#UNITY AMBIENT LIGHT HOW TO#
#UNITY AMBIENT LIGHT SOFTWARE#
#UNITY AMBIENT LIGHT SERIES#

You can modify the cone shape of the light to increase or decrease it's radius along with it's range. Examples of this would be a flashlight, vehicle headlights or an overhead lamp. These are used in very specific cases to emit light in a cone format. Rotating this also works a procedural skybox, which can be useful for creating a dynamic sunset effect. So this could be inside of a building and it would not affect how it lights the environment. The key thing to know about these is that placement (position) of these lights does not affect it, only rotation. These will be included in a scene by default in Unity and typically acts like a sun. We'll be using lights found in Unity 2019 but most of these lights and settings may be common across many software. Now that we've given you a bit of insight into the color space, it's time to start looking at various lights and their use along with settings each may have. It is recommended you use Linear for more realistic colors where possible. Note that after changing this you may have to recalculate lighting. You can find this setting by going into Edit > Project Settings > Player > Other Settings Now this looks more like a dusty wild West environment compared to the saturated color from the Gamma color space up above. While the light intensity has been reduced quite a bit, we can still see everything just fine and we get more of a natural look. Linear color space here looks much better overall. So if I adjust the light intensity to closely resemble a similar look to the Gamma color space up above we can see some differences in the colors and overall lighting of the scene. If I switch to Linear color space without making adjustments to the lighting, I get this: Below is an example of the same scene utilizing a different color space. Some platforms are restricted to Gamma color space, while others can utilize Linear. Linear, as the name implies does utilize a linear approach to light intensity and will result in more realistic looking lighting and colors. Some areas may be brighter, others darker. Gamma has a non-linear approach to light intensity and as such you may see inconsistent colors coming through. If you switch to HDRP you'll use Linear by default. Gamma is the default used in traditional 3D and 2D game projects built in Unity. Within Unity we have the option to use Gamma or Linear color space. You could have the exact same lights and settings but with a different color space you may see more realistic colors.

It may be an odd thing to discuss first, but the color space you use can drastically impact the overall look of a scene.

#UNITY AMBIENT LIGHT SERIES#

Getting started with game development in Unity? Watch our free tutorial series Unity Basics. More specifically we'll be using HDRP which is the High Definition Render Pipeline which contains more lighting settings that we can explore.

#UNITY AMBIENT LIGHT SOFTWARE#

While I will try to keep things software agnostic, examples shown will come from Unity 2019. Let's discuss the six main areas in regards to lighting in games.

#UNITY AMBIENT LIGHT HOW TO#

You need to determine what parts should be well lit and how to use lighting to guide the player through the various levels in a game. Lighting is a complex subject which requires a delicate balance, not just from a visual perspective but from a performance perspective in games. Lighting in CG is always a hot topic and video games are no different.

Unity ambient light