archived-lighting

[misty lynx]

Why are these two boxes using the same lightmap? I mean, it's good the engine determines there's enough space for both, but I'm not sure if that's something expected or configurable

Also I'm not sure why and how does this happen for built in primitives that aren't imported and can't have the resolution tweaked

[deft fiber]

UVs don't contain resolution/scale information since it's all in 0-1 range
You can tweak that one by the "scale in lightmap" setting visible on the mesh renderer component

You can control the parameters for lightmap UV compilation in the lightmap settings, namely the margins and resolution

[misty lynx]

Thanks! I've tried chaging that scale and looks like the baked light maps are choosen at random, with as many objects as possible

[deft fiber]

I don't know if it's possible to manually edit the compiled lightmap UVs, but ideally you don't have to

[misty lynx]

That's good to know, unity GI looks good and is easy to use and tweak but I was confused bc blender has a mode for lightmap unwrap and I was wondering why can unity use it to be precise

[deft fiber]

You can manually unwrap lightmap UVs per mesh instead of letting Unity generate them (though those maps will still be compiled automatically)
But I'd say Blender's "lightmap unwrap" is worse than useless

[misty lynx]

Ok, now I see what's going on after playing with the paremeters, the lightmap resolution is what is always preserved, while the lightmap size is like a "target", if eveything fits in one 1024 map, everything goes there, if you need a little more space, another lightmap with the minumun necessary resolution is created.
Turns out my imported fbx mesh fell into that last "slot" with different resolution, nothing to do with different import settings

[deft fiber]

Yes, the lightmap layout process makes its own decisions so it may be a bit hard to understand but that's the gist of it
Remember to check if "generate lightmap UVs" is enabled in mesh import settings to know if Unity is working with what's there or creating them anew

[timber lichen]

having a problem with the shadows where they just do not line up on my models and make them look terrible

[uncut coral]

Seem like a face orientation problem. Make sure all outside faces are front faces

[deft fiber]

Your mesh uses sharp normals in some places which shadow casters absolutely do not vibe with, creating holes in the shadowing

Could be more problems besides that, though face orientation looks okay to me

[timber lichen]

alright thanks

ill give smoother normals a try

[crisp hatch]

Does anyone know why every time I bake the lighting these show up in this corner?

[deft fiber]

What is "these" in this case?

[crisp hatch]

The lines on the wall

[deft fiber]

If you mean specifically the faint diagonal lines, to me it looks like there's a lightmap UV seam running across there for some reason, which bleeds over a bit due to padding and/or compression

The automated lightmap generation normally never splits continuous faces like that
But I would guess that generation isn't being used here

[crisp hatch]

You are correct but I'm using no compression and a high padding

[deft fiber]

So, why is there a lightmap UV seam running across there? Doesn't seem necessary

[crisp hatch]

I'm using probuilder I have no clue

@deft fiber

[deft fiber]

So, that's probuilder generating its own subpar lightmap UVs
It's intended for prototyping so it doesn't go all in on that kind of quality
If the level is exported as a mesh I expect you'll be able to use unity's usual lightmap UV generation for it

[crisp hatch]

So if I export the probuilder mesh within unity and use it as a mesh instead it should work?

I'll try this in a bit thank you.

[deft fiber]

You have to also make sure automatic lightmap UV generation is enabled in mesh import settings once it's an ordinary mesh
I've never used probuilder so I'm not sure if it normally allows you to tweak mesh import settings without exporting it out in some way first

[crisp hatch]

Alright thanks anyways!

[rocky peak]

In my humble experience, ProBuilder is really good for fast prototyping of levels and such, but it's not good once you harden your assets, and most of the time it's for reasons you're stating @deft fiber - it doesn't allow you precise control of things.

However, this could be my lack of experience on ProBuilder. And since I build my own assets from scratch in Blender/Max, I just never bothered to learn

[crisp hatch]

@deft fiber it was because an overlapping face

[lost granite]

Hey guys, I would've googled this but I'm not quite sure how to word it
when I have a scene like this, and I want to use reflection probes, how do I handle awkward fading like this where it begins reflecting the skybox awkwardly? do i just need to litter my scene with baked reflection probes or is there a better way?

or would this actually just be resolved by building the scenes lighting

i'd do that but it takes like 30 minutes to regenerate and i'd need to do that every time I make a small change

[deft fiber]

What do you mean by awkward fading?

You can bake reflection probes separately from other lighting
If you use baked lighting it's usually best to use GPU baking and bake with low resolution before the final bake

[lost granite]

yeah that is what I do

i guess i need to bake the lighting at least once

this is a relatively large scene so even with the 3090 and gpu baking it still takes like half an hour

these are my settings

there are a lot of static objects in the scene because the asset im using is modular

im gonna try the lightmap parameters set to very low and see if its more bearable

oh i think im seeing part of the issue

it keeps restarting

i think?

nevermind its just only showing the progress for each individual lightmap

oh i think i see the problem

i reduced the max lightmap size but all that meant was that it was trying to fit the same resolution lighting data into more, smaller lightmaps

the ETA is always so inaccurate

it still takes forever to bake all this data

[deft fiber]

10 resolution is much better for a temp bake than 40
You can also to halving the three sample values

[lost granite]

right

[deft fiber]

Even if an object is static, you might not want it to be lightmapped if it's small or has a high polygon density; for example crates, barrels and non-emissive signs

[lost granite]

thats probably the case

theres a tonne of those in this scene

though

what do I do about modular walls that are quite small

but do make up entire large walls

like these segments are small

[deft fiber]

I don't think the size alone is a problem, but small size usually correlates with high polygon density

[lost granite]

ah yeah dont worry i think these are fine

these walls have LODs for 90 tris up close, and 2 at a decent distance

ideally from furthest away you could reduce the entire wall to very few tris

but thats not practical for a project like this being done by someone like me who is incredibly unskilled with blender

[deft fiber]

I think LODs also increase baking time since each LOD would have to be lightmapped separately
But I'd have to verify that

[lost granite]

that might explain it

the 3090 ti should be fairly beefy

oh there we go

it finished

honestly the scene does not look very different

[deft fiber]

With small objects you can allow them to contribute global illumination but use light probes instead of lightmapping to cut the cost

Or not have them contribute at all

[lost granite]

thats something ill go and do

it still hasnt fixed the issue with like

all the very shiny and wet floors are reflecting the skybox

which looks very wrong

somethign the reflection probes make incredibly obvious

[deft fiber]

Decorative geometry like wall panels and edges of sidewalks are kind of bad for the lightmap workflow, compared to simple flat surfaces since you need so little calculations and data to represent them

[lost granite]

oh ive got screen space reflections in the project thats why you can se the somewhat-accurate-seeming reflection of that hexagon pattern

which might actually mitigate the need for reflection probes at all???

i do want to retain the option to turn it off since its fairly expensive

[lost granite]

yeah its just more of a personal limitation

on what I'm capable of by myself

[deft fiber]

Usually you'd want to use decorative geometry that looks okay even with just light probes, and which can be LOD faded/culled without breaking the surface

[lost granite]

im not sure i fully understand sorry

hang on i need to clear my definition of light probes

[deft fiber]

You want details to be non-critical for any lightmapping

[lost granite]

ive been inferring based on context so i dont have a concrete understanding

[deft fiber]

Reflection probes store reflection data, light probes store ambient light

[lost granite]

oh i think i see what you mean

[lost granite]

what are light probes then, are they like per-object maps of the baked light data?

[deft fiber]

Ideally also you want the decorations to be non-critical to the silhouette of the structure, so you can cull them over distance without making a hole

[deft fiber]

per-point maps of baked light data, applied to nearby objects
https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/LightProbes.html

[lost granite]

sorry im back

[lost granite]

this asset pack seems to do this well

structures are prefabs and have lods and everything all good

but imma keep this for other scenes I may work on

[deft fiber]

About this
Reflection probes are usually necessary for SSR to look right
Since SSR can't reflect anything not drawn on screen, in that case it falls back to reflection probe's cubemap
If there's none it'll show a solid color instead

[lost granite]

what can one do about this btw

[deft fiber]

I don't see what's "wrong" about the image

[lost granite]

its just that theres a very clear point where the reflection probe fades

and it start reflecting only the skybox

which is especially terrible indoors

and like

if the solution is to carefully place reflection probes everywhere

thats fine

[deft fiber]

Ah, the dark square there?

[lost granite]

i just wanna know if thats okay

[lost granite]

yeah lmao sorry i didnt say that when I sent it

[deft fiber]

Yes, you'll likely need to use more reflection probes than just one
But I wouldn't bother trying to place them everywhere

[lost granite]

another problem is kinda how innacurately things line up with reflection probes but I suppose in this case the thing I need to do is bring the reflection probe to a better spot

[lost granite]

how do I deal with the distracting fades then

just like crop the boxes?

that would be a lot easier if the editor UI for adjusting the boxes didnt stop showing up 😬

and the canvas frame too

[deft fiber]

Use a smoother blend distance, use as large as possible reflection probes

If you have a lot of them in small spaces, you'll have many seams between them

[lost granite]

i see

so for example

in this case I have a lot of objects to the left of this very shiny object

what do I do about the objects to the right

[deft fiber]

You can hide canvas from scene view using the eye icon in hierarchy to avoid selecting it, if that's what you mean

[lost granite]

do I just put the refelction probe in the middle?

