Placing reflection probes in big interior

Avvi

Hi,

I can't get a good effect with reflection probes.

I'm doing an underground station in Unity 5. It's a big place, so for this reason I need many probes. I split the platform to three meshes, so they get the nearest probe. Unity mixes probes - a single object gets a single "mix", according to object's pivot. It causes problems.

What are the possible solutions for such interiors?

Angry Beaver

If refelection probes are cubemaps like I think they are, and you're trying to make a reflective floor, I would lookk at implementing SSR instead. Screen Space Reflection is a knockoff reflection effect that produces a better result than cubemaps but it has issues. If you you use it on a floor then none of those issues come up probably so its a good palce for it. Because SSR is a shader effect it means regardless of how you build your floor the reflections will look good.

If you don't want to switch to SSR try instead introducing interruptions into your platform, pillar and floor runners that create visual gaps to hide the seams in the reflection.

Avvi

Thanks!

I can't use SSRs now (U5 doesn't support them natively. Maybe Candela would be necessary). It's a great advice anyway! it would really be the solution that's independent of mesh continuity, which causes my problem.

Hiding the divisions with cleverly placed model elements is also a nice idea.

Avvi

Unreal's Reflections and Sun Temple scenes got it nicely. They have big-radius probes for general reflections and smaller for places and objects that require more precision.

Many walls are separate objects (instead of huge modules). That means they have unique pivots, catching reflections properly.

Sun Temple


Reflections


Probe layout in Reflections https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Resources/Showcases/Reflections/index.html