Create the illusion of lit windows

Unity Engine
1

Hi all,

I’ve been playing around with the Unity trial for some days now and I’m really impressed of the ease of rapid prototyping (can’t talking about “real” games yet because I’m not that far with Unity).

Since I’ve a software engineering background and I’m neither willing nor talented to do graphics I bought some models/prefabs from a great artist. Unfortunately, though, in my incredible genius I forgot that many of the scenes that I were about to create were night scenes which require some extra work.

So I was wondering how I could create the illusion of lit windows without touching the graphics and textures? I believe there are many different techniques, Shader-based or not, and I would love to hear some recipes from the kitchen of those who have a bit more Unity experience. One particular idea that I had was to place a spotlight with a cookie texture (that matches the windows structure) in front of the window, pointing towards the window and thus producing the light/glow effect that I desire, but I believe there must be some better and cheaper ways.

Thanks
Matt

2

Hello,

Your idea would work well, some other alternatives could be (depending on the look you were going for) using the self illuminated shader for the windows and maybe look at some of the glow camera effects as well… if you are looking for a more beams of light approach check out http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=2786