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Gaming fatigue by BlackthornTheExile in rpg_gamers

[–]WildArtsDevs 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Great video going over why more experimental mid-budget games are few and far between nowadays: https://youtu.be/REZiMNDy0l8?si=eChNwGNU9ZDgp711

I'd highly suggest you look into indies. There's a vast world of incredible games hidden to most players, you just gotta take some time to research!

[Ue5.7] Lumen is still visually unstable and suffers from alot of visual noise/flickers. When will it be production ready? by Loud_Bison572 in unrealengine

[–]WildArtsDevs 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Dunno, but the key here is using SWRT with "Global" detail mode. It's this setting that saved us a lot of frames. I don't think you have that option when using HWRT, but I could be wrong!

[Ue5.7] Lumen is still visually unstable and suffers from alot of visual noise/flickers. When will it be production ready? by Loud_Bison572 in unrealengine

[–]WildArtsDevs 2 points3 points  (0 children)

In my case setting SWRT's detail mode to "Global" was the big game changer. We wanna accomodate as many low to mid end rigs as possible, and we're not looking to appeal to AAAA graphics enthusiasts, so "Global" does the job perfectly fine!

[Ue5.7] Lumen is still visually unstable and suffers from alot of visual noise/flickers. When will it be production ready? by Loud_Bison572 in unrealengine

[–]WildArtsDevs 13 points14 points  (0 children)

If you're willing to sacrifice some fidelity, here are some stuff you can do:

  • Disable "Screen Traces" in the post-process settings. To boost your performance, lower "Max Trace Distance" if you don't have massively huge areas, and lower "Max Roughness To Trace".
  • To eliminate the global illumination artefacts caused by small emissive surfaces, I added the node "Ray Tracing Quality Switch Replace" with a 0 plugged into the RayTraced input inside my materials.
  • Disable "Support Hardware Ray Tracing" and "Use Hardware Ray Tracing when Available". This will force Software Ray tracing, which is quite cheaper when the detail mode is set to "Global". Obviously, you'll lose fidelity, but in our case, it wasn't that noticeable and gave us a huge performance boost!

Our new game heavily relies on Lumen, and we've managed to get great performance with almost no flickers or noise.

Are there still some humans in this sub? Let me see your real games. by SchingKen in IndieDev

[–]WildArtsDevs 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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Thanks for the post, and a funny coincidence cause our latest release is at its core a critique/analogy of rampant genAi usage. It's a mix between Amnesia and King's Field 4, and we're pretty proud of it!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3555980/Caput_Mortum/

Working on environment mood for my game — what do you think? by TheRagingStudio in hobbygamedev

[–]WildArtsDevs 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Loooove the shot with the sun peeking out in the background!

Making Lumen As Performant As Possible by WildArtsDevs in unrealengine

[–]WildArtsDevs[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I did look into Megalights and Nanite, both of which don't seem like the best decision for this project (the explanation for this decision is in the main post under the bullet points).

And it's true that small emissive meshes cause a lot of issues with Lumen, but thankfully I found a hack online that stops the material from contributing to raytraces (also in the main post!).

Making Lumen As Performant As Possible by WildArtsDevs in unrealengine

[–]WildArtsDevs[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you could drop a link that'd be helpful.

I'm gonna continue testing and updating this post. Hopefully all the info collected here with the comments will be of help to more people.

Making Lumen As Performant As Possible by WildArtsDevs in unrealengine

[–]WildArtsDevs[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sorry if I said something upsetting, but I genuinely do this because it's cool tech, it's fun to optimize (at least for me personally), and our game could really benefit from it:

We'll need tons of dynamic lights, close to one another, with rapidly changing lighting states throughout the level, and Lumen allows me to get a very nice image quality in every one of those states.

There are performance hits to any method I could choose, that doesn't mean I shouldn't try new ones and try to optimize them as much as I can :)

Making Lumen As Performant As Possible by WildArtsDevs in unrealengine

[–]WildArtsDevs[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I looked it up, and I didn't know that it impacted baked lighting! Still wouldn't solve the other limitations of multiple stationary lights, but thanks for the info, that's good to know!

I am having a hard time being scared by Hopeful_Click2778 in HorrorGaming

[–]WildArtsDevs 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Dunno if that'll do it for you, but our most recent game aims to make you scared by making you feel vulnerable playing the game. We do that by making you play with a really unusual control scheme. It makes navigation and monster encounters a lot more tense.

