Lighting

We’ve decided to put lighting in the finishing touches, but this could have had its own book. This is one of those topics that are a massive rabbit hole. We wanted to go over some basics of lighting here and the reason why it’s important to pay attention to lighting, as well as highlighting a few polishing tools and how to use lighting in Unity.

First, we need to explain that lighting is an art. The purpose of lighting includes defining 3D form, providing mood, and designing methods for gameplay. After we go through a few design thoughts on lighting, we will take a tour of the Unity mixed lighting, lightmaps, reflection, and light probes.

3D form

Without lighting, a 3D form is flat. In fact, we use unlit shaders for most effects. One reason is that we don’t need to add shadowing and lighting for small shiny effects that will only be on screen for a short time. They are flat and don’t need lighting to help define them; their texture...