Concord: Luminosity and PBR Validators

Backstory: Concord is a first person PvP competitive game. One of the core pillars for our Art Direction was gameplay visibility and physically based rendering. These two needs spawned the following debug tools we used for the project. 

1. Luminosity Debug Views

• Very early one we decided that Concord will have a low contrast look (Shadows never fall under certain value and we also make sure to clip overall range) for the sake of gameplay visibility 

• This led us to use a fixed EV range in maps (no autoexposure) and overall range of 4EV or 4 stops between our darkest blacks and brightest mid tones of the final frame

•  Below is the debug luminosity view which creates a heat map for the above condition. We had this view for BaseColor buffer and FinalFrame which were used as a step in out lighting workflow.  

2. PBR validators for Unreal and Substance suite

I wrote a PBR validator debug view for both in engine and for substance painter as a workflow step for artists. We use the industry standard PBR range for metallic-roughness workflow (Following values checked against BaseColor buffer): 

1. Dielectric materials: sRGB (30-240)

2. Metals - sRGB (180-255)

Example of PBR validator being used in-engine and Substace Painter