Plugins + Scripts HLC - HDRI Light Creator

[vamBear]

vamBear submitted a new resource:

HDRI Light Creator - A light generation plugin that analyzes HDRI maps and automatically creates matching light setups.

HDRI Light Creator​

A light generation plugin that analyzes HDRI textures and automatically creates matching light setups. By sampling the color, intensity, and direction of bright areas in an HDRI environment, it adds native VaM lights that replicates the atmosphere and mood of the original scene.

** VERY VERY IMPORTANT **​

This plugin won't work without...

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[chako]

Great plugin! Thank you,
Is this plugin effective in other HDRI maps?

 

[vamBear]

Great plugin! Thank you,
Is this plugin effective in other HDRI maps?

Working on it now actually. It might not be as accurate (EV brightness is lost) due to the way I have to recapture the skybox instead of just reading it. I'm also putting together a tutorial on how to create a HDRI for this plug. Really hoping I can figure something out, there are so many skybox hdri assets out there O_O

 

[hazmhox]

Nice idea!

I don't know how you're trying to fix it, but why not doing a 6 sided shot based on an empty in the scene which will obviously account for the skybox AND the enviro.
Which would massively improve the accuracy of the light setup ^^

 

[vamBear]

Nice idea!

I don't know how you're trying to fix it, but why not doing a 6 sided shot based on an empty in the scene which will obviously account for the skybox AND the enviro.
Which would massively improve the accuracy of the light setup ^^

Yeah, Thank you - I've been diving into that concept based around @MacGruber essential tools - hoping to make it a more general plug that you can use in any scene and situation.
The wall I've hit is the capture seems to be LDR so it can't accurately figure out what is brighter in the scene so it's just generally placing lights around vs now where it's accurate.
Hoping to figure something out though.
Thanks Hazmhox!

 

[hazmhox]

Yeah, Thank you - I've been diving into that concept based around @MacGruber essential tools - hoping to make it a more general plug that you can use in any scene and situation.
The wall I've hit is the capture seems to be LDR so it can't accurately figure out what is brighter in the scene so it's just generally placing lights around vs now where it's accurate.
Hoping to figure something out though.
Thanks Hazmhox!

I can be wrong, but I think you only need to ensure that you allow HDR on the cam, have a R2T with at least a 32bit float texture and don't have any post process.
It should be able to output an HDR texture this way.

 

[vamBear]

I can be wrong, but I think you only need to ensure that you allow HDR on the cam, have a R2T with at least a 32bit float texture and don't have any post process.
It should be able to output an HDR texture this way.

Thanks for that. I'll double check a few things, I had the HDR flag on but will need to check if it's saving as 32bit - TY!

 

[vamBear]

I can be wrong, but I think you only need to ensure that you allow HDR on the cam, have a R2T with at least a 32bit float texture and don't have any post process.
It should be able to output an HDR texture this way.

Had it all set to 32bit (phew) - it does look like the cube capture method and how it was being converted was causing some flipped faces. Then placing lights in strange locations, for the most part it looks like this fix is working. Thanks for prompting some new questions

 

[hazmhox]

Np!

 

[vamBear]

Np!

Thanks again, I thought I would mention this just incase you know or have noticed this as well.

The HDRI releases (Here and one from you Here) All those outputs seem to be LDR, when I use a tone mapper (or scene exposure) to adjust the EV they clamp. I'm actually struggling to find a true HDRI map on resources at the moment. That's why this isn't working, no matter if I capture it in HDR it's still just an LDR image. I might have to come up with a solution that does more of an automated fill light / global illumination and then allows you to have a Key/Main light that you can rotate and change the color of or something else.

Anyways, thought I would ask, can continue this in discord chat or DM, let me know

 

[vamBear]

@hazmhox Here it is with your Skybox release. Made a few tweaks and it works pretty well over all.

 

[hazmhox]

Or we can continue here, no problem at all, after all that's made for that ^^

I have never made actual HDRs, due to the fact I'm doing a 24K x 4K captures in Blender (I'm doing a skybox, not a Cubemap). Since the way I'm doing the skybox ( 6 x 4K² ) is actually not a cubemap nor a skybox material ( it's just a basic unlit ), you can't change the exposure and I thought it would irrelevant anyway in the context of VAM as the post process pipeline is abysmal.

On top of that, since we don't have a clean GI system (that could lit a scene through HDRIs), it was even more pointless to me as you need to lit the scene manually every time. So I prefered to focus on texel resolution than having HDR data that would massively increase the package size without getting much out of it in the game itself.

There is a Reflection probe in there, but lower resolution and captured from the final skybox, so it's probably also LDR : )

For the other cubemaps, I'm pretty sure it's kind of normal since it's common that people don't really know what to do with texture formats and ensure to preserve the full features of the texture they're importing in Unity.
It's been a while I checked the skybox materials (real mat with 6 sided skyboxes), maybe I could push an update if I don't see a big quality difference without jacking up the package size like 2 times or more.

 

[hazmhox]

@hazmhox Here it is with your Skybox release. Made a few tweaks and it works pretty well over all.

Really nice! I bet some people are gonna dig this a lot.

 

[hazmhox]

I was thinking looking at the video "damn the res is low" but you have the skybox enabled in the lighting tab right?

EDIT: Well I did a test, I suspect I won't do true HDR. The final file I get is 15mb per face. When LDR per face at 4K is 1.5mb (on disk). I really can't get onboard with that sort of size for a "game ready" release for VAM. The pros of having true HDR values for VAM 1 are so low that I'm not sure it has any real value to multiply the package size by 10.

 

[vamBear]

I was thinking looking at the video "damn the res is low" but you have the skybox enabled in the lighting tab right?

EDIT: Well I did a test, I suspect I won't do true HDR. The final file I get is 15mb per face. When LDR per face at 4K is 1.5mb (on disk). I really can't get onboard with that sort of size for a "game ready" release for VAM. The pros of having true HDR values for VAM 1 are so low that I'm not sure it has any real value to multiply the package size by 10.

Yeah it looks way worse in the video, it's compressed to all get up doesn't look that low in my setup.

I'm using my other plug Skymagic Loader plus it creates a link to the Open Main UI > Scene Lighting > (all the toggles and sliders) in there and I have the skybox enabled.

Damn on the HDR stuff, not a problem at all, appreciate you looking at it - I'll get this out soon but test it with more LDR releases, at the very least it'll now fake GI pretty well.

 

[vamBear]

vamBear updated HLC - HDRI Light Creator with a new update entry:

Version 2

• Skyboxes and older HDRI resources now work (more info in release)
• Updated names to all be HDRI Light Creator and not Generator
• "Hide Lights in Scene List" toggle
• Advanced Fill/GI Analysis Tweaks (Opposite Favor & Color Variation sliders).
• Auto-fallback to Scene Scan when no ReflectionProbe/Cubemap is found.
• Improved Fill-only distribution (removed directional bias when Key light count is 0).
• Corrected intensity normalization pass for Fill lights.

Read the rest of this update entry...