#stupid unity, again

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

raven dome
#

Cave shadows thread mk2

oak bloom
#

there is also a ''normal bias'' setting

#

wow

#

let's toy around

raven dome
#

Unfortunately your problem is shading of the material surface, not shadows from the shadow casting

image.png
#

If your flashlight is very close to your camera, you could get away with disabling shadows entirely

#

And still have the same problem

#

HDRP Lit materials don't allow incoming light to "wrap" around to the dark side of the object, as that doesn't really happen in reality

#

Because normal maps simulate surface bumpiness, the "dark side" can appear even on geometry that you're directly looking at

oak bloom
#

so what you are saying is

raven dome
#

Toon shaders allow this but don't work great with HDRP's PBR lighting

oak bloom
#

there is no real way to reduce them other than reducing normal intensity

raven dome
#

HDRP's translucent type materials might allow it also

oak bloom
#

I did that and it worked

#

at the cost of making the rocks look smoother

raven dome
#

What material properties do you have now and what does it look like?

oak bloom
#

ok you were right, neither shadow dimmer nor tint did anything for the normals

#

and I don't know what normal bias does but it seems to do nothing

oak bloom
#

they're different materials

#

but I'll show the rock mesh properties

#

it's mostly just default hdrp lit

#

for cave walls, there's nothing much to see

#

normal intensity is the only thing that helps so I should stick to that I guess

raven dome
oak bloom
#

meh

#

I'll just finish the bounce light thing

#

then reduce normal intensities

#

what can a man do

#

sorry for going in circles

#

I tend to overthink

#

my september resolution is to stop overthinking overthing

#

and spending days on 1 thing because I can't figure out what the optimal way to continue is

#

and just DO

raven dome
oak bloom
#

What about you

#

You making a game?

raven dome
#

But I spend more time on instructor work

#

And squashing problems here is as good a way to practice as it is to procrastinate

oak bloom
#

You help work on other people's games

#

Instead of working on your own lol

#

You have the knowledge, you can make a game

raven dome
#

I'm trying new things too though, like getting involved with teams and projects that give me more opportunities to do what I'm good at

#

The quickest way past a brick wall is not always through head first

#

@oak bloom oh and btw I did find out how to tweak the light spread, as well as how to reduce shadow effectiveness
Per material anyway

#

Subsurface scattering can make the light "spread" to the darker side, though at the cost of becoming blurrier and noisier

image.png
#

Translucency can reduce shadow strength, though using this might make just about all of your caves lose shadow effectiveness

image.png
#

Worth noting that real limestone shows a bit of both of these optical properties though

#

But in your cave the effect might be undesirable

oak bloom
#

I also fully released a game solo

#

With very underwhelming results

#

I understand the reality

#

Everyone told me my new game idea is great, but we both know it's about the execution, not idea

#

But I don't care, I will try

#

Working in a team like you is probably objectively the best way to try

oak bloom
oak bloom
#

It's an fps game with the only light source coming from the player

#

Am I ever going to see any shadows anyway?

#

Except normal shadows

#

Cause geometrically, I shouldn't really see shadows. Only very slighty because of the off-center light source

raven dome
raven dome
oak bloom
#

I mean, I can try, whatever

#

I've been wasting so much time just thinking about how and all

#

I just need to go with something

#

I suspect a good portion of the problem comes from the tiling of the texture

#

But nothing I can really do about that other than make my own with substance designer, but that's a whole new can of worms to open

raven dome
raven dome
#

Finetune it later when the rest of your game is nearing completion

oak bloom
#

But the shadows look low res because of the tiling

#

Even though it's a large texture

#

When you tile it at .1 or .2, it's still low res

#

But ye ok I will keep moving forward

raven dome
#

If your game gets some momentum you might end up replacing the whole cave mesh anyway

oak bloom
#

But I'm doing this part for the vertical slice, it needs to look good too

#

Digger asset dev fixed his shader and I will look into that going forward

#

But that has nothing to do with the textures

raven dome
#

Point is at this stage of development it's not reasonable to try to do everything in final quality since you probably have other priorities too

oak bloom
#

Yes that's what I took away anyway

#

When I said I need to stop overthinking

#

And get stuck on the same thing

#

Reminds me of the last game I published

#

I had a massive "unsolvable problem"

#

Would never be able to solve it

#

Deal breaker

#

So I took a month's break or something

#

I needed it mentally

#

I came back and solved it within 15 mins

#

And also another big issue lol

oak bloom
#

@raven dome you think this is well covered?

image.png
#

the raycast amount and all

#

logic works

raven dome
oak bloom
#

of course

#

thanks

#

stupid question, but it needs to bounce off in the opposite direction of the hit, right?

#

like, 1 meter or less away?

raven dome
# oak bloom like, 1 meter or less away?

