor or via scripting.

Supported Unity versions
The redLights package works with Unity version 3.5.x and above. The Pro version is required!

Supported Rendering paths
All available rendering paths are supported (Vertex Lit, Forward and Deferred)

Supported platforms
Webplayer, Windows Standalone, Mac Standalone

Supported Unity Features
Correctly blends with built in materials, shadows and lights. Also works together correctly with standard image effects and post pro filters.

Open topics and stuff that is work in progress
Cylindrical light emitters, shadows, support for mobile, runtime configuration

Cheers,
Martin

Awesome! I been waiting for something like this for a while (I have seen something similar done on Blender) and this looks perfect.

So how much is this going to cost? And what’s the minimum requirement for the shaders? (eg. what shader model does this one support? SM2.0? SM3.0? SM4.0?; are there any other special requirements? (does it work in any type of scene? or does it only work in rectangular room?); does this work on Unity 3.5x (as I am still stuck at 3.5x and I am sure a lot of people are too)…and most importantly, does it work on mobile?

It looks pretty good on Mac OS, but I think you aren’t vertically flipping a texture somewhere for reflection.

So, what does using your SSAL package give me? Is it faster, is it nicer looking, what is the advantage?

At first I thought there was ambient lighting in the demo scene, but I was glad to see that it all comes from the lights. Do they have a fixed/limited range?

Awesome!

Need!!!

Thx, for the kind comments.

@I am da bawss
Yes, it is based on the same algorithm as the blender version, but our implementation is rather different and quite unity specific.

We haven’t decided on the pricing yet, however, it will be moderately priced for sure.

Currently it’s shader model 3.0 and above. I’m not sure if it can be squezzed into 2.0, will take a look.

There aren’t any requirements on the type of scene, the demo is just programmers art :). We are currently preparing another demo with a more advanced level.

Yes, it works with Unity 3.5, but since we are utilizing rendertextures, the pro version is required.

It should work on mobile, but we haven’t done any testing yet. It certainly runs fine in gles 2.0 emulation mode. Of course, this will be verified and tested before the release.

@Daniel Brauer
Thx, this is probably due to unity switching vertical uv’s when using rendertextures, depending on the platform. Will be fixed.

@Jaimi
It gives you nice-looking realtime arealights. Arealights are currently only available for static lightbaking.

@RC-1290
No there is no fixed range. However you can control the area of effect by manipulating the light’s attenuation parameters. It uses a basic constant-linear-quadratic falloff, with all values exposed to the user.

@devang_xprt
Thank you :slight_smile:

Thanks for the demo but i have quit a bit fun artefact’s.
(Running at a Mac mini Mac os 10.7.5 2,5 GHz Intel Core i5 and AMD Radeon HD 6630M 256 MB)



1201390--48138--$Bug3.png

Really interesting!

Hi, it’s most probably the same issue, that Daniel Brauer reported. Unity may switch rendertexture uv’s on certain platforms. I’ll upload a fixed version tomorrow, as I’m currently not in front of my unity machine.

The demo should now run correctly in mac webplayer.

Looking very nice , nice performance.
I now that the product is “just starlet” but do you now what a ETA for the version that is working with texture and shadows?

I must have this.
Is it possible to have the (lights “colored planes”), invisible but still have the lighting?

Yes, of course. The planes are just dummies to visualize the light emitters. It’s just a box geometry with an emissive material. You can deactivate them to your liking, as they are not relevant for the lighting calculations.

@fffMalzbier
Thx. As for the release date, we hope to finish a first version by the end of next week. We need to do more testing, bugfixing and generally shape things up a bit. However, shadows probably won’t be finished for the first version.

Small update before the weekend.

Happy Easter!

Does the mesh actually produce the light? I allways thought thats very expensive performance wise

It is screen space filter, so no matter what produces the light, it’s the screen resolution that matters.

BTW absolutely fantastic! I thounght we needed still some years before having this kind of lights on real time!

Hi nuverian, there is no mesh. The neon sign is just a texture.

Thank you!

Another update, added specular reflections to textured light emitter.