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My Approach to Interior Lighting in Godot (with switches in Blender) | rileyb3d | rileyb3d

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2026-03-12Scrapconomy

My Approach to Interior Lighting in Godot (with switches in Blender)

I found an approach to interior lighting I like in Godot. I don't love real time GI (too expensive in game) or light baking (too expensive in production) so I'm going with a technique using multiple lights to fake light bounce.

Typically, this technique involves one main light source per group, with a few fake bounce lights. The main light has shadows enabled and is a higher intensity. The “bounce” lights have shadows disabled and a lower intensity, with the same color as the main source. Depending on the space I might even have a few bounce lights for a single main light. This gives me the most control and performance.

Quick example of interior lighting approach in two rooms.

Main Light

Bounce Light

For switches I identify the switch object in Blender and organize all lights associated with that switch under a parent node in Godot. My script looks for this hierarchy. Watch the video at the top of this post to preview the full effect.

Example of two rooms with a light group for each.

But what about when all the lights go out?

Nobody likes standing in a pitch black room. This doesn’t do much for my story either. If all lights are out, I want my player to be able to see in the dark, but only slightly. For this, I have a simple omni-light parented to the player object. This goes wherever my player goes. It’s dim enough to not interfere with my main lighting, but bright enough to light a room when all other lights are out.

An example of a scene with all light sources disabled.

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Example of a fake bounce light source