Adding "Sunglasses" to FPS to see the world at Night

Ahola!

So I am developing a game - that starts the player in complete blackness. Things are only illuminated when the enemy demons are defeated - then throughout that area - the sun shines - revealing a beautiful scenery.

The problem is - I am having a hard time wrapping my mind around the development of such a system. At first I flirted with the idea of controlling “Light Source” - but I found that to be way too costly to my machine and performance. Then I tried to add an array of “Spot Lights” - To activate if the enemies were defeated. But it looked horrible.

But then - It dawned on me - think about how dogs see the world! What if the world itself were lit up the entire time - and it was the player’s eyes who changed.

Thus I drafted this -

The idea - is to have a different material attached to the player’s lens. The world will look different depending on what kind of “see through” - material that light will be shown through. My question is -

  1. Is this the way to do it?
  2. Could you guys suggest any kind of “sun glass” material? That would be able to achieve such a result - i.e - “glasses” that make everything look like it was at nighttime
  3. How to make these “lenses” interchange - like a old projector slideshow -

I want this to gradually increase - the only way I can conceive of doing that - is through a wheel and have it spin form interaction. But really - I am up for suggestions if anyone thinks of a better way.

Any suggestions would be really helpful. Am I completely off my rocker with this? - My ultimate goal - is to have the
“world” become more beautiful - the more enemies you defeat. I know I need to somehow alter “light” to achieve this goal. But - light - in my understanding - is very costly resource - so I am trying to think outside the box.

At the end of the day - I am asking - how to “add sunglasses” to the FPS camera - to make it look like it was nighttime.

Thank you!

You could use a post process material and tint the scene color with dark blue. You can control the intensity with a float so you can fade it in and out anytime you like.

thank you so much! I haven’t really dove into post processing yet - but really excited to venture into it. That is awesome advice! Thank you