Getting Started with Unity 2018 - Third Edition

Working with lighting

In the previous sections, we explored the uses of cameras for Unity games. Just like in the real world, cameras need lights to show us objects. In Unity games, we use multiple lights to illuminate the game environment.

In Unity, we have both dynamic lighting techniques as well as light baking options for better performance. We can add numerous light sources throughout our scenes and selectively enable or disable an object's ability to cast or receive shadows. This level of specificity gives us tremendous opportunity to create realistic game scenes.

Perhaps the secret behind Unity's ability to so realistically render light and shadows is that Unity models the actual behavior of lights and shadows. Real-time global illumination ...