Lens Flare
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Lens Flares simulate the effect of lights refracting inside a camera lens. You can use them to represent bright lights or, more subtly, to add a bit more atmosphere to your SceneA Scene contains the environments and menus of your game. Think of each unique Scene file as a unique level. In each Scene, you place your environments, obstacles, and decorations, essentially designing and building your game in pieces. More info
See in Glossary.
The easiest way to set up a lens flare is to assign a Flare Asset to the Flare property of a Light. If you do this, Unity automatically tracks the position and direction of the Light. To get more precise control, use this component.
To manually create a lens llare:
- Create a new GameObjectThe fundamental object in Unity scenes, which can represent characters, props, scenery, cameras, waypoints, and more. A GameObject’s functionality is defined by the Components attached to it. More info
See in Glossary (menu bar: GameObject > Create Empty). - In the Inspector, click Add Component > Effects > Lens Flare.
- Assign a Flare Asset to the Flare property.
If you want a CameraA component which creates an image of a particular viewpoint in your scene. The output is either drawn to the screen or captured as a texture. More info
See in Glossary to see lens flares, attach a Flare Layer component to the Camera’s GameObject.
To see the lens flare effect in the Scene ViewAn interactive view into the world you are creating. You use the Scene View to select and position scenery, characters, cameras, lights, and all other types of Game Object. More info
See in Glossary, enable the Effect toggle in the Scene View toolbarA row of buttons and basic controls at the top of the Unity Editor that allows you to interact with the Editor in various ways (e.g. scaling, translation). More info
See in Glossary and, in the drop-down, enable Flares.
Properties
| Property: | Function: |
|---|---|
| Flare | The Flare to render. It is this Asset, and not the Lens Flare component, that controls most of the lens flare’s appearance. To customize the lens flare’s appearance, open the assigned Flare Asset in the InspectorA Unity window that displays information about the currently selected GameObject, asset or project settings, allowing you to inspect and edit the values. More info See in Glossary. Here, you can view and edit any of the Flare’s properties. For information on what each property controls, see the Flare documentation. Unity includes pre-configured Flares for you to use in the Standard Assets package. |
| Color | The color to tint the Flare to. You can use this to make the lens flare better fit the Scene’s mood. |
| Brightness | The size and brightness the lens flare appears. |
| Fade Speed | The speed at which Unity fades the lens flare in and out. |
| Ignore Layers | A mask that determins which Layers can see the lens flare. |
| Directional | Indicates whether Unity orients the Flare along the positive z-axis of the GameObject. It appears as if it was infinitely far away, and does not track the GameObject’s position, only the direction of its z-axis. |
Details
- If you use a very bright lens flare, make sure its direction fits with your Scene’s primary light source.
- To design your own Flares, create a Flare Asset. To do this, click Assets > Create > Lens Flare.
- CollidersAn invisible shape that is used to handle physical collisions for an object. A collider doesn’t need to be exactly the same shape as the object’s mesh - a rough approximation is often more efficient and indistinguishable in gameplay. More info
See in Glossary block lens flares. A Collider between the Flare GameObject and the Camera hides the lens flare, even if the Collider does not have a Mesh RendererA mesh component that takes the geometry from the Mesh Filter and renders it at the position defined by the object’s Transform component. More info
See in Glossary. If the Collider is marked as Trigger, it only blocks the lens flare if Physics.queriesHitTriggers is true.