Yeah no problem! I added the UI Toggle after your request.Hadn't had time yet to check out everything, but on a first glance it looks very good!
I noticed you also added an UI toggle. Nice!
The lavla lamp is obviously yours, but did you also do the other lamps yourself?
Hello! Thank you, that's great to hear! For the colour contrast thing I did try playing around with the built-in CustomUnityAsset lighting and it did help a bit. But yeah it would require animating it as part of the day/night cycle which is a lot of work. Not saying that I won't do it of course in the future. I would still like the sunset/sunrise time period to hit a little harder so I'll definitely look into a colour-correction plugin at some point.Hi,
i finally had some time to check out the update more thoroughly and i like it very much.
Lighting is good in general and the only things i did not like are probably just because of the difficulties of tuning it all for the day/night cycle and i would not really know how to improve on that easily. For example i think contrasts could be a bit more punchy at times, but i think the more contrast (both colour contrast and brightness contrast) you dial in the harder it gets to balance it out over the whole night/night cycle, so i think it's fine as it is.
Only two things that i think could definitely be improved:
- Some lights could use higher shadow quality settings. I did not bother to check which lights, but i noticed some very blocky shadwos in some situations. I assume that those were from light sources with shadow quality set to medium or low?!
- I did not like that objects outside (for example the little tree on the balcony) had a very noticeble double-shadows, as if there were two suns in the sky. I think this was just and oversight, but in case you put the light there deliberately for some reason not obvious to me, remember that you can also disable shadow casting: In direct sunlight there should obviously only be a single shadow - so if you still decide to use a second light for whatever reason, you could disable shadowing on that to not have that double shadow (instead maybe use light distance slider to prevent the non-shadowing light to nuke your whole scene)...
One idea to get more contrast in the scene would be to use a colour-correction plugin, and use it to change contrast and colours for different times of day. I don't know if this is a good idea, because you introduce yet another set of parameters to the scene that you have to account for, but it is an option.
I would probably not do it, or only use it as a last resort, because i feel that it adds another set of parameters and comes with the risk of starting a vicious cycle of endlessly adjusting two competing systems...
Yes absolutely, I've already got the sunlight colour animated for the sunset/sunrise portion where it transitions from white to orange. I know that's not a perfect simulation of reality but it was the only way I could think of doing it. Unfortunately animating the colour looks a bit weird when animating between different hues. It works fine going from white to a specific colour, then back to white again. But for example when I tried animating from orange to blue, it cycled through the spectrum (It goes orange-red-purple-blue or something crazy like that lol).the double shadow from the tree was casted onto the apartment wall, so it was definitely not from the room lighting.
when i load it up next time, i will have a look at it again.
maybe the shadows also automatically worsen when there are too many lightsources active in the scene in order to save performance?
i appreciate your ambition to get it right - just don't go mad over it
is it possible to animate light colour? if so, you could try the following instead of using colour correction:
have the sun be two lights instead of one, but only have one casting shadows. the shadow casting one would be your actual sun, the other would be your GI (global illumination) light and would mimic the colour of the sky (important to disable shadows on that). daylight - if you simplify it, are two light sources: the direct sunlight and the lighting from the sky (which originates from the sun also of course). the sum of both lights is more or less white light. so with a very high sun the sun is nearly white and the sky is pale, with the sun low down the direct sunlight is more yellow, but the sky gets more blue and therefore the shadows get more blue. remember that the light that originates from the sun is perfect white and the "yellow" sun / "blue" sky are just the white light getting seperated and spread across the atmosphere. of course this is simplified, but for your purposes it will be good enough i think: start with noon and set the sun to warm white and the GI light to a very pale blue, now animate the colour in a way that all the blue you take away from the sun, you add to the GI light. this way you get more colour contrast the lower the sun is on the horizon, as direct lights get warmer against shadows that get more blue.
my idea is that contrast does more to convey a light situation than peak values. a light will seem brighter if there is darkness and a yellow/red sun will seem more colourful against a blue sky and blue global illumination. also it is somewhat physically correct (in reality of course direct light and indirect light don't always add up to white, because a lot of the blue lights get scattered so far that it indirectly lights up scenes halfway across the globe, but i think it is good to think about sunlight being white in its sum to get a general concept of how the sun and sky illuminate a scene...)
this is just a quick idea though, i don't know if it works at all within the constraints of vam. also it would fight against the customUnity-GI and you would have to reset that to zero... or maybe just use the UnityGI instead of the second light source? it should have a similar effect, shouldn't it?
Transistion from white to orange (... to red...) and back to near white seems fine to me for realism. The direct sunlight should always only be shades of red. The indirect sunlight (or global illumination from the sun) should only be shades of blue (it gets more complicated for indoor area that open only to one direction like your apartment, because at sunset and sunrise the sky has a colour gradient from red to blue but i am confident that you don't have to account for that. it will look good enough if you keep the GI to shades of blue and the direct sun to shades of red, where at noon they would both be close to white. again: it's an approximation, but good enough.Yes absolutely, I've already got the sunlight colour animated for the sunset/sunrise portion where it transitions from white to orange. I know that's not a perfect simulation of reality but it was the only way I could think of doing it. Unfortunately animating the colour looks a bit weird when animating between different hues. It works fine going from white to a specific colour, then back to white again. But for example when I tried animating from orange to blue, it cycled through the spectrum (It goes orange-red-purple-blue or something crazy like that lol). ...
