Unity Sunshine - A replacement for built-in shadows

Sunshine has been released!
[Asset Store] [Official Thread]


Hey all,
I just wanted to show off a project I've been working on called Sunshine.

It's a replacement for the built-in shadows that come with Pro. It supports soft PCF filtering, MSAA, should work on the Ouya (haven't tested with one yet)... Has a pretty killer Volumetric Light Scattering effect... all around good stuff!

If there's any interest, I could release it to the Asset Store...?

To try the demo, or learn more: UnitySunshine.com

 

What's the speed like vs unity pro shadows?

 

As long as there isn't a huge performance difference, I'd love to have this The more eye candy the better IMO!

 

Similar settings tend to yield similar performance (2x2 PCF with post-processing disabled, since there's no built-in equivalent)... I'd say within a few fps.

At higher resolutions, Sunshine performs much faster than built-in! This is because Sunshine doesn't use a full-screen shadow buffer pass, instead calculating shadows during the regular forward pass. This reduces the fill-rate/draw-calls and is actually the reason I developed Sunshine in the first place.

Having comparable-to-better performance is actually pretty awesome since Sunshine is doing a lot more than the built-in shadows (Overcast shadows, radial splits, jittered cascade divisions, PCF filtering)...

I'm actually most excited about getting this running on my Ouya (if it ever gets here) since shadows are encoded in ARGB32, they don't need "Depth" support.

 

This is looking real good. I'm not working on anything that could use this at the moment, but I'm definitely interested in seeing it progress.

 

I'd buy it although I have no need for something as complex as that demo.

 

It. Is. Amazeballs.

Interest would depend on price for nearly everyone. The lure for me is the godray's finally leaving screenspace. That alone is worth the price of the asset because someone seriously needed to do that crap already.

There's a lot right with this package if it is as advertised. Do you simply add new light objects in place of the default ones? Are there point/omni, directional and spot options? How is it implemented - hopefully just with new Light GameObjects you create and not some custom script or shader garbage on every object.

I'd be interested, as long as it is affordable. It's definitely an integral asset.

 

I've always hated the Unity standard shadows, they are absolutely not on par with the rest of the system. I can't understand why they don't put hands on it.

This looks like something that could be the next big thing.

This said, this thing is nice, but I would only buy it if it would blend seamlessly with Unity.
A complete replacement, I mean.

And we must see the price. Keep in mind that if you set the bar high, you will sell some 10 copies.
If you lower it, you will sell much more. Hundreds, maybe thousands.

For me, I think I would buy it immediately if the price is around 50 euros. If it's up to 100 I will wait until my game is released or nearly there.

Finally, couple of questions: works with U3.5? Works with deferred lighting?
Great that it's already working perfectly with lightmapping, wouldn't drop lightmapping for nothing in the world (apart real time radiosity eheh).

 

Price - I want to keep it as affordable as possible, and maybe even have a free/pro version? @megmaltese 50 euros or less sounds reasonable to me.

Light Types - Directional lighting only (hence the name), because the techniques are very specifically optimized around Orthographic projection.

Seamlessness - As it stands, you drop a single prefab into the scene, which automatically (or manually) picks the primary Directional Light as the Sun, and registers Camera objects with the required script to make the magic happen.

Shaders need a couple lines of code, but you can automatically change all Materials to use the Sunshine equivalent shaders(included) with a single button press.

3.5 support - I'm only using a couple small features from 4.0 to make the Inspector interface... So I'm sure 3.5 support wouldn't be too hard to achieve if there's a need for it.

Deferred Lighting - Currently Sunshine works with Forward rendering only. That could always change in the future though.

Realtime Radiosity - Could be fun to look into that.

 

Does it work with Unity free?

 

Unity Pro only (it requires RenderTargets)

 

Not radiosity, but very similar (in results): http://dee.cz/lightsmark/

http://lightsprint.com/demo.html

http://realtimeradiosity.com/demos/

 

I'd be very interested in this for deferred rendering and some basic high performance radiosity

 

Oh,it's looking so impressive!

