@marcClintDion
IMHO Blender Cylces for UE4 is a bad idea - a very bad idea.
Blender Cycles is unbiased renderer and has NO GLOBAL ILLUMINATION ( only AO ).
GPULightmass (and its predecessor CPULightmass) is better for interior as a biased renderer like VRAY with implemented GI.
That is why Cycles gives so many noise on diffuse channel ( only diffuse channel can be compared ) and needs more samples/time to make all clear ( even with current de-nosie alg.).
I used many renderers for interiors like Thea, Octane, Cycles. And I quite them for UE4 cuz of GI ( and one bake -> many shots/video = time saving that UE4 gives ).
BIASED renderer is best for tasks such as interiors.
GPU Lightmass needs only some small fixer like: fixing shadow splotches and maybe a bit improved GI ( or adjustable ) in the matter of brighter bounced rays ( more energy ) to give much brighter interiors if artist needs that. ( I know it is fake but people like it to see that kind of results and it is more like human brain perception (biased gives) that photography (unbiased gives) ).
@marcClintDion Cylces has not at all of global illumination solver.
This is just a preset that maximizes the amount of light bounces for every ray type
If you enable that preset then your render time should increase drastically.
As I said CYCLES is UBIASED and computes every single ray path.
And that is why it more faithful to reality. It gives no bias to the scene light ( no bias for bounced light).
Typical GI solver works like a mimic of real light bouncing (computation of the surroundings - like light probe in the Blender 2.8 EEVEE ) than computation of every single ray bounce.
That is why GI biased renderer is faster and less noisy than unbiased pathtracer.
But more fake. But most of us like that fake GI
But more professional answer how GI solver works in GPU Lightmass can give
EDIT: Some nice video about rendering methods ( btw: GPU Lightmass uses Radiosity GI ): watch?v=DtfEVO9Oc3U
Did you turn off SSAO when comparing? From my personal experience a path tracer would output ‘lighter’ corner darkening (I’m not using the term ‘AO’ here because AO is an approximation to the general path space illumination)
hey guys, i’m facing some interesting issues: the more props i add to my scene, the worse the quality of the lighting gets with gpu lightmass. don’t know if it happend prior to 4.20.3, used 4.20.2 before and everything looked fine. one pic is with added props (hidden) and one with deleted props
i did ( overwrited the files after upgrading with the unifed ones and made sure the .dll files are allowed.) and yep, im using gpu lightmass, since the gpu batch processing appears and the qualitysettings (preview, medium, production) dont really change a thing. i tried different values in the overwrited lightmass ini.-file ( 32/16, 64/32 and so on) to change the quality, but apart of longer rendertimes it gets only slightly better. as i said, the two shown pictures are the exact same level with same quality, light-settings and lightmap sizes (red in opti-viewmode) but deleted furniture in one pic, so its extremely strange. im using a 1070gtx btw
Just add something on the the issue by Schauk… I’m about to experiment with this but is it advisable to wait for a 4.20.3 version? Or should the 4.20.2 version work with that?
It will be great to start by an official support from Epic about the Lightmass GPU… I had a meeting with Epic (Engine tech director and Senior tech art relationship with studios) this week and when I asked about official support they told us it was not in the development plan since they’re not supporting new features they don’t use on their own games (Because they cannot support fixing issues if they’re working everyday with). A little bit sad about that, even if **** is doing a great job it’s complicated to integrate his tools on a pipeline on AAA production if there are no “official” support. But this tool is a time-game-changer, it’s making the difference when you have long time about building lighting on dozens levels.
still have some splotches. They appear very rarely. In this case I suppose that they could created by reflective material in the window.
If you would like to check I can send whole scene to you.
I use 4.20.x Unified Settings GPU Lightmass with Extreme Setup.
Did they mention anything regarding the lightmass successor they’re working on internally (non RTX) and also if RTX will be used to bake lightmaps in the future?
No plan for lighting in next version for now (projecting until 2.23/24), even if they are working on few things but nothing official for now… For RTX, I don’t remember any comment apart obviously “forget for console” (we’re doing console games so…). Obvious answer regarding actual hardware (consoles are always PC 3-4 ago…). There are very good things coming anyway outside of lighting subject, about rendering… It will start with 4.22 and should be finished few versions after. Waiting for official announcement to talk about it, very exciting things!
Thanks for the info! For RTX, I’m only interesting in it’s potential to speed up lightmap baking. All the runtime stuff (shadows/AO etc.) doesn’t matter for games since the hardware install base will be <0.1% for the foreseeable future.
Anyone having issues with Landscape actors? I’m trying to build my lighting using gpu lightmass 4.20.2 mediumquality, and lightmass keeps crashing with this error message popping up:
512 is pretty extreme, even 128 is still very high. Don’t forget to check the lightmap density via Alt+0, just to make sure you’re using the optimal res.
