Lights in Unity

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From the course by University of London

3D Models for Virtual Reality

97 ratings

University of London

3D Models for Virtual Reality

97 ratings

Course 2 of 5 in the Specialization Virtual Reality

This course will begin your journey to creating Virtual Reality experiences. A Virtual Reality experience is a new world that you step into and are entirely immersed in. Creating a VR experience means creating that world and all the objects in it. In this course you will learn the basics of 3D graphics: how we create objects and how to lay them out to create an environment. You will learn techniques like materials and texturing that make your objects appear realistic. You will also learn about audio techniques to ensure that your experiences sound great as well as looking great. In all of these topics we will pay attention to the particular requirements of Virtual Reality, including pitfalls and performance issues: making sure your environment runs fast enough in VR. You will learn all of this using the professional game and VR engine, Unity3D. Unity is one of the most used game engine and is a relatively easy, but fully featured, introduction to 3D development. The course will culminate in a project in which you will create your own VR scene. VR development is something you can only learn by doing it yourself, so working on your project will be the best way to learn.

From the lesson

VR Graphics

In this module you will carry on learning about 3D graphics, including how to use transforms to lay out a 3D scene and how to use materials to give your objects a distinctive appearance. You will also submit the first draft of your project.

Introduction to Materials1:10

Lights in VR2:20

Lights in Unity4:28

Materials in Unity4:57

Textures in Unity4:52

Meet the Instructors

Dr Sylvia Xueni Pan
Lecturer, Department of Computing
Goldsmiths, University of London
Dr Marco Gillies
Senior Lecturer
Computing Department, Goldsmiths, University of London

[MUSIC]

In this video we're going to be looking at lighting in Unity.

We're going to go over the main types of lighting, we're also going to have a bit

of a look at some of the things that you can do with the lighting.

So there are three main types of lighting that we're going to be covering here,

the first is called the point light.

So let's add one to the scene, we go up to the game object menu,

go down to Light and select the Point Light.

And now we have a Point Light in our scene.

We can't actually see it at the moment because it's currently underneath

our scenes.

So I'm going to move that into a better position.

Now as I move this,

you'll actually notice that the lighting in the scene is changing.

The reason for

this is that the point light is a light that is connected to a game object.

So, as I move it, we can actually see that the lighting is changing and

that different objects are being illuminated.

Now, there are a couple of properties that we can change with this light

to get it looking a little bit more how we want it to look.

The first is the range of the light, so

let depict how far the light is going to go.

So this yellow sphere around the light here is actually showing us how far

the lighting is going at the moment.

And we can change this by changing the range property in the inspector.

So by decreasing or

increasing this, we can actually change how far the light is spreading.

We can also change the intensity of the light, which is down here.

And that then changes how intense the light is going to look.

And a lot of the time when you're trying to get a specific look with your lighting,

it's going to be a case of changing or

at least finding a balance between range and intensity.

We can also change the color of the light.

So if we go and get a kind of strange greeny kind of color there.

And we can also turn and off shadows.

So if I go down to these shadow type over here in the inspector, and

click soft shadows, we're now getting these shadows being cast across the scene.

So that is the point light.

The next type of light we're going to look at, here is the directional light.

Now as soon as I add that to the scene,

we'll actually see that there is a lot more light going on here.

When I try to move it, however, nothing really seems to change.

Now the reason for

this is that the directional light is actually global light, so the object that

is in there, the position of it anyway doesn't really make much of a difference.

What does, however, is that we change the rotation of it.

So when we change the rotation,

you'll see that there is actually quite a big difference here.

I'm going to turn on the shadows and

you'll see that it's a little bit more pronounced, the difference.

And you'll notice that it's basically, it's usually used for

things like outdoor lighting, where you want the whole scene to be illuminated.

The final type of light that we are going to look at is the spotlight.

And the spotlight is somewhat similar to the point light in that

it changes as you move the object.

So, you'll see here down at the game window that as I move this,

the lighting is changing.

Unlike the point light, however, the light that comes off it is it not in a sphere

but it is actually being projected as a cone.

So, we can see that the yellow lines are showing the cone of light that's being

projected.

As I move that about you'll see that the different parts of the scene are getting

illuminated.

I'm going to turn on the shadows again by going down to the shadow type.

And I'm going to rotate this a little bit more,

you could give it a little better idea of how it's looking.

Now, one option that the spotlight has that the others do not is the spot angle.

And that actually changes how wide the cone of light is going to be.

So that is the basic types of light in Unity.

My suggestion would be that you have a bit of a play with the different types of

lighting and see what kind of cool thing that you can get going on.

[MUSIC]

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