Hi everyone, I’m a new Unity user (experienced programmer) and I’m having a terrible time trying to work out exactly how to set my lights.
Scenario: I have a multi level building (currently made of static primitives with basic colour based materials applied). Think of an apartment block.
Each ‘Apartment’ needs to have separate lighting, some dark, some bright. However, if I use a directional light in the scene it appears to light everything, even inside the apartments, destroying the effect. Therefore I have removed ambient lights by setting the skybox to a black material, removing the directional light and setting the light source to black colour.
This has the desired effect of making the scene entirely dark, allowing me to place lights as required. I am now able to place spot lights in the correct places (or not) to have different apartments with different lighting conditions.
The problem:
Light from the apartment above appears to come through the floor and combine with the light below, making the room below much too bright. This is compounded by having multiple levels.
Iv read many similar posts around the internet and so far Iv yet to find a solution that works. I have my lights set to use soft shadows and Iv played with the bias on the lights but that only makes the shadows look nasty and the light still bleeds through the walls and floors.
Apparently the distance set on the light effects the brightness in the room, but in order to light the room even remotely well the distance is about 6 times the height of the room, obviously encompassing the apartment below.
Is there something that can be done about this? I don’t really want my walls and floors to be insanely thick (0.5 seems fair) just to prevent lights from bleeding through them. I am now stumped so if anyone has any ideas Id be grateful.
regards
Max
