I did find myself quite disappointed that there is not a single tutorial that goes through the various features of the lighting system.
I am aware it is a big topic; but I would gladly see some tutorials series, where the whole topic is explored in details. As now, you may be well aware that light a scene that is outdoor is different from an indoor one; and even indoor, you may have scenes where there are windows, where there are no windows, where there is artificial light in the form of torches, electric bulbs, neon and so on.
The topic is so vast that you can’t just get the basics from the various videos, and get results without spend time exploring and experimenting. For some, this may be the fun part of working with a software; but for me it is a big waste of time. I prefer to learn what I need, apply it and then make my own changes, once I know how do you accomplish a specific task.
I wonder if I am the only one having such problems with illuminate scenes that are both indoor and outdoor; and if I did miss any source for training; because as now; I am watching muted videos on youtube; which is the only source for answers to some of the setups you need to know, when creating a believable lighting setup (which also does not take hours to bake, before you can see the results.
The problem I see with the various tutorials, is that they focus on one thing. The outdoor scene; cool and nicely done; but if you want anything different from a forest or a standard outdoor scene, you will end up with issues.
For example a cave area and the transition to it; from outside; or when you get inside a building; which affect lighting. I did work around, making different scenes, with different lighting setup, but this is not really efficient.
IF you make one, even if it is written, it is a good thing in my book Videos are cool, but considering that 80% of the training material out there, focus either on scripting or on the basics of Unity application and UI; I would say that we need more lighting tutorials.
The idea there is you would use hdr and some sort of eye adaptation/exposure adjustment in post to make both those lighting situations work, because if you were going for any sort of realism, those two environments should have completely different light levels.
Making different scenes as you did is not a bad idea by the way.
I am strongly considering writing a tutorial. I am not 100% sure what it should cover.
I did try to use post processing effects to add HDR and eye adaptation, but it does look pretty bad; unless you are making a fantasy game Reduced bloom, but still you get that effect that is not what you would expect in a generic realistic game.
Also another issue is that if you increase light outside, to make the inside more bright; then the outside has white level that just blow off everything. If you make it too dim, then inside can’t see anything, unless you put light sources.
Tried with probes, no luck either. last attempt was with realtime lights inside to compensate for the lack of luminosity but I am not sure how much I can push this approach, since real time lights are expensive.
If you write a tutorial, may I suggest to not focus on what each property of the panel does, but more on how do you accomplish specific lighting setups? Some examples would be interior/exterior like in a city environment; or something like a cave with natural light or a dungeon with torches or neon lights (did you ever check the CERN particle accelerator tunnels? ); and what kind of parameters you use, to change the mood or the intensity and such.
I think the hard part is the mix between baked and real time lights; and how to set materials properly (like a ceiling in a closed environment; especially if you consider that the game could be played as FPS view, so you need to see the ceiling and it has to reflect light; compared to a bird-eye camera like Diablo; where you do not have the ceiling but you need to give the light effects like if the ceiling was there.
Uh, I’m not sure about this. It’s the same reason I don’t like presets for lighting.
Every scene and mood target is so different I don’t really think I could create a cheat sheet of values that would work for each scenario.
I generally subscribe to the “tweak until it looks good” school of thought.
With that said, I think there’s value in having a tutorial not being theoretical and being “okay now let’s create great lighting for this specific scene”. But even there, I think the goal would be to teach what the fields do, than providing a cheat sheet of values.
Hi folks – agree that having more advanced tutorials on the lighting setup and baking for more complex projects is needed and would help a lot of people (including myself).
I’m creating a VR project that has one large scene I’d like to split into multiple levels and load in, to improve performance. Some areas outside, some inside (buildings, tunnels etc.). Lighting things effectively, getting the bake to work and loading has taken the most time so far… and is still ongoing.
Would be awesome if you wrote this tutorial you mention AcidArrow.
Yes, I totally agree w/ the above after spending countless hours looking and searching for You Tube videos- most of which are either silent, out- dated, or hard to follow once something goes wrong on your end w/ no recourse for help. I found the “shake it til you bake it” and “Unity 5 Lighting and Baking” videos to be helpful. I’ve been trying to illuminate an enclosed room scene and have used a baked area light from the ceiling and a real time directional for cast shadows w/ emitting ceiling lites. Real time directional light gave poor results- too bright at origin w/ no illumination for the back of the room. I’ve been told to just bake the lites in Maya and bring into Unity but not sure about this. Others please chime in on techniques for realistic lighting, thank you
Yes this. We’re working on an indoor game with procedural generation, and each room can have radically different lighting. This is a real ball buster of a problem.
Modern games have the same problem with transitioning from outdoors to indoors, so how do you expect to beat them?
The worst I’ve seen just change the ambient light when going indoors without caring how it looks. Other games like Witcher 3 handle it better but there’s still a jump sometimes as the exterior changes colour.
The only real solution is to use realtime GI or bake everything.
Unfortunately lighting a room evenly with realtime GI is near impossible, let alone many rooms with varying lighting and no outdoor aid. Baking is not possible with a procedurally generated game. Minecraft seems to have pulled this off without much issue.
Actually just using the ceiling lights as emissive planes should be enough for your “core” lighting. Emissive when used with PL or Enlighten generally works quite well. Directional lights are rarely used indoors. Other lights for that shop scene that would work would be some spot and point lights.
Light probes are for dynamic objects… be sure to set static objects to Static… that could be why you’re not getting nice bounce lighting?
Then you need reflection probes otherwise you won’t have nice reflections.
Finally post effects (post processing stack) that gives that “pro” feel.
You need to use Linear, HDR in the project and camera settings to get a HDR, wide range of lights and colours, then use the post processing stack to tonemap, colour grade, etc.
IMO this is still a superb lighting benchmark, try PL and Enlighten etc: http://u3d.as/cAD
For CG lighting “theory” Gleb Alexandrov of Creative Shrimp has some very engaging content. It can be applied to offline or realtime rendering.
PS From what I’ve learnt the current Linear, HDR, PBR workflow is to “light like you would in real life”. Only tweak/fake at the later “artistic” phases.
I’m using the emissive property of the standard shader to light a aircraft shelter (static, lightmapped). I will have some dynamic objects that I would like to be lit and cast shadows on the static objects. Unfortunately, every time I add Unity light source it adds light to the baked static objects. What am I doing wrong?
Balancing Post effects,Light settings, material parameters is an too hard task + lightmap baking optimization . I have spent 1 year to find a proper settings and balancing the default settings very similar to the UE4 presets:
Mobile:
The top videos are the most recent and fastest ways to learn lightmapping. But you can find about 500 videos about lighting in my channel:
