The Lighting service contains properties that you can adjust to update and customize the global lighting in an experience. There are five categories of lighting properties:
- Color - Configures hue within the experience.
- Intensity - Configures the intensity or amount of light hitting the camera.
- Shadows - Configures how a user experiences shadows within the experience.
- Environment - Configures the conditions of the experience's world, such as the time of day and geographic latitude.
- Technology - Configures the lighting technology Studio uses to render lighting and shadows.
Color
Ambient
The Ambient property sets a hue for the entirety of an experience. This property affects the lighting for both outdoor and indoor environments.
OutdoorAmbient
The OutdoorAmbient property sets a hue for outdoor areas of an experience. This can help simulate how the ambient color of real-life lighting changes throughout the day. For example, sunlight in the early morning or late afternoon is usually warmer and more pink and orange in tone, while late evening is usually cooler and more blue and purple in tone.
Note that the lighting inside the garage and cafe doesn't change like it would if you were changing the Ambient property.
ColorShift_Top
The ColorShift_Top property sets a hue that reflects from surfaces facing the sun or moon.
ColorShift_Bottom
The ColorShift_Bottom property sets a hue that reflects from surfaces that are facing away from the sun or moon.
In the following images, note the hue change on the sandstone wall facing away from the sun.
This property is particularly subtle. If you cannot see a change in your experience, change the Technology property to Compatibility and/or increase the Brightness value.
Intensity
Brightness
The Brightness property sets the intensity of illumination. This can help increase the contrast between brightly illuminated areas and shadows, simulating bright sunshine and warmer weather.
ExposureCompensation
The ExposureCompensation property applies exposure to an experience. Exposure is the amount of light that reaches the camera.
A lower value is similar to under-exposure in photography, while a higher value is similar to over-exposure.
Shadows
GlobalShadows
When enabled, the GlobalShadows property renders shadows.
ShadowSoftness
The ShadowSoftness property adjusts how blurry shadows are from a value of 0 (hard edges) to 1 (soft edges).
Environment
ClockTime and TimeOfDay
The ClockTime and TimeOfDay property both represent the current time of day in hours, and they are directly related; if you change one property, the other also changes.
The only difference between these properties is their numeric value; ClockTime represents time from hour 0 through 24 while TimeOfDay represents time through a 24 hour string.
Note that each property doesn't follow the actual time of day, and they will not change during an experience unless changed through a script.
GeographicLatitude
The GeographicLatitude property represents the geographic latitude in degrees. Note that while this property changes the position of the sun and moon, it does not change the ClockTime and TimeOfDay properties.
EnvironmentDiffuseScale
The EnvironmentDiffuseScale property determines how much ambient light is derived from the environment.
In the following images, note how the ambient light changes, particularly inside the kitchen of the ramen shop.
EnvironmentSpecularScale
The EnvironmentSpecularScale property determines how much specular light is derived from the environment. When set near a value of 1, smooth objects better reflect the environment and metal appears more realistic.
Technology
The Technology property determines which lighting system Studio uses to render the 3D environment. There are four available lighting systems:
Future - This system features the most advanced lighting technology with high fidelity. It extends support for detailed shadows to all lights in the experience.
Because of its high fidelity, this lighting system may have an impact on the performance of Studio if you're running it on a low-spec machine.
ShadowMap - This system features future lighting technology with more crisp shadows.
Compatibility - This system features a combination between future and legacy technology.
Voxel - This system features future lighting technology with softer shadows that are created using a 4x4x4 voxel map.