[Solved] Natural Interior Lighting

Hello friends

Here is what I spent the day working on!






I'm pretty happy with it, (apart from the last one, which looks pretty empty) but the lighting leaves much to be desired. Note that outside this house is an open world with dynamic time of day, so I have a little less strength here. Also, some of the candles are missing particles.

How should I make everything looks less... samey? Since the lighting is a uniform yellow/red, it makes all of the colors blend into grossness.

-Josh

 

Now, this looks interesting.

I'll see if I can quickly replicate this and play with it....

 

Hmm..... I think I got carried away. Again.



I'm not happy with the results.

Here's what I get in blender:


Here's Enlghten shading, full baked:


By the way Blender Cycles --> Unity material transfer process is very inconvenient. Basically you have to type in everything by hand.

Not good.

Fullrealtime:



Sigh.

Anyway. Getting back to the original question.

 

AFter tinkering with a low poly scene, I think your scene suffers from unity skybox bleeding through. Basically, with default config, skybox tints everything with a nauseating shade of blue, regardless of where the object is.

To deal with it, you either kill the skybox with fire on "Lighting" panel, or you could try placing reflection probes in enclosed areas.


"Samey" areas can be fine, but it depends on what you're trying to do with them. For example, dramatic contrast could be good (I loved hard shadows in old games like blade of darkness):

View attachment 267996

If something will be walking in front of the fire, it could look cool.

But, if you want more more color variety in your scene you could try placing invisible "fill" lights that do not cast shadows, and affect large areas. Could be something like this, for example:

Spoiler

(Low intensity blue light at the barrels).

If I rememebr it right, this was actually used a LOT on games like oblivion. There was a ton of hiden light sources that weren't attached to anything, and just flooding are with som color.

It might make sense to take a look at color theory and see if placing complementary color would make scene more interesting. Just try not to fall into "teal and orange" trap (google it or read about it here).

In addition to that, depending on what you're trying to do, it might be a good idea to grab post-processing stack from asset store. It is free.

Spoiler

https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/essentials/post-processing-stack-83912

 

I think there is too much red for which there's not a logical source. Is your ambient light red? Maybe try getting rid of that, and use color correction (in the post processing stack neginfinity linked to) to adjust the feel.

Otherwise it seems to be lacking good reflections as far as I can tell. A lot of what makes something look more real/vibrant, and not just like a piece of cardboard in monochromatic hell, is a good reflection map.

 

WOW you just did my entires day work so fast LOL

Interesting about the skybox. I sadly have to keep it, since there is no division between interior and exterior scenes, unlike Oblivion. I'll look into it!

And I am indeed using post processing, I think some of the redness is actually coming from that, whoops! And ugh yeah I have a personal vendetta against the orange and teal thing done so often in movies.

Thank you so much for the insanely in depth answer!

Interesting, I sorta assumed reflections weren't important on scenes like this for some reason! I'll check it out for sure!!! My ambient light is blue, but my candles are possibly too orange... I tried yellow and it ended up looking very gross. I'll keep experimenting!

 

Turns out I was lifting the red gamma in my post processing, I forgot I did that oops!



So that certainly helps the redness. Now I guess I should try to figure out how to make everything look less grey!

So I were to use post processing, what exactly would I do? I could throw a volume on this interior specifically I guess, but then what would I tweak?

 

Those are not really same style but you should try some volumetric light, there is some free asset for this that work well. Also it's not very obvious on screenshots but there is some bright dust floating around that give a nice feeling when walking around.



May be you could experiment with your light sources brightness / size too?

 

I love the fire you made for the fireplace.

 

That looks fantastic!

I know right, I'm going to try to replicate that

 

Alright, I've tried this effect:
https://github.com/SlightlyMad/VolumetricLights

The volumetric lighting looks amazing!!!!
But problem is, it makes the sky bright white... I've tried other volumetric effects, all with the same problem.

 

Have you tried this one?

https://forum.unity.com/threads/released-free-aura-volumetric-lighting.441387/

 

After trying it, I still haven't figured it out.
No matter what I do, I always end up fogging out my sky. (even if I disable it for the directional light) I guess it's just what I get for having volumetric effects?

 

I used this one and there is definitly some settings in your light to avoid making everything foggy outside.

Try to play with "Scattering and Extinction" on your directional light as well as the "Skybox Extinction Coef".

 

Eh, I'll elaborate.

You can keep skybox, alright, but the issue is with unity standard shader using skybox as reflection source. Skybox you see in the background is not a problem. The problem is what is being reflected in objects, that's why I mentioned lighting panel.

Because the standard shader is PBR, at grazing angles (i.e. where you're looking pretty much parallel to the surface), almost all materials are reflective. And at those reflected edges you're going to see the skybox, if it is used as reflection source. So, with default skybox in the darkest basement everything will glow blue at edges.

To fix this you need to either set up reflection probes - because skybox is only used when there are no reflection probes, or flat ambient color as reflection source (gradient might also work, but I haven't tried that).

In the end whether to keep the skybox or not depends on what style you're going after.

Basically, as you can see from screenshots I posted, I prefer low detail geometry with relistic lighting and pretty much global illumination. When I can do that, of course. For this situation skybox might be suitable outdoors.

However, if you're going after cartoon look or flat look similar to "another world", then skybox won't look right, and the best idea would be to replace it with ambient color.

Spoiler

Another possibility is ditching standard shader and using your own toon shading shader, but that's not beginner stuff (well, there's asset store, but I can't recommend anything specific).

So it is the matter of deciding what style you're going after.

And one more thing.

It might be a good idea to shut down all lights and see what your scene looks like. Then maybe set reflectio nsource to completley black ambient color and slowly configure individual lights trying to get the right mood for the scene.

 

I think I might've developed a habit of modeling glowing surfaces out of polygons isntead of using particles. When using blender, that is.

Spoiler

Results do not always look good, though.

 

Ahhh I see what you mean. I actually don't have problems with blue light indoors, interestingly enough - so it looks like I'm okay. Thank you for the explanation!

I tried this for a half an hour or so, but couldn't get what I wanted. I've decided to put the whole volumetric stuff behind me for now, since I need to focus on level design. I'll return to this later. But thank you so much for showing me this stuff, it looks so amazing.

 

Put some more windows/make windows bigger?

 

I plan on doing this, my little dinky windows don't suffice ^_^