 

50 euros? That is a bit expensive.

 

this looks pretty interesting. I notice in your video that the unlit areas are extremely... bright... is this just because you're using on top of a lightmapped scene? will you be able to control the shadow intensity to make the rest of the scene darker? I can't tell from the video, does it work per pixel, with lit normals, or is it per vertex? Also, how do point lights react on top of this in the same scene?

I would love to see deferred rendering up and running, and of course radiosity...

 

I'd say: Calculate the time it would take you to implement it yourself, multiply it with an "hour rate" and check back...

 

€50 is cheap considering what the system does.
If you include support for differed rendering i would most likely buy it for the current game im working on, Unitys shadowing is getting pretty outdated.

 

50 euro is good if this gets constant updates and features. If it's one of those assets that gets dumped onto the asset store and forgotten about then maybe it's a little much

 

A well working shadowing system can be pretty costly.
That's why you don't have updates in this point in Unity since a lot of time.

Just think on how much time coding it yourself (if you were able) would take. Debug, polish, integration, etc. You wouldn't come out with less than a couple of weeks, maybe one month, of work.

50 euros is not really much but the count should be done on the number of copies he would sell.

I want to invite everybody who reads here to post if they would buy it, so that the author can have a glimpse of how much he is going to sell if he sets a budget price.

 

I understand there are a lot of people coming from a lot of different viewpoints here... but 50Euros seems to be a very generous price for a system like this. Of course it remains to be seen just how useable/flexible it is for a wide range of projects, but assuming it integrates well into Unity a fair price would easily be twice this. How many copies it would / could sell is beside the point of what value do you give it personally for your own projects...

 

I'm interested, and the price is a good price...if there are more details about how it compares to the Unity directional lighting and such. Documentation. Unity's lighting may not be the best, but it does work for most situations.

 

There's no lightmapping in the demo... The brightness is simply due to the Ambient setting I selected.
Edit: Now that I look at it, it is kinda bright! I must have turned that up to test something... The demo is now a bit darker if you want to check it out.

Sunshine respects the "Shadow Intensity" slider on your Directional Light.

It's per-pixel, and the api plays nice with normals/bump/etc. It even works nicely with custom light models in custom shaders, since only the shadow attenuation is changed.

Just as they normally would in the Forward Renderer. Additional lights are additively blended.

 

be nice if you were able to magic up a mobile version that's as fast as unity's mobile shadows, and smoother. I suspect it's possible with some workarounds... pretty much would be a sale to me.

 

That's fine for calculating freelance work rates for items used by ONE party, but it's a really, really dumb way for pricing things for sale to the public (potentially many parties).


The point of selling something to the public is that you spread out development costs and manufacturing costs (if applicable).

 

He's not saying thats how to calculate how to sell something, he's saying that's how to calculate if something at its current price is any value to you. Regardless of your personal philosophy on how to price things, if you absolutely needed a lighting system like Sunshine, and you value your time at, say, 25 euros an hour... unless you think you can build it in two hours, it is of value to you.

 

As soon as I get my Ouya, and an Android Pro license, I'm getting to work.

 

Don't JUST focus on mobile though

 

@PolyVector

I'm curious, how do you do the light scattering? It can be extremely expensive. Do you use epipolar sampling? There is some great information (including source) on the process from Intel:

http://software.intel.com/en-us/vcsource/samples/light-scattering (Original)
http://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2013/03/18/gtd-light-scattering-sample-updated (Updated)
http://download-software.intel.com/sites/default/files/blog/379498/gdc2013-lightscattering-final.pdf (Presentation, PDF WARNING)

Is any kind of non-homogenous participating media support planned (e.g. fog or smoke)? There seems to be some kind of media participation simulated in the lit parts of the surfaces but not in the air... looks kind of like smoke/dust. Doesn't seem nearly large or dark enough to be cloud shadows. Speaking of cloud shadows, can there be fuzzy/blurry shadows or areas that are between 0-100% shadowed, aside from the PCF filtering? Clearly at least "hard" cloud shadows are possible, by sticking cloud shapes in front of the orthographic camera. But I assume you're just generating some kind of noise to change the brightness on the surface slightly, and maybe this is configurable?

