Customize Global Lighting

Global lighting is the luminescence from either the sun or moon in your environment. By customizing a couple of key default properties in the Lighting service and its default child objects in Studio, you can drastically change how global lighting looks and feels in your experience, as well as how the light interacts with any other object you place in the 3D space.

Using only a few modifications to Studio's default lighting settings, this section of the tutorial teaches you how to customize your global lighting in order to change the sun's position and light color, make dramatic shadows, and thicken the atmosphere.

Set Lighting Properties

The Lighting service contains five high-level categories of properties that you can adjust to customize the global lighting in your experience:

• Color - Configures hue within the environment.
• Intensity - Configures the amount of light that hits the camera.
• Shadows - Configures how shadows render within the environment.
• Environment - Configures environmental conditions, such as the time of day and geographic latitude.
• Technology - Configures the lighting technology Studio uses to render lighting and shadows.

The following instructions show you how to adjust properties within almost all of these categories to alter the colors of ambient and reflective lighting, make the edges of shadows sharper, utilize the most advanced lighting technology, and modify the position of the sun and your world to match the sample Island Jump - Final settings.

Adjust the Color of Light

The first step in matching the sample Island Jump - Final experience's Lighting service properties is to adjust the color of both ambient and reflective lighting in your environment. There are two Lighting service properties that control the color of ambient lighting:

• Lighting.Ambient controls the color of ambient lighting where there is cover from the sky, such as indoor spaces or under outdoor covering.
• Lighting.OutdoorAmbient controls the color of ambient lighting where the sky is visible.

In addition, the Lighting.ColorShift_Top property controls the color of light that reflects from surfaces facing the sun or moon. By default, these three properties are set to produce a dark gray tone throughout your world, but to compliment the nautical sea stack environment of the final sample, you can adjust these properties to make both the ambient and reflective lighting have the subtle blue-grey tone of a traditional ocean palette.

To adjust the color of ambient lighting in your environment:

1. In the Explorer window, select Lighting.
2. In the Properties window,

   1. Set Ambient to 16, 16, 16. The entire environment becomes subtly darker.
   2. Set ColorShift_Top to 196, 222, 255. The hue that reflects from surfaces facing the sun lightens.
   3. Set OutdoorAmbient to 134, 158, 190. All areas except for the tunnel display with a blue-grey hue.

Harden Shadows

The second step in matching the sample Island Jump - Final experience's Lighting service properties is to harden the shadows in your environment. This creates a more dramatic effect when players navigate between the outdoor and covered areas of your experience.

To harden the shadows in your environment:

1. In the Explorer window, select Lighting.
2. In the Properties window, set ShadowSoftness to 0. Shadows produce hard edges.

Enable the Future Lighting System

The third step in matching the sample Island Jump - Final experience's Lighting service properties is to enable the most advanced lighting system in Studio. Studio begins every experience with the Enum.Technology.ShadowMap lighting system that renders crisp shadows and illumination from global lighting. However, to enhance the environment and equip your local light sources to produce precise shadows and illumination, you must enable the Enum.Technology.Future lighting system technology instead.

The Future lighting system allows both your global and local lighting to work together and provide more realistic and immersive visuals. For example, the local lighting from the glowing flare with the ShadowMap lighting system doesn't produce a shadow at all while the glowing flare with the Future lighting system technology produces a subtle shadow near the circumference of the sea stack platform. This effect becomes more pronounced the more light sources you have within your environment.

To enable the Future lighting system:

1. In the Explorer window, select Lighting.
2. In the Properties window, click the Technology dropdown, then select Future. The lighting system updates.

Change Sun Position

The final step in matching the sample Island Jump - Final experience's Lighting service properties is to change the position of the sun in the sky. There are three properties that control the sun's position:

• Lighting.ClockTime represents the current time of day from hour 0 through 24.
• Lighting.TimeOfDay represents the current time of day with a 24 hour string.
• Lighting.GeographicLatitude represents the geographic latitude in degrees.

The sun's default position is high in the sky, emulating around midday in the real world. However, to produce more pronounced shadows and directionality within the environment, you can move the sun to the right of the sea stack platforms.

To change the sun position:

1. In the Explorer window, select Lighting.
2. In the Properties window,

   1. Set ClockTime to 9. The sun moves to the position it would be in the real world at 9:00 in the morning.
   2. Set GeographicLatitude to 78. The world moves by 78 degrees, which also moves the sun to the right of your sea stack platforms.

Atmosphere Properties

The Lighting service's child Atmosphere object allows you to create realistic environmental lighting effects by scattering sunlight in unique ways based on properties that simulate air particles. These properties can be very useful in creating a thickness in the environment's air, giving the atmosphere a tangible sense of depth.

The following instructions show you how to adjust Atmosphere properties to create a slightly thicker atmosphere to conceal the edge of the water and create more depth of field, just like the sample Island Jump - Final experience.

Increase Air Particle Density

The first step in matching the sample Island Jump - Final experience's Atmosphere properties is to increase air particle density. The Atmosphere.Density property controls how many particles exist in the air of your environment. When you increase this property, the additional amount of particles obstruct the players' view of objects in the background. This is particularly useful for hiding the boundaries of your water terrain.

To increase air particle density in your environment:

1. In the Explorer window, navigate to the Lighting service, then select its child Atmosphere object.
2. In the Properties window, set Density to 0.375. The air becomes thicker.

Blend Distant Objects

The second step in matching the sample Island Jump - Final experience's Atmosphere properties, as well as the final step in this section of the tutorial, is to blend distant objects on the horizon. The Atmosphere.Offset property controls how light transmits between the camera and the sky background. When you increase this value, it creates a horizon silhouette; when you decrease this value, it blends distant objects into the sky for a seemingly endless and seamless open world.

While the sample experience could have set this property to zero to completely hide players' view of the horizon, the next section of the tutorial adds mountain objects near the boundaries of the experience that need to be visible. In addition, decreasing the default value without setting it to zero mimics a fog starting to roll in the distance, creating a more realistic environment.

To blend distant objects in your environment:

1. In the Explorer window, navigate to the Lighting service, then select its child Atmosphere object.
2. In the Properties window, set Offset to 0.17. The air becomes thicker.

Now that your experience's global lighting is set to custom properties, in the next section of the tutorial, you will learn how to replace your greybox layout with high-quality polished assets.