lightVoxelProbes

[romain.janil]

HI dev team,

I've a couple of questions regarding lightWoxelProbe:

- is there a way to edit a baked .texture file after it's been produced (either in editor or externally since it's a raster file even tho it represents 3d data I guess it's just  slices of pixels layout in a certain manner) ? use case here would be to edit some areas where hues or values are not correct. These Voxel probes are quite long to produce (see point after) 

- target for these is 2.16.1 but I get really better baking results with 2.18 or 2.19 (I bake huge emissive decals into voxelProbes covering all the terrain which are at low resolution but span thousands of km² ) For some reasons baking the emissive decals works not really well in 2.16 (like if the decal was stuck at a low res mipmap before baking process starts, where in 2.18+ the baking process waits for all the textures in the world to be ready...and so the calculations are way closer to expected) . Anyway, the other question is :is there a way to downgrade a .texture asset from a superior sdk version to a lower, in this particular case from 2.19 to 2.16 ? Simply put I'd like to bake in 2.19 in a copy of the project and use the resulting assets in 2.16

Thanks!

Edited October 9 by romain.janil

[arizmenda]

Hi, Romain!

Thank you for reaching out! Both cases could potentially be addressed by converting the .texture file to a different format, which would allow for editing or importing across different engine versions. However, this feature is currently planned for a future updates.

Could you please share more details on the urgency of the issue? If it's pressing, we may be able to prioritize the conversion functionality and aim for implementation by the end of the year.

Thanks again!

 

 

[romain.janil]

Hi yes this is relatively urgent as a matter of fact, being in several terrain/world design production for some clients with a 2.16.1 version target for some and 2.18+ for some others. 

As I said I've ran into the problem with baking in 2.16 (at least with the workflow I use based on emissive decals  which is very efficient/quick to set up for very large areas), I don't face the issue in 2.18 or 2.19. So having the functionality to export a .texture to either .tif or .exr format would be great.

As a matter of fact, do you think it might be also possible to add a "3d brush" to the texture editor so it'd be possible to edit these 3d textures directly in the viewport and in the voxel space of a voxelprobe?  

[arizmenda]

Romain,

Could you please let me know the size of the voxel probes (in Mb) in your project? Also, if possible, would you be able to share a .texture file created in version 2.19 so we can review it and ensure it converts correctly? If everything goes smoothly, the patch should be completed by next week. You can send it to me via private message at your convenience. 

Quote

As a matter of fact, do you think it might be also possible to add a "3d brush" to the texture editor so it'd be possible to edit these 3d textures directly in the viewport and in the voxel space of a voxelprobe? 

That sounds like an interesting idea. While it may not be implemented in the near future, we've added it to our list of potential features.

[romain.janil]

Thanks a lot, here's an example. The .texture are not big for the smallest (~3.5MB), as I said it's very low res (voxel size around 50m :), but it covers lots of ground, but even at this low resolution it can go up to 100Mb or more. Here attached it c73730c53244aa596fdd91ffdc2e961389d7d3337.textureomes from 2.19 baking, while it's counter part done in 2.16 is almost all black with a few red dots...

What do you mean by a patch ? a patch for 2.16 or 2.19 ?

[arizmenda]

Hello Romain,

I apologize for the delay in getting back to you.

Initially, we aimed to develop a patch for SDK version 2.19.0.1 that would enable the conversion of .texture files to .dds. However, after conducting tests, we found that even after converting and importing the texture into the editor of version 2.16.1, the appearance is quite different. I've included some example screenshots in the attachment for your reference. I sent you a link to the patch in a private message so you can see for yourself. Perhaps, it will be useful to you.

It seems likely that this issue is related to changes in the processing and storage of voxel probes between versions and at this time, we don't believe it's possible to import voxel sample textures from 2.19 into 2.16 with the desired quality.

However, we are now focusing on understanding why baking isn't functioning correctly in version 2.16 and are working on fixing it. You mentioned emission decals - could you kindly provide us with the steps to reproduce this behavior?

Thank you in advance.

 

[romain.janil]

thanks I'll have a look at the patched 2.19 version, and indeed that's exactly the kind of differences I got between regular 2.19 and 2.16 when baking with the same settings some emissive decals over the terrain: 2.19 works and get almost black with weird splotches in 2.16, like you're above screenshot (coming from a 2.19-->2.16 conversion if I understand right). I'll package an example asap, so my guess would be there were some changes in the baking process AND the way voxels are stored, if that makes sense...