PPP3 - Unity Workshop

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Edit > Project Settings > Quality

Anisotropic Textures - Blending Textures (predominantly in Z-Axis)
Anti-Aliasing - Texture Edge Blur/Blending

Quality Settings (Default): Scale of Performance to Quality.
- Fastest
- Fast
- Simple
- Good
- Beautiful
- Fantastic

Fastest

Fantastic

With the Directional Light I'm using it automatically makes the shadow quality coincide with the quality default settings in the Project Quality menu. However, it's possible to change every individual light to different levels of quality.

You may see step-like lines on edges of some objects, this can be altered by going to Edit > Project Settings > Player.

Under Other Settings: Rendering Path* - By Default set to Forward, switch to Deferred Lighting.

Forward Setting: Very stylized, geometric heavy world. Has Anti-Aliasing but no Dynamic Lighting.

Deferred Lighting: Dynamic Lighting. Loses default Anti-Aliasing. 

Anti-Aliasing may be able to be ignored anyway, high quality textures and lighting on insignificant environment objects could be a waste of your graphic budget. They're whizzing by the player at 60fps anyways and all it does is create more for the GPU to render. However, if there's a Hero Object (an important game object to the player) it may be worth spending more of your graphic budget into its appearance as it will be seen/paid attention to much more by the player.

Light Mapping:

Non-Moving Geometry/Lights in the scene need to be ticked to 'Static' in the Inspector.

Once the static Geometry/Lighting has been selected go to Window > Lightmapping and Bake the scene. 

You can change the Strength of Shadows on lighting to give a sense of bounced light behind objects.

Also can use the 'Bias' slider to change shadow distance/influence which will ease performance on the GPU.

Within the Lightmapping window you can also change the colour temperature of the skylight you want for the atmosphere of the scenes lighting and adjust its intensity. You can't preview this, you have to Bake the Lightmap in order to see its effect on the Unity scene.

Evening Time Skylight Lightmapped

Q: Will all of these Lightmaps being baked out to test their impact on the scene fill up my Project Folder?

A: No, every Lightmap is overwritten once baked in the scene.

The Lightmap Window also allows you to play with Shadow Bounces in order to display some reflection of object/light diffuse on other surrounding surfaces, a subtle effect like this can make a scene seem more realistic.

Using Edit > Render Settings

You can change ambient lighting and add scene Fog to alter atmosphere lighting and visibility.

In Lightmapping Settings you can also add Ambient Occlusion to game-objects that provides 'Self-Shadowing'. This effect really sits an object in the environment realistically. 

For controlling objects further in the distance you can use 'Occlusion Culling'.

Ambient Lighting, Ambient Occlusion & Skylight

Resolution:

Be aware of the platform you're aiming your game towards. Games are rarely seen above 720p.

A way to fix what resolution you want to use in Unity when playtesting (maximize on Play) is -

Edit > Project Settings > Player > Untick Default Is Fullscreen > Enter Resolution Numbers

On the 'Game' Window, change Free Aspect > Standalone (e.g. 1280x720).