Frequently Asked Questions
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Q: Can I use it with HTrace AO / WSGI assets? A: You can install all HTrace assets into the same project, but you can only enable either SSGI or WSGI at a time. Both write to the same buffer and are not designed to work simultaneously. HTrace AO, however, can be combined with either of these assets. If you encounter issues when importing them into the same project, check this section.
Q: How is it different from HTrace WSGI ? A: HTrace SSGI captures indirect lighting in screen space only, optionally using Sky or APV data as a fallback. WSGI operates in world space, allowing it to gather lighting outside the frame. Both have different strengths, trade-offs, and intended use cases, but can coexist in the same project as scalability options or if used in different scenarios.
Q: How is it different from the first HTrace GI asset ? A: HTrace SSGI is a completely new asset, built from the ground up. It incorporates the latest techniques (such as ReSTIR) and improves every stage of the pipeline, from tracing to denoising to integration. The only thing it has in common with the original asset is that both operate in screen space and provide diffuse indirect lighting.
Q: Does it support Forward / Forward+ / Deferred / Deferred+ rendering path ? A: Yes. All of these rendering paths are supported and produce near-identical visual results in terms of indirect lighting. In URP in Forward or Forward+ mode, HTrace SSGI automatically renders its own GBuffer, so performance may vary depending on the rendering path.
Q: Can I use custom shaders with this asset ? A: Yes, if they are Shader Graph shaders or hand-written shaders that write valid Depth, Normals, Motion Vectors, and G-Buffer data via the respective passes.
Q: Does it work with BRG / GPU Resident Drawer / Instancing ? A: Yes. As a screen-space solution, it relies only on the rendered buffers (Depth, Normals, Motion Vectors, etc.). As long as those buffers are filled correctly, the rendering approach or technique used to draw meshes is irrelevant.
Q: Does it work with render feature X (e.g. fog, water, etc.) ?
A: In HDRP, HTrace SSGI is injected through the native Screen Space Global Illumination feature and has the same compatibility level as the built-in SSGI. In URP, it is blended manually at the AfterRenderingOpaques injection point and is compatible with effects and features that do not conflict with that stage.
Q: Do I have to keep HDRP's native SSGI on ? A: You shouldn’t disable HDRP’s SSGI in Project Settings or in the Global/Custom Frame Settings. However, you don’t need to add it as an override component in your scene volume or configure it in any special way – we handle that automatically under the hood. You also don’t need to disable it before enabling HTrace SSGI, as we automatically override it and then restore it when HTrace SSGI is turned off to ensure seamless switching between the two.
Q: Do I need an RTX-capable GPU to use it ? A: No. The asset uses software-based screen-space ray tracing and does not require specialized hardware.
Q: Does it work on mobile devices? A: It's untested.
Q: Does it work on Apple devices (Metal API) ? A: Yes, it works on Apple desktop devices.
Q: Is this asset faster / better than HDRP's native SSGI ? A: Refer to this section for the comparison with HDRP's SSGI.
Q: Does it work with VR? A: HDRP version supports single-pass VR rendering.
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