Ambient Light?

Hey guys, I was wondering: is the concept of Ambient Light still valid in 5.0? In 4.6 and prior it used to be found in the Render Settings window (http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/class-RenderSettings.html) along with Fog. And it could be used to lighten or darken the entire scene.

Is that still something available? And if so where is it located now?

 

The scene tab of Window->Lighting

Note it has more options now.

 

Thank you Elbows, got it!

 

Ambient lighting didn't seem to work like I expected. Didn't seem to affect lightmapping at all or lightmapped objects at all. Only objects that were marked as non-static were affected.

 

I'm also seeing the same behavior: the ambient light does not seem to affect my scene (my shaders are created through Shader Forge).

 

I also wonder the same thing. I don't think it is a bug but why it does not affect the lightmap static objects as we expect. Some one knows this?

 

as far as i can say: "ambient source" = "skybox" does not work as expected when using lightmaps on mobile platforms. it works on opengl however. "ambient source" = "gradient" works on all platforms i have tested so far.

@Seith: you may have to have a look into the generated shader code. either in the vertex or the fragment shader their must be a call for "ShadeSH9", "ShadeSH3Order" or "ShadeSH12Order" – otherwise there will no ambient diffuse lighting be applied.

cheers, lars

 

I see. I'm using Shader Forge to create my shaders and there is an option in there in order to have your shader be affected by the ambient light. Trouble is, it's activated and yet the effect isn't quite visible...

 

could you send or post the created shader file?

 

Sure, here's a very simple shader; I can change the ambient light from black all the up to white without any visible change on materials based on this guy.

(Also, I'm in Deferred + Linear + DX11)

 

@larsbertram1 Oh, and since you're a shader wizard, would you mind please having a look at this post: Shader Forge - A visual, node-based shader editor and seeing if you could offer some suggestions? Thanks!

 

hi seith,
your shader does not support deferred but only forward and legacy deferred. so it will be rendered using forward.

as i am not familiar with shader forge i do not know if this is a general solution or will have to look different in other shaders but here it comes:

comment lines:
indirectDiffuse += UNITY_LIGHTMODEL_AMBIENT.rgb*2; // Ambient Light

--> We do not use UNITY_LIGHTMODEL_AMBIENT here as we want to add SH lighting

add lines:
indirectDiffuse += ShadeSH9(half4(normalDirection, 1.0)) * (1.0/_DiffuseExponent);
or:
indirectDiffuse += ShadeSH9(half4(normalDirection, 1.0));
--> Depending on how the custom "_DiffuseExponent" should influence ambient lighting.

this adds per pixel spherical harmonic ambient lighting.
it does not add gi or reflection probes.

lars