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Lighting Tips in Unity - Moonee

The document provides 3 tips for improving lighting in Unity: 1. Use environment lighting without baking lightmaps by adding an ambient color or gradient to create lighting effects simply without impacting performance. 2. Ensure directional lighting is set up properly with shadows at a minimal but apparent level to provide a crisp look. 3. An advanced technique is to use key, fill, and back lighting by setting up multiple directional lights, but this should be avoided in most games due to the heavy performance hit.

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Ömür Bilgin
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137 views

Lighting Tips in Unity - Moonee

The document provides 3 tips for improving lighting in Unity: 1. Use environment lighting without baking lightmaps by adding an ambient color or gradient to create lighting effects simply without impacting performance. 2. Ensure directional lighting is set up properly with shadows at a minimal but apparent level to provide a crisp look. 3. An advanced technique is to use key, fill, and back lighting by setting up multiple directional lights, but this should be avoided in most games due to the heavy performance hit.

Uploaded by

Ömür Bilgin
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Lighting Tips in Unity

Many games can look much better and have greater appeal with
just a few simple and easy steps that will improve your lighting
setup.

Tip number 1:
Use environment lighting without baking lightmaps. The best way
of creating ambient lighting is by adding an environment
color/gradient lighting. This method is commonly used in order to
achieve a cartoony flat Hyper Casual look while keeping
performance at a minimum.
A) Single Color Approach:
1. Go to Window/Rendering/Lighting Setting.
2. Select the Environment Tab
3. Environment section – Sun Source – insert the “Direction
Light” from the scene.
4. Click the “Source” drop down and choose “Color”.
5. This will reveal an ambient color, you can now pick a color
to be used as an ambient light (Pale Blue is great).
B) Gradient Approach:
1. Click the “Source” drop down and choose “Gradient”.
2. Note the reveal of 3 new colors, you can now pick colors to
be used as an ambient light.
3. As you can see this will give better separation for objects
that are in the shade and will result in a less flat looking
ambient lighting.
4. We recommend using Pale Yellow + Light Blue + White
combo.
Tip number 2:
Nailing a good Directional Light setting (sun) is just as important to
get a crisp look. Attached is an example of a straightforward
directional light setting. We want the shadows to be minimal yet
still apparent, that is why we put the sun directly above the scene
at a 90 degrees angle (X = 90). Our color will be either Pale Yellow
(warm) or Light Blue (cold). Mode will be set to mixed and we’ll
play with the intensity from 0.7 – 1.1 (depends on the chosen
color). To save performance and still get a sharp look we’ll set
Shadow Type to “Hard Shadows” and use “Quality Settings” in the
resolution slot.
Tip number 3:
Key, Fill & Back lighting concept. This is an advanced trick and
should not be used in most games. We are going to setup more
than 1 light in the scene and this will heavily hinder performance.
The Key, Fill & Back setup is used to achieve a cinematic look. We
will use 3 Directional Lights in Unity.
A) Key Light: Main light source, setup like tip number 2 but
without the 90 degrees angle. This light should come from
a 45 degrees angle with the camera.
B) Back Light: A directional light setting coming from the
opposite of the camera. Setup should be with higher
intensity (1.2-1.5) and usually with a blue color. This light
will come from the back of the objects and will create a
rim effect.
C) Fill Light: A directional light coming from the opposite of
the Key Light. Setup should be with low intensity (0.2 –
0.6). Color could be pinks, purples, greens. This light will
create an illuminating effect. In scenarios where the
ambient light is strong, we can dismiss the Fill Light
altogether to save performance.
D) Both Back and Fill will have NO SHADOWS and will have
an angel coming from the bottom of the scene.

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