REALTIME LIGHTING in Unity Video Lecture | Build a Game: Unity Tutorial (English) - Game Development

in a previous video we created this
scene using the progressive light mapper
now big lighting is great because it's
very performant and allows for very
detailed lighting but if you want your
objects and lights to move around you of
course need your lining to update to
these changes luckily unity has a bunch
of tools for creating real-time lighting
so today we'll have a look at these
tools and how to use them you can always
jump to the timestamps on the screen now
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and with that let's get into the video
so I've set up this example scene here
and as you can see the lighting is
currently very boring the colors are
washed out there's only a single light
in here and it's just using completely
standard settings by the way if you want
to get your hands on the same
environment that I'm using you can
simply download it off of dev assets all
the assets are pay what you want and of
course have a link to them in the
description now before we start messing
around with lights in our scene we want
to make sure to set up all the
appropriate settings
the first one is configuring our color
space to do this we go edit project
settings and player and here we change
the color space from gamma to linear as
you can see right away this darkens our
scene but it also adds way more color
depth we also want to go to our camera
and make sure we have allow HDR enabled
for the rendering path we have two
options for word and deferred I've
talked about the rendering path HDR and
the color space in another video on
getting good graphics in unity so if you
want to know what all this stuff means I
definitely suggest checking out that
video but for now just note that I
expect to have a lot of real-time lights
in my scene and whenever that's the case
you're probably best off going
deferred finally we can edit our quality
settings by going edit project settings
and selecting quality and the main thing
that we want to do here is up the pixel
light count this is basically a way to
limit the amount of light calculations
that we need to do so in order to
display all the lights in our scene we
definitely want to amp this up to say 20
if you want you can also fine-tune the
shadow quality but I'm just going to
leave this at high resolution so now
we've set up all the right settings but
one more thing that I like to do before
actually lining my scene is adding
post-processing to my camera and that's
because in order to utilize all the data
captured by our camera whenever HDR is
enabled we need to use a post-processing
effect called the tone mapper again if
you want to learn more about this stuff
check out my video on good graphics in
unity for now we can just go and open
the asset store he will search for
post-processing we'll want to select the
post-processing stack and import it when
you're done you should see a folder in
your project called post-processing then
we need to add a component to our main
camera and the component is called
post-processing behavior this will apply
the effects to our camera and this takes
in a post-processing profile this is
basically just an object that stores all
of our effect settings let's go to the
project right click go create
post-processing profile we'll call this
CC for color correction we'll select our
camera and drag in our CC object and now
when we select it we can see all the
different effects that we can now apply
to our camera and the main one that I
always make sure to check before adding
lighting to my scene is color grading
the reason why is that under the color
grading you can see we have options for
tone mapping and now here comes a matter
of preference some people like to use
the neutral tone mapper and then do all
the color correction afterwards but I've
recently been really fond of the filmic
tone mapper as you can see really
darkens our scene and adds a lot of
contrast but in my opinion it also gives
it this really cool filmic look just to
make it a tiny bit brighter I'm also
going to go to the post exposure and add
0.4 so now that we've set up our most
basic color grading we're ready to start
lighting our scene I'm gonna go window
lighting and then settings and this is
going to open up the lighting window as
you can see we have a bunch of diff
settings in here but we're actually
going to ignore most of them we're only
going to focus on the first two modules
on the real-time lighting you just want
to make sure to check real-time global
illumination and under the environment
we have a few settings that we can play
around with the first one is the skybox
material here we can of course change
the skybox that surrounds our
environment and the cool thing about
unities real-time lighting solution is
that unity will now automatically apply
lining to our scene depending on the
skybox that we have applied this is what
we refer to as environment lighting as
you can see the source is currently set
to skybox and I have an intensity
multiply here and you can see as I
increase this just how much it makes our
environment blend in with the skybox so
whenever you're lighting an outdoor
scene I really recommend spending a lot
of time finding the right skybox you can