[lost granite]

nah the frame for the canvas disappeared

the elements are still visible

oh unles its only the canvas thats hidden right now

oh well

i have 3 canvases

i dont know for sure if thats what you're meant to do but I thought I read somewhere that it was what you were meant to do

yeah it definitely just stopped showing up

[deft fiber]

I'd start with one probe per street, or less if multiple strees have a similar lighting
Perhaps a higher importance probes for the alleys between streets

[lost granite]

woah really?

but wont lightr sources like not align at all

is box projection not meant to be ticked or something

or am I seriously overestimating the importance of lights alligning

[deft fiber]

I mean when not using box projection
If you do use it, then the probe bounds need to match the walls of the area

But in an open outdoors place like this that seems entirely unpractical

[lost granite]

ah okay

one more question

for now

thers supposed to be a box within the area the probe includes right

or at least when you press either of these two buttons

because im not seeing a box appear

and it would make editing the box size monumentally easier

[deft fiber]

The boxes may be hidden due to visibility toggle in hierarchy, or because of gizmo visibility settings or probably for other reasons too, hard to guess
The inspector shows what the bounds should be as values to give you an idea where they're supposed to be

[lost granite]

oh wtf it was off in the gizmos

my bad

i was sure id toggled everything on

stuff like these totally detatched red light reflections are definitely kinda odd tho

cos box projection is definitely making that light line up with the billboard that its reflecting slightly more believably

but it also does mean i gotta make tyhe reflection probe area smaller so it doesnt appear in places the billboard wouldnt be visible from

[deft fiber]

Yes, that's the big advantage of box projection
But then you have much more seams to deal with

[lost granite]

is it alright to be picking and choosing when to use either in certain areas

[deft fiber]

You would place the center of the probe in a place that doesn't have extremely distinct light sources, if it's meant to be used in many places

[deft fiber]

Yes

[lost granite]

ah so just generally try to fudge it

[deft fiber]

You already have SSR for handling the direct reflections though

Consider that even triple-A games don't bother getting this part perfectly right

As long as the lighting looks right enough for the area, players won't care that they don't match the light sources

[lost granite]

yeah it seems to be fine as long as i'm careful with calculations

the one on the left is box projection enabled

the fade distance is only 2

should it be higher

hmmmmmmm that being said its still pretty clear when the reflections begin actually lining up with the objects theyre coming from even at this distanbce

[deft fiber]

Which is why I recommend big probes without box projection and without really bright lights on the cubemap

The more vague they are the more forgiving they a re

[lost granite]

yeah

unfortunately bright lights is kinda of the aesthetic

lmfao

so its kind of a tough situation

now I know how the cyberpunk 2077 devs felt
ignoring the time crunch and also literally every other thing they had to get done in the 3 minutes they had to produce that game

[deft fiber]

You can cheat by having the brightest lights disabled when baking the probes and then enable them back on
The player will see the lights in the scene as well as their SSR reflections and it'll look okay

[lost granite]

oh true

man that is really frustrating though

having to manually disable things when you are baking whatever

[deft fiber]

The main thing the probes are responsible for is to occlude the sky in the streets and alleys

[lost granite]

atm its looking like im gonna need to create blocks to build the navmesh for my game

[deft fiber]

Or mark them not reflection probe static

[lost granite]

true

[deft fiber]

Reflection probes can be used for realistic and accurate reflections only in the most ideal situations

Which is namely box-shaped rooms that can match the box projection perfectly

[lost granite]

another question actually, if I have a reflection probe within another, and that reflection probe is marked as more important, will it properly fade between the two at the edges of the overlapping area

[deft fiber]

So I would presume

[lost granite]

okay so i should just save box projection and stuff like that for ideal situations

[deft fiber]

That's what I'd recommend

[lost granite]

like a little area like this??

ignore the endless void

[deft fiber]

At least they had a hard time limit to get it done
You need to stop trying to make things perfect we'll be still mulling over this stuff in a year's time

[deft fiber]

Could work

[lost granite]

i guess its trial and error

[lost granite]

i guess so, im just trying to make sure im learning how to do things properly

since im only just getting started and this is my own personal thing i figure its better to take my time and learn the right way to do things

"only just getting started" being 3 and a half years in but regardless

[shut dawn]

i don't know if this is the right place to ask this as a beginner, but when i get too close to a wall, the flashlight's light makes a line, how can i fix this?

the line is always there but it doesn't show up if i don't get close to a wall

[shut dawn]

like this

[unique mango]

Im beggin for help... I hate lighting in unity. What can I do to fix this shit. The funny thing is that when I move camera in the different direction shadows are kinda working...

the map is connected perfectly and there are no gaps between the walls

this is directional light from the outside

but this is not the only one problem I have.

those are shadows from point light

[chilly kettle]

First: Use Shadow caster Geometry
Second: Shadow Bias of your Lightsource

[unique mango]

those are settings for the point light

this is directional

[unique mango]

to the first, how to use caster geometry?

what is that btw

and where

[chilly kettle]

Geometry that avoid light from hitting your 90° edges there

its typical problem and can be solved easily by using additional geometry that blocks the light there

[unique mango]

hmm. so there is no other way to fix this?

[chilly kettle]

https://forum.unity.com/threads/light-passing-through-seams-on-mesh-edges-real-time-lighting.1200160/

[unique mango]

well... still not sure what can I do.

[chilly kettle]

Go into Blender, import your model and build a cage outside of it that blocks the light from outside ^^

Or do it with probuilder in unity

[unique mango]

if anybody have any other ideas please answer :((

[limber delta]

Shadowcasters are the way to go

[deft fiber]

Bias values of 0 are extreme and likely to cause issues as explained here
https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/ShadowPerformance.html
The default values are something like bias 0.05 and normal bias 0.4

[unique mango]

it's even worse

well... no matter how i set this it's not working

[deft fiber]

Well yes, this is what you need shadow casters for, as mentioned

Extreme bias values can make it seem like it fixes that issue, but it doesn't and causes more issues in turn

[unique mango]

yeah i see

I know how individual values work, but for years I have not been able to deal with this problem.

I tried lot of solutions and didn't find the right one...

[deft fiber]

What do you mean not the right one?

[unique mango]

I mean that for example someone sugested to put some walls behind but you know doing this isn't the best option.

[deft fiber]

I'm afraid it might be

[unique mango]

trust me it's not...

[deft fiber]

What's a better one?

[unique mango]

idk maybe writing my own rendering engine XD

but how....

we all know unity sucks

at lighting

I don't want to play around with "fixing" sunlight as then complications will come out of it as I want to create a scene with an open environment. just as I do now.

point lights are even worse...

shadows are not casting from actual object.

none of those funny values can solve that problem

[deft fiber]

The reason this happens is because when the light renders objects again for shadow casting it shrinks its geometry, so that the shadows don't poke through the surface, which consequently means seams at edges where vertices are disconnect or have sharp/split normals
Which means you can also

1. Use smooth-shading for all corners
2. Have another variant of the mesh that's smooth-shaded which you use as shadows only, whereas the visual mesh casts no shadow

Extra shadow caster meshes are likely the best solution out of these three

You could automate solution #2 pretty trivially if you have the know-how
Not sure why it isn't already an option

[unique mango]

yeah

[dawn cape]

Does this look decent if not any tips u guys can give

[arctic pier]

Looks cool but in my opinion there is too much bloom

[dawn cape]

Will change then thx

[quasi copper]

hi i have a problem with 2d light... the light go through the player

how to fix that...

i want the light to affect the player but when the player is over it, it should not go through the player

[wanton rune]

Remove the player's layer from Target Sorting Layers

[dawn cape]

lighting goes a really long way if u do color theory 🙂

[quasi copper]

but then he is not affected by light at all

[dawn cape]

not entirely sure how to do some of those but will try

[dawn cape]

Thx will do

those buildings were placeholder anyway

[loud laurel]

last i checked, lights arn't supposed to work like this

[unique mango]

shadows in unity:

there is NO WAY TO FIX IT

and YES i tried to play with those bias/normalbias/nearplane options, it's getting worse and worse

quality settings are the highest.

shadow res HIGHEST

well... im 101% sure there is a solution to this but noone on this server won't tell me ;))

and I don't mean additional geometry or another fckng sht

idk what i want new screenspaceshadowsshader if needed

whatever what, some experts please help

with this shadows I CAN'T RELEASE MY GAME

I tested EVERY SINGE SETTING in quality/light etc

every singe one of them are not working correctly

so where is the solution

[deft fiber]

Texel invalidity
https://forum.unity.com/threads/faq-blocky-artifacts-appear-when-i-bake-a-scene-how-can-i-fix-them.951444/

[deft fiber]

I believe you know what the solutions are
Leave bias values as defaults and either add shadow geometry or use merged normals

Projects never really "just work out" without having to resort to workarounds in some way or another

[unique mango]

sadly but another geometry increases performance cost

and I tried to make it

but it's working even worse or the same

any other ideas?

