A Unity High Def Rendering Pipeline Experiment
I’ve used Unity since 2007 and have watched the technology mature into a modern game engine. Most of our games @ MLB have been built to be cross-platform which results in loss of quality to target more platforms. I wanted to push this and began investigating AAA techniques in the summer of 2020 when Unity announced a major update to the High Definition Rendering Pipeline.
Project Goal
The goal was to build a prototype “broadcast quality” scene in HDRP, test Offline Rendering, and make a customizable asset that could be used as a gear customization demo, possibly for Augmented Reality.
I began the process in Maya and Mudbox modeling off a generic shoe. I added lots of extra detail that only make sense in close-up beauty shots but knew that there would be a mix of high-quality geometry and hyper detail added through the shader.
Custom Materials and Shaders
I have lots of experience writing custom shaders but wanted to explore a method that uses RGBA maps to drive material properties, combined with a displacement map and a real time tessellation shader that subdivides a surface when close to camera. While this method is computationally expensive, it does allow an object with a decent polygon count to look great when close to camera.
Textures were generated through Mudbox or built with Substance Designer.
Lighting and Post Processing effects used raytracing to give an extra degree of realism, especially around reflections, ambient occlusion and more. The potential use cases for this technology include Augmented Reality shopping, video game gear customization, and more.
