Unity output is dark?

[VM_Nexus]

I’m attempting to use the Unity r2 script from the website to output a unity camera to VDMX via syphon. Everything is working except that the image in VDMX appears to be significantly dimmer than the original Unity output. Any ideas about how I can preserve the same brightness?

(This appears to be a Unity only problem… all my other syphon streams seem to be 1:1 on the image brightness)

Thanks!

[vade]

If i recall correctly, this is actually a lighting issue in Unity. Ensure you are using a sane material (maybe one that ignores lighting all together), and have lighting setup in such a way that your objects are illuminated well.

I had that issue when I first started prototyping with Unity, and messing with lighting parameters fixed it.

[VM_Nexus]

Ok, thanks – I’ll try that. I’m still pretty new to Unity. I was just trying to add more lights or turn up their intensity… didn’t think about trying to change the materials of specific objects. I also tried just using the syphon screen recorder, but that adds noticeable latency in the chain and I’m trying to work on creating playable scenes for live mixing. (along the lines of the ideas presented here: http://www.creativeapplications.net/mac/visuals-for-sonar-festival-vdmx-to-unity3d-tutorials/ )

Really, I wouldn’t even need to use Syphon for it per se (though it’d be nice to be able to play fx over it), I just can’t get the Unity window to full screen on the 2nd monitor (aka the projector connected to my Macbook Pro). It won’t let me drag the window over to the 2nd screen. Someone mentioned dragging the icon over there and launching it from there, but that still makes it come up on my primary display.

Although, I do want to figure it out anyway so that I can use it for content inside projection mapped stuff.

[vade]

Are you building an application out from Unity? You should be able to decide what screen to go fullscreen on in the compiled unity apps startup prefs.

[VM_Nexus]

Yeah that’s what I’m trying to do but I don’t see an option for that anywhere…

Here’s what I see on the build options (with the player options open on the far right) http://imageshack.us/f/221/unitybuildoptionsxr.png and here’s what I see when I run the built executable: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/12/playoptions.png

Is it somewhere else, or am I just blind?

[Brian Chasalow]

well, this is curious. the syphon output plugin actually ignores any materials- it is simply blitting to a texture, and uses a ‘safe’ material that is script-generated to handle the ignoring-lighting bit. not sure what would cause this. what version of unity you using?

on that note, i would make sure that your ‘safe’ material is getting generated/called properly…

[VM_Nexus]

Using Unity Pro 3.4. It happens with the example project from the unity syphon script zip as well as the example project from the site I linked above.

[Brian Chasalow]

you don’t drag the icon over to the other screen- you drag the unity app window to the 2nd screen, and then run it. cmd + f should toggle fullscreen, also. not sure about the lighting thing though… are you using the uh, very latest version that just came out, 3.4.1? or 3.4.0? i haven’t tested 3.4.1 yet.

[VM_Nexus]

Just 3.4.0, haven’t upgraded yet. For some reason I can’t drag the Unity output window to a 2nd monitor… it will let me drag it almost all the way off screen (towards the other monitor) but then it’s like it gets stuck on the edge and won’t let me fully drag it off the primary display.

[VM_Nexus]

I think vade is right about it having something to do with the lighting… look at this screen shot of the vdmx output side by side with the unity output: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/41/screenshot20110923at121.png

The white of the cloth is the same in both outputs, but the cube is darker (and on the cube you can see the light shifting as you rotate the camera, it is just always much darker in the VDMX output.

[VM_Nexus]

Here’s some more screenshots (probably no new information, but maybe it will help somehow):

In this first one, the cube material is the default-diffuse: http://imageshack.us/f/607/screenshot20110923at125.png/

In this case, the white on the top of the cube (where the spotlight is shining) is 255, 255, 255 on the unity output and then 128, 128, 128 on the VDMX output. (I checked in photoshop just in case it was some weird optical illusion and my eyes were tricking me)

In this second one, I remove the material completely and it appears that the cube is the same color in both outputs. http://imageshack.us/f/854/pinkoz.png/

[Brian Chasalow]

you should never use default shaders if you’re using syphon.
use Syphon/diffuse instead and tell me if it works.

default shaders typically have a flag that masks the alpha channel out, which, depending on a number of factors, may affect the final blend output. Syphon materials have this mask, //Colormask RGBA, commented out in the shaders.

normally this only affects you in a major way if you’re trying to use the background as a transparent alpha channel. However, this could be a more generalized issue than previously thought. let me know about your results after trying the Syphon shader instead, and we’ll see if that’s the case.

Also, come to think of it, I do recall needing glDisable(GL_LIGHTING); in my plugin. I don’t know if that ever made it to the released version. Will check right now- EDIT: glDisable(GL_LIGHTING) is indeed in the plugin, so that’s not your issue.

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