Unity Tech Art: Realistic Lighting For Game Development

2019 Update:  Check out our new Section on the ShaderGraph! Creating shaders can now be done without writing a single line of code!

Making your Unity games look amazing is easier than you think. You don't need to be great at programming and don't need incredible 3D art skills.

Creating immersive games starts with understanding the secrets of lighting and being able to squeeze maximum value from your technical art pipeline. 

This course assumes that you're a little bit familiar with Unity but doesn't require you to have any programming or art experience. We will take you through Unity's lighting toolset and discuss everything from colour theory to shadows to materials that emit light.

More specifically, the course will start off with basic light set ups such as a single point light and build up to complex lighting setups. Among other things, the course covers:

• Direct realtime lighting including directional lights, point lights and spotlights.

• Global illumination theory and principles, both realtime and baked (pre-rendered).

• Emissive materials and how they can be used to make specific items in your scene stand out.

• Three- and four-point lighting set ups - how to create them, how to vary them and how to use them for different effects in your games.

• ShaderGraph: get started using Unity's visual editor for creating shaders!

We follow a project-and-challenge approach which means you don't just sit there and watch us, you follow along and flex your own creative muscles to create interesting game moments. We all learn best by doing (rather than just watching)!

You will also be asked to take on a bigger challenge and light your own scene. This serves as a great portfolio piece, or just something to show yourself what you're capable of once you've finished the course.

Unity is a fantastic engine which enables you to make production-quality games. Furthermore these games can be created for Windows, MacOS, iOS, Android and Web from a single source!

This course is perfect for programmers who want to make their game more interesting, for 3D artists who want to triple how amazing their artwork looks, designers who dream of creating cinematic moments worthy of AAA games, and anyone else who is interested in leveling up their tech art skills.

Get plugged into our communities of amazing developers on Facebook (nearly 20k), in our own TA-curated Community (17k views/day), and our student chat group (10k live at any one time).

Come and join us in this course now - you'll be amazed at what you're capable of creating!

Note: the project files for this course have been updated to use Unity 2019 with version 2 of the PostProcessing stack. We recommend that you complete the using Unity 2019 or above.