I am trying to create a scene with gorgeous looking lighting and shadows. I created and loaded a single model (USDZ) from my modeling software (Cinema 4D) into RealityKit.
Here's what it looked like in Cinema 4D after a quick render:
As you might notice, the lighting is even, with great highlights. There are sharp (but not too sharp) shadows from the rocks.
This looks really great, and I am trying to replicate this (or even better) in my RealityKit app. This lighting in this first image was created with a physical sky object, which is basically an HDR (image based lighting) applied in the modeling software.
However, after doing a lot of research on the topic of lighting and shadows in RealityKit, I can't figure out how to get my scene to look like this. I used a DirectionalLight and placed its anchor at [0, 0, 0] for the world, which is around the center of the square in the middle of the view. I set that light to look at [0, 0, 0] from many different points, but right now it's looking from [0, 0, 25]. So, the light should be basically on the horizon, 25m out over the ocean from the flat plane in the middle. Kind of like a sunset.
I end up with this:
Of course, the first image looks WAY better than the second. I can't figure out how to get the right intensity and distance to make it look better.
This model is one asset, and so it's all loaded in at once.
I drew some shadows to get the idea across of what I want. Basically, it needs to look like my render in the first image.
I know how to adjust color of the lighting, etc. but I cannot figure out these shadows or how to make it look evenly exposed and highlighted properly, like in the first image.
I thought about using an HDR directly from my modeling software, but I want to animate this light later on, to show the timing at different times of the year/day/night/etc.
Am I using the correct lighting setup? What am I doing wrong? How can I do this? My own shadow component?