archived-lighting

[night shell]

even outside as well

so whats the solution here?

you sort of need to be smart about it

for example instead of modeling this room in a bunch of little squares, you "combine" meshes, and instead of the floor in this instance being a bunch of little cubes

you make it one big stretched cube

gimme a sec to show it off

realtime in this example

but notice no more lines

its perfect

same with the outside (excusing the sloppy nature of my cube modeling)

now when I bake it

notice how much cleaner it all looks

granted you still see some artifacts because of my rough cube modeling, but we can take it another level where its all combined

you following so far @dense mural ?

I'll show the light blocker thing as well in a bit

here we go

done in probuilder but this entire room is all one mesh

compare that to prior where the room was modeled with cubes that were all perfectly aligned mind you...

now granted, its important to mention that you can STILL segment meshes

but you need to segment them where it makes sense

for example this room, all of these walls can be seperated, and it'll look the same

segmented walls in this example, and it still looks the same

and its segmented where it makes sense if you think about it

its where literally there is a wall there

now...

to explain why you need shadow blockers

usually for lightmapping this isn't too much of an issue

but for realtime lights

here is a mesh with no backfaces on the outside

obviously light leaks through

I can set this to be a two sided shadow caster...

but watch what happens

so for realtime lighting, this is why light blockers are necessary

to an extent this also applies to baked lighting

this is from unity's trouble shooting guide, but here is an example of light leakage even in an interior scene with light baking

light blocker meshes are always very necessary

@dense mural

sorry for @'ing but just making sure you catch all of it

[dense mural]

Yeah you're good, sorry I'm in lecture rn but I'll check it out when I'm done

[deft fiber]

@night shell good demo!

[night shell]

glad you appreciate it

[deft fiber]

Even a completely seamless room with smooth normals for corners can appear to leak light

[night shell]

yep

[deft fiber]

I'd say do whatever but be ready with the duct tape
You could be doing everything "wrong" and still end up not having to use the workarounds, if the light angle and player perspectives just happen to not reveal any problems

[night shell]

^^ this is a good point

[deft fiber]

Except this tiled style for baking tbh
Even if it's possible to tweak settings and tile geometry to get it seamless, each of them still needs margins on the lightmap which end up consuming most of it

So I don't recommend to try it under any circumstance

[reef schooner]

Why is my Coin in the game not like the Image? Its a bit gray

[night shell]

is it fully opaque? you might also have potentially some post processing ontop that will definetly affect the color

[reef schooner]

How can I see if it's completely opaque?

[night shell]

the color of the sprite

in the image field

it looks fully opaque

[reef schooner]

yes it is

Thats my Canvas

[night shell]

well it makes me think that its some kind of post processing you have ontop that is affecting your UI colors, or you might also have something else layered ontop that is affecting its color as well

are you using any post processing?

[reef schooner]

If I switch to Screen Space Overlay it works but then I lose the glow effect

[night shell]

so you do have post processing

[reef schooner]

yes

[night shell]

you probably have tonemapping enabled

[reef schooner]

tonemapping ?

[night shell]

you'll find it under color grading

if you want to keep tonemapping

but make is so those UI elements arent affected

your probably going to have to render that UI on a seperate camera

[reef schooner]

On which Object?

[night shell]

and that camera will have no post processing

[night shell]

your post processing volume

[reef schooner]

ok thanks

[reef schooner]

Tonemapping isnt enabled

[night shell]

do you not have any other options enabled under color grading that change your image colors?

no contrast/brightness/gamma etc. adjustments?

[night shell]

oh your using HDRP

[reef schooner]

yes

[night shell]

right because HDRP has another post processing volume with tonemapping enabled by default

and you don't know where it is

well you can add an override

so on that volume add a tonemapping component

and set it to none

[reef schooner]

ok yes that helps

[dense acorn]

I'm using URP for 2D lighting, and when I use a freerform light to light up edges, I'm getting weird artifacts.

I don't have any shadow casting objects in the scene, and changing the falloff seems to mess with it a lot

[dense mural]

@night shell that first image shows how I have my room set up, each one of those colliders is a wall segment, and then the second image shows the bleed through the ceiling

so I'm guessing I would need to make those shadow blockers you mentioned?

[night shell]

yes

[dense mural]

so would you completely surround the corridor in a single large cube? Or would you place one in the wall segment prefab?