[deft fiber]

That doesn't sound right
You shouldn't be getting more light leaking by piling stuff in the way of the light

[limber delta]

Shouldn't be too bad if you use a Unity cube and make it a prefab. (Remove the collider and set Cast Shadows to "Shadows Only")

[deft fiber]

Geometry is cheap

The only option I didn't remember to bring up is a shader that renders smooth shaded geometry with flat normals, so it appears as smooth for shadow casters but not the camera
But that one is probably not worth the trouble over simple shadow caster geometry

[limber delta]

Yes, I use one prefab and copy it over and over (while adjusting its size when needed)

Does anyone have any idea why those tiny lines of light appear? They go away when I get closer to them. I use a mixed light to lighten that area. Unity 2021 and URP.

[unique mango]

the answer is UNITY

[limber delta]

I feel your frustration.

[unique mango]

good

[limber delta]

ok.

[unique mango]

the same problem for about 4 years

no solution

unity can't fix it

[limber delta]

Right. Have you tried creating a test scene and isolating the problem?

[unique mango]

yeah many times man

[limber delta]

ok ok

[unique mango]

the same problem with shadows on fricking default cube and plane

[limber delta]

Right, and just to be clear. You haven't tried creating a shadowcaster yet?

[unique mango]

maybe i tried or maybe not. i tried many things

[limber delta]

ok

[deft fiber]

I don't recognize the issue, but if it's by distance, that suggests probably something to do with shadow distance or mip mapping, maybe mip mapping of normal maps if you're using those

[chilly kettle]

Can you PLEASE open a thread?

[limber delta]

Right. Yes, by distance. I will look into that. Yes, I am using normal maps. Thanks!

[deft fiber]

I've never seen that happen but it sounds possible that the normal maps contain invalid data outside the UV islands, and mip mapping makes them bleed over at edges

[limber delta]

I tried without the normalmap on the floor asset (also with generate mip maps off) but it didn't make any difference. I'll see if shadow distance affects it.

Oh wow. Ok, I removed the emission map and that made the "error" go away. Hmm. Maybe my white emission UV island is too close to the floor one.

Thanks man!

[mystic raptor]

Encountered a weird bug (or rendering quirk?) with using realtime reflection probes and an HDRI sky. This room is supposed to be pitch black, but a realtime probe samples the skybox across all surfaces, making the room overly bright, while a baked probe renders it correctly

I can tell its not a shadowmap problem cause I can disable it in the custom frame settings and you'll see the direcitonal light affecting the room now

none of the custom frame settings let me toggle off the skybox lighting it up like this though

disabling the volume does return it to being black so I know for sure HDRI is affecting this

[deft fiber]

Well found!

[limber delta]

Actually, I solved it by giving my UV island-- for the geometry that emits light -- a bigger margin.

That is interesting though, as I actually still see that type of super thin light flickering sometimes in assets. Making a VR game if that makes any difference.

[red pagoda]

hey! I am having tons of trouble today buthow do I make this area light larger 🤦🤦🤦

[daring haven]

Range is one value, but I go crazy on the intensity for point lights compared to directional lights.

(and area and spot lights)

[limber delta]

Size X and Y

[red pagoda]

noo i came here so i wouldnt bug you more xd but my intensity is max

[daring haven]

No, you can edit the numeric field and make it bigger. The slider is at its limit. You can also change the units.

[red pagoda]

that increases the size like I want however it doesnt brighten it in fact I would say it darkens it

[red pagoda]

huhhhh lol

[limber delta]

right, you probably have to balance it with intensity and range

[red pagoda]

I dont know how to do that im so sorry

[daring haven]

I keep adding zeros to the end until its about right, then start fiddling the leading digits. (Yes, I am a hacker! lol!)

Just under the slider is a numeric field with drop down for units - I add zeros to the numeric field until it looks good

[limber delta]

A tip, when testing, really exaggerate values. then later make finer adjustments

[red pagoda]

ahh can you show me which one is the numeric field lol i am so dumb xd

i feel so bad making you show me everything a-z

[limber delta]

Are you using HDRP?

[red pagoda]

got it thanks

that worked amazingly I cannot thank you enough I promise this is my last one

[daring haven]

One of the drop down values next to it (EV 200?) shrinks the numbers to more like 20 to 30, which might be easier to fiddle with. Not at computer to remember the value

[red pagoda]

yeah but i thought this channel may work better

[limber delta]

For sure, just wondering. Because in URP you can't use realtime area lights

[red pagoda]

yeah that seemed to do the trick

[red pagoda]

thanks for making sure i didnt know that

[unique mango]

and by the way, has anyone realized that the Normal Bias option in spot lights does not work?

no difference when manipulating this slider

point lights are so f*ckd up.

this is when i leave them on default

and this is what i want

but

im using negative bias values

by my own script

and this creates a problem

[deft fiber]

Why's that?

[unique mango]

see the difference in the shadows?

that's what i want to achieve(idk the spelling)

[unique mango]

this is the minimum of the minimum what I want exactly

[deft fiber]

Use the bias values only as recommended
Don't try to bruteforce this light leak problem with bias values, it's not the solution

[unique mango]

I know it's not

used this only for demonstration

[deft fiber]

Spot light normal bias value seems to function just the same as for any other light, so it's not universally broken anyhow

[unique mango]

um I think it doesn't work.

no changes when manipulating values

in directional light of course it's working

but in point lights it's not

u know what am I talking about or not...

haha so yeah I checked one more thing.
in directional light: working - bias and normal bias
not working - near plane offset XD
in point light: working - bias, near plance offset
not working - normal bias XD

working I mean when you change those settings the changes are visible somehow

[red pagoda]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYIbDAW950s the first 5 seconds of this video show exactly what I am looking for is if anyone knows how about I could make that almost no shadows effect? Thanks! (I use hdrp so some stuff wont work... I think)

[limber delta]

@deft fiber i saw you mentioned in the thread above that the shadowcasters should be smooth shaded. Do you know if the box mesh in Unity is smooth shaded? Or how to achieve that.

[little condor]

That's quite easy to achieve in HDRP as the lighting in the room of that video is very basic. It looks like it's just ambient lighting with ambient occlusion post processing.

So in HDRP, add a Volume > Global Volume gameObject. On the Volume component add in 4 overrides; Ambient occlusion, Exposure, Visual environment, and Gradient sky.

Disable your directional light. On the Visual environment, enable Sky Type and select Gradient sky from the drop-down. On the exposure settings, set the mode to 'fixed' and then play with the Exposure slider, maybe around 2.0.

That should start to look a bit like what you want, but you will need to experiment with the various options.

[red pagoda]

what is overrides listed as?

wait I think I get it

nope lol is it children

[little condor]

Ah, create a new profile first.

[red pagoda]

ahhh thanks

I think my lighting is reverse? the lower the exposure the brighter it is?

[little condor]

Yeah, I might have a different setup on my project, but you just need to adjust the exposure until it looks right. Or, if the exposure override makes it worse, just disable/remove it.

[red pagoda]

okay, its just weird that when it shows a moon icon its brighter and the sun is darkest

[little condor]

The exposure setting tries to mimic how a camera works. In low light levels the exposure (how long the shutter is open for) is increased so more light can get in and brighten the image, ideal for night-time scenes or dark rooms.

[red pagoda]

ohhh got it

would there be a way for the textures to show without blinding me lol

this is what it looks like without global volume

also if its too much of a bother to fix I could just remove hdrp and put 2 directional lights

[silver grove]

So I've had this grudge with directional lighting for a while and can't figure for the life of me how to have both directional lighting whilst having completely dark areas without having this weird specular reflection:

How do I fix it?

[silver grove]

It looks like in the video he has a light radiating from the player in all directions, or at least facing the players look direction

evident when he looks at the glass and its reflecting light from exactly where the player is

[little condor]

There are some default volume settings when you create an hdrp game and are carried over to all scenes.

The overrides allow you change those settings when you need to.

So in your situation you likely have Bloom enabled in the default settings, so add a bloom override toy volume and lower the bloom intensity.

[red pagoda]

thanks very much but it turned out that it was just me being dumb when hdrp wasnt on the project and turned the emission to 10k

[little condor]

That would do it too 😁

[peak pilot]

How can I smoth out these sharp lighing errors

[hard grail]

Hey, can anyone tell me why I'm randomly getting some lights in my scene that I can't delete or change or anything?

When I press them, they do not exist in the heirachy yet they affect my scene

[deft fiber]

It's not
If you can somehow get to the cube's import settings, you could set the normals to be recalculated as smooth
However that only works with geometry that shares vertices, not if the faces are entirely separate /unwelded
Also, Unity hides its built-in assets so well you might not be able to access it
It's probably easier to just set the Blender's default cube to smooth shaded and export that

[limber delta]

Right. Damn, I wish I learned this sooner 😅 I'll probably make a cube in blender and export that then. Is the smooth shading a performance optimization?

