Try the new environment probes
Entry posted by Josh ·
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Environment probes are now available on the beta branch. To access them, you must set the "UnlockBetaFeatures" setting in the config file to 1, then start the editor. Environment probes are available in the "Effects" object creation category.
Environment probes should be placed with one in each room. Use the object scale to make the probe's volume fill the room. (Like decals, probes will display a bounding box when selected.) You do not have to worry about covering every single space as the GI effect will blend in pretty well with the regular old ambient light level. Outdoor scenes do not need probes covering everywhere. There is not presently an entity icon for probes so you will have to select them from the scene panel. The AI & Events map has been updated with probes added, and it just took a couple of minutes.
The color value of the probe (under the "Appearance" tab in the object properties) is used to control the amount of ambient lighting the probe contributes. The specular color of the probe is used to control the strength of the reflections it casts.
Materials can control their reflectivity with their specular color and specular texture, if it exists. You may find some materials are highly reflective and need to be toned down a bit, so just make their specular color darker. The roughness setting is used to control how sharp or blurry reflections are. Higher roughness = blurrier reflections.
When you first create an environment probe, its cubemap will be rendered immediately. You should re-render it when you have made some changes to your map and want to see the updated global illumination. To do this, select the Tools > Build Global Illumination menu item, which will update all environment probes in the scene.
Global illumination is an inexpensive effect because it is precomputed. However, environment probes will be skipped if the lighting quality is set to the lowest setting.
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