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The Unreal Engine 4 is going to support dynamic GI soon, made by Lionhead

L

lefantome

Member
Using the same approach of the Cry Engine aka Light Propagation Volumes

It was discovered by vblanco on the Unreal Engine forums and it's still in beta.

A video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WEi6cH34o4

After dropping SVOGI, the UE4 is currently using baked lightmaps produced by Lightmass and they are amazing as you can see in this tech demo(for mobile devices):

gHySkPs.jpg


Flythrough: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fz3PPZr8XKo
 
M

MasterOfPastures

Banned
Very nice. I've been porting some assets over and I'm working on a scene at the moment. I don't mid lightmaps now that much, since they fixed many issues of previous iterations (like vertex-to-vertex lightmap seams).
Still, if we don't have to worry about them altogether, even better.

Edit:
childplease said:
Was this the feature removed because of the lack of power on consoles ?
Click to expand...

No one speaks of it... but yes.
 
A

Aizu_Itsuko

Member
childplease said:
Was this the feature removed because of the lack of power on consoles ?
Click to expand...
I don't think so.

I think it was removed because it was too demanding for pretty much anything on the market. Even on top of the line GPUs you had to devote way too many resources for it and in the end you could get better looking results by using traditional methods (as evidenced by the Infiltrator tech demo).
 
L

lefantome

Member
childplease said:
Was this the feature removed because of the lack of power on consoles ?
Click to expand...

the original elemental demo was using an insane amount of ram, 32gb If I recall correctly.


@Techie: yes it is, it seems to run decently on a nexus 4 but I haven't tried it myself.
There is a pc version of a very similar scene with more complex stuff but the effect it's close. The power of the lightmaps.

That scene runs well at 20-25fps on my HD intel 4600
 
D

DerZuhälter

Member
enzo_gt said:
Why would they explicitly remove it for this reason? UE4 isn't just for consoles.. or gaming for that matter.
Click to expand...

Workflow. Wouldn't be efficient for multiplattform development if you have to bake lights for the console version, and have a complete different lighting engine in the PC version.

Sure for a PC exclusive it would make sense, but it's still quite a taxing feature.
 
cyberheater

cyberheater

PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 Xbone PS4 PS4
What are the benefits of GI.

Can you populate your scene with geometry. Define a moving sun light source and then run the game and you get realtime shadows on everything?
 
aY227

aY227

Member
sn00zer said:
Baked lightmaps look glorious and are perfect for certain games where you dont need a dynamic change of day
http://dl.dehkadeyedownload.ir/gallery/952-4.jpg
Click to expand...
Its not glorious at all, because it makes iterating in development a bitch.
Read about Carmach talk about their prebake tech, KZ:SF prebaking when they used all PCs in a studio at nights and some at days to prebake or just watch DICE presentation about Mirrors Edge development and why they went away from this solution in Frostbite 2.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBe9pZyy9bQ

cyberheater said:
What are the benefits of GI.

Can you populate your scene with geometry. Define a moving sun light source and then run the game and you get realtime shadows on everything?
Click to expand...

You get better light distribution in areas that are shadowed, because You get light bounce from surfaces.
Its not about getting shadows from sun or light sources, its about getting more light in shadowed areas and applying color of light bounce from surfaces to other surfaces.
The benefits of real-time GI is that You can apply it to dynamic objects and dynamic light sources and You can move sun in real time, which also makes development much faster.
 
M

mandiller

Member
Are there any Unreal Engine 4 tech demos you can download and run on PC to test out how the engine runs and looks in real time?
 
C

Candescence

Member
Dynamic GI probably isn't really gonna be feasible until something like Unlimited Detail comes out and we can stop upping the polygons and focusing on other things, I suppose. Same with a lot of other things like Fluid dynamics.
 
T

Thunder Monkey

Banned
Candescence said:
Dynamic GI probably isn't really gonna be feasible until something like Unlimited Detail comes out and we can stop upping the polygons and focusing on other things, I suppose. Same with a lot of other things like Fluid dynamics.
Click to expand...
What?!