Ah yeah that's a good idea! Turning off all shadows to try and fine-tune the contrast seems the way to go. I think I currently have 3 directional lights in the scene, although only one is active at any one time of course. I have the sunlight during the day (Which rotates), and then the moonlight at night (Fixed). If I remember correctly, the sky light was just for that midnight to dawn period to get some cool shadows spilling into the apartment (That was another one of your ideasSince your whoel scene opens up to only one direction, maybe you can even get away with directional light for GI. Just make sure to deactivate shadows on a directional light and shoot it straight into the apartment from outside. So you would have the direct sunlight ("sun light") with shadows on animating from white to red and animating the direction, while the GI light ("sky light") would be static in direction, without shadows and only animating between white and blue.
example:
GI and UnityGI set to off...
noon:
sun light warm white
sky light cold white
on transiton to sunset
sun light hue to red, animate direction (sun movement)
sky light hue to blue
Ahh I see! So essentially to try to avoid the problems caused by the UnityGi function by using a directional light instead for the same purpose. I'd definitely be interested to see what you come up with if you get the chancenonono, you misunderstood me.
i was only talking about a way to substitute global ilumination with a light. that light can't have a shadow, because that is the whole point of global illumination.
i thought about that, because you said that using the UnityGi function for GI has it's drawbacks.
so i was only proposing that you could use a directional lightsource (without a shadow) as global illumination. so for natural light, you'd have two vam lightsources to simulate daylight ("sun" (white-red) and "sky" (white-blue) with "sky" having no shadow because it would be your GI source). same for night with "moon" and "sky"...
maybe it does not work well, but since i'm now interested if it works, i might try it for myself![]()
I stand corrected: After having a look at it, i agree that vam skyboxes are little bit too limited to use them for GI with day/night cycle. I was hoping once could cleverly misuse them to get noon light from a sunset-skybox or vice versa, but it did not look good.Maybe it's best to actually work with the vam skyboxes and normal vam GI. I think the skyboxes offer enough adjustments to make a day/night cycle with them when being very clever about it. But i would have to test that also...
I think that actually looks really cool! That shade of orange is exactly what I was hoping for. Right now I'm working on other things, but I'm definitely gonna go and play around with the lighting more at some point. I think the idea of a shadows-off "cheat light" could help a lot to emphasise specific colours where I need them.I stand corrected: After having a look at it, i agree that vam skyboxes are little bit too limited to use them for GI with day/night cycle. I was hoping once could cleverly misuse them to get noon light from a sunset-skybox or vice versa, but it did not look good.
If you are really serious of pushing your scenes to the limits with dynamic lighting, it's maybe best to ask some of the community wizards like mcgruber for help. He will probably have some ideas, or at least know what's generally possible within the limitations of vam...
I would not recommend that honestly. Or maybe i misunderstand you. I would not consider that blue "GI / skylight" a cheatlight, same as i would not consider using the GI slider or the UnityGI slider a cheatlight. Again, i am not sure with the english terminology. I think for this conversation it would eb good to have some common terms:I think that actually looks really cool! That shade of orange is exactly what I was hoping for. Right now I'm working on other things, but I'm definitely gonna go and play around with the lighting more at some point. I think the idea of a shadows-off "cheat light" could help a lot to emphasise specific colours where I need them.
Sure skyboxes are an interesting problem, but i did not miss better skyboxes in your scene. I think the weather effects and the nice city backdrop do a decent job in hiding the fact, that the skybox is static. But as a problem to solve it might be nice to work on it...Tbh I think my first task when I do another pass on the lighting is to try to fix the skybox issue. Imagine if in the image you posted above, there was an actual sunrise skybox in the background. It would make a world of difference I think. But yeah it's definitely a question of working within the limitations of VaM, and also having to think about performance as well (My scene has over 300 atoms which is already overwhelming lol).
But yeah thanks again for taking the time to test this out. It's always cool to hear your insight!![]()
Ah yeah maybe my use of the term "cheat-light" wasn't appropriate there. So I guess the thing I'm missing at the moment is some sort of representation of what you call the sky light (That natural blue). So by cheat-light I guess I meant creating something to represent that, although yeah technically that would be a natural source of light as you say.I would not recommend that honestly. Or maybe i misunderstand you. I would not consider that blue "GI / skylight" a cheatlight, same as i would not consider using the GI slider or the UnityGI slider a cheatlight. Again, i am not sure with the english terminology. I think for this conversation it would eb good to have some common terms:
- Sunlight, Moonlight are both self-explanatory i think (natural light sources obviously, could both be animated in direction, hue (warm white to orange-red and maybe animated in intensity if necessary).
