Wayback Machinekoobas.hobune.stream
May JUN Jul
Previous capture 13 Next capture
2021 2022 2023
1 capture
13 Jun 22 - 13 Jun 22
sparklines
Close Help
  • Products
  • Solutions
  • Made with Unity
  • Learning
  • Support & Services
  • Community
  • Asset Store
  • Get Unity

UNITY ACCOUNT

You need a Unity Account to shop in the Online and Asset Stores, participate in the Unity Community and manage your license portfolio. Login Create account
  • Blog
  • Forums
  • Answers
  • Evangelists
  • User Groups
  • Beta Program
  • Advisory Panel

Navigation

  • Home
  • Products
  • Solutions
  • Made with Unity
  • Learning
  • Support & Services
  • Community
    • Blog
    • Forums
    • Answers
    • Evangelists
    • User Groups
    • Beta Program
    • Advisory Panel

Unity account

You need a Unity Account to shop in the Online and Asset Stores, participate in the Unity Community and manage your license portfolio. Login Create account

Language

  • Chinese
  • Spanish
  • Japanese
  • Korean
  • Portuguese
  • Ask a question
  • Spaces
    • Default
    • Help Room
    • META
    • Moderators
    • Topics
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Badges
  • Home /
avatar image
0
Question by Gamershaze · Nov 12, 2014 at 03:02 AM · lightinglightsflickeradvanced

Dynamic Ambient Light 'Flicker' Effect | Example/Custom Images Inc.

Forewarning: This is not a request for you to go out of your way to make it. Looking for any possible external examples, suggestions in achieving this, or store assets. That said, I am a relatively novice programmer so any help is more than appreciated. Thank you for your time.

Hello everyone, today I'm looking to achieve something I've seen little to nothing about. The ambient light 'flicker' effect, that you might've seen in triple-A titles over the years. (Hand-recorded example below.) The reference is not to the lights themselves, but the light yet rather atmospheric ambient flicker effect you can see around the edges of the light and where it fades. The effect rather subtle, yet all but unnoticeable.

How to achieve this however, I'm not entirely sure. As you can see, each light has it's own offset. (They don't match in pattern.) This effect also seems to be relatively random, though it very hard to tell given it's subtleness. Clearly you can not just use a standard flicker effect, that would only turn the light itself on/off and is not what we're looking for.

My only other solution is to have a second light, that stretches slightly further out; that has such a standard on/off flicker effect. This would be extremely expensive to render though, as you would need at least two of every light in the scene. Utilizing resources that are otherwise not available, especially the mobile platform we are targeting. (iOS to be exact.) I would love nothing more to hear all of your inputs though, I'm sure there's a relatively easy way of doing this that I'm unaware of; as per-usual.


alt text

Credit: Starbound from Chucklefish shown above. Include: Another picture for reference, not recorded by myself.


Comment
Add comment
10 |3000 characters needed characters left characters exceeded
▼
  • Viewable by all users
  • Viewable by moderators
  • Viewable by moderators and the original poster
  • Advanced visibility
Viewable by all users

2 Replies

· Add your reply
  • Sort: 
avatar image
0
Best Answer

Answer by blueLED · Nov 12, 2014 at 04:03 AM

One way to achieve this effect:

Select a point light in your scene, then go Window -> Animation. Click "Add Curve" and save your animation as "lightPulse" or something like that.

Then click "Add Curve" again and click the Light dropdown to show the properties you can animate.

The ones you are interested in are "Light.Range" and "Light.Intensity". Move to about 2 sec on the timeline and set your keyframe with the value you want, and repeat to make it look natural or random like. You may also want to go to the Curves view (button next to Dopesheet) and then right-click on the nodes and set them to "Flat". This will make the transitions/tweening smoother.

The animation will play automatically in a loop now when you run the game.

You could make more lights with their own varied animations so they're not all pulsing in sync.

Of course you could write a script and Lerp these value changes and set some random ranges within that script.