And, similarly, what about translucency / "stained glass" effects in the light scattering? The Intel implementation manages to do so by storing a color at the sample along the surface of the translucent material. They also managed to get their implementation working for spot lights and point lights as well.

 

@jonwd7

The shadow cascades, and by extension the light scattering is achieved through a technique I came up with in 2009/2010 for an Xbox game I was working on called Dead Shift. I call it "Orthographic Shadow Reprojection" to sound fancy, and I don't believe it's a known technique.

It allows me to pack the data required to traverse up to 4 shadow cascades into a single 4 component interpolator. The math is so lightweight that I can easily utilize up to 4 cascades in the pixel shader for the light scattering.

The basic premise for the scattering is that I project the eye ray into shadow space, then I uniformly divide up the ray to sample N times. The buffer is generally lower resolution, and the starting point for sampling is jittered, so it bares a resemblance to SSAO... The buffer is then blurred with a separable gaussian (or optional radial) blur and upscaled if needed... Since light rays are generally low frequency, I think it looks pretty good, and definitely lightweight... I'd rather not get into an in-depth analysis of the tech here.

The next step for me is to find some free time to actually get this ready for the Asset Store (a new concept to me)... I'm hoping to do a Free Version first which I'm sure everyone will enjoy, plus it will give me an opportunity to work out the kinks... Then when I'm confident it's stable/compatible, I'll release a Pro Version for sub-50-euros, as that seems to be what people expect.

Thank you all for the feedback, it's been invaluable.

Edit... Non-Homogenous: Nope, but you can optionally allow the Overcast Shadows to attenuate the scattering. It's more expensive, but looks awesome! There's even an option to use a separate Overcast Texture for scattering, to create a "light dancing" effect... Basically, it's very tweakable.

 

I hope you will try and get it to work in deferred?
Please : D

 

I'll definitely have fun playing with it when you release it

 

Any news on this?
Looks awesome and I'm really interested in trying it out : D

 

Having this not working in deferred rendering would be a huge waste :|

 

Also noticed it wont work with point lights, but i guess its possible to use Unitys shadows for those and use this system for the "sun" and other directional lights?

 

I've been working on optimizations, and improving the quality on the Ouya. Don't worry, it's still slated for release.

As for mixing with built-in shadows, I haven't tried this, but I suspect it would work since "ForwardAdd" lights have no problems..

 

I'll buy for 50€ it works with deferred and forward and has a clear tutorial on how shaders would need to be modified.

If you had a red light and a blue light crossing would their volumetrics add up?

 

I take it this requires Unity pro?

 

@tabor
This is for a single Directional Light, so there wouldn't be multiple volumes.

@brilliantgames
Yes, because shadow mapping requires RenderTargets.

 

Hmm, single light you say, would it be possible to change light source during runtime to support both a sun and a moon for example?
If that's the case and you will support deferred its probably an instant buy for me since it looks way better than the built in stuff : )
Also, would it be possible if you could test so it works well with point lights using Unitys built in system as well?

 

@virror
You can switch light sources at runtime, yes. It's a simple parameter.

I will be doing a lot of compatibility testing as I near release.

 

Deferred lighting support would make it an instant buy for me.

 

The initial release is pending approval. I'll investigate deferred support for an update.

 

This look interesting.

Keep this good work!

 

Beautiful. Can't wait to try it out.

 

How about compare this with unity 4.2 shadows ? Is it have shadows static/dynamic batching?

System use normal deferred light or I need to rebuild my scripts to get into parameters?

 

As soon as I get paid I'm getting this (I currently only have 50p in my account lol)

 

@Chaoss

I know how that is.

Let me know what you think if you pick up a copy!

 

I probably should have made an official announcement here... So here goes:

Sunshine has been released!
[Asset Store] [Official Thread]

 

May I trouble you for another web player demo where we can control the player rather than an on-rails demo?