26.7. Lamps in the game engine

Figure 26-9. LampButtons, settings for Blenders game engine

Lamps are created with the Toolbox (SPACE->ADD Lamp). For a selected lamp you can switch to the LampButtons (F4) to change the properties of that lamp. These properties are the color, the energy, etc. Due to the fact that the game engine is fully integrated in Blender, there are some buttons which are only useful for linear animation.

Common settings for all lamp types are the energy, and the color (adjustable with the RGB sliders).

To allow a face to receive real-time lighting in Blenders game engine, the face has to be set to "Light" in the Paint/FaceButtons (See Section 25.3). With the layer settings for lamps and objects (EditButtons, F9) you can control the lighting very precisely. Lamps only affect faces on the same layer(s) as the lamp. Per Layer you can use eight lamps (OpenGL limitation) for real-time lighting.

Lamp types for the game engine

Lamp

Lamp is a point light source.

Spot

This lamp is restricted to a conical space. In the 3DWindow the form of the spotlight is shown with broken lines. Use the SpotSi slider to set the angle of the beam.

Sun

The "Sun" lamp type is a directional light. The distance has no effect on the intensity. Change the direction of the light (shown as a broken line) by rotating the lamp.

Hemi

"Hemi" lamp type is currently not supported in the game engine.



The "Lamp" and "Spot" lights can be sensitive to distance. Use the "Dist:", "Quad1:" and "Quad2:" settings for this. The mathematics behind this are explained in the "Official Blender 2.0 Guide" (see Section 29.5).