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Question What's the trick to replicating an Area Light's specular reflections?

Discussion in 'High Definition Render Pipeline' started by dgoyette, Jan 20, 2023.

  1. dgoyette

    dgoyette

    Joined:
    Jul 1, 2016
    Posts:
    4,196
    Something I only just noticed with Area Lights is that they produce a nice reflection if "Affects Specular" is enabled. This doesn't seem to occur on spot lights, though. Is there some trick to getting this effect, in general, from any kind of light?

    In this image you can see the area light is producing that nice reflection off the tunnel wall.

    upload_2023-1-20_17-4-48.png
     
    dgoyette, Jan 20, 2023
    #1

  2. Remy_Unity

    Remy_Unity

    Unity Technologies

    Joined:
    Oct 3, 2017
    Posts:
    704
    All lights produce a specular reflection, but for point and spots it appears as a "halo" on the surface of the object (size depends on the smoothness).
    Point and spots have no volume (or surface), compared to area lights. But you can affect the look of the specular reflection by changing shape radius.
     
    Remy_Unity, Jan 20, 2023
    #2

  3. dgoyette

    dgoyette

    Joined:
    Jul 1, 2016
    Posts:
    4,196
    I see. It's too bad it's only for area lights. It felt like kind of an easy way to get what looked kind of like ray-traced light reflections, without enabling raytracing or screen space reflections. I really liked the effect I was getting of these area lights reflecting off the glossy, curved surface of these tunnels:



    But it looks like I can't get a similar effect from spotlights, just the area lights.
     
    dgoyette, Jan 20, 2023
    #3