Light Explorer (2D)

2D
,
1

Using Unity 2023.1, in the Light Explorer window, could we also get controls for:

  • Shadows > Softness slider (we already have enable/disable toggle, and Strength slider)
  • Volumetric toggle and intensity slider

Just updated to Unity 2023.1, very happy with the new 2D features like soft shadows. Unity did a good job, was worth mentioning!

2

Thank you @BACALL for trying out the soft shadows! I’d be happy to bring this piece of great feedback back to the team. :slight_smile:

Yes, we have exposed the most frequently used 2D Light and Shadow properties in the Light Explorer for quicker and easier batch-manipulation in context of all the other Lights in the Scene. Shadow softness slider is an interesting one and it does sounds like a possible candidate.

As for the Volumetric (and Normal Maps) properties, one of the reasons why we didn’t expose them was so that we could keep the Light Explorer relatively light and clutter-free so it remains easy to use.

Just curious:

  • How many of your 2D Lights have the Volumetric effects enabled?
  • Also, when and how often do you have to tweak the Volumetric properties e.g. Intensity and/or Shadow Strength?
3

Hi, thank you for reaching out!

Extra note regarding the Shadow Softness: The idea for this feature came from my experience of updating my project (from 2022 to 2023). All scenes had lights defaulted to 0 softness. I had to manually increase the softness for each light and scene to implement the new shadows.

  • I don’t use volumetric effects for many of my lights, but it depends on the scene. If it’s a “hazy” looking scene or location, I might enable a lot them. So it’s not as important as shadow softness.
  • I don’t change the light settings very often, but once I need to tweak something, it’s annoying to go through light by light. But I’ve learned to always keep all of my lights under one game object in the hierarchy for easier access. The more properties exposed in the Light Explorer, the better.