Hope that helped. Oh, and I'm not sure why you referred to them as "ambient" light, I believe they're just point lights.

Comment
Add comment · Show 1 · Share
10 |3000 characters needed characters left characters exceeded
▼
  • Viewable by all users
  • Viewable by moderators
  • Viewable by moderators and the original poster
  • Advanced visibility
Viewable by all users
avatar image Gamershaze · Nov 14, 2014 at 06:25 PM 0
Share

Thanks a lot, yeah. This is presumably the best way to handle it. Also, I referred to it as ambient light as we were trying to achieve the flickered 'ambience' at the edge of the lights, not the simple point light torches themselves. Thanks again!

avatar image
0

Answer by idurvesh · Nov 12, 2014 at 05:04 AM

The effect is called Vignetting .

If you are using Unity Pro then you can easily achieve it by importing Image effects comes up with unity

Assets > Import Package > Image Effects (Pro Only)

Then on main Camera add the component "Vignetting and Chromatic Aberration" Component > Image effects > Camera > Vignetting and Chromatic Aberration

and play with it.

Main property is "Vignetting"

Comment
Add comment · Show 2 · Share
10 |3000 characters needed characters left characters exceeded
▼
  • Viewable by all users
  • Viewable by moderators
  • Viewable by moderators and the original poster
  • Advanced visibility
Viewable by all users
avatar image blueLED · Nov 12, 2014 at 05:25 AM 0
Share

A Vignette just creates an overall dark, blurred border.

It would add to the atmosphere, so still a good suggestion.

avatar image idurvesh · Nov 12, 2014 at 08:13 AM 0
Share

I have not tested it yet.You may try to change "Vignette$$anonymous$$ask.png" img in asset folder with the shape you desire.You may get that effect.

Your answer

Hint: You can notify a user about this post by typing @username

Up to 2 attachments (including images) can be used with a maximum of 524.3 kB each and 1.0 MB total.

Follow this Question

Answers Answers and Comments

28 People are following this question.

avatar image avatar image avatar image avatar image avatar image avatar image avatar image avatar image avatar image avatar image avatar image avatar image avatar image avatar image avatar image avatar image avatar image avatar image avatar image avatar image avatar image avatar image avatar image avatar image avatar image avatar image avatar image avatar image

Related Questions

Why do 2D Lights render past shadowcasters. 1 Answer

How to make a light flicker 5 Answers

Flickering Deferred Lighting 0 Answers

Trying to make light pass through object 0 Answers

How do I adjust the lightmap parameters for objects in Unity 2018? 1 Answer


Enterprise
Social Q&A

Social
Subscribe on YouTube social-youtube Follow on LinkedIn social-linkedin Follow on Twitter social-twitter Follow on Facebook social-facebook Follow on Instagram social-instagram

Footer

  • Purchase
    • Products
    • Subscription
    • Asset Store
    • Unity Gear
    • Resellers
  • Education
    • Students
    • Educators
    • Certification
    • Learn
    • Center of Excellence
  • Download
    • Unity
    • Beta Program
  • Unity Labs
    • Labs
    • Publications
  • Resources
    • Learn platform
    • Community
    • Documentation
    • Unity QA
    • FAQ
    • Services Status
    • Connect
  • About Unity
    • About Us
    • Blog
    • Events
    • Careers
    • Contact
    • Press
    • Partners
    • Affiliates
    • Security
Copyright © 2020 Unity Technologies
  • Legal
  • Privacy Policy
  • Cookies
  • Do Not Sell My Personal Information
  • Cookies Settings
"Unity", Unity logos, and other Unity trademarks are trademarks or registered trademarks of Unity Technologies or its affiliates in the U.S. and elsewhere (more info here). Other names or brands are trademarks of their respective owners.
  • Anonymous
  • Sign in
  • Create
  • Ask a question
  • Spaces
  • Default
  • Help Room
  • META
  • Moderators
  • Explore
  • Topics
  • Questions
  • Users
  • Badges