Unity real-time Ray Tracing

Ray tracing realistically simulates how light behaves and interacts with physical materials, bringing true global illumination and other effects to your projects, from photorealistic to stylized

Reality vs illusion

Rendered in real-time in Unity, this demo spotlights one real car and another powered by Unity and NVIDIA. The dazzling array of lights and high visual fidelity make the vehicles indistinguishable from one another. 

Unity and NVIDIA collaborated with BMW to showcase the 2019 BMW 8 Series Coupe. 

The right tool for the right job

The technology provides a key advantage to creators because it mimics light’s real behaviors, allowing developers to make and dynamically alter creations that blur the line between real-time and reality.

For projects that demand maximum photorealism and the highest visual fidelity, Unity Ray Tracing features provide reflections and accurate dynamic computations for global lighting.

 

Ray Tracing available in Preview

Unity’s real-time Ray Tracing realistically simulates how light behaves and interacts with physical objects and materials in your scenes. This technological advance enables true global illumination (GI) and ambient occlusion, as well as other effects, whether you want to achieve a photorealistic or stylized look.

The High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP) includes ray tracing support and hardware acceleration, allowing you to take into account reflections from all objects, even when they’re off-screen. Some of the implementations included are directional and area shadows, GI, reflections, and transparencies. 

The DX12/DXR API in the HDRP package targets applications for the engineering, architecture, and automotive industries. Download our sample office project from GitHub to get started.

Ray tracing effects

The High Definition Render Pipeline uses ray tracing to replace some of its screen space effects, shadowing techniques, and Mesh rendering techniques.

Bob Pette, Vice President, Professional Visualization, NVIDIA

“Unity’s plug-and-play resources for developers, and popularity with brands large and small, make its users a natural audience to take advantage of RTX’s ray tracing capabilities.”

Bob Pette, Vice President, Professional Visualization, NVIDIA

Explore how to put real-time ray tracing to work

Reality vs illusion

Go behind the scenes of our ray tracing demo. We matched a CG Unity-rendered BMW to a real BMW 8 Series Coupe that we filmed in a warehouse to demonstrate how the ad creation process can benefit from the versatility of a real-time engine.

Ray Tracing – What does it mean to you?

Unity’s Ray Tracing enables customers to create stunningly realistic real-time experiences using affordable hardware. Learn how you can put real-time ray tracing to work for your projects.

Real-time Ray Tracing is available in Preview

You can start working with Ray Tracing (Preview).

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