always go to the asset store and search
for skybox and there are actually a lot
of really great ones here and many of
these are actually free one that I
really like is to free HDR sky now as
you can see if I add this to my project
switch to the scene view here and go and
change the skybox material I'm just
going to change to the skybox day this
immediately impacts the lighting of our
environment and if I switch to sunset
you can clearly see how the intensity
and color of the light changes but for
now I'm just gonna switch back to the
default skybox I'm gonna set the
intensity multiplier to 1 and we can
actually go in here and change from
skybox to gradient this allows us to
create our own custom lighting gradient
from the sky color to the color around
the equator and the ground or if you
just want to apply a flat color you can
do that as well whenever I'm lighting an
indoor scene I always make sure to set
the color to a complete blank but this
scene is not indoors so I'm gonna change
it back to Sky box and set the intensity
to around - so now it's finally time to
start adding actual light emitters into
our scene I'm gonna get rid of my
directional light here and show you how
this is done
try the light tourist scene with simply
right click in the hierarchy go light
and here we can select from three
different real-time lights directional
light point light and spotlight the
directional light applies light from a
given
direction you can see if we add this to
a scene it applies to all the objects
within it it actually doesn't matter
where it's placed the only thing that
matters is how we rotate it as you can
see right away there are no shadows we
need to enable these manually so we'll
go into the shadow type and here we can
select either hard or soft shadows hard
shadows of course always completely hide
where soft shadows are kind of more
realistically blurred out of it
now we can position our direction of
light where we want it to be
I'd like it to kind of come from the
left hand side here we can also change
the color of a light I'm gonna make mine
a tiny bit warmer by tinting it Orange
as well as the intensity of the light
one technique that I often like to apply
when using directional light is what we
refer to as two point lighting this is
where we have a main light I'm gonna
rename this to main light that is the
main source of lighting in our scene
this illuminates our subject from the
front then a bit to one of these sides
on top of the main light we also apply
what is called a rim light I'm gonna
rename this one to rim light and now
this light comes from the back kind of
pointing in the opposite direction of
the main light now for this light we
probably want to decrease the intensity
a bit and what we often do is tint the
rim light a blue tone again this helps
it contrast with the main light
currently this effect is very subtle but
it's also supposed to be we can't go
ahead and bump up the intensity a tiny
bit though so now that we have our main
directional lights in here it's time to
make our scene feel more alive by adding
point lights again we wanna right click
in the hierarchy code light and select
point light and just like directional
lights emit light in a certain direction
point lights emit light from a certain
point so if we reset the transform on
this and drag it into a visible part of
our environment we can immediately see
that it starts applying light to this
part of the environment the intensity
might be a bit too low here so we'll
bump up the intensity to say 2 and we
can also adjust the range of our light
you can either do that by dragging on
the sphere or changing it in the
inspector I'm gonna set mine to around
20 so as you can see this immediately
gives a very cool effect especially if
we go in here and
at shadows however if you have a lot of
point lights in your scene having all of
them rendered shadows can be quite
performance intensive so I definitely
recommend that you keep this at a
minimum but for now I'm just gonna set
this to hard shadows and as you can see
this immediately looks super cool now
I'm gonna go through the scene here and
add a bunch of point lights with varying
color I find that for fantasy
environments like this one it's really
important to play around with different
vibrant colors so I'll see you in a bit
[Music]
so as you can see that helped quite a
bit the scene feels way more interesting
and less flat now I also think that we
might have exaggerated the amount of
light that we need from the directional
lights so I'm gonna go into my main
light here and decrease the intensity a
bit I'd rather have the point light take
over and make it feel like most of the
light is coming from the environment
itself now I don't think it's needed for
this environment but we do have a third
type of real-time light I'm of course
talking about the spotlight the
spotlight is fairly self-explanatory it
allows you to create spotlights within
the scene I found that I actually very
rarely use this light but it can be
really nice for highlighting certain
parts of a scene or of course for
creating stuff like flashlights say we
wanted to really emphasize these two
skeletons a way to do that would be put
a spotlight right on top of them maybe
move it a bit closer you can play with
the range of the light here as well the
