Lights attached to objects turning off over terrain

Questions & Answers
1

Hi all. I think this is probably a bug in the engine, but I am new to using Unity and wanted to get your opinion before bothering the developers with a bug report.

I have “defenders” that get instantiated, and they instantiate projectiles, kinda like magic bolts or missiles. These projectiles are textured spheres made in unity that have a particle emitter and point light attached to them. They fly forward over a board composed of individual flattened cubes also made in Unity.

Everything works fine until the spheres pass the board and are over the terrain. At this point if only one projectile is over the terrain the light stays on. If 2 or more are past the board, only the first one has a light on. Even more confusing, the projectiles die automatically after 5 seconds, and once the one with the working light is destroyed, the light on another one over the terrain turns back on. The projectiles and board tiles have colliders but they do not touch each other.

Does this sound like a bug in Unity, or did I likely miss something stupid that I did?

Thanks in advance, guys…

3

Under Edit->Project Settings->Quality there is a “Pixel Light Count” setting. Mine was set too low. Raising it fixed the problem.

Thanks to all who read my post.

2

Sounds like forward lighting to me. Try switching to deferred lighting.
Edit → Project Settings → Player → Other Settings → Rendering Path

As for why they die off after 5 seconds, check your projectile code and collision. Maybe they don’t die but instead go ‘inside’ the terrain?