Unity Tips: Lighting vs Ambient Light

Simple solution to a basic processing issue. Especially if you don't have Unity Pro and / or haven't mastered baked lighting, lights slow your game down.

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Lighting Your Scene

Point 1
Every individual light rendered on every texture has to be processed.

Point 2
Beginning scenes are hella dark. You HAVE to use lighting to be able to see your assets.

Point 3
You don't actually have to use lights to fix this problem.

• Hit Edit
• Pan down to and select Render Settings 
• Render as in how things show up
• Click the dark gray box labeled Ambient Light. 
• I usually go with a very light gray, but pale yellow is good for simulated sunlight
• blue is good for night or dream scenes
• green to enhance a forest glade
• Best Part: pick a light color and you won't need lights to see!

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Also in Render Settings

You might want to look around further in this menu area for other useful ways to tweak your scene.

• Skybox - a special texture set that creates the illusion of 3d sky
• many skybox sets are available in the assets store
• you can also follow a guide on how to make your own skyboxes
• Fog - a player view shortening and somewhat magical effect, especially set to odd colors
• obscures overhead map views, but great for immersion
• Halo and Flare - camera effects I haven't actually played with yet.

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Secret in Quality Settings:

Go to Edit -> Project Settings -> Quality and you'll find an interesting setting.
"Pixel Light Count" Turning this up increases the number of pixel lights that render completely, but has performance repercussions.
I turn this up for high-quality urban promo shots and down for everything else.

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All blog posts by UnityGirl are inspired by my work with Brunelleschi: Age of Architects on the Aesop Games team. Download the current Unity client On IndieDB

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Wondering where Part 3 of the Oculus Pointer Trilogy is? I'm not done with it yet. :D