Journal 50 — Lighting Options and Light Probes in Unity

Objective: To go over lighting in more detail in Unity

Unity allows for various light types, such as spot lights, point lights, directional lights, and area lights.

As described earlier, the scene in “The Great Fleece” uses a directional light to simulate the sun/moon light across the entire scene, and emission parameters on some materials to simulate objects giving off light, like a computer screen, or lights on a light fixture.

The scene also uses a Light Probe Group, which is used “to provide high quality lighting (including indirect bounced light) on moving objects in your scene, or to provide the lighting information for static scenery when that scenery is using Unity’s LOD system.” Unity Learn includes a tutorial on setting up a Light Probe Group.

The scene also uses reflection probes, which are used to simulate reflections in the scene. Unity Learn includes a brief tutorial on reflection probes.

For more information, you can try the Unity Learn tutorial on Lighting and Rendering.

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