Maybe more if using point lights
If it's too close it'll just illuminate the surface your flashlight is pointing at
Spot lights facing away from the surface might work better in some circumstances

oak bloom
#

I need more def

#

Although spot light isn't a bad idea at all either

#

But I think small poijt light pribably better

#

Maybe

#

I don't know

raven dome
#

I'd start with 1-2 units off the surface along the ray

#

That probably works well enough

oak bloom
#

1-2 units? You mean meters?

#

And I guess you mean on the opposite vector by along the ray

#

Or do you actually mean back on the same ray

raven dome
raven dome
oak bloom
#

As a real bounce

#

Or along the same vector backward

#

I would think right angle as bounce, yea?

#

Although I guess I don't know much about physics

raven dome
#

Simulating a reflection probably would reveal the illusion since the fake bounce light would have to move around a whole lot

oak bloom
#

Oh yeah, I didn't consider that

#

Good point

#

It would probably be ver jarring with the light flipping due to normal directions

#

But then, if we exclude that

#

Why do you think it would look worse with right angle, rather than reflecting back

#

Wouldn't it still be "closer to reality"

raven dome
#

The idea of faking it this way is to illuminate the area in front of the lit surface very generally
Certain "inaccuracies" help conceal the fakeness of it and thus would look better

#

Because true bounce lighting is ultimately unachievable

#

At least without Enlighten or RTX

#

If using a point light, rotating and maybe also moving it in reflection vector direction might give you more correct fake bounce lighting for that particular ray

#

But I would expect it's still too finicky due to the hit normal changing very rapidly

#

And it could reveal how few rays and lights we have

#

That's why I think big vague point lights could be better

#

This seems like an overthink though ^^

oak bloom
#

I understand what you mean

#

You might be right

#

But I'm afraid, for example, hitting a wall at a very small angle looking bad without reflective vectors

#

If shine close to 90 degrees, then yea, it doesn't matter

#

But once I figure out all the setting and what looks good, I think it can look pretty good, due to volumetrics and lit particles everyhwere and all

#

It can look nice if I'm competent enough

#

Also I will have siltout parts with volumetric "fog"

#

I will make raycasts hit that as well

#

And light up the dust as well as the particles flying around

#

Might look cool, we'll see

raven dome
#

But if it becomes an issue we could look at it later

oak bloom
#

Ah I see, yes

#

I have 11 rays

#

Maybe I should add some more

#

Then, in theory, it shouldn't be discernible between real light bouncing and that

#

Yes yes I will do that

#

And look into light color there

raven dome
oak bloom
#

Isn't enlighten shit?

#

It's essentially the standard hdrp realtime gi, right?

#

It doesn't really do anything for me

#

I've researched it some time ago

#

People are saying it's a bad solution

#

There was essentially no difference when I tried it

raven dome
oak bloom
#

Strange, as I saw a very, very minimal difference when I tried

#

I mean, if it works, then why am I doing this in the first place

#

I will try it again

raven dome
#

It's not without downsides though

#

For being precomputed it's pretty expensive to run and not very high fidelity
It also reacts with a delay and may leave artefacts when the lighting changes, as it's a temporal effect
Since it requires lightmaps, there's a lot of types of geometry it cannot deal very well with

#

So it doesn't really excel at anything
But it's still effective at calculating the bounces and updating scene lighting, which are really though for other systems

#

Since you have no scene/environment lighting, you can't benefit from that

#

And since your cave is pretty sprawling, precomputing realtime lightmaps for it may be inefficient

oak bloom
#

Ah so that's it

#

Lightmaps

#

Yea

#

That's why it probably worked like shit

raven dome
#

Despite being "realtime" it does require them

oak bloom
#

That's why it didn't really work for me

#

No matter

#

Tbh creating a fake realtime gi system isn't that hard

#

Pretty simplistic if that's the purpose ofc

raven dome
oak bloom
#

Yea that's what I meant lol

#

Tbh

raven dome
#

There's a reason why there were no realtime light bounce simulations to speak of before ray tracing hardware came around

oak bloom
#

I think unrealistic isn't necessarily shit looking

raven dome
#

Indeed

oak bloom
#

The purpose is looking good, it's true that something that's more realistic naturally looks better

#

Cause we're used to it

#

But it's not necessarily the case

#

I can make wild leaps in physics and perhaps make a good looking bounce system lol

raven dome
#

It's always a tradeoff, of development time and performance

#

RTX lighting took years to develop and still in most cases looks a bit crap
Even if it's technically more accurate

#

Even with that hardware the amount of light rays to simulate tends to be too much
So you end up with noise and then denoising which has its own problems

oak bloom
#

Yea

#

When it gets too complex

#

It's essentially an entropy of lights

#

So maybe it doesn't need to actually be complex to look good

#

I will see