Character Sprite rendering question (with overlays etc)

Harkenin

Hi everyone.

I'm currently working on a 2d title and the character moves just like Secret of the Monkey Islands. I want scenes to have an effect on the character (a rather dynamic way). This topic is not stricly about AC but rather more Unity in general. So any one who has few cents on the matter is welcome to chip in.

Lets say we got a character and it is walking to the window. As he closes, the window should illuminate the character. In order to give this effect, we can have a "lighter" sprite on top of the old one.

We may be able to trigger sprite change (i'm assuming) with a trigger object but would we be able to overlay on top of the Original sprite. And if we can,  can we also "mask" it dynamically, so we can have only "torso" (for the examples sake) illuminated rather than whole body?

Would you suggest any other approach on the subject matter?

Thanks alot.

Xidore

Better to try this:

Have an overlay which is partially transparent - like the character shadow. I mean to use this as a shadow cast on the whole scene/area. It can be quite low resolution if you want soft edged shadows.

I thought, like you, that illuminating might be the answer, but as Unity doesn't really have an easy way to brighten portions of sprites.  Putting shadows on TOP and leaving some transparent areas to appear as 'lit' areas works quite well. Just have everything created quite brightly and then they will appear duller in shadow.  You can't really get the same result in reverse by overlaying bright areas which is why I recommend this approach.

I do have a way to make small lights such as candles glow using a subtly animated particle/ light halo and placing it between the camera and the scene so it looks like a light glow.

Hope this helps your idea.

Harkenin

Oh thats a really valuable heads up. Thank you very much for this insight.

As for the "dynamic lightning". Maybe having step by step sprite change wont be necessary but any idea on how to change shadows on scene basis ? Do you use Trigger? and if not, how ?

Xidore

well I'd just have an interaction switch the overlay to one which leaves a 'light hole' in a different way.

If you wanted to have a very clever level of control then you could have the shadow overlay animate, just animate it like any sprite and have various states in the controller.