Realtime Reflections mod:
newest version - get it from nexus: https://www.nexusmods.com/daggerfallunity/mods/121
old version for dfunity 0.10.24:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/13WxbPi ... sp=sharing
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Gallery:
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legacy discussion:
I was investigating (realtime) reflections in unity the last couple of weeks since I plan to do a reflection mod.
things that would be nice to have ingame:
- water reflections for water terrain tiles near the player (should be possible)
- floor reflections (should as well be possible)
- outdoor window reflections (may be possible with some restrictions)
- reflections on every wall (pretty impossible to make it work correctly I fear)
- planar reflections (similar to what is done in unity's water pro asset)
- reflection probes (realtime and custom)
- screen space reflections (http://www.kode80.com/blog/2015/03/11/s ... n-unity-5/)
All techniques are not cheap in terms of performance, but some are more performant than others, see below:
Planar Reflections:
pros:
- correct reflections on a plane
- good quality
- runtime performance is acceptable
- custom shader required (not working with standard shader out of the box)
- every seperate reflection plane needs an additional render to texture pass (although it is possible to share the rendertextures in reflective surfaces on the same extended virtual plane to a certain degree and even on parallel planes with the same surface normal )
Realtime Reflection Probes:
pros:
- out of the box support of standard shader and unity pipeline (no custom shader necessary)
- poor runtime performance (one realtime probe is basically the max already)
- poor quality
- per probe only one reflection plane for which reflections are correct (so can effectively only be used for correct floor reflections)
Custom Reflection Probes:
pros:
- out of the box support of standard shader and unity pipeline (no custom shader necessary)
- acceptable quality
- runtime performance better than realtime reflection probes but still not good
- per probe only one reflection plane for which reflections are correct (so can effectively only be used for correct floor reflections)
Screen Space Reflections (ssr):
pros:
- out of the box support for unity pipeline
- pretty good runtime performance (everything is done in the fragment shader)
- reflections in all directions
- requires deferred shading
- ssr method inherent limitations (missing information is the biggest issue)
- only works indoors well enough (outdoor reflections are mostly wrong due to missing information)
- heavy artifacts with daggerfall's billboards (see torch and npc reflection in the screenshot)
There is no best technique as you can see. While it is possible to mix ssr and reflection probes it is not possible to do the same for planar reflections and reflection probes as it seems.
I may go for planar reflections outdoors (since they are the only technique that might allow for the window reflections) and custom reflection probes indoors.
ssr will be a viable option indoors once all billboards have a model replacement...
The nice thing about the reflection probes is that they are fully integrated in the workflow - you can tweak the parameters inside the editor, e.g. smoothness adjustment:
smoothness 1.0:
smoothness 0.8:
So hope it was an interesting read!
I will keep you informed when there is more progress!