How do you set ambient light?

[jwwalker]

Probably a dumb question, but I don't see how to set up ambient light. IndirectLight looks like something much more complicated, and LightManager does not seem to handle it.

[romainguy]

IndirectLight is an ambient light, actually the only type of ambient light you can use. An IndirectLight is not set via LightManager, instead you set it on the scene with Scene::setIndirectLight.

[jwwalker]

OK, but how do you make an IndirectLight without a cube map? I'm looking for something equivalent to the old OpenGL glLightModelfv( GL_LIGHT_MODEL_AMBIENT, someColor ).

[romainguy]

You can make a solid colored cubemaps, either offline or programmatically. Just fill all the pixel data with a single color. If you want to provide SH all you need is set the first value to the ambient color and everything else to 0. I would however recommend using an actual environment map for better results. You'll get very flat lighting otherwise.

[jwwalker]

Thanks! I knew that using only ambient light would produce a flat effect. Normally I would combine a little ambient light with one or more directional, point, or spot lights.

[romainguy]

Unless you'll move those lights or enable multiple shadows, it's better to just bake them in your environment map. It's not quite the same but it gives great results at a low cost. "Studio" lighting environment are therefore pretty common.