[SOLVED] is it possible to create a post_ssao_material or improve occlusion shader?

[steve3d]

unigine use internal occlusion for indirect lighting, but this effects are so expensive, udk and other engine all have a post_ao effect/shader, unigine's current ao is not so good compared to udk's ao

 

ao in UDK:

 

ao in directx sdk's hdao10.1 sample:

 

ao in ungine ( no need to post a sample, everyone here knows the effect)

 

so, after almost two years of using unigine, I never used ao in unigine, so, is there any posible to impove the unigine's ao effect or create a new post_ssao_material?

[steve3d]

 

Occlusion effect in unigine, this ambient occlusion looks very strange..

[pluton]

Use Heaven settings of SSAO as your starting point:

screen radius 0.04

sample radius 6.0

distance power 65

distance threshold 0.1

 

emitter normal 0.35

receiver normal 0.93

 

Ambient scale 0.7

ambient power 17

 

indirect scale 1.3

indirect power 1.1

 

Use indirect scale 0 if you aren't going to use it

[steve3d]

yes, I tried with your parameter settings, the occlusion effects are much stronger than ever:

 

 

but the image also have too much noise.

 

and another question why the wall corner between the ground has a white line correct ao shouldn't have that line.

[pluton]

Increase distance threshold to reduce noise.

and try decreasing emitter normal parameter to reduce the white line effect

[steve.brodie]

I have testing importing a building mesh into the Heaven demo to test the AO settings but the result is very noisy, has lots of banding and doesnt pick up any fine detail. See attached image.

 

Is there anyway to implement an AO solution more like the UDK example steve3d posted. A sample rate slider might be good also if high quality AO is going to impact on speed.

[steve3d]

Unigine only use ao when occlusion enabled. But enable occlusion has big impact with performance, in many cases, we really don't need those global illumination effect, all I want is just a ambient occlusion post effect.

[manguste]

we really don't need those global illumination effect, all I want is just a ambient occlusion post effect.

Simply set Render settings->Indirect scale and Indirect power to 0 and there will be none.

 

have testing importing a building mesh into the Heaven demo to test the AO settings but the result is very noisy, has lots of banding and doesnt pick up any fine detail.

There are plans to improve AO (make it less noisy at the very least) in the nearest future.

[steve3d]

Hope to see the seperate ao post filter that can archieve the similar effects with UDK.

[manguste]

i can only repeat myself: if Indirect scale and Indirect power are set to 0, there's NO performance penalty for the global illumination effect whatsoever.

[ulf.schroeter]

SSAO Technique used in Battlefield 3

[steve.brodie]

Battlefield SSAO looks good. We would be really keen to see an update to the current AO process as the current Unigine method does not pick up detail well and has a lot of banding problems.

 

Maybe improve the quality of the current method, or completely rewrite the system with something like Battlefield or Unreal method.

 

We often turn SSAO/SSDO off because it looks too dirty.

[ulf.schroeter]

We often turn SSAO/SSDO off because it looks too dirty.

 

Same did we, because especially during movement SSAO showed heavy 'flickering' artifacts.

[steve3d]

I never turn it on because of 3 problem, a, enable occlusion cause a huge performance drop, b, many banding effects and it always looks wrong, c, flickering problem.

 

I really just need a simple ssao post filter, it's really enough for us. I don't need SSDO.

[steve3d]

Well, I have to say sorry to unigine, I've tested the occlusion effects on UnigineSDK-2012-02-26, as manguste said, the performance won't be a problem at all, on my complex scene, without occlusion, it rendered at 103-105 fps, after enable occlusion engine rendered at 95-98 fps, that's acceptable.

 

As to the AO effects, it rendered much more correct than before, although there are still so many banding effect, but it can be removed with higher Distance threshold value.

 

brodie and ulf, you should really test the ao in newest version.

[steve3d]

after a few more test, I found another problem, see following picture:

in this camera view the camera is much higher placed above the road surface.

 

when camera get closer to the road surface, strange occlusion appears in bottom and right-bottom. these area should not have any occlusion effects.

 

I think this should be a bug of occlusion.

[steve.brodie]

Yes we have noticed the edge of frame AO effects (my image is from the very latest Heaven Demo in the BETA), it mostly is on the bottom and right of frame.

 

We have never had a problem with performance, the issue is always quality when compared to Battlefield, Cryengine and Unreal.

 

I think it needs a rewrite or access to more sampling and better filtering.

 

It looks like from the Battlefield Paper Ulf pointed out that most of the methods are available.

[manguste]

Yep, improving AO includes getting rid of this frame.

[steve.brodie]

How is work going on an improved SSAO shader? There are still a lot of horizontal lines that go across the screen and other artefacts. Everything else in Unigine is looking really good now except for the AO.

[manguste]

It's on a hot list. Rough ETA is the next update or the next following one.

[manguste]

AO has been improved.

[steve3d]

Could you post some new ao screenshots?

[frustum]

https://developer.un..._8859#entry8859

[manguste]

Steve, here are some more screenshots for you.

[steve3d]

Wow really looks better than ever, and, are those noises on walls caused by normal texture?