Light

Light determine the shading of an object and the shadows it cast. As such, they are fundamental part of graphical rendering.

• Type, the current type of light

• Range, defines how far the light emitted from the center of the object travels (Point and Spot light)

• Spot Angle, defines the angle at the base of a spot light cone (Spot light)

• Color, uses the color picker to set the color of the emitted light

• Mode, specifies the Light Mode used to determinate if and how a light is "baked"

• Intensity, sets the brightness of the light. The default of Directional is 0.5, for Point, Spot and Area is 1

• Indirect Multiplier, use this value to vary the intensity of indirect light, that is the light bounced from one object to another.

• Shadow Type, determines whether this light casts hard shadows, soft shadows or no shadows at all

  • Baked Shadow Angle, if light is Directional, mode is Baked and shadow is Soft Shadows, this property adds some artificial softening to the edges of shadows

  • Baked Shadow Radius, if light is Point or Spot, mode is Baked and shadow is Hard or Soft Shadows, this property adds some artificial softening to the edges of shadows

  • Realtime Shadows, if mode is Realtime and shadow is Hard or Soft Shadows, this properties allows to control realtime shadow rendering

    • Strength, controls how dark the shadows cast by light are, 1 to 0, default 1

    • Resolution, controls the rendered resolution of shadow maps, a higher value more impact to the GPU

    • Bias, controls the distance at which shadows are pushed away from the light, 2 to 0, default 0.05

    • Normal Bias, controls the distance at which the shadow casting surfaces are shrunk along the surface normal, 3 to 0, default 0.4

    • Near Plane, controls the value for the near clip plane when rendering shadows, 10 to 0.1, default 0.2

• Cookie, specifies a texture mask through which shadows are cast

• Draw Halo, draws a spherical Halo of light with a diameter equal to the range value

• Flare, you can set a Flare to be rendered at the light position by placing an Asset in this field to be used as its source

• Render Mode, sets the rendering priority of the selected light. Can affect lighting fidelity and performance

  • Auto, the rendering method is determined at runtime, depending on the brightness of nearby lights and the current Quality Settings

  • Important, the light is always rendered at per-pixel quality, this is used only for the most noticeable visual effects

  • Not Important, the light is always rendered in a faster vertex/object light mode

• Culling Mask, selectively exclude groups of objects from being affected by the light

Different types of light emit their assigned color in different ways.