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Mental Ray lightmaps for indoor scenes


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Our team works on MMO FPS and currently we are on prototyping stage.

That is not our first experience with Unigine, but first indoor environment. Our artists spent a lot of time trying to achieve realistic-looking lighting with Prob and Spot lights, but it seems like the best result is achieved with pre-rendered lightmaps. We bake not only Ambient Occlusion, but full Global Illumination and Final Gather data for each room and each element. Photon count is set to low for 'dirty' metal effects, each 1024x1024 map took 2-3 hours to render.

All screenshots are taken with 9600GT, 2x AA.

 

post-26-067198000 1283970424_thumb.jpgpost-26-025449900 1283970506_thumb.jpgpost-26-060394200 1283970541_thumb.jpgpost-26-099061700 1283970315_thumb.jpgpost-26-076566500 1283970361_thumb.jpg

 

P.S. Of course, using engine's Ambient Occlusion, HDR and DOF greatly improves image quality in the cost of performance, as seen on last two shots.

P.P.S. Model from Unigine Character Demo is used as a temporary placeholder.

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Our team works on MMO FPS and currently we are on prototyping stage.

That is not our first experience with Unigine, but first indoor environment. Our artists spent a lot of time trying to achieve realistic-looking lighting with Prob and Spot lights, but it seems like the best result is achieved with pre-rendered lightmaps. We bake not only Ambient Occlusion, but full Global Illumination and Final Gather data for each room and each element. Photon count is set to low for 'dirty' metal effects, each 1024x1024 map took 2-3 hours to render.

All screenshots are taken with 9600GT, 2x AA.

 

post-26-067198000 1283970424_thumb.jpgpost-26-025449900 1283970506_thumb.jpgpost-26-060394200 1283970541_thumb.jpgpost-26-099061700 1283970315_thumb.jpgpost-26-076566500 1283970361_thumb.jpg

 

P.S. Of course, using engine's Ambient Occlusion, HDR and DOF greatly improves image quality in the cost of performance, as seen on last two shots.

P.P.S. Model from Unigine Character Demo is used as a temporary placeholder.

 

Hi Alexei,

 

Pretty neat. Just wanted to ask if you are/plan to support normal mapping with the current baked lightmaps?

 

Will your game support outdoor environments? Are you considering some kind of mesh / texture streaming on top of Unigine's LOD system?

 

 

Regards,

 

-Dev

 

(Dibyendu Das)

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Hi Alexei,

 

Pretty neat. Just wanted to ask if you are/plan to support normal mapping with the current baked lightmaps?

 

Will your game support outdoor environments? Are you considering some kind of mesh / texture streaming on top of Unigine's LOD system?

 

 

Regards,

 

-Dev

 

(Dibyendu Das)

 

 

Hey, Dibyendu

To support normal maps we place in-game lights at the same positions as MR lights in MAX scene, so lighting is not 100% static. At the moment we use Spot Lights, but it can happen that Probe Lights would also do the job.

 

About outdoor environments. We don't plan them for this FPS, but our another project (steampunk setting RPG) is planned to be mostly outdoor.

To be clear, we were working on RPG for almost a year, but cause of terrain and large scene management issues we decided to pause the development and release multiplayer FPS first using almost the same client and server code.

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Hey, Dibyendu

To support normal maps we place in-game lights at the same positions as MR lights in MAX scene, so lighting is not 100% static. At the moment we use Spot Lights, but it can happen that Probe Lights would also do the job.

 

About outdoor environments. We don't plan them for this FPS, but our another project (steampunk setting RPG) is planned to be mostly outdoor.

To be clear, we were working on RPG for almost a year, but cause of terrain and large scene management issues we decided to pause the development and release multiplayer FPS first using almost the same client and server code.

 

 

Hi Alexei,

 

I can see why you might want to do that. In addition to showing normal map details your dynamic lights also light up character meshes. The video looks good and you do get the feeling of moving around in a grudge ridden underground facility. One thing though: in case the number of dynamic lights in your scene start to grow, you'll notice a significant drop in framerates. You might considered using Radiosity Normal Mapping instead of the standard lightmap supported under Unigine. The HL2 shader/ material for the same is not too difficult to implement in Unigine and the results are very nice. You can then replace your spot lights with cheaper prob lights ( for lighting character meshes correctly) HL2 source shading . This technique has been around for a few years now and in my tests it ran well on my aging ATI 9800 series.

 

Best wishes.

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We already have SSRNM shaders implemented, but I don't see a way of generating RNM maps with Mental Ray or any other raytracer with specified light source.

In our RPG project xNormal is used to create such maps and they looks really great in outdoor scenes (including self-shadows that are dependent on light position), but when you need to bake light and shadows from several indoor light sources, MentalRay seems to be the best solution.

I'll try to generate those three light map types (AO, MR, SSRNM) and apply them to single scene to compare results.

 

P.S. Probe lights based on spherical harmonies are part Unigine core for a long time. Those are VERY fast and can be treated as 'local environment maps'.

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We already have SSRNM shaders implemented, but I don't see a way of generating RNM maps with Mental Ray or any other raytracer with specified light source.

In our RPG project xNormal is used to create such maps and they looks really great in outdoor scenes (including self-shadows that are dependent on light position), but when you need to bake light and shadows from several indoor light sources, MentalRay seems to be the best solution.

I'll try to generate those three light map types (AO, MR, SSRNM) and apply them to single scene to compare results.

 

P.S. Probe lights based on spherical harmonies are part Unigine core for a long time. Those are VERY fast and can be treated as 'local environment maps'.

 

 

FYI- You can try a trial version of the Turtle renderer from Illuminate Labs for your RNM tests. Although tweaking the lighting rig may take some time, the generated RNM maps themselves are top notch and you do have a lot of control. Alternatively if you have loads of money you can license "Beast" from illuminate labs. Haven't really experimented with xNormal so i'm afraid I can't do a comparative study. I concur about the inexpensive probe lights Unigine provides - they are pretty neat . Good luck and keep us posted on your development progress :blink:

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FYI- You can try a trial version of the Turtle renderer from Illuminate Labs for your RNM tests. Although tweaking the lighting rig may take some time, the generated RNM maps themselves are top notch and you do have a lot of control. Alternatively if you have loads of money you can license "Beast" from illuminate labs. Haven't really experimented with xNormal so i'm afraid I can't do a comparative study. I concur about the inexpensive probe lights Unigine provides - they are pretty neat . Good luck and keep us posted on your development progress :blink:

 

I tested Turtle about a year ago and result was not as good as in XNormal. I'll give it another try.

About a Beast. Yesterday I first heard about this API and it seems to be the product we need, but I'm afraid it would take a lot of time and resources to integrate it to Unigine. Also I know nothing about its price, especially now, when Illuminate Labs is acquired by Autodesk. I'll post SSRNM screenshots recently - shaders still needs to be upgraded to recent Unigine build.

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