How would I go about lighting up a large room without making the light too bright, too dim, looking weird / weird shadows? I don’t know whether to use point lights, spot lights, surface lights, etc and where to put them.
I want the lights to not be too bright, perhaps a little darker than the natural light at time 14. I did try making the roof not cast a shadow, it works okay but it looks a little odd. No shadows in the corner where the roof meets the walls, shadows a bit slanted looking since the sun isn’t straight in the sky, etc.
I think one of the best ways is, Lightning.GlobalShadows = false, and so all shadows are just gone which is really helpful, than work out the light using SurfaceLight objects.
The only problem with disabling global shadows is that I’d prefer to have some shadows, for example for the corners. If it wasn’t supposed to be a more realistic looking build then I might, as I do that for cartoonish builds that don’t really need to have nice looking shadows.
You can always change the thickness of the walls so the interior isn’t as dark.
But if you want to use the light objects
SpotLight - Emits light from a specific direction
SurfaceLight - Emits light from a face
PointLight - Emits light from all directions
You can also mess around with the properties till its to your liking
You’ll find that by adding in assets for your lighting to actually play with will give your maps much more depth. Lighting up an empty room looks bland because the room is bland.
Here’s an examples of a practice map I made a few months ago. The global lighting settings are a darker dusk time since that’s the feel I wanted to give the map - a rooftop patio bar:
Circled in red in the image below, you can see the same three asset groups of two-chairs-and-a-table, but they’re placed in very different lighting settings, from cozy (orange glow - it’s by a firepit), to visible (right underneath the wall light), to cold (only global lighting, which in this case is cold). Depending on what emotion or experience you’re trying to give your players, let the lighting guide you.
You can add some more lighting effects with beams and decals too, as I highlighted in yellow. This can give more definition to your fixtures and not just rely on the bubble of light emitting from your source. Since Roblox’s lighting engine is currently fairly simple, these cheats can add some flair.
And finally, with the strip of neon on the floor, the light radiates out and hits the walls and assets around it, making it feel like it fills the area more.