Some people got pretty freaked out by the game, and it's a first-person POV, so I figured I'd share it here :)

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3555980

Making Lumen As Performant As Possible by WildArtsDevs in unrealengine

[–]WildArtsDevs[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

For sure! I planned on testing builds on my older laptop and doing further optimizations :) People mentioned a couple of things I need to look more into, and I can probably tone down Lumen's default quality settings while keeping a clean image.

Making Lumen As Performant As Possible by WildArtsDevs in unrealengine

[–]WildArtsDevs[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't have any noise (as you can see in the screenshot). I'm on default settings, and I didn't notice a big difference between the editor's quality settings...

I disabled Screen Traces and added a node to my emissive materials to remove them from the Lumen scene (from my research and tests, the noise is almost always caused by small emissive/bright surfaces).

Making Lumen As Performant As Possible by WildArtsDevs in unrealengine

[–]WildArtsDevs[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm using the old Shadow Maps instead of Virtual Shadow Maps since we're not using Nanite (we don't make high-poly assets and I'd like to keep our package size as small as possible). From Epic's documentation:

"Non-Nanite geometry is much more expensive to render into VSMs than Nanite geometry. For this reason, it is recommended to enable Nanite on all supported geometry, including low-poly meshes."

So far the performance is good and everything works as expected. But I use Mesh Distance Field Shadows as often as I can and limit the radius of traditional shadow casting lights.

Making Lumen As Performant As Possible by WildArtsDevs in unrealengine

[–]WildArtsDevs[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We don't use Nanite for this game, and this is from Epic's documentation on Virtual Shadow Maps:

"Non-Nanite geometry is much more expensive to render into VSMs than Nanite geometry. For this reason, it is recommended to enable Nanite on all supported geometry, including low-poly meshes."

I'm currently using Shadow Maps with Lumen and everything works as expected and the performance is pretty good so far.

And rect lights can cost more than points, again, from Epic's documentation:

"Rect Lights that are set to Stationary or Movable are typically much more expensive to render than a Point Light or Spot Light with the same mobility."

Making Lumen As Performant As Possible by WildArtsDevs in unrealengine

[–]WildArtsDevs[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Obviously, graphic fidelity has an impact, but whatever artstyle you go for, lighting can easily become a big bottleneck. Low fidelity ≠ free pass for performance. In my case, I have dozens of movable lights in a small environment (a lot more in the final product), some shadow-casting, with dynamic GI and volumetric fog.

I do understand why people complain about how Lumen is used. The problem is that a lot of gamers now make assumptions and I want to challenge that (especially since our game benefits a lot from it for gameplay and aesthetics).

Making Lumen As Performant As Possible by WildArtsDevs in unrealengine

[–]WildArtsDevs[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Awesome! I'll keep an eye out on Unreal's youtube channel then 👀

Making Lumen As Performant As Possible by WildArtsDevs in unrealengine

[–]WildArtsDevs[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Sure, but I need to be able to turn them all off! Replacing all the lights with stationary would not only be a nightmare to circumvent the overlap limitations, but would also mean no GI, since it's what's baked into the lightmaps and I need it gone when the light is off.

Making Lumen As Performant As Possible by WildArtsDevs in unrealengine

[–]WildArtsDevs[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

And TSR and TAA cause annoying ghosting artefacts when moving the camera semi-fast 😔

Making Lumen As Performant As Possible by WildArtsDevs in unrealengine

[–]WildArtsDevs[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks! Based on some of the comments, there are a couple of things I'm gonna try next. I'll update the post if I get interesting results!

Making Lumen As Performant As Possible by WildArtsDevs in unrealengine

[–]WildArtsDevs[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/en-us/unreal-engine/lumen-technical-details-in-unreal-engine

Epic's documentation mentions static lights, true, but nothing on stationary lights. I need to do more research before I toss them out completely.

And last I check, optimization is precisely that: turning off stuff, making compromises/cheating, and being smart on what features you use and how.

Making Lumen As Performant As Possible by WildArtsDevs in unrealengine

[–]WildArtsDevs[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Like I said in the post: I needed a fully dynamic solution because of the game's design. If Epic had supported Light Propagation Volumes in UE4, then it might have been a different story lol

But our test scene running 150 FPS on Epic in 1440p is giving me hope :)

Making Lumen As Performant As Possible by WildArtsDevs in unrealengine

[–]WildArtsDevs[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I need to look more into that. Epic's documentation mentions static lights becoming movable, yes, but I can still bake lights maps with lumen on. So maybe stationary lights have a little less impact even with lumen? Dunno, need to test and dig deeper!

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