[deft fiber]

It can be, since split normals will require the renderer to render a new vertex for each split normal
In lighting the significance is that split normals are seen by the shadow caster as gaps in the mesh
My understanding is that it shrinks each connected surface (which is what "bias" is about), but since the vertices aren't connected, they get pulled apart

[limber delta]

Maybe I've gone about the shadowcaster thing all wrong. I've used individual elements and placed them along walls as pictured (with "Cast Shadows" off here, so you actually see them). Not sure if this is the way though. Hard to find info on how to use shadowcasters.

[deft fiber]

Not wrong, but not as effective as they could be I think
The more they overlap, the tighter the sealing is
Also, the more sharp corners you have near each other, the likelier it is that the light will find a gap through all of them

If that setup works without issue, I probably wouldn't worry about changing it

[limber delta]

Right, I understand. In most cases they do overlap and it seems to do the trick. I'll just make sure to not have sharp corners near each other as you say, kind of looses the point of using them in the first place. Thanks!

[shadow horizon]

How do i fix this light bleeding?

[limber delta]

With shadowcasters 🙂

[deft fiber]

Shadow caster geometry are one solution

[shadow horizon]

i "solved" it with editing the lights bias etc, but then it adds artefacts in other places

one step forward, one step back

[deft fiber]

Though first it's important to diagnose what the exact cause is

[shadow horizon]

my experience with Lighting is nearly negative, i constantly have problems with this type of thing and never learn it, because frankly, it's quite tragic

the whole system

Why is it so jagged, its 4096 resolution 😅

[deft fiber]

@shadow horizon There's generally two kinds of realtime shadow problems
https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/ShadowPerformance.html The ones listed here, fixed by balancing bias values
And the second type which is where light passes through corners of sharp geometry

That type seems to be fixed by bias values, but you can't ever tune them enough for it to work without other problems

[deft fiber]

This might be solved just by rotating your light around its forward axis, if not then it's something tricky

[shadow horizon]

reducing the "outer spot angle" produces very little jagged ness

at the expense of smoothing out the insensity across the light projection 🥹

[deft fiber]

Spot light quality suffers exponentially the higher you set the angle, just like a rendered image distorts with high FoVs

[shadow horizon]

this is the best i can get it

Could it be because the object im trying to cast a light on... is 100 scale

would changing the scale factor of it fix that

[timber lichen]

as far as i understood "Mixed" light means it acts as a baked light for rendering lightmaps for static objects but also as a realtime light for dynamic objects

but putting it as mixed doesnt seem to affect any dynamic object if i change the intensivity

[limber delta]

Do light layers exist in Unity 2021.3.0f1 and URP (Version 12.1.6)? https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.render-pipelines.universal@12.0/manual/lighting/light-layers.html#enable "Light Layers" does not show up when I press "Show Additional Properties". Thanks

Basically I want a particular light to only affect some of the geometry in the scene.

[deft fiber]

iirc that option should've been there since 2021.1. or .2.

[daring haven]

No idea when introduced, but you have to turn them on in the project settings I think for them to appear elsewhere.

[limber delta]

I see. Thanks

[timber lichen]

is there still a light limit as in how many lights u can have on in a scene?

[chilly kettle]

In URP there is a light limit per Object

[uncut coral]

What is the optimal lightmap size for android game?
Is 3 lightmaps of size 2048x2048 good for a scene in android game?

[pine zodiac]

I want to have multiple objects with their own assigned light sources, and only have them be affected by their assigned light sources. How would I go about this?

Nevermind I think I need to use layers

[hard grail]

Can anyone explain why I'm getting these SceneLights?

I can't disable them or anything

I can delete them by removing the 'light' component but then my scene view goes all white. If I then reload the scene view panel, it regenerates these lights again!

[deft fiber]

Is it possible they're from the unloaded scenes?

[hard grail]

They are not

They seem to be present in every scene

And they actually are affecting the lighting lol

I get specular off my material from it

Here I've created a completely empty scene and unloaded all the other scenes

I just can't seem to get rid of them at all

They also seem to be untouchable and act like they're checked out lol

We are using Unity 2021.3.12f1

[deft fiber]

It's related to some part of HDRP, probably the volume framework and how it needs to use lights to allow the sky to cast realtime ambient light

I think there's only meant to be one set of three, so there being two sets of three might be an editor glitch

Try to catch a moment when Remy is active in the HDRP channel, they usually have answers to all these mysteries right away ^^

[silver grove]

love how light probes dont work with progressive cpu

[deft fiber]

Can't find any issue with it
Might be helpful to share which editor version and render pipeline you're using

[wraith mica]

I seem to be having some trouble with my fill lighting in my scene. These white "cracks" seem to appear on the ground of my scene here, built out of cubes with some of them overlapping. Is there a reason to why this happens and is there a fix? When I turn off the Fill Light the cracks do not appear. The cracks change location/direction upon moving the camera

[thin cradle]

Hey, how can I make lightning like this guys here https://youtu.be/nmtBq4Z9sD4?t=246
I tried to make spotlight too but I dont see the "Spot Angle" lighted out like in the Video at 4.06
Is it just dust particel system or how can I make this happen ?

like this here

Is it a bloom effect?

[thin cradle]

And How is it possible to get the Lightning around the lights on the Roof?

I know the light is a Spotlight But How does he get the light Circle on the top of the light and How can i get the rays of the light Like he does ?

[silver grove]

URP, 2021.3.0f1 (not updated though), and yourself?

[silver grove]

Its possible he has a light model with emissive texture for the light part, then putting the spotlight right below it

[silver grove]

not sure what you mean by this, like how he made it wide?

[thin cradle]

This was just to Show What i mean with the Rays of the light

[thin cradle]

So he uses emissive Texture to get the Rays of the light ? Or to get this circle around the light ?

[thin cradle]

This it the circle on top around the light I mean. Does he use another light Object to get this?

[upper fable]

No its not bloom alone, there is clearly bloom pp effect enabled but in addition to that you need to get some sort of volumetric lighting system or just fake it in some way like having this type of cone shape and making/getting a shader that draws the mesh in a way it looks like that

[silver grove]

ah yep thats right as well

volumetric lighting is in affect

[silver grove]

He has the lamp model with emissive texture to make it look like its turned on

it doesnt create the light rays itself

three elements to it, the spot light to cast the lighting, the lightbulb model with emissive, and volumetric lighting

[silver grove]

from what I've gained so far working with unity, it definitely doesnt like overlapping elements, especially if you use it with lightmapping

[thin cradle]

Thank you very much!! That was what i was looking for. Also thx to @silver grove for Helping.

[thin cradle]

What do you think he uses for this Circle around the Model of the light? Another light object, if so, wich One would it be ? PointLight? Or is it schader thing again?

[silver grove]

you can do that by making a white emissive texture and assigning it to a round shaped model like that

[upper fable]

Id say point light, maybe combined with light cookies

[deft fiber]

URP also, 2021.3.11f1
You should get the bugfix updates unless you have a good reason not to
I don't recall this being a common issue on any version, however
Progressive CPU is usually the most reliable way to bake

[silver grove]

I'll try updating and see what happens

cheers

I think unity just doesnt handle planes very well, making my meshes not as tiles seems to fix many lighting issues

[deft fiber]

Planes are fine, but having a lot of separate geometry or lightmap UV seams is really difficult for baked lightmapping

[unique mango]

just normal looking point light shadow right?

nah fck u btch LOOK CLOSER. and there is NO WAY to fix it

quality settings are the best resolution and every fckn sht

[chilly kettle]

Did you adjust the Bias settings of the light?

[unique mango]

of course

even the value of 0 is same sht

[chilly kettle]

im quite sure i have read a way to get rid of this a while ago. let me look

What size does your building have there?

in unity units?

[chilly kettle]

ok

Ok what i found what can help is increase the cascade count of shadows or the shadow resolution if you didnt try this

[chilly kettle]

looks okay as well

[deft fiber]

Thread

[wise hawk]

Does anyone know where exactly in the cgincs the lighting from the lightmap is mixed into the gbuffer in deferred with baked lighting? It seems the baked lighting is premixed into the gbuffer's albedo by the time the deferred shader can do anything

(I'm trying to do texel lighting with the lightmaps)

[glacial heron]

This happens to my scene when i load it. Is there a way to light every face of the 3D objects?
I can't find anything working besides the directional light.

[unique mango]

Does anyone know how to tweak or comment out mydist parameter in UnityShadowLibrary.cginc built-in shader?????

i found something that can be a good solution for weird point light shadows

but im not exactly sure what to do and where

this is the possible result

[deft fiber]

Generate lighting for each scene

[crisp rapids]

not entirely sure where to put this but when I make my own procedural skybox to customise the colour over time it goes orange even though the atmosphere tint is white, anyone know why this happens?

[silver grove]

@crisp rapids have you tried turning down exposure?