[night shell]

depends on your level geometry

generally I would try to surround the entire map, and put cutouts wherever I need it

[dense mural]

Okay cool, thank you, I really appreciate it

[untold rain]

How best to have multiple light sources in a scene? Like 500+? I'm worried what slows down a computer

I am trying to do a festival scene at night, and am going to end up with a lot of lanterns and lights.

This is for a First Person game.

[stark temple]

if you use deferred rendering then the cost of lights is per pixel that they light on the screen. But regardless of that, the smaller lights should probably just be lit billboards/meshes and not actual lights

[untold rain]

I am doing Unity Spotlights.

[stark temple]

The actual lighting should just be general approximations, and the light objects should just be materials that give the appearance they're causing that lighting

[untold rain]

Here is one example. This is not the festival lights, but I also have these hazards that are sort of like "Light up Disco Floor"

Each has a spotlight for Blue, Yellow, and Red.

This probably should somehow just be drawn-on as most of the light in my scene may not change at all.

I am sort of new to lighting in the scenes.

(Also in the scene, there are about 300 of these panels)

[stark temple]

Again, if you use deferred rendering then the cost of lights is per-pixel that they light on the screen. So the smaller the lights are on the screen the less cost they incur, the amount of lights matters much less.
If you don't mind those panels not causing lighting on the objects around them then the panels themselves could just be emissive materials and then you once again approximate the lighting on other objects to give the appearance like they're all actually lit

[night shell]

^

I agree

[night shell]

for something like this, emissive materials are enough to sell it, no need to have actual light sources for each one sucking up costs

approximate lights whenever you can as well, for instance if its an actual festival enviorment you cna just fake lights by using glow sprites

or if your lucky and you have alot of lights that will stay the same

use lightmapping and baked lights

defferred rendering would definitely do a ton of heavy lifting for having tons of realtime lights, but if your in forward rendering then your only choice is to minimize the amount of lights in your scene because they will wreck your framerate

[hybrid pewter]

Why do there seem to be seams in the ground from the baked lighting?

[deft fiber]

They don't appear to be from bakd lighting, as it's a specular reflection that cuts off there which baked lights usually don't do

I believe they're realtime or mixed lights, and the realtime portion is being culled by light limits

[hybrid pewter]

The only light sources I have are from a singular point light on the candelabras which are set to "baked"

I then go into Lighting Settings and clear the Baked data and generate lighting

These are my lighting settings

These are the settings for my floors

No other light sources

[deft fiber]

baked lights are not capable of specular reflections (except I think from one source using directional lightmaps), meaning they have not been baked for whatever reason

Make sure the lights and floors are all marked static and bake again

[hybrid pewter]

So how do I utilise specular reflections? Realtime?

[deft fiber]

Mixed lights usually

But they're subject to the pixel light limits you see culling your lights there

[deft fiber]

Post only to one relevant channel at a time, please
It looks like the shader doesn't support per-pixel lighting
I'm not familiar with tree shaders bur iirc built-in render pipeline's lit particle shader was also one that only receives light at the origin

[hybrid pewter]

@deft fiber I want to have baked lighting to try and minimize the strain my game has. How can I still get some effect of specularity when using baked lighting?

[deft fiber]

The recommended approach is to use "emissive proxies" in chapter 5 here
https://forum.unity.com/threads/lightmapping-troubleshooting-guide.1340936/#post-8466953

[night shell]

emissive proxies is one way

when you bake directional lightmaps

you can also leverage directionality from those lightmaps to recreate specularity from light sources

but that requires a shader that can do that

luckily there are some that exist

https://gitlab.com/s-ilent/filamented

these are one

they also do other good things like darken reflections in dark parts of the enviorment

comparison with the standard unity shader

unity standard

filamented shaders

you can see both of the things I talked about in action, both the darkening of enviorment reflections, and also maintaining specular highlights from light sources

and its all 100% baked, no mixed/realtime sources

@hybrid pewter (and @deft fiber for future reference)

[deft fiber]

What's this compatible with? Why don't these kind of loose repos ever have any info with them

[night shell]

forward rendering and built in pipeline

which is what hes using

[deft fiber]

Directional lightmapping was removed from the progressive lightmapper iirc because it wasn't "worth the cost"
Bakery also still does them

[night shell]

you can still do directional lightmapping with the progressive lightmapper...

