Geomerics Enlighten Finally supports UE4

[Nudlegaru]

This looks cool: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_E1oVl2d01Q

I hope Epic will integrate into UE4.

[darthviper107]

Voxel GI is still a terrible memory burden, which makes its utility very limited in practice.

I don't know how it compares--Epic did demos using SVOGI on a GTX 680, and VXGI should run better than that. Not sure if it's ok for low-end systems (probably not) but it's still a better solution.

[RPotter]

I don't know how it compares--Epic did demos using SVOGI on a GTX 680, and VXGI should run better than that. Not sure if it's ok for low-end systems (probably not) but it's still a better solution.

It's not just a matter of the rendering time, but the *memory*. Voxels, even sparsely stored, require a lot of VRAM to store. The more in the scene, the worse it is. I would expect an outdoor scene to be pretty terrible.

[CharlestonS]

So what exactly is the status of this? I see they have it working with UE4 but they make no mention of public availability.

I know that UE4 is modular and not final-featured but real-time lighting and GI should be a given. They even made it a big focus of their early features demo and i didn't see any inherent problems with it there.

[ryanjon2040]

I know that UE4 is modular and supposedly not final-featured but real-time lighting and GI should be a given. They even made it a big focus of their early features demo.

It was called SVOGI and unfortunately they dropped it .

[RPotter]

So what exactly is the status of this? I see they have it working with UE4 but they make no mention of public availability.

You won't find an "out of box" price for that system, they only ever do licensing via negotiation. I can promise you, it won't be cheap. They may eventually offer per seat indie licenses (so long as part of their contract with Unity doesn't include any kind of competitive restriction), but I don't see them offering it for less than $200 per seat, per platform. Epic's model is to avoid integrating any third party software that carries a cost or royalty, in order to ensure they can release things cheaply, and with source (at least as much as they can, PhysX being an exception, but some companies won't even let you show the code for binding to their libraries without an NDA, hence the console restrictions).

Here's the email to contact them about licensing: sales@geomerics.com

[sarfios]

@RPotter,

I'm no financial or marketing expert, but considering that SpeedTree offered their software for $19, I don't see how geometric can will have success if the licenses are too different from it's origin.

If Enlighten brings outstanding quality to the lightning in UE4, I personally as individual would be willing to give them 5% royalty and $10 a month for covering the support. Charging same amount per seat for different scale projects seems the Old-Fashioned mode of leading a business.

We've all seen that with enough skills you can recreate great lightning in EU4 so... I don't know how this will workout if it's too pricey.

However, I'm so happy to see that people are eager to find improvement in the Engine and make it the best tool that people can use it around the world. It really makes me feel nice to be party of the that community and give me the will power to improve myself and my skills.

[darthviper107]

If they can make more money by offering it easily then they'd probably do it. Speedtree is a different matter, it was integrated with UDK for a long time and they've been very good about supporting the engines.

[gwhatever]

Any news? I'd like to see it integrated in the engine like it is on Unity or for a small fee per user.

[Wozner]

Epic games! Please please please please make enlighten available for us! PLEASE PLEASE!!!! THIS IS AWESOME! No lmaps baking! PLEASE PLEASE

[Errvald]

Epic games! Please please please please make enlighten available for us! PLEASE PLEASE!!!! THIS IS AWESOME! No lmaps baking! PLEASE PLEASE

You still have to "bake" with enlighten.

[darthviper107]

It's up to Enlighten if they want to make it available, I don't think it's likely so if you want to use it you'll have to talk to the Enlighten people.

[DamirH]

I always failed to realize what people's problem with LPVs is. Fable Legends looks amazing. None of the systems is perfect and given the ease of implementation, LPVs are great.

[darthviper107]

There's always a specific case where features will work great, the reason it works well for Fable is that it's mostly an outdoor environment, where most of the light is direct from the sun, so all you really need is a bit of light in the dark areas even using a skylight object to brighten them a bit and add AO will make it look fantastic, LPV will add a bit of color bleeding which makes it look even nicer.
Try it in other situations and it doesn't give as good of results, any situation where a large amount of the lighting would be due to GI will look bad. It's also a bit limited in that it only truly supports directional lights.

[DamirH]

Well, truth be told most people here are hobbyists with little production experience, and when a studio like Lionhead tells me it's good I tend to believe them. I believe people expect some holy grail "IT WORKS WITH EVERYTHING" solution but the truth is, that ain't happening.