[unique mango]

left shadow: point light
right shadow: directional light

Directional is just fine I don't want anything more from that. But it's not the best.

Point light is close enough to be fine but it's not really unity's job but mine. I made script for that. Of course I won't let it be as it is because it's not the proper solution. But if someone can help me get similar result without writing any new code and hacking nasa's systems I'll be really grateful.

well... this is without the script

[crisp rapids]

that just makes it less bright, doesnt change the colour

[silver grove]

either that or, you mess with the atmosphere thickness

the exposure thing is for when you have it as dark as possible, itll have this red glow to it which is fixed by turning off exposure

[crisp rapids]

ok

its weird how this is happening since the default skybox works fine but this one doesnt?

[crisp rapids]

wait i only seem to have half the settings im meant to have

fixed it, i seemed to have 2 shaders with the same name, the second one overwriting the default one, deleting that one fixed it

[timber lichen]

whats the light limit

[deft fiber]

What do you find when you google "unity light limit"?

[timber lichen]

thar i need unity pro?

yea idk

[amber arrow]

Hey, I'm using 2019.3.11f1 and everytime I go to click 'generate lighting' it gets stuck on 'Create Geometry 0/11 1 Task' and will not budge, I've left it for an hour at this point and tried a lot of configs on the lighting tab. So stuck

2019.4.31f1* version number

nothing in the console, just nothing happens

[deft fiber]

Clearing the baked lightmap cache entirely before baking again solves most of these nondescript problems

[amber arrow]

tried that multiple times

[deft fiber]

@amber arrow Just to make sure, you are trying to use baked lightmapping, not just generating lighting to save environmental lighting?

[amber arrow]

um...not quite sure what the difference is, it is for a VRChat world.

I'm a total novice

I guess baked for GI and dynamic for shadows

[deft fiber]

Baked lightmapping means using a raycasting process to produce lightmaps that represent bounce lighting
Generating lighting can include that, but doesn't necessarily have to, in case all that's necessary is to generate ambient and reflection probes from the environmental lighting
I assume baked bounce lighting is what you want though

[amber arrow]

yes

[deft fiber]

What I'd do in that situation is try to make a super simple test scene for light baking to see if it works there
Static geometry with too high polycount can cause the baker to hang up
If 2019 has the option for progressive GPU lightmapper, try that instead of CPU or vice versa

[amber arrow]

that was using the GPU lightmapper, have a 2070super. Ended up grabbing Bakery as many people have recommended it and baking fine, just need to figure out dynamic shadows with it.

[deft fiber]

Usually if CPU baking works but GPU baking fails, usually means the editor has failed to access the GPU properly
Every time that's happened for me it's worked to restart the editor and make sure the GPU drivers are up to date

Dynamic shadows together with baked lighting are used via "shadowmask" and mixed lights
Don't know what the Bakery equivalent is

[silver grove]

anyone know whats causing this botched lightmapping?

the right side especially, its not as close as the left side yet reflects indirect light like its close

[deft fiber]

I expect you would need to increase min and max bounces

[silver grove]

damn not enough bounces can cause that?

[deft fiber]

The light rays bounce from the far wall to the side walls, but will have to bounce again to reach the far wall again, so the limit may be terminating them prematurely

[silver grove]

makes sense, Ill give that a try thanks

[rapid crow]

anyone know how to fix this problem? In game (after I clear cache) the lighting looks completely fine but as soon as I press play I guess something disables??? not exactly sure what's wrong here

[lament barn]

Does anyone know why it seems as if parts of my model are lit from the outside instead of the inside?
its especially weird considering the mesh normals seem to be oriented the right way (its one sided and shows no face on the outside)

[silver grove]

yeah so... outside faces dont block lights @lament barn

you can try double sided shadows

although you will run into shadow seems

[lament barn]

I don't need them to block lights, im only lighting from the inside

[silver grove]

the other option is to make it a 3d cube

oh?

You mean the desk?

[lament barn]

the problem is that the room is not being lit from the inside

[silver grove]

oh right

are the walls and floors static?

also depends what the lighting setup is

[lament barn]

the walls and floors are all part of one big mesh

[silver grove]

ah yep... okay so that may be a problem

I've tried combined meshes and that completely fucks up the lighting

probably something similar there?

might want to try making the pieces modular as walls and floors

probably will get better results

[lament barn]

I did just fix the problem by recalculating the inside normals on every room actually

[silver grove]

oh awesome

[lament barn]

however im still curious as to why that would fix the issue at all, considering they were already oriented correctly

otherwise you couldn't even see the room

[lament barn]

I actually started by doing that but I got terrible lighting results using that method

every seam would visibly show up

[silver grove]

yeah... not too modular to the point where you have multiple pieces for one side of a wall

[lament barn]

even if I scaled them to snap to the absolute grid in Unity

[silver grove]

can I see the after?

[lament barn]

baking :p

[silver grove]

fug aight

[lament barn]

looks 'aight

[silver grove]

wow

its fucking beautiful

Im gonna try making rooms out of one giant mesh now lol

Ive been putting it off because Im not sure if the effort is worth the risk of it going awol

[lament barn]

I mean I wouldn't do it for anything non-low poly tbh

texturing can become a mess doing it that way

luckily in low poly i can just use flat colouring

[silver grove]

yeah true

lighting becomes more important the less detail things are

[lament barn]

so I can get away with this amazing uv map lol

[silver grove]

oh god

yeah alright

[deft fiber]

Try generating lighting from lighting window (no need for "baked lightmapping"), check if it persists
Then restart editor, check if it persists

Then check if it persists in build

[rapid crow]

aight its baking rn, I'll let you know if it works

@deft fiber it just looks like this now

[deft fiber]

So, shadows no longer turn black?

[rapid crow]

no now they just dont work at all

nvm I got it working

[silver grove]

what did you do?

[rapid crow]

thank you 🙏

[rapid crow]

I hit the generate lighting button before and for some reason it just eliminated the shadows

so I just clicked chose the lighting data asset that looked the best to me in "Baked Lightmaps" in the lighting window

and that seemed to fix the problem

[deft fiber]

@rapid crow Helps to be specific about what kind of lighting (baked, precomputed, realtime, whatnot) you intend to use, so I don't have to guess

[rapid crow]

oh sorry, yeah I'll definitely do that next time

I'm extremely new to lighting

[silver grove]

@lament barn my room already looks 100%+ less buggy as a full mesh, thanks for the inspiration lol

[lament barn]

[daring haven]

That image! What is it? Halloween? ... oh, hang on....

[acoustic tartan]

So another "help light is bleeding through" issue

The meshes are generated with pro builder

The hallway mesh and the room mesh are two seperate objects

The light is confirmed to be 100% inside the hallway and I've confirmed that it's the closest light source to capsul that's causing the issue. Two-sided shadows have been enabled for the meshes.

Also this issue only appears in Play mode, when in Editor mode the lighting behaves as expected

Any idea what could be the cause?

[silver grove]

As I found out yesterday (you can scroll up) making the rooms as entire meshes would make it much easier for the lighting in unity to be accurate

I too had massive issues with choppy lighting or leaking lights when using probuilder

that being said, full meshes can have leak issues as well, just make sure there are no split edges

[acoustic tartan]

Unfortunately that's not actually practical as doing so will get you wrecked by the 6 max light sources per object limit

[silver grove]

is 6 max light sources baked or realtime as well?

[acoustic tartan]

Only realtime

[silver grove]

if you're able to find a resolution to getting accurate lighting results with probuilder, I have a vested interest

otherwise I just found it much easier to use mesh rooms and design around the light limit

[acoustic tartan]

Sure, though in this case I have assume it's something silly, since the lighting DOES actually work correctly in edit mode

[languid violet]

this is scene and camera view. Looks a bit different. Why are there no shadows on the cam view?

[silver grove]

is the light coming from where the camera is?

[languid violet]

yes

[silver grove]

it may be a case of perspective, does it show if you move the camera to the right, away from the light?

[languid violet]

the light is under the cam if you know what i mean it always moves with the cam

[silver grove]

then its probably doing it correctly

your camera will not see the shadow its casting

[languid violet]

why?

[silver grove]

because perspective

[languid violet]

What do you mean can you explain it?

