30/08/2017 7 Tips For Better Lighting in Unity

7 Tips For Better Lighting in

Unity

21 August, 2017

Opinion

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Justin from LMHPoly allowed us to

repost his article on setting up a perfect
lighting in Unity. 7 useful tips for your
atmospheric scenes. 

My 7 tips for better lighting in Unity 5.6 and

up.

Tip 1. Use Linear Color Space. It s important ’

to choose a ‘Color Space’ before lighting
your project. The preferred Color Space for

realistic rendering is Linear. By default Unity

use Gamma Color Space. To change it go

to (Edit > Project Settings >

Player), inside Other Settings tab you will

«nd Color Space* – change it to Linear. Read

more about Gamma and Linear Color

Space HERE.

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Gamma vs Linear (no Post-Processing)

Gamma vs Linear (with Post-Processing)

Tip 2. Use Global Illumination (GI) – for more

’
realistic lighting. It s a system that models

how light is bounced off of surfaces onto

other surfaces (indirect light) rather than

being limited to just the light that hits a

surface directly from a light source (direct

light). Read more about Global Illumination.

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Realtime Global Illumination OFF vs

Realtime Global Illumination ON.

To turn on Realtime Global Illumination go

to (Window > Lighting >

Settings), Lighting window will appear.

Open Scene tab inside Lighting window and

enable Realtime Global Illumination. You can

change Realtime GI resolution by

changing Indirect Resolution.

Both Baked GI and Precomputed Realtime

GI have the limitation that only Static objects

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can be included in the bake/precomputation

– so moving objects cannot bounce light

onto other objects and vice versa. However

they can still pick up bounce light from static

objects using Light Probes.

Tip 3. Color Harmony. You must understand

colors to create nice lighting and

atmosphere in the scene. Read more

about Color Harmonies.

Scene use 2 Complementary colors of Blue

and Orange.

Scene use 3 main Analogus colors from

Green to Yellow.

Scene use 2 main Complementary colors of

Blue and Orange.

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Different lighting colors can change the

scene mood drastically:

Tip 4. Use very Light Colors, Don t use Over ’

Saturated colors! Light colors are much

more pleasant to the eye, and looks more

realistic. Watch this video to Understand

Colors more – by Andrew Price.

Over Saturated Colors vs Light Colors.

Tip 5. Play with Lights – change Light

Direction and Shadows to get different

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results.

Tip 6. Play with Ambient Color to change

shadows color. You can get pretty nice

results by changing shadows color.

You can do it by going to (Window > Lighting

> Settings), Lighting window will appear.

Inside Lightingwindow open Scene tab and

set Environment Lighting Source to Color.

Now you can change Ambient Color to any

color you want.

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Tip 7. Use Post-Processing image effects. By

using Post-Processing image effects you

can improve overall scene lighting very

drastically. Here is an example in Unity 5.6 –

’
I ve used FREE Post Processing Stack from

Unity Asset Store.

Post-Processing OFF vs Post-Processing ON

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Post-Processing OFF vs Post-Processing ON

I hope that these few tips will help you to

improve your overal lighting in Unity. Keep

learning and practice every day!

If you have any questions, feel free to ask!

Follow me on Twitter to see what I m ’

working on

Follow me on my Instagram

Also, check out my Facebook

The article was originally published

here.

Source: lmhpoly.com

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Comments

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2 Comments on "7 Tips For Better Lighting in Unity"

Join the discussion

Andrei 

These are render settings, and have very little

to do with lighting. As Lights, and Light

Guest
Parameters, as well as setups / key «ll, back

are not discussed.

 0   5 days 17 hours ago

Bubba 

Great! Thanks.

   7 days 7 hours ago

Guest
0

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