Lightmapping Extended - advanced lightmapping settings editor

Hi,

I would like to ask a couple of beginner questions. I have tested this tool in Unity (Indie) a little but I believe that I don’t have the knowledge about Unity and lightmapping in order to use this tool properly.

When using this tool and IBL as environment, should I still use light source (directional Light) in the scene?
Should I be able to see the HDRSky when using IBL?
Also, I am not getting any shadows in my terrain. Should I get shadows in the ground (terrain) when using unity trees?

 

It is recommended if you want shadows in your scene... I have done all of my testing before I light a scene to see if I could light the level with just an IBL... and if you want the IBL to match the skybox, the IBL should be generated as a separate lat long... I have a tutorial that explains using Beast... it doesn't use the LM Extended but the idea is the same...

 

That is a common mistake when trying to use Beast... I've lit scenes using Emissive materials and it would have to be set to a value high enough to see some bleed.

 

I dont see it, but is there any setting for DiffuseBoost? I've been using xml till now and want to use you plugin, which by the way looks AWE-SOME!
Thanks a lot for this

 

Yep, it's in the Final Gather settings right below "Bounces".

 

Hi Mr.Stevenson,

Couid you please give us a simple tutorial(video will be very much favored) for achieving a nearest quality of above given screenshot?

Thanks

 

This is from my game RedFrame which we aren't baking in Beast. We're using Mental Ray, primarily for its support of photometric lighting and translucent materials which tremendously increase the realism of indoor lighting. There isn't an equivalent for either of these features in Beast.

You can read more about our lighting process on our blog - we're running a series of articles on our Mental Ray to Unity workflow:

http://redframe-game.com/blog/

 

This is quite beautiful if I may say so... I was thinking about doing a new tutorial for Beast using the LM Extension tool... the image about could be replicated in Beast but it is a pain in the ass to have to tweak the point lights and continual baking... I just wish Monte Carlo was a bit faster...

 

Could you point out the where I can find the Beast tutorial? In general, I would say that all the tutorials would be interesting regarding Beast/LM Extended.

 

Here is the link to the playlist... the tutorial is 6 months old, but it is still very relevant http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL14D69AE7371C894C

 

Thanks, I will check the tutorials!

 

Thanks for this amazing asset.

 

I've been using DiffuseBoost with pathtrace and as far as I've seen, it does what it is supposed to do even in pathtrace. The problem here is that it's not available in Pathtrace options. :-/
Not that I am complaining. Im just saying

 

Are you wanting to use a cubemap for image-based lighting? Beast only supports single images in lat/long format for IBL, whether or not they're HDR.

 

So it's possible to use HDR images for illumination?

 

Yes... it is in the environment settings

 

This is extremely handy mstevenson, nice work!

I notice in your shaders you use a variable called _TransparencyLM, is this another super-secret variable that the lightmapper looks for, like _EmissionLM? Do you know of any other such variables?

 

Yep, Unity does some internal voodoo and translates the _TransparencyLM and _EmissionLM properties into special Beast material properties. I'm not aware of any others.

 

Hey man... are you still updating this tool? Do you think you could add that little lightmap display box that would normally pop up with the old lightmap popup?

 

The tools exposed by the in-viewport GUI aren't public, as far as I can tell, so I can't easily implement them. While Lightmapping Extended does share a few parts of its GUI with Unity's Lightmapping window, it's probably best to use them together.

 

I reverse engineered them in the attached package View attachment $LightingDebug.unitypackage

 

That's great, thanks! I'll look into integrating this as soon as I have some time.

And of course anyone is welcome to make changes to LM Extended in a github fork, or include it in another tool under the MIT license:
https://github.com/mstevenson/Lightmapping-Extended

 

Interesting tool you've got here. And a mighty interesting blog about photometric lightmapping. With this tool you say there's now the possibility to use HDR images for lighting an environment. Multiple HDR per scene?
If so - how about converting IES files to HDR files... possible?
I am not familiar with this topic, but I don't seem to be the only one thinking about this:
http://www.cgtechniques.com/lightboard/show.php?id=278
http://blendscript.blogspot.de/2012/08/ies-lights-in-blender-cycles.html

With that done and Beast capable(?) of evaluating multiple HDR-images one might be able to reproduce your mental ray results within Unity. Again, I've got no idea what I'm talking about

 

A really good tool for Unity/Beast.

But i have a question: final gather, path tracer and Montecarlo, but why dont have use also Metropolis-Hastings algorithm (variant of Monte Carlo) used also on Artlantis, Indigo Renderer, Kerkythea, Maxwell Render, LuxRender, ...
(slideshare on Metropolis Istant Render)

 

Unity should absorb this into the main lightmapping panel since they are too lazy to make their own UI. The old style would be "Simple" and this one would be "Advanced". Really awesome stuff mstevenson. Thank you.

We need a really good tutorial on these extended features. Been trying to mimic Mirror's Edge lighting as a test and I just couldn't do it previously. I think PathTracer is the one that gives good colored bouncing. Then add FG as the second for shadow?

I really don't want to do anything fancy...I just want to bounce better looking colored light around the room.

 

I've been experimenting with bringing IES files into Unity. I have a functional IES parser, but i but still need to find a good method for converting the data into a cubemap. Unfortunately these lights can't be baked, but they look pretty good as real-time lights with baked indirect lighting.

 

Hi Stevenson, I downloaded and installed this tool because it looked cool but I'm in trouble now.

Tried a render and came up with nothing.
Tried to change some parameters, etc. and no way to make it work.

Then I deleted the xml file and tried to render with the standard Unity window. No way.
So then I deleted the lightmaps folder and tried again. No way.
So then I saved the map with another name and tried to render again. No way. The lightmaps folder wasn't even created.
And so then I took off the folder with your tool from the project and tried to render. No way.