[silver grove]

if your eyes shot out rays of light, you will never see shadows in your entire life

[languid violet]

ah i see

[hybrid pebble]

Does anybody have ANY idea of why this looks like this?

i`ve been follingaround

with every single possible setting i can think of

and nothing works

to fix this

idk what to do anymore

anyobjet i add to the scene has hard shadows like this

i turned off every single light on the scene

yet this still remains

and idk why

it looks like i mixed two separate objets, but this is basically the inside of a cube, it shoudln`t look like this, all the shadows are messed up

[deft fiber]

Screen space ambient occlusion

[hybrid pebble]

alright

[hybrid pebble]

how do i get to that?

sorry

[deft fiber]

Depends on your render pipeline

[hybrid pebble]

urp

[deft fiber]

It's defined in the renderer asset

[hybrid pebble]

ok

ok

found it

and trying to change things within this, doesn`t solve this

i am

stumped

[deft fiber]

I assume you ruled out it being from the baked lightmap, but if you didn't it could also be baked ambient occlusion

It looks like baked GI and "auto generate" are on, but there's reported to be no lightmaps so I'm not certain what's going on

Perhaps you're attempting to bake lighting on non-static meshes
Could also be that you have several renderer assets and you aren't changing the right one

[hybrid pebble]

I do have several

I guess i need to look into every asset to figure out the correct one

[deft fiber]

URP assets define quality settings for rendering, each of them refers to a renderer asset to choose rendering path and to implement renderer features such as SSAO

[hybrid pebble]

Thank you
I has no idea

[spark pawn]

Anyone have any idea why my baked Lightmap UV charts look like this? I would assume one color per chart (UV Island/shell)

[silver grove]

looks beautiful though

[hollow dagger]

Hey, any recomendations to make it look good?

[final lance]

this engine is very strange sometimes

does anyone know the reasoning behind why bloom PPEs affect every object in the scene?

[deft fiber]

That's how it fundamentally works
It processes the rendered image in post

Bloom in particular has a "threshold" value which ignores pixels below certain brightness value

[final lance]

and bloom is achieved through HDR right? so wouldn't giving an object a material with a color mode prop set to default make it ignore the bloom?

or am I misunderstanding something

[upper fable]

Hdr just allows brighter color values. Bloom affects everything except pixels below the threshold brightness

[final lance]

gotcha. How can I manipulate the brightness for individual objects? via materials?

essentially I want to exclude some objects from the bloom effect

[upper fable]

Yes

[final lance]

what property would that be?

[upper fable]

color

also emission if thats in use

[final lance]

I realize I'm asking a lot of questions so I apologize, but I'm just trying to clarify some stuff

I DO notice that a color's value impacts the bloom intensity, which makes sense, but what if I want a high value color without the bloom?

I would change the threshold on the override?

[upper fable]

That you cant do. Only way that I know is to render those objects without bloom with different camera than all the other objects

[final lance]

hm.

that's not ideal but if it works it works

[upper fable]

PP effects are always added to all pixels on the camera

[final lance]

thanks for your help. That was extremely useful

[deft fiber]

In simplified terms a surface's brightness is light it recieves * albedo color + emission color

Normally the albedo color cannot go higher than 1 or 100%, so with a very bright coloured object whether it surpasses your bloom thershold or not is dependent on how much light it recieved

A sufficiently high bloom threshold in most scenarios will let you display fully bright albedo colors without blooming, and where you want blooming use a very intense emission color

This gets tricky to fully control if the player can stick objects really close to lights to make them really bright, or if you're working with adaptive exposure

[primal rover]

I'm having issues with the lighting in a house I'm using. I'm basically trying to make the house darker, I was recommended deleting lightmaps which I've done but now it gives me an off-color kinda look. I was told I needed to bake light probes with new settings and bake the reflection probes. But I can't really see where I'm supposed to change the light probes.

It looks like this:

But i want it to look like this:

i just dont understand lighting i guess right now, and looking for someone who might know something about whats going on

[silver grove]

you need lightmaps

thats how it tells light to bounce and illuminate stuff

[primal rover]

with the lightmaps theres too much excess light and its not dark enough at all, light in random spots too

i was told to remove the lightmaps

[silver grove]

you'll need to modify the lighting parameters to get it the way you want them to look like

and if there's lights in random spots, go through this:
https://forum.unity.com/threads/lightmapping-troubleshooting-guide.1340936/#post-8466893

there is no way you're going to achieve the second image without global illumination

either that or ray tracing

[primal rover]

i see okay

ytea im very new to all this and like

lighting seems so tricky dude..

[silver grove]

yeah...

it is

very finnicky

[primal rover]

yeah

[silver grove]

its worth spending days on, so get your gameplay loop first before being concerned with lighting

and art stuff in general

[primal rover]

worth getting gameplay down before lighting

?

maes sense yea

good advice

ill read that forum, might as well ask this rq if u know can u just simply darken lightmaps or does it not work that way

[silver grove]

do you use directional lighting?

[primal rover]

yeah

[silver grove]

mega problem

it likes to highlight dark areas

[primal rover]

does that affect the INSIDE tho

cuz i have it outside

[silver grove]

yes

[primal rover]

ohh

[silver grove]

dark shadows

[primal rover]

should i disable it entirely?

[silver grove]

If you make it a gradient, you can modify equator and ground colour

if you turn that black you will see how dark you can make things

welll

if you need day night cycle then not really

[primal rover]

nah just needs to stay night

[silver grove]

makes it easier for you then

yeah so instead of using colour lighting from skybox, change that to gradient

sorry actually, directional lighting isnt the problem

its the skybox lighting that is

which is affected by directional lighting

[primal rover]

in the actual lighting settings

[silver grove]

yeah

where you assign the skybox and sun

[primal rover]

yee

i see

hm, that doesnt rly seem to actually change a lot

[silver grove]

did you bake the lightmaps?

no lighting thing is going to change a lot if theres no light mapping

[primal rover]

ye theyre baked

[silver grove]

you'll need to mess with the intensity parameters and such

[primal rover]

here can i tell u exactly what the creator said to me? it seems we're on opposite time zones thats why its hard for me to talk to him about it

[silver grove]

sure

[primal rover]

so for pre-context here I had sent him the 2nd image that u saw (the actual good looking one)

and i really just dont see what he means i cant rly find options hes talking about

i can remove the lightmaps like he said and it gets closer

but not quite u know what i mean?

when i do that it removes the lightmaps

but u said theres no way u can do it w/o lightmaps

[silver grove]

oh this is stoer asset?

[primal rover]

ye

me and a buddy were like fuggit and we tryna learn stuff and we found this one

it had a lot of learning potential ig u can call it

[silver grove]

so what if you just deleted it all and created it again

open another unity project

[primal rover]

just like completely start over with it?

[silver grove]

solely for that

and mess around with it

[primal rover]

shouldnt be too bad, id just have to re-apply a couple scripts but

[silver grove]

well not even

you can keep this one

[primal rover]

but make another one?

like a duplicate

[silver grove]

just make another one so you can exzperiment with the lighting

[primal rover]

purely to fuck with

[silver grove]

yes

[primal rover]

hmm ig i havent thought of that rly

[silver grove]

I hav like 10 projects full of trash

just so I can experiment

[primal rover]

yeah i never thought of that

not a bad idea

i still wouldnt rly know what to do exactly but

i WOULD be more comfortable messing with stuff

[silver grove]

ye

[primal rover]

cuz rn im kinda like afraid ima destroy some thing major

and its all fucked

that is a good idea though dude

[silver grove]

have fun bro

dont be afraid to start over

good thing scripts can be just copy and pasted over

but if you have a project with lots of worldbuilding and such already

[primal rover]

yeah exactly

[silver grove]

dont import stuff you dont know

I think its good practice to just import stuff into dummy projects first just to see if they actually work first

[primal rover]

yeah

that sounds like a good idea

also ig i can ask this but im p sure i know the answer lol

u just obv know more than me but

ok so

this asset has a URP & HDRP versions

so when creating the project, i can still just create it as a 3D (core) project right?

or do i need to do any bs special shit

like just, bam right

[silver grove]

3d Core is bult in

[primal rover]

ye

[silver grove]

you want the (URP) or (HDRP)

there's three render pipe lines by default

[primal rover]

bottom one

[silver grove]

Built-In, URP, and HDRP

URP is more lightweight and performance friendly than HDRP

[primal rover]

but HDRP just looks better?

id guess

[silver grove]

HDRP has better graphics yeah

[primal rover]

yeah

while i dont need it to be triple A

style of graphics lol

i dont want it looking bad

is there a big diff between the 2?

is it WORTH using HDRP version if ur not going for like an insanely beautiful game?

[silver grove]

imo not really

not too familiar with HDRP tbh

but pretty sure you can dial it back to URP levels

just need to mess with it

[primal rover]

yeah

hmm

ig ill just load into the hdrp one

cant be too harmful

[silver grove]

its all free

[primal rover]

yea

wait so

could the house have been affected because i wasnt using the hdrp one?

cuz i imported the HDRP house, but i only used 3d core

or is that kinda irrelevant ?

[silver grove]

that is likely

[primal rover]

oh

[silver grove]

if an asset is not designed for a render pipeline, anything can go bad

[primal rover]

yeah

[silver grove]

and it will go bad

[primal rover]

anything that can go wrong will go wrong lol

[silver grove]

shaders especially

[primal rover]

so i wonder if like

my problem could just be solved by this?

[silver grove]

yeah maybe

[primal rover]

my brain is telling me thats not the case

but im hopeful

and optimistic lol

[deft fiber]

@silver grove @primal rover Remember that discord threads are good if it seems that a topic drags out

[lone pier]

Whenever I set my structures to static and try to build the lighting, it throws these errors in the console and leaves these visual artifacts everywhere.