- Skylight was what i called my GI (global illumiantion) light. It's GI and in the same category as the scene GI slider and the UnityGI slider. It has no shadows, because it is an extremely rough approximation of indirect light (light that does not come directly from a lightscource but scattered/bounced light). I called it "sky" because in your specific scene the sky would and should have such a big impact on the GI. Of course all light sources have an impact on GI but since that this is not realistic to archieve in vam it's a reasonable approximation to say that all GI comes from the blue sky. Theoretically GI should be different in every part of the scene: Outside on thee balcony it would be more blue from the sky, inside (at night) it would be less blue, because the room lights would also contribute to the GI. but this is not feasable in vam, so just going with "sky" is a good compromise.
- Room light / practical lights: Also self-explanatory. Electrical light sources. If the light fixture is a visible object, i'd call them "practical", otherwise just "room light" or "int light" or sth. like that...
- Cheat light, effect light: These are only lights that "should" not exist and are only there for artistic purpose, where "realistic" lighting is not enough, or where you want to add some hyperrealsitic effects, or you maybe need to circumvent a vam engine limitation. An effect light could also be a approximation of many lightsources into one. For example "city lights" as a single dim lighsorce that shines upwards fromt eh ground and mimics the diffuse glow from all the city lights...
I've listed them in the order i would implement them. Start with only the Natural light sources and GI and make a good day night cycle with it. (the sun and moon going from warm white to red, the global illumination going from cold white to blue. Nothing more. Adjust this until it looks good. Don't be concerned with your actors, just get a believable cycle with good colours and good contrast. At this point it does not amter if your actors are in shadow or not...
If your cycle is set, add room light in a way that makes the apartment look realistically lit, but also in a way that gives interesting light to your actors. It does not have to be perfect, but it should look decent.
Only now add your effect lights and cheat light. Set them up with all your poses in mind. And make sure that every pose works at every time of day and if needed add a cheat light to help. Cheat light could also animate with each scene and move witht eh actors. Remember though to make them "invisible". They are like a magic trick and you don't want the viewwers to notice them directly...
Sure skyboxes are an interesting problem, but i did not miss better skyboxes in your scene. I think the weather effects and the nice city backdrop do a decent job in hiding the fact, that the skybox is static. But as a problem to solve it might be nice to work on it...
Have you looked in maybe just using a plain blue skybox (i think there are some variation of that in vam) and than using a "sun sprite" as a custom unity asset? So you would use the skybox and change it's intensity to get different shades of blue, but for the sun and sunflare you make your own sprite in photoshop and move it across the scene? You could then maybe animate the brightness and hue within vam's object texture control to make the sprite change intensity and hue over the day-night cycle. You could do teh same for the moon obviously...
absolutely. i think you've done what is possible within the limitation. everything from on here would be pushing the boundaries.... maybe it's more of a fun problem to solve than a necessary one!
For sure yeah, I feel like I've taken a mini-course in cinematography and lighting lol so it's been really interesting. I'm constantly tweaking stuff within my scene, so all of the above will definitely come in handy at some point. Thanks again!absolutely. i think you've done what is possible within the limitation. everything from on here would be pushing the boundaries.
and don't worry about the wording. some of my terminology is correct, on some i'm not sure (language barrier) and some terms (like "cheatlight") are made up by me, because i wouldn't even know the correct term in german: as i mentioned before (maybe) i'm trained in cinematography, computer graphics are just a hobby of mine and between the two not all concepts do perfectly align...
Hello mate! Yeah to be honest the reason I made my scene is because it's not possible to retain looks unless the scene is specifically designed to allow swapping positions without triggering a load screen (Like mine is).Hey, I'm new to VAM and wondered if you could help.
I love the fact that you can move from spot to spot in this scene without losing the looks and having everything else reset. So with that in mind, I wondered if you could tell me if it would be possible to make this happen with another scene, particularly the "best laid plans" scene, which like most others is actually made up of loads of separate scenes.
Through playing around I have figured out how to add the passenger and improved pov plugins to the scenes so you start in male pov automatically, and also how to adjust the in scene "arrows" which you click on much like your hearts to progress, so clicking them takes you to the edited versions of the different scenes with the additional plugins already installed.
The last bit I can't figure out is how, or even IF, it's possible to integrate all the different scenes that load when clicking the arrows into a single scene so the looks stay the same from each 1.
Any help would be awesome.
Thanks
Thanks for getting back.Hello mate! Yeah to be honest the reason I made my scene is because it's not possible to retain looks unless the scene is specifically designed to allow swapping positions without triggering a load screen (Like mine is).
'Best laid plans' is an incredible scene and one of the main reasons why I started creating. However, clicking the arrows triggers a "merge-load", which effectively reloads the scene and reset the person atoms to how they were when the scene was saved.
If you wanted the scene to have the same look each time, you'd first have to load each scene, replace the look in each one, and save it. Of course, if you then wanted to swap the models again, you'd need to do all that again for each segment of the scene with the new model.