https://github.com/frostbone25/Unity-Specular-Probes

A simple editor script that emulates specular highlighting for every light in the scene on reflection probes when baking them.
https://github.com/frostbone25/Unity-Specular-Probes

rendering rendering-3d-graphics unity unity-3d unity-editor unity-package unity-scripts unity3d-plugin

Last synced: 4 days ago
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A simple editor script that emulates specular highlighting for every light in the scene on reflection probes when baking them.

• Host: GitHub
• URL: https://github.com/frostbone25/Unity-Specular-Probes
• Owner: frostbone25
• License: mit
• Created: 2022-10-06T04:24:27.000Z (about 3 years ago)
• Default Branch: main
• Last Pushed: 2024-02-28T04:04:58.000Z (over 1 year ago)
• Last Synced: 2025-04-07T03:11:18.410Z (8 months ago)
• Topics: rendering, rendering-3d-graphics, unity, unity-3d, unity-editor, unity-package, unity-scripts, unity3d-plugin
• Language: C#
• Homepage:
• Size: 4.21 MB
• Stars: 37
• Watchers: 1
• Forks: 4
• Open Issues: 0
• Metadata Files:
  • Readme: README.md
  • License: LICENSE

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• anything_about_game - Unity-Specular-Probes

README

          
# Unity Specular Probes

A simple editor script that places an emissive object at the place of every light in the scene to emulate specular highlights on reflection probes when baking them.

![window](GithubContent/window.png)

## Results

Specular Probes Enabled

![result1-on](GithubContent/result1-on.png)

Specular Probes Disabled

![result1-off](GithubContent/result1-off.png)

Specular Probes Enabled

![result2-on](GithubContent/result2-on.png)

Specular Probes Disabled

![result2-off](GithubContent/result2-off.png)

### Why?

The unity standard shader does not have a specular highlight term when baking lightmaps *(even with directional lightmaps, but it only shades the diffuse term)*. As a result when a light source is baked fully within unity, you lose out on the specular highlight term you would normally get from realtime/mixed lights *(unless you are using the shader that computes a specular highlight using the directional term from the lightmap)*. For PBR rendering, having a good specular term is critical for getting good and correct shading results.

This is a script that attempts to alleviate that by spawning an emissive object *(that matches the shape of the light source)* before reflection probes are baked in an attempt to emulate the specular lobe of the light. All of this at no extra performance cost at all! *(because it's being baked directly into the reflection probes)*.

### Credits

I was inspired by [Zulubo's](https://github.com/zulubo/SpecularProbes) implementation, however I opted for my own and went for a more simplified but global solution that also can do area lights as well.