Does anyone know how I can fix this?

[lone pier]

Figured it out, I had to make sure that Generate Lightmap UVs was checked on my models

[manic vector]

i have lights in my scene liek area lights spotlight etc but they arent emitting any light

does anyone know why its happening

i am working in a 2d project btw ive seen that it might have somethnig to do with it

[serene basin]

I've created this simple map with probuilder. I built out the red side as a single probuilder object, then duplicated and mirrored it (so I have two probuilder objects that compose the level). However, I'm having this issue where the baked light seems to be sharing between the two probuilder meshes. Clearing all baked lighting data and regenerating doesn't do anything. The two objects have two different mesh names when I inspect them in the editor, so why is this happening and how can I fix it?

In this pic the issue is that the blue room has the same baked indirect red lighting on the walls as the red room

and here's after i cleared bake data and baked again. this time the blue indirect light is on the red room walls

it seems to randomly switch between the two

[deft fiber]

They have overlapping lightmap UVs
You'll probably have to enable lightmap UV generation for them, or separate them into different probuilder objects somehow so they don't get the exact same ones

Probuilder generates meshes by its own rules so I'm not entirely sure what affects it
If all fails you should be able to export them into non-probuilder meshes so Unity can do the lightmap business uninterfered

[whole bramble]

well

in case of LOD group

how can i make the second LOD objects get lightmapped by baking?

[whole bramble]

whenever i am baking lighting, i see that the gameobjects of the second LOD group i.e LOD 1, is getting UV overlapped

but when i am baking that game object individually without LOD , then it is getting normally baked without any UV overlapping warning

a big depression

[whole bramble]

well....kind of solved

i just probuilderized those objects

and on the exported mesh i checked 'generate lightmap UVs'

then those noisy/dark artifacts went away

and got a healthy baked lightmap

[stable patio]

Is there any way of passing my own shadowmap into the Unitys _ShadowMapTexture and enabling SHADOW_SCREEN keyword so it will render the shadows? trying to enable keyword but it simply wont take it, and cant find any information of overriding unity's shadows

[orchid rampart]

is there any method of making skinned mesh renderers receive light maps? I have a cardboard box rigged for modularity, no movement would be happening in the scene. However, stuck using a skinnedmeshrenderer instead of a normal mesh renderer due to this. Sorting out the bake lights for my scene but the boxes kinda stand out not being able to receive the bake lights.

[silver grove]

Anyone know whats going on here? the mesh render of the mannequin is messing up the lighting very badly

[deft fiber]

Specify what "messing up lighting" means
You can investigate it by testing if the lighting looks messed up without the blobby fog, in different lighting (preferably new test scene) or by assigning different materials to the mannequin (or assigning its material to a default cube)

[silver grove]

Sure I can do a control test, but there is no fog involved, just tried assigning a different material, no difference

this is what is behind it

nothing

that is not correct, aka messed up

[deft fiber]

@silver grove is the problem w ith the mesh or with the shadows of the surroundings?

[silver grove]

definitely something with the mesh

if I disable the mesh render, all is well

[atomic monolith]

How bad do point lights bog down a scene? Say I have a city background and i want to put point lights in the windows to make them glow a little.. would that like really slow things down? Id say there are about 100 windows. Is there a better way?

[deft fiber]

In forward rendering which is the most common each mesh within a light's range will be rendered again for each light
So, pretty expensive with a lot of lights, big ranges and/or big meshes
For cities you usually can get by with just an emissive texture for windows, or something called "fake interior" shader

Baked lights or deferred rendering path don't have that specific limitation, but they have their own

[atomic monolith]

Thank you so much, for your response! I figured it would be pricy. I had a feeling from back when I used maya that emissive textures were a thing and i think thatll be perfect! You rock!

[small fulcrum]

Howdy folks. I am using the Light 2D experimental for Point lights, and have noticed they add when overlapping. This can lead to wash-out when a large number of illuminated sprites are close together. Do any toggles or strategies exist for mitigating this?

[deft fiber]

I believe you can use HDR emulation and light blend styles as defined in the renderer asset to change how much brightness builds up and how lights blend together
I don't think the 2D renderer has been called "experimental" since a couple of years ago

[small fulcrum]

I wonder if perhaps that is related to my using 220.f.36f1. Been hesitant to upgrade given how quickly old packages are deprecated, and I'm still learning the ropes.

"3. For Unity v2021+: Right click in your project window, Create > Rendering > URP Asset (with 2D renderer). For Unity v2020: Right click in your project window, Create > Rendering > Universal Render Pipeline > 2D Renderer (Experimental)." So yeah, I'm just on a much older build I suppose.

The only light blend styles defined are multiply, additive, subtractive... nothing I can fine tune really?

The URP Asset itself has fields for maximum lights on a pixel, but they don't seem to be considered.

[daring haven]

Didn't someone say they are like a cube - 6 faces of light - so 6 times more expensive than say a spotlight?

[upper fable]

That doesnt seem right. First of all, the math behind spot light is bit more complicated. The faces doesnt really matter, I think this was referring to shadow maps which is problem only if the light casts shadows. Even then the "6 times more expensive" isnt exactly correct, its true each side is rendered to their own shadowmap texture (/part of texture atlas, using single pass tho) but what matters more is the amount of objects that gets affected by the light/shadow so light range can have major impact on the performance. In general spot light is cheaper than point light but 6 faces = 6 times faster isnt true (https://forum.unity.com/threads/what-is-the-most-expensive-light-type-in-unity-3d.56490/)

[small fulcrum]

I am all updated to Unity 2022 and although the naming is different, and the experimental is gone, nothing much else has changed regarding point lights overlapping and washing out the scene. It is interesting reading posts over the years detailing the same issue I'm having with point lights, yet no real viable solutions. It apparently is a much larger issue in 3D due to the "realistic" falloff range of light that makes it very difficult to do flashlights properly w/o tonemapping. Generally there folks expect static scenes so bake the lightmaps and move on. One recommendation I tried had me adding a post-process tone mapping shader. It dimmed the overall scene but didn't actually help the problem. And I'm not really setup for writing my own shader. Just surprised to see this is a common issue and the recommended solution is don't use lights if they could possible overlap. If I could simply limit the number of light sources acting on a pixel simultaneously it'd be fine, but those settings don't seem to affect this.

[whole bramble]

any solution for lightprobes breaking the static batching?

[whole bramble]

bump!

[deft fiber]

Very few
https://forum.unity.com/threads/static-batching-problem-with-light-probes.949707/

[edgy stream]

Hey guys!
Im having shadow issues, how do I stop shadows that occur when the light source is coming from underneath the geometry? The terrain is casting a shadow onto the pillar

Some extra details is that the shader for the terrain is a custom shader where I have custom code that enables shadow casting / recieving on instanced indirect meshes.

[whole bramble]

u can just keep receive shadows off on the cube...

The culled geometry surface let light pass through a mesh

[edgy stream]

yeah I figured as much but was hoping for a solution to fix for all cases, stopping the shadow cast on the cube still allows the shadow on the terrain gemetry in weird places

[whole bramble]

those shadows are not from the cube

If you turn off cast shadow on your terrain as well...it fixes the problem

[edgy stream]

its like a lose lose situation then lol, no shadows from the mountain tops, ill just look for another solution

[edgy stream]

a middle of the road solution was to check the angle of the light and bsaically clamp it between 0 and 180, essentially forcing the light to always stay above the ground. OFC its not perfect, but another solution I thought of was maybe to have two directional lightsources that alternate depending on the time

[cobalt hound]

So I clearly must be doing SOMETHING wrong but when I use mixed baking with a directional light to bake a lightmap it seems to cause an issue where when there is no light at all afterwards some top faces begin to glow to an extreme level

HDRP stuff I guess. Is there an obvious reason this would be happening?

[timber lichen]

So, I have a really larged scale world that uses a day and night cycle. Is there a way to bake the lighting for only the emmissions on the materials being used in the world and not the shadows?

[wise hawk]

You need shadow casting geometry on the bottom of your terrain

I know it sounds counterintuitive because you're adding geometry that will never be seen, but think of it from the perspective of the light: it culls backfaces as any normal camera would, so you get the effect where only some of faces (the ones that are inclined towards the light) cast a shadow and you get zebra stripes

[silver grove]

anyone know what this is?
There's this circle that resizes based on how far from the wall I am

disappears if I turn rendering culling mask to nothing, but then the sun light stops casting on surfaces

so is it something to do with light optimisation?

(this comes from directional lighting)

[silver grove]

fixed it 🙂

shadow distance

[edgy stream]

Good idea

[wise hawk]

You can make it a seperate object and set it to shadow only if you want, although it honestly shouldn't matter really

[little condor]

On your post-processing settings, play with the Exposure and Bloom settings. To me it looks like you may have 'Automatic' mode for exposure which is trying to compensate for the mostly dark scene, but then the tops of your walls are being blown out and then the Bloom exacerbates the problem.

