Guides Customized global illumination with SkyMagic

[AlexV]

Try right click on Download button and save as the pdf file.

 

[Dragontales]

Try right click on Download button and save as the pdf file.

OMG...thank you. I've only been using this site since the beginning. HOw I got fixated on the little pic in the description is beyond me. lol. I blame covid-brain. It's definitely a real thing.

 

[MacGruber]

OMG...thank you. I've only been using this site since the beginning. HOw I got fixated on the little pic in the description is beyond me. lol. I blame covid-brain. It's definitely a real thing.

rofl.....that is what you looked at. I thought maybe you had some crappy default PDF viewer or whatever, but for that AlexV's suggestion made sense as well.

The thumbnail thingy is there because this was originally EarlyAccess, so you needed an idea what you would get without actually getting it, hence thumbnail

 

[Dragontales]

rofl.....that is what you looked at. I thought maybe you had some crappy default PDF viewer or whatever, but for that AlexV's suggestion made sense as well.

The thumbnail thingy is there because this was originally EarlyAccess, so you needed an idea what you would get without actually getting it, hence thumbnail

No....just me being an idiot. some days I wish I could start over. lol.

 

[Gary Wallace]

Hello @MacGruber,

First of all, thank you for your amazing work for the project. I just arrived to Vam and same as @AlexV, Skymagic is one of the most important plugins for me as I try to create realistic but lightweight lighting setups for the VR VaM version. I recently found the GI problem too and I was wondering if you had any luck with it.

I´d also like to share a couple of thoughts with you. The Exporter plugin seems to generate a 8 bit PNG, for this use a 32 bits HDR image would look incredible, maybe there´s a way to do it but I didn´t find it. I managed to load custom HDRs with your Loader plugin though and that´s very cool ?

I also found that VaM built in skyboxes are HDR and it shows in background and reflections, specially if you play with the exposure, but GI over the models through these same maps look quite flat ,as if 8 bit images were used instead. Maybe it´s just me, anyone else noticed?

Thanks again!

 

[MacGruber]

@AlexV @FCG Burned some 5-6 hours between yesterday and today on this. Sadly, no dice. I think it has something to do with the spherical harmonics setup just being copied from the Museum sky. So the diffuse you get is from that sky. I tried to compute my own values from the cubemap, but for some reason that just results in some uniform yellow'ish diffuse lighting that seems unrelated to the actual cubemap. Not sure what's wrong with it. If anyone wants to continue tinkering with this, I added the following in the UpdateSky method of SkyMagicLoader:

Cubemap cube = mySkyProbe.customBakedTexture as Cubemap;
int miplevel = 0;
int mipsize = cube.width;
for (; miplevel<cube.mipmapCount && mipsize > 8; ++miplevel)
    mipsize /= 2;                   
Cubemap copy = new Cubemap(mipsize, cube.format, false);
for (int i=0; i<6; ++i)
    Graphics.CopyTexture(cube, i, miplevel, copy, i, 0);
Destroy(copy);
mySky.CustomSH = null;
mySky.SH = new SHEncoding();
SHUtil.projectCube(ref mySky.SH, copy, 0, false);
mySky.SH.copyToBuffer();

This may be something rather stupid, but I don't see it.

This has now been fixed in Essentials.15, see:

Plugins - MacGruber Essentials - Updates

hub.virtamate.com

 

[TrukDinal]

Hello, I am converting a room scene to vam and trying to export the reflective prob to improve the reality of this asset. How should I export this prob, the sphere or the prob? I exported the prob but the assebundle in Vam gets nothing in it "none" but the room is fine. If I am supposed to export the sphere, how do you edit the material of it? Because it is not editable for me.

You see it is grey,what comes into my brain is should I extract it from prefab? It is not an external asset.

 

[Mutatta]

I'm trying to use this to use the ReflectionProbe of a unity scene as global illumination. Not sure how to do this though.

 

[MacGruber]

@ConCquent @Mutatta When you want to use custom GI you need to setup a reflection probe the same way the SkyMagic Importer script would do for you when you take a cubemap-screenshot using SkyMagic Exporter. See the screenshots on page 4 of the PDF tutorial for the precise settings. If you need more details, just go through the Exporter-Importer cycle and see what exactly the script creates for you. Then replicate that with your own reflection probe. Later in VaM you then load your Reflection probe using SkyMagic Loader.

Out of the top of my head, the important are settings:

• For the Texture:
  • Texture Shape
  • Mapping
  • Convolution Type
  • Fixup Edge Seams
  • Generate Mip Maps
  • sRGB (try to switch on/off if you have trouble with too bright or too dark reflections)
• For the ReflectionProbe:
  • Type = Custom
  • Cubemap = above texture