The Lab Renderer

[aaron.leiby]

This is live now.

http://steamcommunity.com/games/250820/announcements/detail/604985915045842668

http://u3d.as/content/valve-corporation/the-lab-renderer

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/the_lab_renderer

[HiLiX]

Hey, I've removed the Lab renderer from my project. Remove all scripts from lights, all shaders converted back to unity etc. But now after I've publish my project Baked GI doesn;t work on some machines - I can not see realtime light - just baked one....

[autumn_zero]

Originally posted by Kevin:

Originally posted by autumn_zero:

Scratch the comment about the vert and fragment pass, I was being stupid.

Managed to get the type of cookie support I need added to the shader. It's not quite the same use case as a normal spot light cookie, but requires very similar changes. Unfortunately I can't share this code (yet).

I noticed the part of the code where they were starting to implement it, how did you finish it?

The Valve code is incomplete. I had to change the ValveCamera script to pass the cookies across to the shader where it sets up the light constants and also some light information about each spotlight. I then changed the fragment calculation function in vr_lighting.cginc to sample the cookie based on the new shader data I had set up. I did put my code in the same location as the commented code. Sorry, I'm at home now and don't have the code to hand.

[autumn_zero]

Originally posted by autumn_zero:

Originally posted by Kevin:

I noticed the part of the code where they were starting to implement it, how did you finish it?

The Valve code is incomplete. I had to change the ValveCamera script to pass the cookies across to the shader where it sets up the light constants and also some light information about each spotlight. I then changed the fragment calculation function in vr_lighting.cginc to sample the cookie based on the new shader data I had set up. I did put my code in the same location as the commented code. Sorry, I'm at home now and don't have the code to hand.

To be honest, other than noting where some of the commented code was I didn't reference their implementation at all.

[HelloBard]

I can confirm that The Lab Renderer can use Unity's Cinematic Effects Bloom with the new Unity 5.5.0b5 with Adaptive Quality set on:
https://twitter.com/hellobard/status/781450081065177088

Wonderful to get that bloom back in my life :D

[RazTOO]

Originally posted by HelloBard:

I can confirm that The Lab Renderer can use Unity's Cinematic Effects Bloom with the new Unity 5.5.0b5 with Adaptive Quality set on:
https://twitter.com/hellobard/status/781450081065177088

Wonderful to get that bloom back in my life :D

Just what my game needs :) Thank you !!!

[guanmjie]

Originally posted by GrimmGames:

Android is not supported? Either switching to Android mode from a working standalone with The Lab Renderer, or building a new scene already in Android mode and converting materials to Valve shaders results in the following errors and inability to see any meshes in the scene or main camera:

ERROR! Resources/vr_cast_shadows not supported!
ERROR! Resources/vr_shadow_vis not supported!

Any insight? It would certainly be awesome to be able to use this with Gear VR.

Hey, I have also met this question. How did you solve the problem? Can you please share?

[Red of Paw]

Builds are turning Pink on Valve VR standard shader (and other lab shaders)

I'm now using the latest patch version 5.4.1p4 and get the same:
http://i.imgur.com/HGruBq2.png

Is there a known bug here? A known fix?

I've seen previously that using 'additive' does the same, however I am not using additive and actually even on a new scene with nothing in it it still occurs, which leads me to believe the shader is at fault

EDIT: Ok... problem solved perhaps. I commented out the entire IF statement surrounding the bug and it appears to work. As I have no real idea what it does (not really) I don't know if this breaks anything else... but for now I'm happy.

[RazTOO]

Originally posted by Red of Paw:

Builds are turning Pink on Valve VR standard shader (and other lab shaders)

Is there a known bug here? A known fix?

I had this issue when marking things via valve shader as UNLIT.

[Skullsnatcher]

Originally posted by beta:

I get no shadows at all using the vr_standard shader in Unity 5.5. Is there a temporary solution to make it work maybe?

I had the same problem in unity 5.5 but thankfully someone on GitHub was able to provide a code fix: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/the_lab_renderer/issues/16

Shadows now working again!


There is also a fix for the flickering problem when using Adaptive Quality: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/the_lab_renderer/pull/17

Now that I go the lab renderer to work properly, I can't believe the improvement in quality/performance!!!

[Will]

Originally posted by shawnblais:

Has anyone been able to get this running on PS4? I've removed all the Adaptive Quality stuff, (as OpenVR calls crash on PS4, and I don't want to use it anyways). But all the shaders are just rendering as pink...

Did you have any luck at getting it to work? Everything using the Valve renderer is pink in my game and Valve's example scenes crash on startup because of openVR calls.

[DeanSledgehammer]

Has anyone got a cutout lab shader that casts shadows? Care to share?
@zordon posted one shader in post #45, but that doesn't work for me at least.

[railboy]

Originally posted by autumn_zero:

Originally posted by Kevin:

I noticed the part of the code where they were starting to implement it, how did you finish it?

The Valve code is incomplete. I had to change the ValveCamera script to pass the cookies across to the shader where it sets up the light constants and also some light information about each spotlight. I then changed the fragment calculation function in vr_lighting.cginc to sample the cookie based on the new shader data I had set up. I did put my code in the same location as the commented code. Sorry, I'm at home now and don't have the code to hand.

Any chance you could post your solution somewhere? I've been struggling to get cookies working for a while now. (I've got them working on point lights, but spot lights are being stubborn.)

[djsegler]

Trying to use Lab Renderer with recent Unity project under 5.4.1f1 and having trouble. Shadows seem to shift/change depending on head rotation and I'm not sure of the cause. How do I fix this?

[DeanSledgehammer]

Originally posted by djsegler:

Trying to use Lab Renderer with recent Unity project under 5.4.1f1 and having trouble. Shadows seem to shift/change depending on head rotation and I'm not sure of the cause. How do I fix this?

This is probably because you have point lights with shadows on. We found that Lab Renderer bugs with point lights and multiplies their number. We could have only 4 or 5 point lights with shadows and the 18 light limit was reached. With spotlights you can have 18 with shadows and it's fine. Directional light also works fine.

So it's a good idea to not have any point lights with shadows.

If the shadows are not completely turning on and off, but rather showing small aliasing error and flickering, then try increasing shadow resolution from lights and camera eye, switching off adaptive quality, then single-pass rendering. One of those is probably culprit.
Try using VRTK adaptive quality if you want that, it works better.

[RazTOO]

Originally posted by DeanSledgehammer:

Originally posted by djsegler:

Trying to use Lab Renderer with recent Unity project under 5.4.1f1 and having trouble. Shadows seem to shift/change depending on head rotation and I'm not sure of the cause. How do I fix this?

This is probably because you have point lights with shadows on. We found that Lab Renderer bugs with point lights and multiplies their number. We could have only 4 or 5 point lights with shadows and the 18 light limit was reached. With spotlights you can have 18 with shadows and it's fine. Directional light also works fine.

So it's a good idea to not have any point lights with shadows.

If the shadows are not completely turning on and off, but rather showing small aliasing error and flickering, then try increasing shadow resolution from lights and camera eye, switching off adaptive quality, then single-pass rendering. One of those is probably culprit.
Try using VRTK adaptive quality if you want that, it works better.

Actually that is not an error ;) If you look closely a point light has to ligh way more around it. Best to use as small point lights as possible. Spot light with wide angles look preety much the same on some ocassions ;)

Also try to split the UNITY view in a way that both GAME VIEW and SCENE VIEW are being shown- this will refresh both views (leaving only scene view doesnt refresh the shadows!).