Optical Instruments
Predict Engine is a path tracer : its algorithm computes the illuminance incoming at every single point on the surface of objects in a 3D scene. Different optical instruments can be used to convert this illuminance into a 2D image.
Default cameras
In Unity, optical instruments are necessarily represented with a Camera component (see the Unity interface overview for details on the Unity components) that defines the model of a digital camera. Without additional settings, a Predict Engine camera will be generated automatically from this component using the default settings defined in the preferences : see the Preferences section for more details.
Unity Tutorial : Working with Unity Cameras
Predict Engine cameras
In Predict Engine, optical instruments can be digital cameras, photometers, radiometers, polarimetric sensors, Bayer sensors,... Such optical instruments can be defined by adding the UVR Camera Settings component to a Camera component.
The UVR Camera Settings component defines :
The type of sensor that is used,
The filter placed in front of the sensor,
The color system used to compute the simulation,
The post pipeline applied to the final render.
Scene rendered using a Predictive Engine camera of type "Photographic". The scene is made of a cube covered with a white matte material, and an IES light emitting from the little square luminaire visible near the ceiling.
Additional camera settings are available if you enable the Expert Mode.
Default optical instruments can be instantiated in the scene via the “GameObject/PredictSuite/Optical Instrument” menu.
Predict Engine physical sensors (Beta)
Using Predict Engine, you can also compute and visualize what a physical sensor would perceive (a plane defined by a geometry in the scene). Physical sensors are defined by the UVR Physical Sensor component.
The UVR Physical Sensor component is necessarily associated with a default plane geometry (Mesh Renderer and Mesh Filter components). The default plane dimension is 10x10 units, in the scene scale.
The UVR Physical Sensor component defines :
The sensor generic settings :
Clear Flags and Background Color : defines the environment,
Culling Mask : defines the layers visible to the sensor,
Resolution : the number of pixels along the local X axis of the sensor, the number of pixels along the Y axis is computed automatically to fit the sensor width/height ratio,
The type of sensor that is used,
The filter placed in front of the sensor,
The color system used to compute the simulation,
The post pipeline applied to the final render.
Same scene as above, rendered using a Physical sensor of type "Photometric" placed on the bottom plane. The value is visualized in false colours on the Y channel. The left image is the output of the sensor, the right image is the visualization of the sensor plane in the Unity view.
Physical sensors are a preview functionality, there might be some issues remaining and they should be reworked in the next versions of this plugin
When using the Predict Engine renderer view to visualize the output of a UVR Physical Sensor, the picking mode is not available when visualizing the sensor inside the Unity view.
Additional camera settings are available if you enable the Expert Mode.