Is this multiplayer? If not, I would probably just adjust the directional light as the player moves around to account for it. Probably way easier than any alternative. The only other thing I can think of if its multiplayer is make a grid of lights all pointed in the appropriate direction. You could create them programmatically at the game start, but I dunno what that might do for performance. Someone with more lighting knowledge might have a better answer though.
I’m working on an open world level (approx 64x64 km) where all of the light needs to be cast from an artificial sun which would be much closer to the terrain than an actual sun would be (a couple of KM up at most). so moving across the map would change the direction that the shadows are cast.
Ideally, I would do this using a point light in the centre of the map but unfortunately point lights (or any kind of light other than directional lights) don’t seem to function at these scales.
Can anyone offer any advice on how I could achieve this? or is there a way to get a single point light to cast that strength, range, etc of light?
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Thanks.
Well actually, the single player solution I mention above would still work. Just make sure the directional light isn’t replicated to the server, so each player has their own local light source, reflective of their location in the world. The only issue would be what triggers the sun update. You probably don’t want to do it on a tick event, that would be a bunch of needless updates. You might set up collision volumes in the world that trigger the change. These could also be created programmatically based on the size of the world, if it grows or shrinks over time, this would auto update when the game runs.
It is currently a single player game but with the plan of developing it into a multiplayer at a later date.