How can I make particles receive light? (Not HDRP or LWRP)

Hey folks. Working on a VR project (forward render) where it would be useful to perceive light being cast over the player's shoulder and onto smoke particles in front of the player.

I'm running into trouble getting this to work with Shuriken - I'm playing around with the Renderer and Light settings, but nothing seems to be getting me close to my target (I can't even seem to get the particles to cast shadows!).



Can anybody suggest a solution? Many thanks in advance.

 

Hi @richardkettlewell, thank you for taking a look at this.

When I first posted I was using the default particle material provided by a new Particle System, therefore 'Standard Unlit'. =/ Sorry for wasting your time there, and thank you for pointing me in the right direction. I was hoping you might answer some more related questions, however?

The project colour space is set to Linear.





I've chosen an additive shader with relatively low smoothness and this seems to help pick out a slightly tighter area of particles for display - however, I'm running into a couple of problems. (I have turned off all other scene lighting other than these lamps for the example (turned off skybox ambient lighting etc).

1) It seems difficult if not impossible to cast a tight cone of light onto a specific piece of particle fog.

2) When the light reaches a certain distance from the particle column, the lighting just... snaps off. (see second light to the right in the Scene view, which is not contributing ANY light to the column). This is fairly distracting and I'd like to avoid this binary effect, if possible.

I was thinking this might have to do with the limitations of forward realtime rendering, but I've just realised that that would be if more than three lights were hitting a single billboard. So I guess I'm confused again.

3) With the system for the Particle System set to receive shadows and the lights set to cast hard shadows, there are no shadows to be seen. These aren't vital to the project, but I'm unsure of why I can't see them.

Leaving aside jokes about 'shining some light on the topic' and 'illumination', I could really use some help here. Thank you in advance...!

--Rev

 

1) Boo but I understand the reasoning. Will investigate the custom shader, time permitting.

2) Light Probe Proxy Volumes - Wilco! This looks interesting, thank you!

3) Understood! Not a critical issue, good to know.

Thank you so much for your responses. Have a wonderful day!