No... no... no...

Currently lighting a scene and testing a scene are time intensive processes. Dynamic GI takes one of the time sinks away. No longer having to prebake all of your lighting. I mean you can still use the tools given to prebake if you want the resources freed that realtime GI would sap away, but with such a tool it's not "Place props, bake lighting, test to see if works or looks good, doesn't, start over". With this kind of realtime approach it's "Place props, place lightsource, look see, tweak" Without wasting minutes in the process.
 
H

Horp

Member
Candescence said:
Dynamic GI probably isn't really gonna be feasible until something like Unlimited Detail comes out and we can stop upping the polygons and focusing on other things, I suppose. Same with a lot of other things like Fluid dynamics.
Click to expand...

Please stop...
Unlimited Detail is vaporware, if even that. What those old videos talked about doesn't adress a number of deal breaking issues that kind of nullifies their whole approach. So please put Unlimited Detail out of your mind until they actually present something.

And GI has nothing to do with polygons/voxels.
 
P

Prophet Steve

Member
mandiller said:
Are there any Unreal Engine 4 tech demos you can download and run on PC to test out how the engine runs and looks in real time?
Click to expand...

The engine released a few days ago, and it does contain some sample scenes. If it hasn't happened yet I am sure someone can package one of them so that you can run it.

Sorry, not want to do so myself right now cause I still kind of suck with the engine.
 
G

GamingIsDead

Member
Hope this become a standard on pc at least. Even games that are graphically less then steller games can be given a huge boost in realism and looks with improved lighting.
 
T

Thunder Monkey

Banned
Horp said:
Please stop...
Unlimited Detail is vaporware, if even that. What those old videos talked about doesn't adress a number of deal breaking issues that kind of nullifies their whole approach. So please put Unlimited Detail out of your mind until they actually present something.

And GI has nothing to do with polygons/voxels.
Click to expand...

I'm not even sure what they were meaning. If I remember right isn't UD supposed to be using a point sample approach? Basically casting light everywhere that reacts to different points making something like GI useless?

Not exactly applicable to rendering and lighting techniques designed under the current realtime design paradigm.
 
H

Horp

Member
Thunder Monkey said:
I'm not even sure what they were meaning. If I remember right isn't UD supposed to be using a point sample approach? Basically casting light everywhere that reacts to different points making something like GI useless?

Not exactly applicable to rendering and lighting techniques designed under the current realtime design paradigm.
Click to expand...

What Euclideon has done so far is saying "We render voxels, but for some reason we can render them 100x faster than anyone else, and even though we have thousands of billions of points of detail for a world memory wont be an issue, for some reason. Oh and we won't tell you how this is even remotely possible. Just trust us, and invest a bit in us." aka nothing.
 
T

Thunder Monkey

Banned
Horp said:
What Euclideon has done so far is saying "We render voxels, but for some reason we can render them 100x faster than anyone else, and even though we have thousands of billions of points of detail for a world memory wont be an issue, for some reason. Oh and we won't tell you how this is even remotely possible. Just trust us, and invest a bit in us." aka nothing.
Click to expand...
Well that's even more worthless than I initially thought lol!

I must have gotten into the hype and bad info trap. I thought they were working towards something truly revolutionary. Not something that's been tried and failed a billion times before.
 
HuzZz

HuzZz

Neo Member
GamingIsDead said:
Hope this become a standard on pc at least. Even games that are graphically less then steller games can be given a huge boost in realism and looks with improved lighting.
Click to expand...

Honestly it'll take a long time before dynamic GI beats the accuracy of prebaked lighting. Having to calculate light bounces at runtime will in no way be as accurate as an offline bake which can take as long as it needs to (within suitable development limits). Don't expect dynamic GI at this stage to look better/more accurate than lightmaps, because the truth is it won't. It'll take a long time for dynamic GI to surpass lightmaps. The reason why lightmaps are still used is purely because they are the best looking and graphically cheapest solution, although it is the worst solution iteration wise.
 
