##General Info
Have you ever been working on a game, just to realize that when you're making lights they don't seem to fit well with the theme? Maybe they're too bland or pheraps there aren't even shadows. The answer is: Lighting Technologies!
In Roblox, there are 4 types of lighting technologies, each serving a purpose. The 2 most important ones are ShadowMap and Future.
- Despite the name, ShadowMap actually doesn't provide much ambience. It does, however, create darker areas where light doesn't shine and making indoor spaces dark. It's an approximate way of creating shadows. This works if your game isn't too impacted by graphics, especially if performance comes before appearance. The sun's rays still give an accurate shadow. This is the default technology enabled.
example of ShadowMap
- Future uses raycasting to detect and create exact shadows from any source of light. Raycasting means to create a ray, or a "line", in the workspace. They have a starting position and a direction. In this case, it's used to detect if it hits a BasePart, and creates shadows accordingly. This means that, like the sun in ShadowMap, light sources with the property Shadows enabled will also raycast shadows. It additionally enables screen space reflections, which are reflections of lights and even other colored BaseParts on the surface of a reflectant BasePart, such as metal.
example of Future
the sun and a light source reflecting on metal
So, in short, ShadowMap gives more performance and Future is more appealing.
##How to switch
Now that we know what they do, how exactly do we switch the lighting technology?
This is fairly simple—you just have to select the Lighting service in the explorer, find a property called "Technology" and select the one you'd like! Remember that the Technology property cannot be changed via script—you can only change it using studio's exporer.
Where to find them in the Explorer and Properties
MAKE SURE THAT THE LIGHT SOURCE HAS THE PROPERTY CALLED "Shadows" ENABLED AND THE BASEPARTS HAVE "CastShadow" ON, OTHERWSE NO SHADOWS WILL APPEAR!
With that said, also remember that Future isn't always better—sometimes going for performace is actually better!
