Add lighting to your game

In this tutorial, you’ll add lighting to your game, whether you’re working in 2D, 3D, or decided to try both. By the end, your project will have a lighting solution, just like the example projects shown below.

3D

If you’re doing the 3D game, you’ll design a lighting solution that will enhance the experience and align with the theme of your game.

2D

If you’re doing the 2D game, you’ll design a lighting solution that will enhance the experience and align with the theme of your game. Depending on your selected theme and setup, you may not need any lights in your scene, or you may have a game where lighting is essential to the game loop.

Your game design document (GDD) is still evolving, so take a moment to look at how lighting supports the atmosphere, clarity, and tone of your game.

Lighting is one of the strongest mood-setters you have. A horror game leans into darkness, sharp contrasts, and gloomy environments, while a cheerful adventure might use soft light, warm colours, and broad illumination. Now, think about the lighting approach that suits your project, whether you’re building in 2D, 3D, or both.

Ask yourself the following questions:

• What overall mood should your lighting create? Tense, inviting, mysterious, energetic?
• Do important objects or characters need highlight lighting to draw attention?
• Should the lighting change during gameplay to signal danger, progression, or time of day?
• How will colour temperature and contrast guide the player through the space? Should your game rely on baked lighting, real-time lighting, or a hybrid approach?
• Will lighting be purely functional, heavily stylised, or something in between?

The following sections will provide you with some guidance on each of the tasks in this challenge.

If you need a reminder on how to do this, check out the Lighting mission again.

Add additional light sources to your scene

• Design a lighting solution for your scene based on your theme and design.

Bake your lighting (3D)

• Make sure all lights that should be included in the baking process have their mode set to Baked.
• Make sure all objects that should be included in the bake are marked as static. This should include everything that will not move at runtime.
• If there’s a need for dynamic lighting in your scene, remember to set the mode for these lights to Realtime. Remember that dynamic lights have a drastic influence on performance; use them sparingly.
• Bake your lightmap.

Organize your Hierarchy window

Make the management of your scene easier by organizing the GameObjects in your Hierarchy window under headings like Static, Dynamic, Lighting, UI, and Other. Feel free to add your own.

Add Light probes to simulate realistic and dynamic lighting effects on objects (3D)

• Create Light probes that will cover the scene and capture baked light for the dynamic objects.
• Bake your lightmap textures again to see the effect of the Light probes on the dynamic objects when the game runs.

A Global Light 2D (2D)

• Add a Global Light 2D to your scene.
• Set its Colour and Intensity to define the overall brightness of the scene.

Make certain objects cast 2D shadows (2D)

• Add a Shadow Caster 2D component to any sprite you want to block light.
• Ensure the Light 2D component and the Shadow Caster component share the same Light Layer so the shadows respond correctly.

Easy: Create moving lights

Create dynamic lights in the scene by animating some of them. Remember that for this to work, you'll have to set the lights to Realtime.

Keep in mind that realtime lighting has a high performance cost, so use them sparingly.

In this tutorial, you created a custom lighting setup for your game. In the next tutorials, you will continue iterating on and improving your game.