Hello,
I am creating a level for an open world game with a day/night cycle from a top-down perspective and I am searching for a way to get a nice lighting on both, outdoor and indoor. I read a lot of guides and tried some things out but I’m still kind of clueless. So the the way to go for open world games seems to be no static lighting at all. So I’ve been using a movable directional light and a movable skylight. But that movable skylight doesn’t care about shadows at all.
So take a look at these 2 rooms.
The left room has a window while the right one does not. However the brightness of the 2 rooms is basically the same. Doesn’t look very well. I’ve tried using Light Propagation volumes but these return really bad results when it comes to interiors. Post Process effects aren’t really an option due to the top-down perspective, are they?
Using a movable spotlight gives better results I’d say:
But when the sun moves it looks just wrong.
I’d need to adjust the intensity of all spotlights whenever the sun moves depending on their angle. That does not only sound like a lot of work but I am also worried about the performance. I’m planning on using world composition but with only ~500m² tiles this would still be easily 100+ movable spotlights. So if there are 4 levels loaded that would be 400-500 movable spotlights. Not really a valid option performance-wise, is it?
Generally a fast level designing process is a little bit more important than awesome lighting but there must be a way of getting better lighting results, isn’t there one?
