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Is Autodesk Beast gone in Unity 5?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by techmage, Mar 18, 2014.

  1. techmage

    techmage

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    So I noticed this

    "In partnership with Imagination Technologies, Unity 5 will be the first-ever development platform to ship with in-editor real-time lightmap previews based on Imagination’s ground-breaking PowerVR Ray Tracing technology. This exciting addition allows for near instantaneous feedback from changes to global illumination lightmaps by displaying an accurate preview in the editor’s scene view of how lighting will look in the final game. With this technology, artists can continue to iterate and refine the look of a level while final lightmaps update and bake in the background, dramatically decreasing the amount of time needed to make artistic adjustments to scenes."

    It seems like Unity has written a new lightmap baking technology based on PVR OpenRL? Or is this Autodesk Beast rearranged and reworked to be powered by OpenRL?

    Or is this some completely separate OpenRL 'preview engine' and it still ultimately gets baked in Beast? However if you look here http://www.imgtec.com/powervr/powervr_raytracing.asp it says:
    "With this technology, artists can continue to iterate and refine the look of a level while final lightmaps update and bake in the background, dramatically decreasing the amount of time needed to make artistic adjustments to scenes."

    Seems like it's some kind of iterative baking tech that is producing final lightmaps.

    So does this mean that Unity 5 will have a new OpenRL based iterative light baking engine?

    How does this interopt with Geomerics Enlighten? Or is this new baking engine from Geomerics themselves?
     
  2. Deleted User

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    If I were to hazard a guess I'd say most likely, what exactly would beast be needed for? You can use Hybrid raytracing and / or baking with Enlighten. UE4 doesn't use beast, so I'm not sure why Unity would need it?
     
  3. jonas-echterhoff

    jonas-echterhoff

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    Correct, Unity 5 will not have (or need) Beast for lightmap baking.
     
  4. Deleted User

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    All I can say Jonas from working with Enlighten on a non-public release engine, moving away from beast to Enlighten is a very good idea.

    Looking forward to seeing how it plays with Unity.
     
  5. techmage

    techmage

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    Totally stoked. Back when I first saw enlighten like 2 years ago I bugged them until they gave me a private beta of their app for me to see running and was hypnotized by it.

    Now the only thing reliant on Autodesk in Unity is FBX. Is there any plans to phase that out and move to Collada entirely?

    Also I am curious to know. Is this new lightmap baker. Is it something UT has made themselves? Or is it just a component of enlighten?
     
  6. Thomas-Pasieka

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    I sure hope that will never happen. FBX is and will remain the industry standard for good reason. Collada has been nothing but disappointing so far.
     
    AndrewGrayGames likes this.
  7. BuildABurgerBurg

    BuildABurgerBurg

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    +1000000000 on what Thomas said
     
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  8. TheDMan

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    So what will take its place and what does it mean in the big picture?

    Does it mean baking lightmaps is out of the question completely? Does it mean not being able to have directional lightmaps? Does it mean not being able to bake or have various lightmap settings (such as single lightmaps or dual lightmaps)?

    What about light probes, are they gone as well in Unity 5?
     
  9. makeshiftwings

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    Enlighten can bake lightmaps. I'm pretty sure it can do everything Beast does.
     
  10. TheDMan

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    I like to confirm and hear it from Unity, because I dont want to spend money thinking and believing something is or isnt in it or that you can or cant do something in it, only to find out on release date that isnt the case and them to say "sorry, we never said that".
     
  11. techmage

    techmage

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    I imagine they will be there, just deprecated and you'll have to use a switch to use old systems. I mean they didn't take out the old animation system when meccanim went into place.
     
  12. Pix10

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    *hugs*
     
  13. Pix10

    Pix10

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    Indeed. Collada is a pain, and it's a myth that it's free to use (properly and reliably). We were early adopters back when Sony recommended using it on PS3. Cost us a lot of time money getting it working straight.
     
  14. Meltdown

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    Hopefully the lightmapping workflow is vastly improved, although I never used it much it never quite made sense to me.
     
  15. TylerPerry

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    So Unity free will support Enlighten? I suppose it will only be baked, while pro will support real time?
     
  16. Graham-Dunnett

    Graham-Dunnett

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    The feature split isn't decided yet.
     
  17. artzfx

    artzfx

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    +1 on what MoHoe said :)
     
  18. Aurecon_Unity

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    Yep - I'd actually prefer for Unity to look at a possible IFC importer - A lot of people use Unity for more than just games, and the potential engineering / BIM crossover is huge.
     
  19. KRGraphics

    KRGraphics

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    Looks like my need for quicker level iteration is warranted... I've been looking at Enlighten for a long time... very nice stuff
     
  20. miniduck

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    Alembic all the way please.

    FBX is just a move-from-one-software-to-another format. I want proper geometry cache.
     
