LUMINA URP: True Voxel based Real time Global Illumination

Features:

- Fully real time, true Global Illumination system for the Universal Rendering Pipeline.

- Voxel based solution (Not based on screen space) for zero local change of the lighting or flickering as the camera rotates and moves around.

- No baking or preprocessing of any kind is required. The system is not using SDFs, any kind of scene light or reflection probes and everything is in real time, supporting procedurally changing geometry and worlds.

- Creates a volume representation of the scene, which can be used as a style as well, this aspect will be work in progress for offering a special stylistic voxel look of the whole scene directly.

- Grabs color from both main color and object textures, for maximum realism.

- Ambient Occlusion embedded to the GI solution.

- Multiple optimizations factors (Full or Half resolution rendering of the effect - Low, High and Insane voxel resolution options - Cones number and lighting calculations steps - Update per a number of seconds or per distance travelled)

- Easy setup, a single script on camera configures the pipeline and the effect directly, minor changes are required in the renderers after that setup, described in the manual and the Video Tutorial.

- Supports big number of mesh shaped lights, mesh lights are configured with emissive color and texture, set HDR color powerto zero to stop the effect, above zero to cast light and the main color alpha to further control the light power.

DEMOS:

LUMINA new room demo (Windows - Use left CTRL + Mouse to rotate the sun)

(Windows Demo v2.0.4 Optimized Sponza)

(Windows Shroom Reflections Combination Demo)

(Windows Shrooms & Reflections Separate Demos)

Roadmap (Some of the entries are TBD):

- Support reflections from the voxelized solution, a first version is included and will be updated in next versions.

- Support point and spot lights, though those can already be emulated by the mesh lighting system. In latest version both spot and point lights are also experimetally supported.

- Finalize some experimental aspects like the self temporal AA and Bilateral Filtering. Two external separate temporal AA solutions are included in the latest version, that allow lowering a lot the step count.

- Create a version of the system that will support cascades.

- Create combined demos of LUMINA asset together with Sky Master ULTIMATE URP Ethereal Volumetric Lighting system, for a complete atmospheric emulation showcase (Sample image and Video of the first version of the combined assets demo).

IMPORTANT: The real time global illumination problem is generally a very complex and hard one, thus there is some considerations currently on the system, which will be mentioned here.

The system uses Geometry shaders to calculate the voxelized space, thus is not compatible with any hardware that does not support Geometry Shaders, e.g. Mac PCs.

The system is ideal for smaller spaces, where the voxelized space can be calculated only once and possibly be recalculated on the fly every time entering a new room, this is the ideal use scenario.

The system can be used in realtime for infinite worlds with constant space voxelization and there is two ways to optimize, update the voxelization per distance or per time, or both together, keep in mind can be more taxing to get a smoother volume recalculation result in run time.

Update per time will showcase a gap in lighting in moving objects, so is best used for very fast or slow moving items.

The system supports sun light source and local light sources through emissive materials, and there is experimental support for spot and point lights casting GI.

IMPORTANT: The system uses the Standard Pipeline (BiRP) to render the scene voxelized volume when the colorize option is selected, this mode is the most accurate. The rendering is then diverted to the URP. The non colorize mode gives GI which is colored only by the sun light.

In the latest version a fully URP native version is also included as an experimental version, that does not use the BiRP and is planned to be used if Unity deprecates the BiRP in Unity 2024 or 2025.

The true transparent materials are not included in the GI casting, this aspect is work in progress and TBD if can be addressed in later updates.

A cascaded version and integration with volumetric lighting are also in the works, those are not guaranteed to be finally included in the asset and depend on a lot of factors, main one is reception of the system and reviews and second is feasibility and usefulness assessment.

The system requires Unity 2021.3 LTS and above with URP renderer set to Deferred mode and due to the complexity and technical methods supports only LTS versions. Also does not support VR, Mobile, Mac because uses Geometry Shaders, WebGL and Consoles. Currently Unity 6 new URP Render Graph pipeline (and Forward, Forward+ in 2022.3) is supported through LUMINA 2024.

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