Unity: Lighting

Name: Unity: Lighting
Author: Ken Geary

Add various lights, edit lighting parameters, and bake lights for static objects

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Course: On-Demand

Hello. My name is Ken Geary. In these lessons, you will enhance your scene by adding and adjusting lights. Before we begin open the My Level scene. We may have some extra panels docked and the best way to get back to original panel settings. We started with go to window layout and default. This sets all panels back to where we started a 3D scene. Whether in a 3D app such as Maya Blender or in a game engine such as Unity typically consists of objects, materials, cameras and lighting. Without lighting, the scene would be dark and not very interesting. One exception is to make all your materials unlit or viewable without lighting. We will focus on lit materials and the types of lights available. In Unity, you can work on your level without lighting by clicking the light bulb icon on the top right of the scene panel. This is useful when you want to just focus on placing your assets in the scene and easier to see in dark areas like a cave. Click the light bulb again, select Hovercraft and Hierarchy and click F. In the scene view, you may have to orbit around to see the hovercraft. You can see the effect of our default light, such as brightness, shadows and highlights. Select directional light and hierarchy. A directional light works similar to sunlight, in which parallel rays of light will light a scene no matter where you move it. In scene view. Click F to focus on light. Gizmo you can see the straight lines in the direction as lighting, in this case at a small angle to the ground, click W and move the light around the scene lighting remains the same, however, if you rotate a directional light, it will change its intensity very similar to sunrise and sunset. The default Unity layout has the angle of this light affecting the sky background. Select Light E to rotate, then click and Drag the Red X circle and slowly Drag one way or the other, you can simulate going from night to day just by rotating the light and as you see, the light only lights everything in one direction. You could also rotate in Y, which is the green circle. This changes direction of the Light along the Horizon. Any Inspector change Rotation back to 50 on X and Y to -30 any Light can have its Color Change by clicking the Color Strip before we just the Color. There's a feature in the color panel where you can save swatches of your favorite colors. At the bottom. Click swatches. Click to open it as a tiny square. Give it one click. Now it saves the current color of the light. Now we can adjust the light color, and if we want to return to the sunlight color we originally had, click the Color Swatch and it returns. The mode allows you to use a light in real time which will show shadows. Dynamically this is a good setting for main lighting such as sunlight, where you want to see shadows move as the light or objects move around. Change the intensity to make the light darker or brighter. Be careful not to overlight your scene. We'll set this back to one. You may be adding more than one light, and each light adds to the overall intensity of the scene. Let's look at another unity light. Select the Hanger in the scene view. Right click hit F that frames our hanger. Then select game, object, height, point, light. Right click and hit W to move the point light around. We want to move it towards the back corner and that should be fine. Point light emits light in all directions, much like a light bulb. It has a range gizmo that looks like circles that you can click and drag in and out to adjust the amount of light fall off, as well as type in values. In the inspector. We'll type in twelve. As with any light, you can change the mode to Real Time Mixed or Baked. Select the hanger, then right click over the word Hanger. Select Light. Spotlight spotlight is similar to lights you see in a theater where a dramatic pool light can highlight one actor. You can change the position rotation and that will affect where the light is cast in the direction of the cone. Let's move and rotate the spotlight above the hovercraft and point it to the bottom wall corner. Right click W to move D to Rotate green circle rotates in Y red circle rotates in X. Next, let's bring the intensity up to ten and expect it to see the light effect better. Next, click and drag the dot in the center of the cone to adjust the fall off distance. Click and drag any dot on a circle and this adjusts the cone shape in the area of coverage. Turn on soft shadows and move this by light until you see the hovercraft cast a shadow. You could also change the light you are working to a different type of light by clicking the pull down menu. So with this light in position, I could change it over to a point light or back to a Spotlight. Save the scene as Lighting File save as Scenes menu lighting in the next lesson, we're going to learn about placing lights around your level in unity. Thanks for watching and.

Beginner Provider : Ken Geary 3 Lessons · 22m in Arabic, German, English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Chinese

Course Description

Unity can enhance your scene quality with the usage of various lights and shadows. Lighting is an essential component of creating immersive environments in your scenes. In these lessons, you’ll learn how to use Unity’s powerful lighting system to create a wide range of lighting effects, from realistic natural lighting to artistically stylized lighting.

Unity’s lighting system is based on a technique called global illumination, which simulates the way light bounces and interacts with objects, both static and dynamic, in the scene. This creates more realistic shadows, reflections, shading, and ambient lighting in a scene. The directional light will be edited to simulate sunlight at dawn. Point lights and spot lights will be added and edited to showcase how they can be added to enhance the look of your scene. Some lights will be set for light baking to showcase performance saving by baking lights for static objects in your scene while still moving objects with dynamic lights and shadows.

What You'll Learn

Use Unity's lighting system to create realistic natural and artistically stylized lighting effects
Adjust directional light color, intensity, and rotation to simulate daylight and sunlight at dawn
Add and edit point lights and spot lights, including a spotlight under the hovercraft Prefab
Perform a light bake on static GameObjects to save performance
Apply global illumination to produce realistic shadows, reflections, shading, and ambient lighting

Key Takeaways

Lighting is an essential component of creating immersive environments in Unity scenes.
Unity's lighting system is based on global illumination, which simulates how light bounces and interacts with both static and dynamic objects.
Global illumination creates more realistic shadows, reflections, shading, and ambient lighting in a scene.
Light baking saves performance for static objects while dynamic lights and shadows continue to move with moving objects.
Directional, point, and spot lights can each be added and edited to enhance the look of a scene.

Frequently Asked Questions

What will I learn in this course?

You'll learn how to use Unity's powerful lighting system to create a wide range of lighting effects, from realistic natural lighting to artistically stylized lighting, using global illumination.

What topics does this course cover?

The course covers Types of Lights, Adding Lights to Your Level, and Light Baking, including directional, point, and spot lights as well as baking lights for static objects.

What is global illumination in Unity?

Global illumination is the technique Unity's lighting system is based on; it simulates the way light bounces and interacts with static and dynamic objects in the scene, creating more realistic shadows, reflections, shading, and ambient lighting.

What skills does this course help me build?

This course helps you build skills in Lighting Layout and working with the Unity Engine.

Why would I use light baking?

Light baking is used to save performance by baking lights for static objects in your scene while still moving objects with dynamic lights and shadows.