  21. Kuba

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    Enlighten is responsible both for in-game GI and for baked lightmaps.
    PowerVR path tracing is responsible for filling in lightmaps with indirect lighting when Enlighten is calculating its data in the Editor.

    We plan to support all lightmapping modes currently available, although we would prefer to simplify a little on that front.
    Enlighten in-game GI is provided in a form of dynamic* lightmaps, dynamic* light probes and dynamic* cubemaps. Baked lighting (static lightmaps and static light probes) seamlessly mixes with the dynamic data.

    *) dynamic meaning that the lighting is updated dynamically.
     
  22. jashan

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    Awesome! It's really great to see Unity / UT becoming more independent of TEE (The Evil Empire aka Autodesk).
     
  23. Fishypants

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    Alembic is also just a move-from-one-software-to-another format. As someone who works in the VFX industry, Alembic is great when working with very dense, high resolution meshes (millions and millions of polygons) and geometry caches. Alembic is geared to the VFX and Animation industries and honestly seems overkill for Unity.

    If you are super concerned with geometry caches and you happen to use Maya, the Maya .mc cache file format is an open format that you can easily read. They even have an example of how to do it in Python in the devkit folder:
    Maya2014\devkit\pythonScripts\cacheFileExample.py

    I would rather Unity keep FBX. Its stable and works perfectly fine the way it is.
     
  24. miniduck

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    Ok
    But didn't you say "just a move-from-one-software-to-another format"?...

    Yes dense objects, referencing within references... I work on large projects and would like to see this.
     
  25. hippocoder

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    But you're probably one of 10 people in unity's userbase who would even be able to export properly to it, so moving *away* from FBX to only Alembic is a daft move.
     
  26. Fishypants

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    No, you did. I was reiterating what you said because you were implying the fact that FBX is inferior in some way because its just "a move-from-one-software-to-another format", which is exactly what alembic is.

    You do realize that FBX can handle very dense meshes as well right? My point is, I don't care how big your project is, it is not big enough to justify Alembic. It's just not. If your project is so incredibly massive that you need Alembic, Unity will not run it. The FBX import works perfectly fine, why change it for the sake of changing it?
     
  27. jRocket

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    To those mentioning Collada... Unity already supports importing Collada files. I am happy with FBX, and for those with a vendetta against Autodesk, there's always Collada that you can use. :)

    Don't take for granted these widely supported formats like FBX. It wasn't long ago that many game engines only supported importing their own custom mesh formats(old UDK, Source, ect..).
     
  28. hippocoder

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    BTW latest Develop magazine has a cool article about enlighten and unity, with some revealing information how it's taken Unity and Geomerics 3 years to get to this point where they can work together. The partnership greatly benefited the Enlighten product as well, as many of the improvements Geomerics made in order to be Unity compliant (mobile/dynamic/baking etc) have been put back into the core Enlighten product.

    So what we're getting is an evolution of Enlighten, something that's really quite special if the article is anything to go by.
     
  29. 3agle

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    Is it possible to get a little more information on what exactly is meant by 'dynamic lightmaps'?
    It's rather difficult to find anything recent from Enlighten that discusses such a feature, and it suggests to me a real-time updating lightmap, is this the case? And if so, is there any more technical background to that which we can look at? For instance, what makes this different from real-time lighting...

    Thanks

    EDIT:

    I have actually found a sort-of answer through some digging, for anyone who is interested.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4wi6loLWbY

    at around 10:20 they talk about dynamic lightmaps.

    The dynamic lightmaps are for GI only, and are updated dynamically, which is fast since the resolution is 64x64.

    So it seems I misinterpreted kuba initially as referring to the regular lightmaps, as I wasn't aware that the GI had separate lightmaps.

    Clarification from anyone Unity as to the implementation of Enlighten in Unity 5 would still be appreciated though, as the talk from Geomerics mentions that only Unity know how it's implemented within the engine :)
     
    Last edited: May 7, 2014
  30. deram_scholzara

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    I was just about to post a link to that video. My favorite part is when he says "There is no bake button in Unity 5".
     
  31. Meltdown

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    Great news, I've been using Beast to try and get an iOS build of my game looking and performing well and I've had nothing but issues and undesirable results.
     
  32. tswalk

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    I think this has more to do with the lack-luster toolset we have to work with in Unity, cause messing around with Beast (e.g.: Turtle), in Maya it seems to be a pretty powerful "light probe" baker... there's a lot more accessible under the hood then what we have access to, and honestly the tools we have to setup light probes and managing them in Unity is rather poor... it works, but arrrrgh!... not an easy endeavor.

    I guess this is why I keep asking if we are going to get any tools for Enlighten that work in other DCC programs "outside" of Unity... lets' face it, 100% of workflow is not just in Unity.
     
