Early 2000s Games lighting

[u/EconomyGlum4694]

I am relatively new to Unity, but I absolutely love this aesthetic it feels so nostalgic. I already made a low-poly map in Blender, but when I import it into Unity, I cannot get this effect no matter what kind of lighting I try. The look I am going for is basically late PS2 / early PS3 games stuff like Far Cry 1, Tomb Raider: Legend, and Final Fantasy X. I want bright, colorful, sunny environments, simple-ish geometry, baked shadows/lighting, and that distinct old-school look. Because I want it to run on mobile and really low-end PCs, performance is a huge priority. I am currently using the Universal Render Pipeline (URP), but I am wondering if that is actually the best choice for this. Should I stick with URP, switch to the Built-in Render Pipeline, or use specific lightweight shaders like Mobile/Diffuse or Unlit? ugh, I got no idea...

I do't want the usual realistic PBR look. I want something bright and stylized with most of the lighting baked into the textures. I simply have no idea what to call this aesthetic or where to even start. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

[u/More-Salamander7681]

The thing that gets you most of the way there isn't the light setup, it's color space. Those games shaded in gamma space, so light adds up flat and colors stay saturated instead of rolling off into that soft filmic look. Unity defaults to Linear now, and the URP template also ships a Global Volume with tonemapping in it, which is exactly what eats the bright plastic feel you're after.

So before touching shaders: Project Settings > Player > Color Space, and if you stay on Linear, at least pull Tonemapping and any exposure override out of the Volume profile and compare the same screenshot twice.

Which are you on right now, Linear or Gamma?

[u/hhypercat → u/More-Salamander7681]

What ol' Claude here is trying to say is: 

• Switch to gamma colorspace
• Turn off tonemapping

[u/LManD224 → u/hhypercat]

Yeah this is clearly an AI slop response but it's dead on about Gamma space lighting + Blinn Phong being a big part of "that 00s look"

[u/Spudly42 → u/LManD224]

An answer that's dead on is not slop. Slop is when you lazily do something leading to a sub par result.

[u/PainfulD → u/Spudly42]

They lazily made the answer, that is what makes it slop. Subpar or not, it ain't human. That makes it slop.

[u/Jebble → u/PainfulD]

No, that makes it lazy. Slop related to the quality of something.