Reduce Shadow Intensity in a World

[Pierre_Bultingaire]

Hello, 

I'm currently using Unigine 2.16.1
Is there a way to reduce the intensity all of shadows in a world?
I can only turn it off completely in the Render Settings or in the LightWorld Parameters

Thanks,
Pierre

[silent]

Hi Pierre,

What do you mean by shadow intensity?

Could you please attach a screenshot or video showing how your current shadows look and what you want to achieve?

Thanks!

[Pierre_Bultingaire]

Hi Silent,

Currently, this is what I have : 

 

And on the other side : 

I got feedback from some customers that shadows on the plane (circle in red in the first picture) and the one cast on the ground are too dark.
I don't really have screenshot of want I want to achieve, but i was wondering if I can make them a little bit less dark and make it configurable.

Thanks,
Pierre

[werner.poetzelberger]

There are many ways to design lighting in your scene.

You can do this with additional lights, ambient/environment lighting, material parameters.

But a shadow intensity itself is not a parameter as the shadow is the absence of the light and the remaining color comes from the other light in the scene.

In the "default" scene setup with a single directional light as the sun, you can increase the environment/ambient intensity, this will increase the "ambient light" and brighten the shadows. But it also will increase the lighting itself.

Material parameters also influence the behavior of the light on objects.

As I can see from your screens, the planes seem to have just basic material without any parameters like roughness, reflectivity, ambient occlusion, metalness etc.

Then the tonemapping of your "camera" also influences the final look.

As you see much to play around and dial.

Not easy anyway to get consistency, especially dealing with dynamic light and scenes.

But exciting ;)

Cheers

Werner

Edited January 25 by werner.poetzelberger

[silent]

Hi Pierre,

Normally that can be achieved by editing (in Photoshop) scattering LUT base texture. That would be the right way to do it.

However, you can also try to simply adjust the Ambient Intensity factor and set it's value to something greater than 1:

For some small adjustments it's should be fine and may let you avoid manual texture editing process.

Thanks!

[Pierre_Bultingaire]

Hi Werner, Silent,

Thank you for your answers! I'll try that and see how it goes!

Pierre

[werner.poetzelberger]

I have spent literally months in designing the light (over the past 10 years of UNIGINE) and it always ended up in a) modifying the LUT textures for the scattering, mie, suncolor, and also animating parameters depending on the sunagle.

I think that good practice is, to use standard bodies and materials and make it look good in the scene. Once established the correct lighting, the materials are the only thing which should be changed following up the process.

I always wanted to design a perfect system, but ended up in designing special systems for our scenes. 

Well I guess to a degree compromises need to be accepted and a balance has to be found.

Especially twighlight times are delicate (and UNIGINE standard LUT does not deal with that). 

The scene/environment/light settings are definitely something you should start with before starting the project as it is the foundation of everything.

You can run into major issues if you dont consider that before creating the content. Even a simple camera setting can mess up a lot.

Edited January 25 by werner.poetzelberger