APV - Improvements and Changes
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These improvements have been included in the 2023.3 / Unity 6 Beta release
Virtual Offset now uses Unity’s new internal Ray Intersector API
Adaptive Probe Volumes now use Unity’s new Ray Intersector API to perform Virtual Offset calculations when baking probes. This replaces a temporary implementation which used a physics collider workaround for offsetting invalid probes embedded in meshes.
These improvements result in a considerably simpler authoring workflow, with much faster lighting data generation.
URP: Blend Lighting Scenarios
Previously only available in HDRP, this feature is now also available in URP:
With “Blend Lighting Scenarios”, we provide you with the ability to bake individual probe volumes lighting scenarios to be used in your virtual environments and blend between them at runtime using scripting. This way there is no need to duplicate the scenes to store multiple probe volumes bake results and one can easily swap the baked lighting data for day/night transition or switching lights on and off in a room. For developers, it can also be very useful to compare multiple baked results and iterate more quickly. Our recommended min-spec is GLES 3.2 and above.
Control sample count in specific areas of the world
Light Probe processing times can be long, impacting setup and slowing down iteration times
This feature enables faster iteration during the Light Probe data processing by allowing the creator to control where in the world more (or less) samples are required to be calculated - this is especially useful for large environments
Reduced light leaking through limiting noise
When using multiple subdivision levels, one can use sampling noise to hide the visible seams. However, in interiors this would often cause light leaking issues because the noise could easily push the sampling position through a wall, resulting in overly bright or dark pixels.
This improvement limits the direction of the noise in a cone toward the camera, considerably reducing the risk of light leaking when using sampling noise in complex environments.