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.

 

[VaMToon]

You can increase the number of available lights by changing the value of "pixelLightCount" in the prefs.json file. You can open and edit this file using any text editor. Keep in mind that if you want to use, for example, 10 light sources, you should set the value to 11 in the document. The final light will always be converted into a vertex light. You can use as many lights as you want, all you have to do is to increase the amount of light counts in this document. I've set mine to 21 light sources, so I can use up to 20.

For good lighting results, it is important to place light sources naturally within the scene. A 3 point lighting setup can work very well for a character, but it is less effective when you also want to create good environment scene. A 3 point setup works best in a controlled photostudio style scene with a simple background or something like portraits. I also use additional light sources to simulate light bouncing from other light sources in the environment, which helps create more natural feel to it.

Also, when a character is lit incorrectly, it can feel disconnected from the environment. The character may appear as if it has been copied and pasted into the scene rather than naturally existing within it. To avoid this, the character’s lighting should match the direction, color, intensity, and quality of the surrounding environment. Using additional lights to recreate ambient bounce light that can help blend the character more naturally into the scene.

3 point, good for studio kinda portrait renders. if you want to have good renders with a good environment, the lights should come from within the environment like a sun shining through the windows, a physical lamp on the ceiling etc. I easily end up with +10 light sources.

 

[DJ]

Something you should know is that the pixel light limit doesn't limit the number of pixel lights in the scene, but the number of pixel lights that can be shining on any given object. For best performance, see if you can reduce the range of the pixel lights in the scene so they're only lighting what you need then to light, instead of also lighting the background. Lots of short range pixel lights will look a lot better than a few long range pixel lights and vertex lights picking up the slack.