This light is based on an environment map and act as if the whole
environment (located at infinite distance) was illuminating the scene.
This light has been specifically conceived to work with the
PBR Surface
Surface Physically-based rendering
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and
Substance PBR Surface
Surface PBR renderer defined by .sbsar file
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renderers, but simpler behavior
is also implemented for the legacy
Surface
Display geometry's triangles as a surface
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renderer.
By default, this light displays the environment map in the background,
similarly to what
Skybox
A 360 ° background
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does. This can be disabled thanks
to the
Render Skybox option.
In order to benfit from High-dynamic-range lighting (HDR), you need to have the
compo
Pixel Type
in an HDR format (either 16 or 32 bits) and to use an environment
map encoded using the
.hdr
format. Such environment map files easily be found on the web
under the name
HDRI
.
You can adjust the intensity of the whole environment with the
Exposure parameter.
The Environment Light is based on an internal pre-processed content map. This pre-calculation is very expensive, but allow a real time rendering after it.
Animating the content inside it is not recommended, if so the pre-processing will need to be done for each frame and you will encounter a big performance issue. For animated background content you can use a
Skybox
A 360 ° background
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