Lighting question

Having lots of fun today playing with particles, but I've come across a lighting issue and I don't know what could be causing it. Please forgive the dark scene; I disabled ambient light to set the torch lights.



There are 12 point light sources in this scene, each tucked inside the particle systems that make up the torches. If you look at the light on the lower left, it is not illuminating the area above it. There is another light (not visible) directly across from it that is also exhibiting this same behavior. Every light in the scene has the exact same settings (they were all duplicated from one another).

Another question: how do you make lights dynamic?

 

Could it be that your level in that area is 1 mesh? A single mesh is only affected by the 8 brightest lights in Unity. If this is the case you could fix it by breaking up your mesh.

What do you mean by dynamic lights? You can script the light's transform component so it moves around, attach the light to a rigidbody on a swaying hinge joint, alter the light's color at run time... even set the light's cookie at run time.

So there's a ton you could do dynamically... what are you after?

Cheers,
-Jon

 

Thanks. You're right; my level is all one mesh. It will be easy enough to split it up.

What I was looking for is a way to make the lights from the torches flicker. What's the best way to do this: "wobble" the lights or change their intensity? Is there a code sample you can point me to?

 

Really cool character! For flickering, I would think moving AND varying the intensity would be the nicest effect. To move smoothly, maybe you could have the light source parented just a bit off center from an empty gameobject. Then rotate the parent randomly (randomly nudge all 3 rotation axes?) making it "orbit." The farther from the parent it is, the more variation would result.

Some color variation might be neat too.

 

Or use perlin noise. Don't know how performance would be for a huge amount of lights, but it should be ok. The perlin noise script is on the wiki with an example of using SmoothRandom to move objects.

-Jeremy

 

You're awesome, Joachim! Thanks.

Do you have any advice regarding how to compensate for gamma differences between the Mac and Windows displays?

 

It's still dark, I know, but better... (And the flickering torch light helps a lot! )

 

Looks good, I like your character.

This has been mentioned elsewhere too and I think it's down to either finding a happy medium, or you can use the Application.platform to find when it's running on windows and brighten all of your lights. A bit annoying to do, but I think it's the best option for now.

-JEremy

 

So there's no way to adjust gamma in-game?

 

You can't control the OS's gamma controls right now, no. There is that color correction filter for Pro users that one could use, but that's kind of an unneccsary performance hit. :/

 

It's probably the wrong look for most games, but you could adjust the ambient light globally.

 

I tried that but it really washes out the lighting on the Mac. I should probably go back and see what happens when I play the file over on the pc. It would be great to find a quick fix like: "raise ambient light by X% for Windows builds."

I'll report back once I've had a chance to check this out.

 

Code (csharp):

1. var testBoost = false;
2. var ambientBoost = Color(0.1, 0.1, 0.1);
3.  
4. if (testBoost || Application.platform == RuntimePlatform.WindowsPlayer || Application.platform == RuntimePlatform.WindowsWebPlayer)
5. {
6.     RenderSettings.ambientLight += ambientBoost;
7. }
8.  

Untested, sorry, but you'd just play with ambientBoost and then try it on a PC.

Put this javascript on one object in each scene you'd like the ambient light boosted.

I'd be really interested to hear how acceptable the results are, as I would like to do some cheap gamma correction on my games if possible.

Cheers,
-Jon

 

What I do is set my gamma (in System Preferences) halfway between Mac and PC. Then everything I do is a little brighter on Macs and a little darker on PCs, but I'm doing all my work at a "happy medium."

Different displays (and how people have them set) vary SO much anyway, that I haven't been bothered by that amount of variation.

 

Ok, so this pic was grabbed from the pc. I turned the ambient light way up and it looked very washed out on the Mac.

 

Why don't you add a control so users can adjust the ambient light in-game? Either step it up and down via key presses (F1 makes it darker, F2 makes it brighter) or add a slider as part of the preferences in-game. This would help to cater for the many different types of displays out there, too.

 

Maybe its just the old mac/pc gamma correction problem?!

 

Yes, it is. That is the problem on all the shots I've posted here. The latest just illustrates that you can alleviate it somewhat by raising the ambient light levels before exporting to Windows.

 

Did you try my script? It would save you the hassle of that.

-Jon

 

I haven't yet, but I'll let you know if that works. I assume the vars are percentages, correct? 1 would equal 255 of a color?

 

ot... looking great!