[deft fiber]

But not with out of the box features I assume?

[night shell]

no its always been built in?

im confused, has this been removed in later versions?

I've been on 2020 - 2022 versions

[deft fiber]

I thought it was but it seems that it isn't
Maybe I'm thinking of something else

[night shell]

its always been around, its just the standard shader in unity doesn't do specular highlights using directionality

it still shades the diffuse term with normals for extra detail

[deft fiber]

I think I was thinking of stored specularity, but that apparently wasn't in

[deft fiber]

I vividly imagined that this^ type of system was a built-in thing at some point

[night shell]

same, it was then it was removed

it really isn't that costly

I've been able to use them on quest 2 just fine

must have been a piss poor implementation at first

[maiden hemlock]

in 2022.2, it seems like the reflection probe settings are missing from mesh renderers? ( manual for .2 states it should be in there.. like it's always been for a decade+?)

(hmm. Just opened up a blank .2 project, and it's there as usual.)

[deft fiber]

Are they both on the same render pipeline?

[maiden hemlock]

new one wasn't. Installing urp 14 on it, will report back shortly 🙂

yep. gone again when a urp render asset is assigned in graphics > srp settings. Guess I'll have to read up on the 14.x upgrade ( coming from 12)

[pliant gazelle]

when manually making the 2nd channel for lightmaps. am i supposed to do that per 3d model. or bunch alot of 3d models into say 1 lightmap atlas?

[maiden hemlock]

one per model, it will atlas it post bake. If you want extra control over the atlas, bunch of models into one lightmap atlas ( but they'll have to be combined into one I'm pretty sure, otherwise it won't respect your custom atlas)

[deft fiber]

I don't recall if URP/HDRP ever had light probe settings in the mesh renderer component itself
Let me know if you find out more about it

[maiden hemlock]

Not light probes, reflection probes 🙂 it looks like things changed in box projection + blending. Anyway, my custom shaders are completely broken ( and honestly, more than a little bit messy) on this new urp, so I'm focused on this for now.

[foggy condor]

for the life of me, anyone know what is this error:
"Assertion failed on expression: 'm_PendingLightmapHashes.size() == m_LightmapCompositeHashes.size()'"
and why im getting such unnatural light when my light sources are set to "baked"?

this is what its supposed to look like

when lights are set to realtime at least

[grim crater]

@foggy condor ChatGPT is your friend. 😄 The response may not be entirely accurate but you definitely can get an idea.

It probably is a Unity glitch.

As for the baked lighting, I have found that baked lights do not light the same as mixed or (of course) as realtime and you need to adjust them accordingly.

[storm steeple]

What are these weird dark artifacts which occur in both progressive cpu/gpu?

[foggy condor]

tried that already, although i got different responses. none of the solutions worked

[grim crater]

Solutions for problems like this are usually for Unity to solve as it is probably a unity glitch that you can ignore. It is probably not what causes your lighting to be like that. Just that baked lights behave differently.

[foggy condor]

but i cant really ignore it when i cant set me scene up? i know baked lights behave differently but no matter how much i play with it, i cant find even an "acceptable" result.
The ground texture is lit, the grass is not

[grim crater]

have you tried automatic lightmap creation

[grim crater]

what do you mean you can't set your scene up?

What RP are you using and how is your ground and grass set up?
Have you tried using light probes?

[storm steeple]

no, what's that

[foggy condor]

I mean, i want to set the lights so i can move to another room. right now the baking of the lights seems broken.
Im using URP. the ground and the grass is just a terrain. havent tried light probes..

[grim crater]

I mean i want to set the lights so i can

[hallow elm]

how do I stop light from going through the 2 connected edges of cubes?

[icy tundra]

play with your shadow bias settings

[hallow elm]

ok I figured that when it's .1 or 0, the issue disappears. but wont changing this setting cause problems elsewhere?

[icy tundra]

You can say that about any setting; any value will be a tradeoff somewhere.

[stable patio]

if its your generator, Id say make a copy of the mesh, weld all vertices and use that mesh in shadowsOnly renderer this should eliminate any light bleeding that is caused by offsetting normals as it splits the mesh because of vertices not being connected.

there is also way to generate normals on the fly in the shader for low poly which you could use either so you will have only one mesh but you still need to weld them, but that is more expensive for GPU and can sometimes result in a lighting artifacts.

