How to Have Point Light Change to Random Colors?

Hi there, currently I'm trying to add in a little fun thing into one of my levels wherein pressing a button causes some lights pointing at targets to start randomly changing colors like a rave. I tried hodge podgeing it together and what I've ended up with is some bad code that causes the light to spazz out as a billion different colors a second rather than a nice transition.

Code (CSharp):

1.     public Light buttonLight;
2.     public Light leftLight;
3.     public Light middleLight;
4.     public Light rightLight;
5.  
6.     public bool changeColor = true;
7.  
8.     // Update is called once per frame
9.     void Update()
10.     {
11.         if (changeColor)
12.         {
13.             ColorChange();
14.             changeColor = false;
15.         }
16.         else if (!changeColor)
17.         {
18.             StartCoroutine(Delay());
19.             changeColor = true;
20.         }
21.        
22.     }
23.  
24.     IEnumerator Delay()
25.     {
26.         yield return new WaitForSeconds(3);
27.     }
28.  
29.     void ColorChange()
30.     {
31.         buttonLight.color = new Color32(System.Convert.ToByte(Random.Range(0, 255)), System.Convert.ToByte(Random.Range(0, 255)), System.Convert.ToByte(Random.Range(0, 255)), 255);
32.     }

It's currently set-up to make the light inside the button change colors and not the 3 spotlights I have set up. I wanted to figure it out for the button light first and go from there. Any help would be appreciated! Thanks!

 

Coroutines don't work the way you seem to think they do. Although they don't run on a separate thread, they also don't block the Update() method from being called every frame. So, your attempt to call 'StartCoroutine(Delay());' merely calls a method that waits a little while, then exits, without affecting anything else.

You probably want to write your whole color change code as a coroutine. Something like this:

Code (CSharp):

1. void Start() {
2.     StartCoroutine(ColorChangeRoutine());
3. }
4.  
5. private IEnumerator ColorChangeRoutine() {
6.     while (true) {
7.         buttonLight.color = new Color32(System.Convert.ToByte(Random.Range(0, 255)), System.Convert.ToByte(Random.Range(0, 255)), System.Convert.ToByte(Random.Range(0, 255)), 255);
8.         yield return new WaitForSeconds(3);
9.     }
10. }

Once you've got that working, you can consider using Color.Lerp to more smoothly transition between colors if you want. (Sorry if there are any typos here...)

Code (CSharp):

1. void Start() {
2.     StartCoroutine(ColorChangeRoutine());
3. }
4.  
5. private IEnumerator ColorChangeRoutine() {
6.     while (true) {
7.         var startColor = buttonLight.color;
8.         var endColor = new Color32(System.Convert.ToByte(Random.Range(0, 255)), System.Convert.ToByte(Random.Range(0, 255)), System.Convert.ToByte(Random.Range(0, 255)), 255);
9.        
10.         var t = 0;
11.         while (t < 1) {
12.             t = Mathf.Min(1, lerp + Time.deltaTime; // Multiply Time.deltaTime by some constant to speed/slow the transition.
13.             buttonLight.color = Color.Lerp(startColor, endColor, t);
14.             yield return null;
15.         }
16.        
17.         yield return new WaitForSeconds(3);
18.     }
19. }

 

Awesome! I'll just get it working first and then transition into the smooth color changing. Thanks so much for the help!

EDIT: Additionally, you use "lerp" inside of the Mathf.Min bit but don't define it elsewhere, contextually what is "lerp" meant to be in this case?

 

can also use this for random colors,
https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Random.ColorHSV.html

 

Oops, that 'lerp' should be 't'. I changed the variable name but didn't change it everywhere.