Vertex light count

Unity Engine
1

Hi all,
I found that in Unity, the maximum number of vertex lights allowed is 8 and when I exceed that, unity gives me a warning and the additional lights do not affect the same object.

Could anyone please tell me if this is a limitation of the shader model (3.0 in my case)? or is it my card (8800m gtx)? or is it a preset of Unity that I could adjust via code.

any help would be much appreciated

Ps- By the way, I thought I could develope an instant radiosity solution by using code generated vertex lights and other vertex lights that give off negative values to fake shadows. the idea was promising sinse there is no pass overhead to this type of lighting and one could use limited number of Pixel lights to reveal bumps and other pixel effects. Unfortunately, the whole thing was put off coz of the vertex count limitation.

2

Vertex lights are not related to shaders at all.
They are hardware lights and you can’t do anything about their count etc.

At max 8 (7 + ambient) can be active at the same time, so you should disable all you don’t need at the same time.

If you need more you potentially could fake vertex lights through vertex shaders by basically writting materials that cut the pixel shader aspect of the pixel lights and only work on the vertex shader side :slight_smile:

3

As far as I know there is no limit to the number of vertex lights you can use, although only 8 can affect any one object at a time.

–Eric