Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 3-17.
Game views showing Light with and without Sun light flare effect
Render Mode
This designates the importance of the light. Calculating lights and shadows can take up a lot of
computational power at runtime. Things that take a lot of computational power are referred to as
“expensive” when they affect the quality and performance of the game. Rating the relative importance
of a light assists Unity in optimizing the performance of the game, a topic covered later in this topic.
Culling Mask
This works the same as the Culling Mask property in the Camera component, where you can identify
which layers you want affected by the light.
Lightmapping
Realtime Only means the light is used for dynamically lighting the scene at runtime. Baked Only
refers to lightmapping, which is beyond the scope of this topic. Auto allows for both.
Other Properties
There are also a few properties that are specific to the type of light you choose. These properties will
appear in the context-sensitive Inspector depending upon your selection.
Range
For Point and Spot lights, Range refers to the effective distance of the light emitted from the source.
Game objects outside of the range will not be illuminated. With the light selected, the range is
represented visually in the Scene view with a yellow sphere.
Spot Angle
For Spot light. Measured in degrees, the Spot Angle determines the width of the cone of light
coming from a Spot light.
