Clarify performance impact of area lights in 3D lights and shadows#12032
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Calinou wants to merge 1 commit into
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Clarify performance impact of area lights in 3D lights and shadows#12032Calinou wants to merge 1 commit into
Calinou wants to merge 1 commit into
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Calinou
added
enhancement
topic:rendering
area:manual
clayjohn
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Jun 2, 2026
| .. warning:: | ||
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| This type of light is expensive to render in real-time, so it should be used | ||
| sparingly, especially when shadows are enabled. As soon as one area light is |
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I would change this a bit. The being in the view frustum thing is only applicable to the Forward+ renderer. For the others, only meshes that intersect with the light pay the cost. So it is a lot cheaper.
So I would say:
- It is very expensive, use sparingly
- It's especially bad with the Forward+ renderer since all objects pay the cost of one is in the view frustum.
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There is a significant cost as soon as at least one AreaLight3D node is visible in the view frustum, due to certain shader features only being enabled in this case.
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There is a significant cost as soon as at least one AreaLight3D node is visible in the view frustum, due to certain shader features only being enabled in this case.