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What is the best lighting set up for an interior with windows?

Discussion in 'Global Illumination' started by Jason210, Mar 8, 2019.

  1. Jason210

    Jason210

    Joined:
    Oct 14, 2012
    Posts:
    131
    The room is quite dark, but there are a few small windows letting daylight and sunlight in. The room also has artificial lights. The sun is moving during the course of the game, and the artificial lights can be turned on or off. I've been experimenting with real-time global illumination and it seems to work. I'm interested to hear any suggestions or points to consider.
     
    Last edited: Mar 8, 2019
  2. kristijonas_unity

    kristijonas_unity

    Unity Technologies

    Joined:
    Feb 8, 2018
    Posts:
    1,080
    Well, if you need the lighting in your scene to change dynamically, then realtime GI is your best choice by far. Of course, you could also go with a mixed solution if you'd like. In other words, you could bake neutral ambient color into your scene to get some baked indirect shadows, and keep the rest of your lighting realtime.

    Baked GI would of course give you better looking results, and more light types to play with, but you will be stuck with static lighting in your scene.
     
    Jason210 likes this.
  3. Jason210

    Jason210

    Joined:
    Oct 14, 2012
    Posts:
    131
    Thanks for your reply. The scene has to fulfill the following requirements:
    • Have direct sunlight and shadows, and the bounced light resulting from that.
    • Have an artificial point light, for nighttime illumination.
    • Work in twilight, with a combination of the above lighting
    • Have a darkness setting, where there is a low ambient light but no sources.
    As the sun will be slowly moving, then dynamic lighting is essential. I have been experimenting with dynamicGI and at one point ha d reasonably good result using the skybox with gamma color settings. With no lights active, I was able to get a good ambient darkness and combine the two lighting sources as required. This mo longer worked when I switched to linear color.

    Now I'm messing about putting point light sources in all the windows to create a fake indirect light coming from outside, and also the HDRP package.
     
    Last edited: Mar 16, 2019