VaM 1.x number of lights & image quality

[HaiiiHarrr]

Hey everyone,

I tried making my scene as detailed as possible and put a ton of lights in it to try and get every light source there is in an attempt to create a nice picture quality.
Quality was ok, but not great.

Then I stumbled over a guide, deleted all light sources and only added 3 new lights in total and the image quality went through the roof and also the lighting looks much more natural.

Can someone explain to me, why there is such a gap in the quality of lighting despite reducing the total number of lights?

 

[rokoc]

Did you increase the number of pixel lights in the quality settings too ? if i recall it's default is 2 or 3 ? so adding more light sources won't look right unless you increase that too

 

[HaiiiHarrr]

Ya, that is my suspicion, too.

Do you happen to know (as the max is 6) if the maximum of light sources is also capped at 6?

Because in the scene I am talking about I added a light for each lamp there is in the asset I was using, so I had a total of like 15 lights added.

 

[rokoc]

Sorry I don't know thay much more but 15 seems a lot. someone else might be able to answer that.

Thinking out loud here but maybe your best option is to recreate the environment/asset in unity/blender and bake the lighting for your lamps. how you do that I don't know. from what I gather the light is on the textures and not an actual light source it'll look litup on lamps, walls,floor etc but will not light up the person or other assets not within the envoirment/asset you make in unity/blender

 

[SlimerJSpud]

Baked lighting only affects the asset they were baked with. Having a ton of lights in a scene is not a good thing, as you found out. Once the max of pixel lights is reached, all lights get converted to vertex lights, which don't look as good. Worse, as you move around in the scene, some lights will flip-flop between pixel and vertex, which can be very annoying. Point lights cost more FPS than spotlights. I typically use one of the standard 3-point light rigs, with the keys set to spot, and the back set to point, or spot depending. If you then add one extra point light at a large enough distance to light up the background, and let it be a vertex light, it shouldn't hurt the FPS much.

In real estate, they say location, location, location. In 3D, they say lighting, lighting, lighting. Learning more about lighting will make huge improvements in your scenes.

 

[HaiiiHarrr]

Baked lighting only affects the asset they were baked with. Having a ton of lights in a scene is not a good thing, as you found out. Once the max of pixel lights is reached, all lights get converted to vertex lights, which don't look as good. Worse, as you move around in the scene, some lights will flip-flop between pixel and vertex, which can be very annoying. Point lights cost more FPS than spotlights. I typically use one of the standard 3-point light rigs, with the keys set to spot, and the back set to point, or spot depending. If you then add one extra point light at a large enough distance to light up the background, and let it be a vertex light, it shouldn't hurt the FPS much.

In real estate, they say location, location, location. In 3D, they say lighting, lighting, lighting. Learning more about lighting will make huge improvements in your scenes.

learning about lighting is so easily said, but so complex. You always think more is better, but then for whatever reason 3 lights are superior to 10.