Environment and post-processing

Two groups of settings belong to the whole scene, not to an entity. To see them, open the scene and select the scene’s own row at the top of the hierarchy, the row with the scene’s name. The inspector then shows Environment, the light around everything, and Post Processing, the finishing passes over the picture.

Environment

Sky

Sky Mode is one of:

• Procedural (the default): a gradient from Sky Ground below the horizon, through Sky Horizon, to Sky Zenith overhead.
• Analytic: a physically based daylight sky, coloured by the sun’s direction. Turbidity (2 to 10, 3 at first) is how hazy the air is: 2 is clear, 10 is hazy.
• Color: one flat colour, Sky Zenith / Color.
• HDREquirect and Cubemap: an image. See Skies.

Sky Intensity brightens both the sky and the light it gives. Sky Background Intensity changes only the sky you see, not its light. It starts at 0.5, so the visible sky is drawn at half brightness until you raise it.

In the Procedural, Analytic and Color modes the sky also shows a sun. Sun Intensity is how bright its disc is, and Sun Angular Size how large, in degrees (0.5 at first). The sun is placed in the direction of the directional light that casts the scene’s shadows (see Lights and shadows); without one, it is straight overhead.

Ambient light

Surfaces are lit by the sky as well as by lights. IBL Diffuse Intensity and IBL Specular Intensity scale that light (IBL is image-based lighting, light taken from the sky’s picture). The first scales the sky’s light on surfaces’ colour, and the second the sky’s reflection in them; neither changes how the sky looks. Ambient Color and Ambient Intensity (0.3 at first) add a flat light everywhere on top, to lift dark corners. An intensity of 0 leaves only the sky’s light.

Shadows

Shadow Distance, Shadow Cascade Split and Shadow Fade Distance set how far the sun’s shadows reach. See Lights and shadows.

Post Processing

Exposure and tone

• Exposure (EV): brightens or darkens the whole picture, in photographic stops, from -8 to 8. +1 is twice as bright, and 0 leaves the picture as it is.
• Auto Exposure (off at first): adjusts the exposure to how bright the scene is, as an eye does when walking from a cave into daylight. Adaptation Speed is how quickly it adjusts, Auto Exposure Min (EV) and Auto Exposure Max (EV) limit how far, and Auto Exposure Key is how bright it aims to make the scene.
• Tonemap: how brightness beyond white is fitted onto the screen. AgX (the default) rolls bright colours off gently; Clamp cuts them off at white.

Bloom

Bloom (on at first) makes bright things glow into their surroundings. Bloom Threshold is how bright a point must be to glow. It starts at 1, which is white, so only emissive surfaces and bright highlights glow. Bloom Knee softens where the glow begins, and Bloom Intensity (0.05 at first) is how strong it is.

Colour grading

Grading LUT is a lookup texture that recolours the picture, for a warm evening or a cold night. It is a strip of 16 squares, 256 by 16 pixels, imported with its colour space set to linear. Grading Intensity blends it in.

Ambient occlusion, reflections, GI

• Ambient Occlusion: darkens creases, corners and the ground under things. It is Off at first; choose GTAO or SSAO to turn it on. Ao Strength sets how much of it is mixed in (0 to 1), and Ao Radius and Ao Intensity tune its reach and depth.
• Screen-Space Reflections (off at first): reflections of what is on screen in shiny surfaces. Ssr Intensity sets their strength.
• Screen-Space GI (off at first): light bounced from what is on screen onto what is near it. Ssgi Intensity sets its strength.

Each costs time. They work only from what the camera sees, so anything off screen does not appear in them.

Anti-aliasing

Anti-Aliasing smooths jagged edges:

• Off (the default).
• FXAA: cheap, and softens the whole picture a little. Fxaa Subpixel sets how much it smooths fine detail.
• TAA: smoother and steadier, by blending each frame with the frames before it. Taa Blend Factor sets how much of the earlier frames it keeps: higher is steadier, but fast motion can leave faint trails. Taa Variance Gamma is a further tuning value; the default suits most scenes.

MSAA, in Project > Project Settings… on the Display tab, is another way, set for the whole game: Off, 2x or 4x.

Reflection probes

Shiny surfaces reflect the sky. Indoors, that looks wrong: a polished floor in a cellar should reflect the cellar. A Reflection Probe component captures the scene around its entity into a picture that the surfaces inside its box reflect.

• Half Extents: the box, as half its size along each axis (5 by 5 by 5 at first). Fit it to the room.
• Parallax (on at first): reflections line up with the box’s walls, as in a room, instead of seeming infinitely far away.
• Blend Distance: how softly the reflection fades out towards the box’s edges.
• Intensity: how strong the reflection is.
• Priority: which probe wins where boxes overlap; the higher number wins.
• Enabled: turns the probe off without removing it.
• Update:
  • Static (the default) captures once, and again if the probe moves.
  • Realtime captures again and again, in turn with other realtime probes, for a room whose look changes.
  • Manual captures only when a script asks, for a room that changes now and then, such as when lights are switched on or a door opens. Ask with ReflectionProbeComponent.of(entity):capture() in Luau, or ReflectionProbeComponent::of(entity).capture() in AngelScript. A Static probe can be asked to capture again in the same way.

Up to 16 probes are used at once.

Profiles: sharing settings between scenes

Levels that should look alike can share their settings through a profile. Under either group, Make Profile saves the scene’s values as a profile asset and switches the scene to use it. Another scene uses the same profile by setting its Source to Profile and choosing the profile; a change to the profile then changes every scene that uses it. Open Profile opens the profile on its own page, with a preview. Copy Into Scene copies the profile’s values back into the scene, which then uses its own values again, so you can change them for that scene alone.

To make a profile directly, use New > Rendering > Environment Profile or Post Process Profile in the Assets panel.