[Coming Soon] SpectraGI Advanced Real Time Global Illumination For Unity from Livenda

Just a question, do you have any new idea of when u want to release this product? A goal that your trying to hit?

 

I'm with Fog... after working with Alloy for so long... I REALLY don't wanna redo anything at this point. And I also use Substance Designer and Painter... gotta make sure it works with these programs.

 

My bad about it not supporting alloy,and +1 for your area lights,they are so important for true pbs rendering

 

Disney method, as that is what Alloy uses, and UE4, and I suspect Substance too? thanks! ( naturally Unity chose to go with the opposing method to all of those in it's standard shader )

 

Regarding Enlighten being limited or 'a flop' I have been talking with Unity and doing more tests. It certainly can do very good baked GI as well as realtime-ish ( I initially thought it could not ), it certainly is not setup for that out of the box yet and they are exposing more settings for shadows ray count and so forth in later betas. One thing you must do is increase the precompute resolution to 20-40, then suddenly it gets good, though right now settings for realtime and baked are not separated, they will be. As far as it ever being as idiot proof as hitting bake and it working perfectly every time with brilliant quality and fast rendering speeds with no light bleeding or glitches, well... we shall have to wait and see but it definitely will be improving before it is out of beta, and when it is I will have a complete guide for it ready showing what it really can do when dialed to max

 

Any Apple fans here? Are you more excited for the SpectraGI videos or the Apple event stream taking place in about 30mins?

 

Haha well the Apple event, since we know for certain IS taking place in 30 mins.

 

going to have to say more excited for spectraGI. Apple is garbage. Developing for them is worse then garbage.

 

What's the event even about? Probably some new iPhone, right? Not exactly the most exciting stuff >.>
Realtime GI in games is far more exciting to me.

EDIT
Not to mention I can't watch it because Apple basically said "Hey, you're using a PC, so screw you you can't watch the event". Thanks, Apple. You REALLY make me want to switch -_-

 

Depends on performance, if the new iPhone (or better iPad) can run my game that needs a PS4 like hardware for 30fps, certainly would be more interesting, since i could tap on a huge market as well as PC/PS4

If SpectraGI is very fast and i can use it in my game, will also be extremly interesting

So, it can be both, either or neither, depending on performance

 

Well, in LIVENDA I trust.
But time to go sleep.

 

A couple folks on this thread mentioned Alloy support for Spectra. I wanted to pop in quickly and let ya know we're always trying to integrate with 3rd parties that are relevant to high-fidelity Unity work, and once Spectra is live, we will most certainly be supporting it (esp. as I intend to use it in a personal project ). Our next version of Alloy will also have much more sophisticated integration with Candela

 

@LIVENDA

Is it too much to ask for some high resolution screenshots of the interior pool scene(with GI) from the first video? And yes if SpectraGI lives up to the hype, I'd like to see a UE4 version asap.

I like the Disney GGX method metallic(0 = non metal ,1 = metal) + roughness (0 = smooth, 1 = rough) workflow, this means cross compatibility between UE4+Toolbag2+Unity+Substance Painter+Substance Designer art asset.

 

Disney i think is more common, but its just about me

 

Sorry if i was a little rude. I just wanted to see how you would react.
I'm actually a little impressed here.
I've studied dx and open gl for months from time to time. I find them very interesting.
Technically, lights dont have size,, but it's subject to debate as the term can be interpreted differently based on what your definition of "size" is.
I know area lights with shapes are invaluable I'd like to see how well it works.
Developing a new rendering tech requires a huge amount of knowledge of algorithm, math, physics, which i happen to love. But im not smart enough to develop one on my own,,
Anyway,, hats off to you, dude.

 

Someone posted a real picture to prove lights have size,,
If you cover the bulbs with your hands,, what happens? Some bounce off you hands to the walls. Some pass through your hands, for which case subsurface scattering shader comes in handy. And some spread in other directions, causing the brightness of the area encompassing the objects of interest to change.
What happens when you open the window on a sunny day? The room brightens up.

