Ever been working in a dark area of your build that needs light, but you’ve got lighting already set up just how you want it?
Ever worked on a map with a lot of fog, but wanted to make sure your build looked good in it?
What is it?
A quick method of jumping between a work-friendly and gameplay-intended lighting profile.
How does it work?
The plugin lets you move between two profiles in Lighting;
Game → The way that your game will look when people play it, your skybox, atmospheres, blurs, depth effects, anything and everything lighting based.
Development → A very basic lighting setup created specifically so that you can see your game, whether you’re working in a dark environment, or a fog-heavy map.
You can use Studio’s shortcut settings to quickly bind keypresses to either mode, or just click the plugin to toggle it.
When you toggle modes, all the Lighting properties are captured and stored as Attributes under the Game/Development Lighting profiles.
The profiles are stored as objects; so you can save/publish/crash, and the setups will be the same when you come back.
How do I edit a profile?
Once you enter a mode, any changes you make to the lighting will be saved to that profile, adding skyboxes, changing the brightness - once you switch modes, that data is stored. This could prove useful if you’re aiming to test different lighting setups.
What happens if I accidentally save/publish without going into Game mode?
Entering Development mode saves your Game profile under Lighting
When you re-open the place, the plugin will see this folder, and assume you’re still in Development mode.
Just toggle it again, your Game lighting profile is back.
Hi
This is a pretty handy plugin. The problem I’m having with it is that the lighting switches back every time I switch to the building tools. This makes it impossible to build while having the “Development-friendly” lighting enabled. Is there a studio setting I have to enable?
Aha! That sounds like it’s disabling once you’re clicking on another plugin.
To move past this completely (and make it a bit easier to work with)
Follow these steps!
Go to File
Advanced > Customize Shortcuts
Search for “Lighting” (This will only appear if you are currently in an open game-file.)
You can now set keyboard buttons to push that will automatically change the way your lighting is setup. No need to keep pressing the actual button!
I have my buttons bound as “/” for Game lighting and “*” for Development lighting, because they’re at the top of the numberpad. (Though they’re captured as the regular keyboard keys, doesn’t seem like I’m able to differentiate.)
By having these set up, you should be able to switch between without hassle, and a lot easier too! Let me know if this doesn’t fix the issue and I’ll jump in and change some things!
However, this doesn’t really solve my problem. If I go into development lighting and click on the “Move” tool, the lighting goes back to game lighting. I constantly have to switch the development lighting back on as soon as I start building.
