Hello everyone. It's Tyler again with an update on lighting and visual effects

As we near the end of the production phase, it is my job to go in and do some adjustments and do some more visual effects to help finalize the look of the level. I'll start off with the lighting update as I messed with the shadows in the URP settings and added a directional light to help give off better shadows that help with the look of the lobby. 

The picture above is the URP Asset that allows me to adjust the lighting quality.  When I was first implementing the lighting and ran into the issue of the shadows not being the way I would so I went into the asset to adjust the shadows to fade more by adding in a cascade count of 3. The quality button doesn't make much of a difference so I kept that at low just to help with any performance issues. When these settings are applied and changed to my liking I would get an outcome of the lobby at the top and this hallway right below.

The use of reflection probes are all over the level to blend the lighting together with the objects. There was a noticeable difference when I baked the reflection probes with the edges of walls and floors. Also throughout the level are light probes to give a lighting blend on our enemies and player model's hands as majority of the lighting is baked with the exception of the 1 directional light and the emissive maps on some of the materials.

When it came to particles, I needed to know what would be in an abandoned building and what would be useful for amplifying any of our other assets. The first one I show in the gif is my god rays that I made the emitter in photoshop where I made it have a soft edge and then I stretched the particle to get the faded look. I also figured there would be some frayed wires and some leaking water so I added those in to help tie in the look of the place being poorly maintained. Lastly I wanted to create a vfx that would amplify and draw the attention of the player to the Phoenix Chip that they are looking for.