[wise hawk]

That might be it but I've had problems before where lightmap errors result in extremely overbright pixels

I dont remember exactly what it was or how it was resolved but they were technical mistakes in the vein of having exposed backfaces

[lyric gull]

Why? And how to fix? What I meen is making the baked one look actual good

[deft fiber]

You can control the quality of the shadow by changing lightmap resolution, lightmap compression quality as well as increasing samples so there's no denoiser grain
However, do you really need to bake a sharp projected shadow onto a featureless floor?

You'll usually want to use baked lighting in situations where there's many light sources and/or a lot of bounce lighting, so there are no terribly sharp shadows

Having some natural texturing on the floor also practically hides compression artifacts and other imperfections

I probably would use mixed lights with shadowmask mode to get both sharp shadows and bounce lighting, but that's only if I really need the sharp shadows and increasing texture that much isn't preferable

[lyric gull]

well thanks for all the detailed answers. I was just doing the unity learn ligthing stuff and notice this difference and just wondered 😄

[deft fiber]

Realtime and baked lights excel at different things, basically

[silver grove]

Soo the directional lighting rotation is choppy, I've tried rotating using slerp and currently just use Vector3.Rotate(vector3) but there's no differences, is there an issue with settings?

settings

[deft fiber]

I would guess this is related to your directional light shadow resolution, shadow distance and cascades

At low shadow resolution and a moving light source the shadow would be snapping from pixel to pixel

[silver grove]

yeah sounds about right, I'll try upping that, forgot I was using baked GI, so that may be affecting it

cheers

[deft fiber]

It won't, since your directional light is entirely realtime

[hexed portal]

Hey, im attempting to color a mesh using a shader and c# code, but it turns out extremely weird, and i cant see any shadows or depth on the object?
Im setting the colors of each vertex using mesh.Colors[vertexIndex].
Material is shownon the 2nd picture.

mesh has a structure like so

I would assume the issue is me using baked lights and changing the baked mesh's vertices at runtime??

Okay i just solved my own problem nwm

[hexed portal]

Now im having issues with everything being great in editor, but when i build it it looks like shit and there are no shadows?

[deft fiber]

Do share

[deft fiber]

It'll always help to demonstrate the specific variety of shit
Though I'd guess it's that you haven't generated lighting for scenes (baked lightmapping doesn't have to be enabled, and shouldn't be unless you want that workflow)

[hexed portal]

Fixed that as well, 1st issue was due to me using baked lights whilst changing mesh;s structure which broke it somehow. So i changed it to realtime and it worked.
2nd issue was due to the quality level being at 5 in the editor and for whatever reason being set to 2 in the built game.
So i just made a script to force quality to 5 at load.
And now everything is as it should be

[modest ledge]

Hi all, I'm having some dumb results with lighting in my VR Chat world.. there's some pre-existing stuff I've been able to look past but I've just a made a new spawn room and I can't figure out why I'm getting these results.
As you can see the walls aren't receiving any light at all, and the door frames are wildly different from one another?? Any ideas what's going on?

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/841232199415758878/1039786819409150003/image.png
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/841232199415758878/1039786304721915985/image.png

[silver grove]

@modest ledge tried rebaking the lightmaps?

[modest ledge]

Yup, a few times, I get varied results but nothing I'd consider passable.

[silver grove]

what happens if you recreate the walls?

[modest ledge]

As in reimport the mesh?

[silver grove]

yeah, in that case it could be a problem with the normals

did you make it?

or downloaded?

[modest ledge]

I made it, the normals are all in the correct orientation.

[silver grove]

look at this:
https://forum.unity.com/threads/static-model-goes-black-when-lighting-is-baked.140815/

[modest ledge]

I'll have a looksie, thanks

[modest ledge]

That was my issue, thanks!

[silver grove]

nice 🙂

[umbral elk]

Why is my image burning when setting the rotation of the sun to midday?

This is the default one, but I want the shadows from the top

[deft fiber]

Your material appears to have specularity, so as in reality the sun's light is reflected back to the camera

At other angles it's reflected away

[umbral elk]

@deft fiber Oh, it was that hahaha, thank you! ❤️

[peak pilot]

Hello, my Angel object is black without a skybox and in my scene i cant have a skybox because it will mess upp the lighting. The light you see on the walls are all baked. so I have no real time lighting. Is there a way I can make my object show its texture without skybox

[modest ledge]

I believe the object has to be set to static to receive baked lighting.

[peak pilot]

I allways forgets that, Thank you ❤️

[deft fiber]

@peak pilot Dynamic objects can also receive baked lighting via light probes

Also useful for non-lightmapped static objects

[peak pilot]

ok

[vestal basin]

Anyone know if there's a way to share environment lighting between scenes, or even just copy the values over in some convenient way? It's very tedious to have to go through each one just to make one change.** **

[deft fiber]

The way that comes to mind is additive scene loading
The additional scenes would inherit the envrionmental lighting from the main scene

[silver grove]

Do you know if there is a performance hit when using light probes vs lightmaps?

[rapid hazel]

is there any way to globally light a scene?

with out directional lights?

[serene tartan]

Is it possible to programatically set the directional light values (direction and color) only for specific material? I am using DOTS renderer so using separate layer and separate light source for this material is not an option since DOTS renderes currently supports only single layer

[serene tartan]

I tried setting light color globally like this but it doesn't seem to be working:
public static int _MainLightColor = Shader.PropertyToID("_MainLightColor");
public static int _LightColor = Shader.PropertyToID("_LightColor");
...
Shader.SetGlobalColor(_MainLightColor, Color.green);
Shader.SetGlobalColor(_LightColor, Color.green);

[deft fiber]

Yes
Why?

[rapid hazel]

I just want to light a scene up

like I'm using an unlit shader, but not quite flat

[deft fiber]

Use environmental lighting

[rapid hazel]

doesn't work quite right

[deft fiber]

I started by asking why so that I can avoid suggesting something that doesn't actually suit your project's specific needs

Environmental lighting is highly customizable though, so it's still likely the solution
Good luck

[deft fiber]

I guess some, as they're evaluated in realtime, though it's still baked data being sampled
I haven't heard of any performance considerations with light probes so I assume the impact is negligible in most circumstances
It rarely makes sense to compare them directly since you would almost always prefer probes for any object that doesn't specifically need baked lightmapping
Small objects for example tend to be a total waste to bake lightmaps for

Lightmaps tend to have a much bigger filesize

[glass shard]

Not sure if anyone has seen this before, but my realtime lighting works fine in editor, but in build there is 0 lights rendering. So its pitch black. Any idea what this could be?

[fluid musk]

Hi, I am using URP 12 and Unity 2021.3.4. I have some custom shaders from an asset and I'd like to use a cookie on a spotlight, when shining on this shader(left), my cookie doesn't show. When shining on the standard lit it works fine. Any clue on how to fix this?

[deft fiber]

Refrain from crossposting

It's quite rude

[silver grove]

Yeah, I guess if the light probes are baked data there shouldnt be much difference

[primal slate]

using unity solely to convert 3d models, so i don't have much in the scene
there's a weird shadow cast over the entire scene around the horizon line
it moves when i move the camera and appears to cover the entire scene
this is when i have turned off the directional light
how do i get rid of this?
there are only 2 objects: the model and the light (turned off)

[daring haven]

Are you using HDRP vs URP etc? There are project defaults you can set (varies per pipeline). E.g. what skybox is being used, are you using physical sky, HDRI, any fog, ... some of them can be done in the project settings rather than the scene, so I would be looking through those. (No, I am not an expert, but I found some of the defaults were not what I wanted with HDRP for example - there was a ground tint shining light upwards by default for example)

[shadow zodiac]

Can someone explain to me why changing a layer on an object removes it's shadows?

Default Layer

Other Layer

I'm using HDRP

[graceful shoal]

I'm palying around with the HDRP lighting settings... Under Project Settings > Graphics > HDRP Global Settings. Are these settings the same as if I made a Volume component one an empty?

If I wanna create a scene, with one global light setting, should I just use the settings in the Project Settings tab?

[wicked orchid]

Is there a way to include more than light layer 0 as the default? I'd like light layer 1 to also be checked by default... very tedious to go through all my renderers and turn it on (and prone to me forgetting)

[small fulcrum]

Hey folks. Figured I'd ask again... I'm making a Unity 2022, 2D game with Point Lights using the latest URP. When too many overlap, the scene gets incredibly washed out. Does any method exist to prevent this from happening? This is a particularly bad problem when AI units are emitting glowing effects and begin to clump up

I tried using a Tone mapping shader on the scene but it only added perhaps another 10% margin before it washes out.

[daring haven]

I think so, yes. You can then override the the settings with volumes etc. I say "I think so" however as sometimes it seems to not work as I expected, so I always create a global volume in the scene. It has been more predictable that way. But I might just have made a mistake somewhere. I believe the idea is the global settings is the default, as you indicated.

[daring haven]

The manual says "Shadow Light Layers - When using Light Layers, Meshes only cast shadows for Lights on the same Light Layer as them." So I would check the layers for the lights and objects to see if there is some difference going on.