Hello everyone!
I’ve been learning unity for a couple of months and I really like it. I’m trying to use Unity for Architectural interactive walkthroughs, and I’m getting somewhat good results. My Background is Architectural visualisations with Vray and 3ds Max - I’ve been doing it for 5 years.The Cinematic Image Effects asset is great and with proper post processing brings the image to a production level. However there are a couple of limitations that I’ve come up to and I can’t Get them through.
1.More Settings for GI
There aren’t enough settings which allow the global illumination to be boosted. In architectural design the global illumination is very important, and it is more important than the frame rate. Unity’s GI is good for games, but what I’ve found is that it cannot be brought to ArchViz production quality.
In the featured unity tutorial, they say that Realtime resolution of below 1 texel per unit is ok for most cases, but for interiors, the level of detail for GI has to be below 1 centimeter, which to my understanding is equivalent to 100 texels per unit. Also is there a way to directly control the quality of the GI, except setting the texel resolution higher? Setting the baked and realtime resolution high makes a difference - the GI is better, but it still isn’t quite what it should be for architecture.
I’ve messed with the per object settings and managed to get rid of light leaks, but I’m not sure is this actually improving the quality of the GI.
Raising the Backface Tollerance to One seems to get rid of lightleaks. Is raising the Irradiance Quality actually making the GI better?
2.Implementing an estimate time left bar.
I’ve tried raising the resolution to 100 texels per unit and it looks like the bake would take forever. I’m not actually concerned about the baking time - it can be even days. What concerns me though is that there is no guarantee that Unity is actually baking and is not hanged, Thus implementing a bar that shows an estimated time left would be great.
3. Color correcting a texture.
I like the simplicity of Unity’s shaders, but a great feature for design and Archviz would be to have the possibility to adjust a texture’s color (hue, or RGB values) directly in the editor, without having to use Photoshop and overwriting the file.
4. Photometric light implementation.
Implementation of IES light profiles would be a huge improvement of Unity’s workflow for architecture.
5. Better screen space reflections
The Image effects is great, but it has room for improvement too - the screenspace reflections add alot of realism, but they have quite a bit of artifacts, mainly that they disappear close to the edge of the screen. I think the issue with SSR, that they don’t reflect anything that is not directly seen by the camera ( like for example the underside of a chair is not reflected on the floor) is universal and nothing can be done, is this correct?
6. limit for mesh polygons to be raised.
Now the limit for polycount in a single mesh is 65k. This is not enough for soft furnitures with detailed geometry, and the meshes get split. This isn’t a big issue, but it would make the workflow simpler.
As I said, I thing Unity is a very good tool for making games, but if you have an intention to be used more for architecture, this tips would make unity so much better. The main difference is that for architecture, you won’t be that concerned about frame rate and bake time, but instead you MUST get rid of all the artifacts and have the cleanest GI possible.
here’s what I’ve got so far:
It would be great to get any feedback from others, trying to Use Unity for Architecture and from the Developers, thanks.