  33. Fishypants

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    I agree with you tswalk, it would definitely be nice to tweak things outside of Unity. I highly doubt that will be the case unfortunately, but I would really like this functionality as well. It's hard enough maintaining Unity, let alone plugins for other applications, and I can see Unity Team not doing this because of the extra work it would involve.
     
  34. tswalk

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    here's the deal though, I understand they've been working a deal with Geometrics for a while now, and it looks really promising. I truly hope it is seemless transition and allows more refined flexibility than what we currently have.. however, just skimming over Enlighten I see this on their website:

    Tools Integrations

    Enlighten is available stand-alone or integrated into the Unreal Engine 3 and 4, with plug-in support for Max and Maya.


    So, Unity really doesn't have to do anything other than integrate... (I know I am under playing that by.. a lot), but tools are already available. The question is, will we be able to have access to them. I just seems like a large gap in production pipeline that is needed, perhaps not so much for hobbyists, but I could definitely use this in my pipeline.
     
  35. hippocoder

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    This is entirely incorrect. Unity's integration with Enlighten required a mass of changes across the board to get it working how Unity wanted, with the Unity philosophy. The develop magazine article goes over this.
     
  36. tswalk

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    what is incorrect? the fact that I underplay the effort and/or changes required? .. I really don't have access to the magazine, so I do not know... but what I do know, is that plugins obviously exist for DCC pipelines. It would be a huge benefit to us to get access... it could be like what Houdini has.
     
  37. Meltdown

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    Yeah, lets hope Unity gets the toolsets right this time with all the power.
     
  38. hippocoder

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  39. tswalk

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    ya.. no need for that, this topic is important to me so i'll probably get the digital version. thanks for the links!
     
  40. hippocoder

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    It's a pretty good mag with plenty of insider talk which is always juicy.
     
  41. create3dgames

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    Yep
     
  42. lazygunn

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    Couldn't be happier with the Beast removal, the replacement sounds great, and means I don't have to base that stuff around what is and isnt dynamic cause i always use vray for lightmapping, Beast was an awful pain in the backside

    Using collada instead of fbx sounds completely insane and would break my workflow utterly, but luckily Unity supports both! Hurrah! Alembic would be nice should I ever get to that point - It always sounded like very high end overkill for what i do, a bit like i know Nuke(Yes I know it's not exactly related, it's just a highend tool) is awesome but I can't imagine how i'd ever end up using it myself. A lot of the tools I use would make Alembic use very fiddly indeed anyway, and it's all fiddly enough as it is. Being given realtime raytraced lightmap previews is a godsend and would make some things significantly less fiddly

    Good point on the unsure free/pro split. I'd genuinely like Unity to throw free users a bone and give them some serious hitting power, that would very much mitigate the current antipathy regarding other engines
     
  43. Meltdown

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    +1 to this hippo. Bought a subscription yesterday, its a really nice magazine and well worth subscribing or buying an issue for $1.99 to experience said juiciness. Even the free articles on the site are really good.
     
  44. FuzzyQuills

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    @lazygunn: I actually didn't know COLLADA was supported! would be a benefit to me, i actually would trade it for FBX, since I have blender.

    AT EVERYONE: I definitely approve of the replacement for beast lightmapping with enlighten, since I, although i actually got my lightmaps to look real nice without much effort, I did notice how over-exposed they look sometimes... ;)
     
  45. Zomby138

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  46. hippocoder

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    Ugh... I've long since thrown it away. But the gist of it was that there was a close relationship between Geomerics and Unity, and that they worked together to create a custom version of Enlighten. This as far as I can see from my access to various groups without breaking any NDA is quite true - and they've generally improved upon it a lot just for the Unity version.

    Of course it won't be fully complete in the initial 5.0 release as 'complete' implies there is nothing more anyone can ever add and it's Unity's philosophy to take a look at what their users want mid feature implementation. So when it comes out, be clear and vocal about what you'd like to see in the future.

    Likely though you'll get good results out of the box.
     
    Zomby138 and NomadKing like this.
  47. FuzzyQuills

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    @hippocoder: That's probably correct! Anything has to take time to mature into a good citizen of modern society, so to speak... ;)
     
  48. duke

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    I'm really excited about enlighten but a bit concerned as well. I recall reading an article about enlighten in Battlefield 3, and it mentioned them needing to use distributed computing to pre-process their levels to make it viable. Will we have that, or will we be waiting for overnight/multiple day bakes on complex levels?
     
  49. FuzzyQuills

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    @duke: Well, I am sure I read somewhere that Unity 5's version of Enlighten was dramatically re-written so that mobiles could use it without having a heart attack. so, the pre-process thing probably isn't needed in this boat... ;)

    Actually, hang on... :D
     
  50. FuzzyQuills

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