Now,, in graphics terms,,"size" can have multiple meanings depending on the devs.
It's low level c++ stuff. So i cannot get into the details.
Anyway, let's hang back, grab a beer and watch the new tech.

 

If you REALLY want to be pedantic about it...

What emits light? Well, atoms do (when an atom gains energy, it expends this new energy as light). Can an atom be infinitely small (have a zero size)? Not really - it can be really, really, really, REALLY tiny, but it still has a size.

Even if, however, light sources were actually zero size in life (like, say, a lightbulb), effectively the light bulb emits light from the surface area of the bulb (it kind of scatters it around from internally). Of course we're definitely not going to simulate the physics behind this at anywhere even close to realtime in a game, so representing the bulb as an area light with finite size is significantly more efficient.

Also, FYI, in real life the sun also has a size Directional lights are basically just a sort of hack which tries to look like a huge and very far away light source such as the sun.

 

That`s what I meant by size. It can have multiple meanings.
I just assumed it(spectra gi) would be something like area lights put togather like the last video they showed.
When they mentioned "size", I thought of point lights, which have a predefined size.
By size I meant "how far the light emitting from the source can reach and how much the surrounding areas are affected ". I know the technical difficulties as I`ve been learning rendering tech myself(for only a few months).
I didn`t mean the size of the source,.

That`s why I had my doubts in the first place.
Making a new rendering algorithm is no joke,, Any kind of algorithm(raterization, lighting,,) is put to test for performance reasons. Imagine how difficult it would be to test hundreds of complex lighting algorithms in terms of efficient memory allocation and in what order and at which time the functions should be excuted and graphics driver compatibility and a whole lot more I can`t even begin to explain.
Bu,,t if you had a team of 5 talanted people dedicated to rendering tech, it`s totally plausible, imo.

Anybody with some experience with redering tech can build his own renderer, although it`s easier said than done.
But making it production-ready is a whole another domain.

But after reading their comments, I`m not as skeptical as before,
Good luck~

 

It's great to see that SpectraGI will have some more decent Area Lights, but I think we all are waiting more eagerly for some GI videos rather than AL videos. Many people created realtime GI stuff in the past, but they all disappeared into nothingness. DynamicGI, BG Light Engine, kurtloeffler's VCT - just to name a few...

Of course, GI isn't something easy to implement, but seeing the existing Candela SSRR asset, you guys at Livenda seem to have enough knowledge and power to do this.

 

That is true, my game wont be using area lights at all probably, beeing a medival title that generally dont have neon lamps and neon signs

Could come in handly though if i ever decide to recreate Blade Runner in a game for sure

Hopefully the GI video shows some outdoors usage and performance in complex environments. I wish it is something like the GI in Fable Legends, that looked very cool outdoors and i suppose performced well too.

Is there technique used in Spectra similar to Legends one btw ?

 

so much for getting a new video... yesterday...

 

Isn't it still Yesterday in Australia though Kurylo?

I thought one of their days were like several of ours?

 

That would be attenuation or falloff, not size, and that's not what area lights refer to. Realistically you wouldn't even have a setting for that on a light anyways, since the falloff will be dependent on the intensity of the light.

 

Fable Legends use a different technique call LPV, the only advantage is it doesn't require preprocessing of data however light leaking is a issue - so its not practical for indoor scenes.

@LIVENDA , can you possibly post a high res screenshot while we wait for the videos? It'll only take a minute.

 

i just managed to light open world scene with my pocket flashlight! The only problem is that i get AO, soft shadows, reflections, refractions, motion blur, antialiasing etc..............

but i think SpectraGi will beat my method...

 

+1 for this.

