Control Your Lighting in Unity Using Light Layers

Objective: Layer our lights so it will not be to expensive for the computer.

Light layers allows us to decide what the lights will illuminate. If we want the lights to only work on fog and nothing else, Light layers is the way to go.

We will put in some Spot lights that can be seen on the fog. You can see the lights on the fog and on the test tubes.

If we have to many of the spot lights like this, we may tax the systems to much. Let’s create light layers now. In our Project window, find DefaultHDRPAsset.

With DefaultHDRPAsset Selected, we will look in the inspector window and drop down Lighting and check to see if Light Layers is selected.

Now we can go to our light and click on the More Options on General.

This will display the Light Layer option.

We will change the Light layer to Light Layer 5.

You should get an effect like this. The light on the left has the light layer set to 5 while the light on the right is set as default.

Now with a few adjustments, can get an effect like this.

This is how to get some nice light rays going through fog only and not tax the system to much.

Thank you for reading and have a wonderful day!