spot angle and then increase the
intensity and we can of course also add
some shadows and as you can see it
really helps our skeleton pop but for
now I'm just going to delete it now the
last type of light that I want to add is
actually not a real-time light however
I'll show you a few tricks for making it
look like it is what I'm referring to is
what we call emissive materials so I
would really like this doorway to light
up this way it could kind of act like a
focal point for the scene but how do we
do this using lights all the lights that
we've seen so far to emit light onto the
surroundings but they aren't actually
visible themselves how do we create an
actually visible light but to do that we
first need to create the object
for our light if you want to make a lamp
you can go inside of blender or any
other 3d modeling program and model out
the lamp in our case we just want a flat
doorway so I'm just gonna use a plane
we'll right-click in the higher Kiko 3d
object and select plane and it's gonna
create a flat plane inside of the game
I'm gonna rotate this by 90 degrees so
it's pointing directly forward I'm also
going to slice it down I place it in our
doorframe
once we're satisfied with the placement
of our plane we want to go ahead and add
an emissive material to it to view this
we'll right click in the project go
create material and we'll call this
material glow we'll select the plane and
drag our glow material onto it and now
we can pretty much leave all the
settings as is here the only thing that
we want to do is go ahead and check
emission here we can define a color for
our mission I want to make this a light
blue and I've actually prepared a color
beforehand you can go ahead and copy it
if you want to I also want to bump up
the intensity of the emission which we
control over here so I'm gonna set that
to 5 and as you can see our object now
looks very bright but it doesn't have
that glow light effect and it's still
not influencing the rest of our
environment well for the first problem
we can fix that using a post-processing
effect so remember earlier when we added
some color grading well we can actually
go in here and add some glow as well we
refer to this setting as bloom and as
you can see right away when I check it
there's really no doubt that it's
working we can go in here and we can
adjust the threshold this is how bright
something needs to be in order for us to
apply a glow to it I'm just gonna set
this to something like 2 then we can
also adjust the intensity as well as the
radius of the glow now I don't want this
to take over the entire scene but I
definitely want it to be there so that
was pretty easy but it's still not
really applying light to the rest of our
environment and the reason why is that
unity won't actually apply light from
emissive materials in real time you need
to bake your scene in order for this to
happen but we can fake it to do this I'm
simply going to use a few point lights
so let's take one of the point lights
from our scene and duplicate it let's
move it close to the doorway and let's
simply tend it in the light blue color
you can see right away it looks like the
light is actually coming from the door
it's that easy no one is ever going to
notice that we're actually using a point
light to do this and you don't even
necessarily need to put it right on top
of the door of course this might give
really nice shadows but I like it more
out here why it's actually lighting up a
larger part of the scene so once we're
satisfied with all the lights I'm gonna
right click in the Harkey hit create
empty object and I'm gonna rename this
to lights and then I'm gonna select all
my lights and drag them in there and
I've actually placed my environment on a
turntable so if I go ahead and hit play
the entire environment is going to
rotate now of course we want our lights
to rotate with it so I'm just gonna take
my lights here and parent them to the
turntable and now we can see our entire
scene rotating and updating in real time
and the final thing that I always add to
my scenes which are lighted in real time
is a third post-processing effect now
this one is a nice one let's select our
CC layer and let's go to the top and
check ambient occlusion and right away
this might not do much but we can play
around with the radius and the intensity
in order to really help at detail to our
lighting ambient occlusion is basically
just the shattering that happens when
two surfaces meet you can see this if I
enable and disable it that every time we
have a sharp angle between some surfaces
ambient occlusion gets applied of course
play around with this effect to make it
suit your scene but I definitely
recommend adding it that's pretty much
all of my real-time lighting tips for
unity from here recommend you to play
around with different lighting setups
different lighting settings
post-processing effects and of course
trying to tweak these settings to make
everything as performant as possible and
of course make sure to have fun that's
pretty much it for this video make sure
to check out the IBM watson unity sdk
using the link in the description you
can get started for free on that thanks
for watching and I will see you in the
next video thanks to all the awesome
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