Global illumination Has little/no-effect

Computron

IDK if it's just my settings but I have a DX10 (Not dx11) card set to ultra and most all the indoor scenes from crymod (Like the Prism.cry level) have practically no global illumination. I really want to see some cool indirect light and compared to what they showed and gdc and in other presentations I am a little disapointed.

I was expecting something like this:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyfBoYo6khU"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyfBoYo6khU[/ame]


but it looks no different with GI on or off in most indoor scenes, and in places that it does work, sometimes the lights will bleed through walls. outdoor scenes all have supplemantary lights placed by artists to help it look correct. Thats not dynamic at all!

Pehaps the LPVs are too sparse? any way to increase the density or the ammount of lights?

Is there any console debug commands to visualize the indirect lights? I tried looking online, found nothing.

teaandcigarettes

In the Time of Day editor, did you try cranking up the Global Illumination Multiplier setting? Try to push it above 1 and I'm sure you will see the difference. DirectX should have no effect on the GI. As far as I'm aware, the SDK version of the editor supports only DX9.

Computron

No way, It works fine in DX9 and 10. You replied a little quick I edited the OP right as you posted. I think in some of the dx11 patch upgrade notes they had screenshots with better GI, a lot denser.

teaandcigarettes

Ah, crap. I meant DX9 of course. I was must have been thinking about something else as I was writing it. I have edited my original post.

Anyways, Global illumination multiplier should make GI more pronounced. Speaking of errors, I'm guessing that they are bound to happen as their solution seems to be an approximation. It might be possible that it's precision can be tweaked via config files. In CE2, you could modify advanced graphical settings outside of the editor, so I'm assuming the same is possible for CE3.

Computron

There is an option under "Config Spec" with the Crymod 2 editor (Not SDK) to turn Dx11 on.

teaandcigarettes

Computron wrote: »

There is an option under "Config Spec" with the Crymod 2 editor (Not SDK) to turn Dx11 on.

I see. I've seen some comparisons between these two versions and haven't noticed any significant differences in the quality of GI. I'm using the free SDK and have yet to see any problems with GI.

Computron

Well, I will use whichever Has it best, since I have both. Why don't they make the differences more clear?

Anyway, The problem is not in the GI Multiplyer, there is nothing to multiply in a lot of indoor areas for some reason. Is GI enable for all light sources or just the sun?

teaandcigarettes

I just a quick test. I have created a vis area, added some objects and a point light and it does seem like GI doesn't work with lights other than the sun. Changing Global illumination multiplier doesn't effect them. Toggling GI on and off in the Render Settings panel does not make any difference. I guess the reason why I didn't notice it before is because all indoor locations I've seen were still affected by the sun light. That's interesting.

Vis Areas have a setting called IgnoreGI but toggling it doesn't make any difference.

Computron

I tried using an irradiance volume and its counterpart in the crymod version, I can't get that to work either. They show this cool feature off every chance they get but I can't find a single place in the crysis 2 campaign that actually works let alone looks like actual radiosity. toggle GI on and off looks the same in %90 of places where i'd expect bounced light. wtf?

The biggest WTF is half of the console commands they reference in the manual don't exist according to the console.

This page: http://freesdk.crydev.net/display/SDKDOC2/Irradiance+Volumes

r_IrradianceVolumes? nope. r_DeferredShading? nuh-uh.

[HP]

GI works for the sun only, it doesn't work for individual lights!

It really doesn't add too much, the differences are minor, they're supposed to be, it's light bouncing not light casting, but their there.
You can although, really pump up the GI strengh in the TOD.

OFF: (0)

ON: (1 = max)


Values of 0.3/0.4 usually create good results, it really depends on your ToD, how bright the sun is, etc, play around.

VizAreas have a IgnoreGI on and off flag, but again, this only works if you have sun inside your viz-area.
To fake GI in interiors, we used manually placed deferred lights, their cheap so you can use a lot of them.

Computron

Ah, that clears that up, I suspected they would limit it to important light sources.

Helder, Could you explain the irradiance/Light-propagation volumes? I want indoor GI with light entities.

Also, does any of these indirect lights occlude like in the video with the couch? (2 minutes into the video embeded in OP)

also, where is that screenshot taken?

[HP]

Screenshot is taken in the forest level from the FreeSDK, I just turned on "e_DefaultMaterial 1" to get rid of the textures.

I'm not a coder man, so I can't go into details too much, I only know how to use it and where to go to turn it on, eheh.

But check out the Lighting presentation to see how we did our lighting on C2:
http://crytek.com/cryengine/presentations

Bottom line is, we did not rely on GI too much to do our lighting, it's there, it adds a nice light bouncing touch to exteriors but the effect is not ground breaking, hence why we complement it with manually placed deferred lights.

Computron

Yeah, I was loking through all those presentations the other day, cool stuff, thats why I started looking in the manual and this post. I just can't get the volumes to work, and the concole commands don't work. I placed a volume, scaled it and added a light, flagged deffered and use volumes and it does not look correct at all.

polyly

Crytek must implement indoor GI method as soon as possible.

Computron

they already have one called irradiance/light-propagation volumes, it's supposed to be kinda expensive though.

Computron

Has anyone got the propagation volumes in the Crysis 2 modSDK to work? I can't seem to figure it out. Helder, have you ever worked with one?

I set up a scene with 6 solids for walls inside of a visarea with black ambient light, a LPV that I scaled to encompass the room and increased density, and a deferred light with LPV checked on. Still no radiosity, what gives?

Ark

I've messed with it as well and couldn't get it to work.
Seems to be only good for small scenes anyway and doesn't support shadowed lights.

Id just use normal deferred lights, with manually placed bounced lights to get a similar effect with more control and shadows. Aslong not too many lights overlap and eat all your fillrate then it should look similar.