About the Patch
We heard from our users that Volumetric Point Light support is a key feature when thinking about a Volumetric Lighting and Fog asset for Unity. We understand that Volumetric spotlights are also important, but less critical when looking at an initial release. So, we decided to release Volumetric Point Lights first as part of Buto 1.3 and intend to update Buto later on with support for spotlights.
Patch Notes for Buto 1.3
Volumetric Point Lights can now be configured to work with Buto, with support for up to 8 fog-enabled volumetric point lights in scene simultaneously. Note that Volumetric point lighting does not support shadow attenuation.
What is a Volumetric Point Light?
Volumetric lighting is a method used to represent light interacting with a non-zero-density medium, such as air or fog. Volumetric point lights are used to describe a single point where the light originates from. The light is emitted in all directions equally and is attenuated according to the standard light attenuation algorithms. You can see an example of these volumetric point lights in the screenshot from Buto’s demo scene above.
Update Aug 31, 2022:
Buto is now more flexible when using more than 8 fog-enabled volumetric point lights. This game asset will now automatically cull all but the nearest 8 volumetric point lights in the scene, enabling you to have more flexibility when editing and crafting your scene. Note that we have also improved the quality of these Volumetric Point Lights in a subsequent bug-fix release where we fixed an algorithm used in Buto’s point light representation.
You can set up any Game Object to act as Volumetric Point Light by adding a Buto Light component to the Game Object.
Buto Lights can inherit the characteristics (such as Intensity and Color) of a Light component on the same Game Object so that your lighting environment is consistent across Volumetric and non-Volumetric types of light. For example, if your Buto Light component is set to inherit from the Light component and your Light Component has a Color of white and an Intensity of 1, then your Buto Volumetric Light will also have a Color of white and an Intensity of 1.
However, you are not required to inherit from the Light component. So, you could have a Light component with completely different settings than the corresponding Volumetric Point Light. In fact, you are not even required to have a Light component associated to the Buto Volumetric Light at all.
Update Aug 31, 2022:
Buto has added support for Fog Density Masks as well! Fog Density Masks enable you to describe areas where Fog is more intense, less intense, or areas where fog is allowed to render. Learn more about Fog Density Masks.
