Dicey Table

Workflow: Lighting a Scene

Steps#

  1. In the Hierarchy, expand Room and select Lights (N).
  2. Click + Add Light. A new light appears in the list — select it.
  3. Set its Type — Point (radiates from a position, has a range), Spot (a cone from a position), or Directional (parallel rays with no position, only an orientation, like sunlight through a window).
  4. Set Color and Intensity (0–8). For Point/Spot, set Position and Range; for Directional, set Rotation instead.
  5. Repeat for as many lights as your room needs — a single directional "sun" plus one or two point lights over the table is a common starting point.
  6. Select Room itself to set scene-wide Ambient color (fills in shadow areas), Fog (on/off, color, density) if you want depth cueing, and an optional Skybox texture.
  7. Toggle the viewport toolbar to Live to see lights interact with a physics-active scene rather than the frozen authoring pose — useful for checking how a spot light reads once dice are actually rolling under it.

Definition of done#

The viewport visibly reflects every light and environment change as you make it — there's no separate "apply lighting" step, and switching back to Frozen doesn't undo anything, it only stops physics.

If it fails#

  • A directional light's Position field is missing. Expected — directional lights have no meaningful position, only Rotation. Switch Type first if you meant to add a Point or Spot light instead.
  • The room looks the same after changing Ambient. Ambient fills in areas your other lights don't reach — its effect is most visible in shadowed corners, not on a directly-lit table surface.
  • A light doesn't reach the table. Check its Range (Point/Spot only) — a light with a small range and a position far from the table doesn't reach it.

See also#