H

Horp

Member
Thunder Monkey said:
Well that's even more worthless than I initially thought lol!

I must have gotten into the hype and bad info trap. I thought they were working towards something truly revolutionary. Not something that's been tried and failed a billion times before.
Click to expand...

Well who knows, they might actually have something. But we have no reason to just trust them.

Off topic:
How about if I tell you a little secret... I have a revolutionary way of doing physics. With my approach you'll get perfect soft body physics on a iPhone 3gs. Awesome huh? I even have video showing you some soft body physics and it says "Running on 3gs" in the corner. Should be proof enough.
Wanna give me money?

Oh and On topic:
Awesome if they can support dynamic GI. I wonder how Enlighten compares to Light Propagation Volumes. I know Enlighten is an half-baked (not meaning half-done here) approach; but I wouldn't be suprised if Light Propagation uses something similar. Probably at least baked AO maps.
 
T

Thunder Monkey

Banned
HuzZz said:
Honestly it'll take a long time before dynamic GI beats the accuracy of prebaked lighting. Having to calculate light bounces at runtime will in no way be as accurate as an offline bake which can take as long as it needs to (within suitable development limits). Don't expect dynamic GI at this stage to look better/more accurate than lightmaps, because the truth is they won't. It'll take a long time for them to surpass lightmaps. The reason why lightmaps are still used is purely because they are the best looking and graphically cheapest solution, although it is the worst solution iteration wise.
Click to expand...
I wouldn't doubt that a good chunk of devs will use it just for iterative testing purposes.

Just so they can line everything up in realtime, test to see if it works, tweak where necessary, and then bake the results at whatever level of fidelity they need..

Horp said:
Well who knows, they might actually have something. But we have no reason to just trust them.

Off topic:
How about if I tell you a little secret... I have a revolutionary way of doing physics. With my approach you'll get perfect soft body physics on a iPhone 3gs. Awesome huh? I even have video showing you some soft body physics and it says "Running on 3gs" in the corner. Should be proof enough.
Wanna give me money?
Click to expand...
Well... you do have a trustworthy face.
 
R

RoboPlato

I'd be in the dick
Cool, glad they found some sort of solution. I know they intended to find some kind of replacement for SVOGI.
 
Q

quantumnerd

Member
The improved iteration time is nice, but GI is great because it allows worlds to be more dynamic. When you rely on baking, changes in the lighting conditions/object positions will be impossible or look wrong. I can see this being useful for bringing back moving level geometry/large objects with a respectable amount of graphical fidelity.
 
H

Horp

Member
RoboPlato said:
Cool, glad they found some sort of solution. I know they intended to find some kind of replacement for SVOGI.
Click to expand...

I think it is worth mentioning that SVOGI has problems. It's not only a question of performance. On the top of my head (it's been a while since I tried to understand if fully) SVOGI have problems with leakage.
 
HuzZz

HuzZz

Neo Member
Thunder Monkey said:
I wouldn't doubt that a good chunk of devs will use it just for iterative testing purposes.

Just so they can line everything up in realtime, test to see if it works, tweak where necessary, and then bake the results at whatever level of fidelity they need..
Click to expand...

That would be ideal. If Epic can get enough consistency between lightmass and their new light propagation volume tech (not to mention an easy way to toggle between LPV and lightmaps) then there would be the potential for some major iteration speedup.
 
S

ScepticMatt

Member
The video posted doesn't have secondary bounces, has low resolution shadows and light leakage problems.

So I'm not particularly impressed. Still, it's nice that they are working on it.
 
R

Raide

Member
Watched the video then imagined what Dark Souls would be like if they used UE4...

Pretty impressed with what Epic are doing but they are the only people that seem to get the best out of their engines, so I cannot wait to see what they have planned.
 
A

astonish

Member
There are totally second bounces, but they are subtle. There is plenty of leakage (as the UE post says its a work in progress).

I wonder if Lionhead gave put out a paper anywhere.
 
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