The "fun" part is that the render actually HAPPENS, I wait 20-30 minutes to see that it's not working.

I really don't know where to knock my head now.
Can you help me to get back up and running?

BTW I have Unity 3.5 (final version of course).

 

If LM Extended is no longer included in your project, I assume it's an issue with Unity's own lightmap settings. Check to make sure Unity's LM configuration window looks correct; without an XML config file it will always default back to these settings.

 

Well the thing is I didn't have any problem before installing this plugin.
I have some yellow warnings about UV2 not being correct (Unity generated...) but everything was working correctly.

Anyway, today I tried to remove all buildings from a parent empty node (just used to keep the scene tidy) and it seems that that was the problem.
I still have the yellow warnings but the lightmapping works correctly now.

I don't know how your plugin works, but it may have done something that upset the renderer when there are these yellow warnings maybe.
I will try to use it again in the future though.

Just to be clear: I don't want to blame you about anything, I still appreciate your free release of this stuff, just pointing this out because it may help you off in the future if there is some problem.

 

*edit* sorry, I missed the first sentence

UV2 data is a part of the model asset import process, so it sounds like your import settings might have gotten messed up. LM Extended only touches lightmap XML config settings, so this particular issue most likely lies elsewhere.

 

Quick question.

where is this project at?

 

Its on the Asset Store here :
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#/content/6071
Project on Github :
https://github.com/mstevenson/Lightmapping-Extended

Its also mentioned in the first post of this thread too.

 

hi guys, first off, thx for this great tool. secondly, what workflow would i need for an outdoor scene like this. my pc is slow but im willing to wait to get good results

 

Well, first, you should try to use the basic UI from unity to light map your scene, for exterior environments is really necessary to have the GI turn on and using a Skylight value or an IBL image (this one is very expensive to use but give you the best result).

let everything by default and test the bake time, use a texel density of 50 to start, higher number, better the quality.

If you like the result, then you can use the LM extended, enabling the path tracer for second solver to get better result but higher bake time, when you enable the path tracer, remember to reduce the bounces from final gather to 1, since the path tracer is the one that will make the bounces.

Hope this help you to get started

PS: sorry for my English, not my native language.

 

Great tool! Many thanks for this!

 

Ditto, great tool I found the controls way more appropriate than the built in stuff. Should come standard in the build.

 

I was looking at your tutorial on Redframe and I see you are using Mental Ray for your lighting specifically for the bulb simulations but I wondered is it possible to get the effect shown in the picture here, the blurred shadows of the bed frame, is it possible to get Beast to do something similar in Unity

 

Hi,
Thank you for this great tool. Here is one test interior rendering.

 

Nice!

 

Hi, I have seen some post with similar issues but I didn´t find a good solution about ti solve them.
I use to get this artifacts when backing.

What is going on ? What I must to do?
I have followed several tutorials but are very simple not getting in depth.



THX

 

Those are most likely compression artifacts from UV islands packed together without padding. I think there was a padding setting either in mesh import settings or in lightmapping settings - look into tuning it a bit, it has a good chance of reducing those artifacts or eliminating them.

 

Are this the padding settings to tuning ? On the Inspector, Import settings and on the Lightmapping"" not LM Extended Window.
Are there padding settings in the LM Extended Window ?

 

Hey MStevenson, I have a question actually for you that I thought carefully about... is there a way to use a box collider to control the amount of rays that are fired into the scene... I am using the Ray Length to speed up the rendering a bit, but it doesn't help that I can't visualise it... and I was thinking of using a box collider as a volume. Just some ideas I want to throw out there.

 

Many Many thanks for this nice tool...
I've a question...
Shall I go straight using this tool without any pre_adjustment in the Unity Beast LightMapping tool...!!?
OR; it's a kind of combination with it..!!?
Regards

 

I have got your nice tool. thanks so much for this...

I have a question...
I have Unity free, which means that i can´t use GI , but in the options is available... i can suppose that it will not work on free ... is that true ?...
btw.. i can see my light maps are much better than using the standard configuration of Lightmaps....

thanks..

 

This post is old, but Unity includes a huge number of features. Sitting down and writing this system seems like ALOT of work. Using the word lazy implies that you could do better. But, it's a case in point that Unity is out there and doing incredibly well. If you could do better, you would have and we would be using your software and not theirs. I've got a lot of respect for how Unity has executed their plan. It's hard work.

 

Hi all,
Forgive me if this has already popped up in a previous question, and i have missed it. I had a brief read through the forum, but had no luck finding an answer.
Im using Unity 4.3.2 and have downloaded light mapping extended to my project, however, I cant seem to get it to show up. im still stuck with Unity's default setup and the option isn't appearing in the window drop down menue.

Im on a PC build setting but exporting to IOS and android, if that's any help at all, as i said, i do apologize if this has already come up and i have missed it.

Thanks for you'r time

 

Hi there, I'm struggling to get a speedy bake;
Baking with normal Beast (Low setting): 7:01
Baking with Extended (Low preset): 22:57

I understand that Extended offer more possibility, but I'm struggling to match the speed of build-in preset...
Is that normal ?

 

Is the git hub version the same as the asset store link?

EDIT: THIS. IS. AMAZING.

I can actually bake GI in Unity Free!? WELL DONE!

EDIT2: Does it actually allow GI baking? My scene is not looking bad...

@t.beauchemin: Believe it or not, it bakes faster for me with the new scripts... What's your setup?

 

@FuzzyQuills I've tested it on a Mac and PC... and it's always slower for me, with the default low setting, but I didn't take the GIT files, I took from the Asset Store... maybe I'll test those....