 

I see, i though it was a custom new method they used

 

I am finally getting spectacular results from Enlighten, below all realtime ( after lengthy lengthy precompute ) and by realtime I mean you can move the sun light, change the sky, change materials, make parts of your model emit light, and by Unity 5 release you will be able to move point lights, spotlights and I think area lights too while in realtime, along with knocking down walls and having the light update and such. And by realtime I mean at that kind of res it takes a couple of seconds for changes in the light to propagate on a high end desktop.

 

Gawd that's pretty.

 

oh boy i never checked any thread this much! come on livenda

 

HeliousDoubleSix, can you please post instructions to achieve what you did to get this nice render ?
for me, i dont even see this precomputing happening, there is any trick ?

Many thanks

 

I don't know guys, but Enlighten is impressing me VERY much. Even with the 'issues' in quality I've been reading, heck if I care when you consider the big picture...that's in realtime.

 

Please keep posting those Helios, always good to see GI no matter what brand it is.

 

I am slowly putting it all together, my rambles on the subject are here:
http://www.shadowood.uk/Store/?u=2014-09-02&c=s
most of the stuff I say regarding GI is wrong when I wrote it though :-D
I will be rewriting and adding info on Spectra if and when it becomes a real thing

Set the precompute res to a higher value from 1 to 5-30, then the system size to 32 ( higher values give me tons of errors right now ) all the other settings apply only to baked lighting really, then sit back and watch it eat around 30gb of disk space over an hour :-S. ( they will be compressing this in future )

Oh and you can set GI settings per object for back face tolerance ( use 1 for closed objects without back faces ) and set the Irrad Budget to maximum to get best quality

 

The images look good. And thx for the tip.
Are the grey lines on the wall part of the texture or errors?

 

No comment ;-P It looks like it is from self shadowing itself as it is a curved surface, normally this is solved with a bias adjustment of some sort, either way Unity have been sent the error.

Also a small cluster size improves the quality

 

Thank you.
Btw, what is the lightmap resolution of each object in your scene? I`m guessing,, 512 x 512 give or take?

And,, you are right. Pre-precessing takes,, like forever,, especially for a large scene.

 

I'm slowly getting used to lavenda's time Scale. Soon = 5 months, later today = 3 days later ..

 

Lets hope it will come today

 

FTFY

 

We all suffer together day after day, delay after delay... by the time Spectra GI comes out we might all be very close friends

 

Just to let you know... I have been lurking this thread for weeks and I'm suffering with you.

 

They are operating in Valve Time

https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Valve_Time

The delays and the inability just to post a high res screenshot has me worried.

 

I find it a bit odd that they ask us now what kind oft pbr we would prefere... Nice, of course, that they ask, but it makes me wonder...So it is not already developed? If it all hangs together this would mean even more delay? Hope i' m wrong..

@SonKim : LOL, didn't know that one

 

Seems like they aren't anywhere near done with this thing. Which is sad... seems like they got in over their heads. Hope im wrong.

 

I cant believe that, if it was that bad they would just annouce a big delay and get it over with.

Maybe there are emerging details that need fixing as with all complex things and these take time to handle, that maybe they did not anticipate.

Of course a web player with the pool area would be very cool to have, even the old one without these details and full performance sorted out

 

I'm sure you're not the only one , over the past week this thread has had almost 10,000 hits. Now I'm sure some of us posting check it a few times a day, but not enough to get those kinda numbers.

Like all of you here, I hope they aren't working on Valve Time... lol

I think they have something, but maybe need a little more time to integrate their solution into Unity. We don't need a fancy perfect video, just some samples to have an idea what to expect from Spectra GI once it is are done.
But I think Livenda like to present their product the best way possible, so they keep delaying until their video is absolutely perfect, showing the quality, performance, workflow, flexibility etc

Back to waiting...and hoping...even just for a few breadcrumbs... lol

 

if you have any GI working then show us you delayed more than ones with nothing but promises
i am starting to believe that you only just started working on the GI after you posted this thread.

 

Totally agree !