Will we be able to test the Future is Bright builds in Team Create any time before release? (i.e for team test)
Doing so currently crashes studio.
9 Likes
Is there any chance the new lighting system will support custom normal and specular maps?
16 Likes
Yeah the new build should address that; should be ready early next week (or this week depending on which timezone you’re in).
15 Likes
I would love to heat a yes on this.
But I highly doubt that’s a thing for a while… 
13 Likes
In v12 if you set Lighting.Brightness to 0, it disables shadows and then crashes after a few seconds.
13 Likes
As for content compatibility, fog blends in a really strange way using the prototype.
It doesn’t really seem to respect brightness, more so colors:
Tried messing with exposure settings as well as turning auto exposure off, same result.
6 Likes
So, is this the way that Light speaks?
8 Likes
Thanks - we’ll take a look - we didn’t work on fog in this prototype at all.
5 Likes
The main github page still links to V11
3 Likes
v12 doesn’t seem to be working correctly for me, it’s just using CPU voxel and there’s no property under Lighting that lets me switch to shadow map. Graphics settings are cranked up to maximum (I also have decent hardware, didn’t have too many problems performance-wise before), and messing with HybridBlendDist and HybridBlendSoftness doesn’t do anything.
What am I doing wrong here?
Edit: Ah.
4 Likes
thanks for working on performance this cant ship till i can get solid FPS while playing in shadowmap 
8 Likes
I hate to say it, but everything seems to look worse in the new prototype, and I can’t seem to find any way to tweak the lighting settings to make it look better.
Everything looks extremely metallic and dark.
The only way I can make things look decent is by changing the OutdoorAmbient to 255, 255, 255, and also making the Ambient something in the midrange of values. Otherwise, it looks like the lighting you would see in a crappy horror game. Whenever I change the lighting to those settings, though, it messes up with the exposure. In a game with indoor and outdoor areas, the exposure difference when AutoExposure is enabled is huge, and it just looks weird.
Maybe this will be solved with the dynamic voxels, but you can really see this difference when you see unloaded voxels.
7 Likes
Make sure you have this option enabled.
I had a similar problem by default, and it changed when I enabled the FutureIsBright option.
12 Likes
Ah, that makes a lot more sense.
Everything still looks metallic though, and I still have to change the OutdoorAmbient/Ambient to high values, but with the shadows it makes a lot more sense.
Also, when the shadows load in, it’s pretty jarring.
6 Likes
That jarring are caused by those two options here.
The BlendDist changes the distance of how far that jarring appears. (You could have it on a distance far enough the player wouldn’t be able to see it that well)
And the Softness should speak for itself, but it makes the shadow softer for everything after the set BlendDist.
Edit: I think it’s performance-wise better than having those shadows everywhere for the engine to render lol (like before v12).
8 Likes
Now I need to figure out how to do lighting in areas like this
I’m using PointLights so the ceiling can be lit (SurfaceLights are accurate, except that they leave the ceiling entirely dark), but then that makes a highlight at the point where the PointLight is located, which looks really weird.
Maybe I’m lighting things wrong, but it seems like this system only really works with suspended ceilings for SurfaceLights or lights emitting from a small, central point for PointLights and SpotLights.
It’s hard to make things not look dark without using artificial, invisible lights all over the place. But that also doesn’t work because of the metallic highlights all over the place. Maybe it’s just because I’m doing it wrong though.
I have the feeling it will only work well when you place lights inside actual visible light objects, but that also makes it so the ceiling is dark.
5 Likes
Remember to always check out the release notes when a new version comes out. In particular, a lot of stuff about v12 that’s been scattered across the past several posts is plainly explained there.
12 Likes
@zeuxcg instead of solely focusing on extended lighting range to light up huge areas ; what about an actual volume area light as seen in an old Hackweek lighting Demo ?!
The way this light worked was basically simply illuminating anything inside an entire parts size or so …
or illuminating everything in a rectangular area … like a block of light…a corridor of light
also about surface lights ; those currently still do not cast any shadows ; plus it would be neat if we could somehow get specular highlights which are shaped as rectangular as the surface light ?! … since a round specular highlights from a wide rectangular light source makes barely any sense in my opinion … and looks weird for wide ceiling lights …
Also based on @DataBrain 's place ; i think the engine finally needs some sort of global illumination / light reflecting off surfaces ; light bouncing … so teh surface lights could actually dynamically fill the room with light …
And sorry for the long text but one last question ; now that the voxel system is used again ; will we ever get self illumination for the Neon material ? so that bright neon colors get their own custom shaped specular highlights ?!
OH and before i forget to ask ; what about shadow transparency for transparent parts ?
and one other thing which was featured in the same old hackweek lighting demo ; tinted shadows ; so if light goes trough any colored transparent pixel it colors the shadow based on the color of the transparent parts and of particle pixels ; this would be especially useful for real tinted glass !
9 Likes
This is also one of the main concerns I have with the system. With the voxel system, there is basically some really fake global illumination due to light blending between voxels.
Feels like the only way to get such scenarios to look right is by using a brighter indoor ambient (which I’d like to avoid personally in order to also have very dark caves).
7 Likes