metallic material looks black with directional light is night

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Hello, I started using Unity5 and I am using metallic material for gameobject.
I wanted to make horror game so I turned down the intensity of directional light but it’s still possible to see in the darkness and the sky is light, so I rotated the directional light upside down and turned the intensity to 0 so it looks like night and it’s hard to see in darkness.

However I realized that the metal material looks completely black when I turned the directional light upside-down and turn the intensity to 0 even metal object is near point light.

Is there any solution that makes metallic material looks right?

thank you for reading.

Have you tried making the ambient light darker (edit->render settings)?

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Hi maccabbe, thank you for comment. I didn't try it yet. Actually, I know there was a (edit->render settings) in Unity4, but in Unity5 that (edit->render settings) is no where. I can't see that render setting menu anymore. Maybe unity's developer remove that or change it. But, now, I found new menu (edit->project settings->graphics) that might have similar work as (edit->render settings). So I'll check it out.

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hmm, looks like (edit->project settings->graphics) doesn't helps me out. But, I found where is Unity4's (edit->render settings) thing is in Unity5. It's in Windows> Lighting > scene tab. But, the color is still black. Reflection has the right color, but it's black even it's under the light...

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Perhaps, if your metal object is TOO reflective and the surroundings are too dark, then it will swallow light. Consider making it less reflective?

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Hi Blackuo, thank you for your comment. Where I can change that TOD thing? I'm not good at material so I have no idea where I can change that reflective thing?

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1 Answer

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Okay.

  • Reduce the metallic value a bit.

  • And put some light back into the scene.

    Either a directional light with very very low intensity…

    Or some ambient light with very very low intensity.

Why do I say this?..
Metallic materials show a combination of their Diffuse(Albedo), and reflected colors. If the “Metallic” value is too high, then it will only show reflective color (which , in a dark room means No color at all)

And the reason why you should have SOME light(even just a little)… is because the material’s diffuse(albedo) color will show as completely black unless you throw some light at it.

Further reading…
The settings for metal materials in Unity5 is very delicate. Making your own can result in a lot of guess work, but Unity has provided some good reading material, guidelines and samples for you to use instead.
Have a look at this document,
Working with physically based shading

It has some excellent charts describing the process of setting up metallic materials.

Thank you so much for your kindness, Blackup!! Everything worked pretty fine and the materials looks greater now! And thank you for the document, that will help me a lot!

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