[hallow elm]

I can pretend I understood, but I didn't get it
make a copy of the mesh - ok
what is meant by "weld all vertices"?

[deft fiber]

Welded vertices are vertices shared by multiple polygons, so the polygon corners share all data
Most importantly vertex normals which are used by shadow casting to prevent shadow flickering
Coincidentally the renderer doing that is what makes sharp edges leak light

[glossy pulsar]

Hello Everyone i have some issues with my normal map, i don't understand what is going on, the lighting seems to move, here are some screen shots of my problem :

[pastel skiff]

How can i manage scenes with lots of lights. When i have many lights it causes extreme performance issues but its hard to put less lights in my scene because it is indoors in a house and it would look wrong if I removed the ceiling lights?

[hallow elm]

have you tried baking your lights?

[pastel skiff]

Yes but i want the lights to be controllable in game

[deft fiber]

Make sure your normal map is marked as type: normal map

[deft fiber]

Limit use of shadow casting lights, limit light ranges, slice big meshes into smaller chunks, consider deferred or forward+ rendering path
Baked lightmaps can be swapped between and blended additively to allow switchable lights, but that's not built-in functionality

By default every mesh within a light range is rendered again for that light, and again more for shadow caster
Sometimes multiple times since point lights need to do a shadow casting pass in all 6 directions

[pastel skiff]

alright thanks

[stable patio]

your mesh contains vertices and triangles, triangle is made of 3 vertices. What you want to do is to weld all vertices that share the same location, because of hard edges your mesh is runtime split at those edges/vertices, by making clean mesh without normals, and welding all vertices sharing location you force one single continous mesh which wont let shadow baking split edges.

[glossy pulsar]

Thank you it worked.

[humble valve]

I need a flashlight in my game to explore some caves. Its barely bright enough when looking in the distance but when looking on the ground it becomes Waaaaaay too bright. None of the settings seemed to help, so is there a way to fix this?

[grim summit]

why does my baked lighting look terrible in large spaces?

[deft fiber]

Why 'your' baked lighting looks terrible has reasons unique to your case
Baked lighting is based on texel resolution, which attempts to remain constant, and practically only be scaled per-mesh
So, regardless of how big your scene is, every lit spot needs lightmap resolution allocated to it
If your scene is very big, this cane become very inefficient

So, if you have a huge desert with a couple of pillars sticking out of it, their shadow resolution by default is shared with the whole desert even if there's actually no detailed shadows to store except in those two places
In that kind of case you'd slice the world geometry into chunks and crank down the chunks' scale in lightmap where no accurate shadows are required

[silk holly]

why are the sharp edges in shadow bits disappearing?

this is a picture of the real car
https://cdn.carbuzz.com/gallery-images/840x560/696000/0/696045.jpg

because they do show up in sun-lit parts

[deft fiber]

Your material has such low smoothness that slight indentations won't be discernible in just soft ambient light

[night shell]

^^^^

thats the main problem

[deft fiber]

Lights in URP use real-world accurate logarithmic falloff and exposure that more or less emulates a camera, which is why the gap between dark and overblown is much narrower than what our eyeballs are used to
There's no simple "fix" to it that I know of
Making sure you're using HDR rendering, neutral tonemapping post processing override and on top of that some overrides to balance out light and dark are your best options

It'd be nice to be able to choose to use linear falloff like BiRP does instead, but afaik that'd require making your own branch of URP, or recreating the Lit shader with your own falloffs

[silk holly]

which smoothness value from 0-1.0 would you recommend then?

I want to try to have it not reflect too much but still have the sharp edges show up

[deft fiber]

Isn't car paint really reflective?
Clear coated even

[silk holly]

I'm not really planning on making it very realistic 😄

[regal sail]

Aside from baking time, is there a limit to the number of baked lights I can have in a scene?

[deft fiber]

None that I know of

[regal sail]

How about in a mixed-lighting situation where those lights are baked but set to mixed in order to light the character in real-time through light probes?

[deft fiber]

Mixed lights are also rendered as realtime so they're subject to all those limitations
Additionally you can't have more than 4 shadowmasked mixed lights overlap

Light probes do not require use of mixed lights

[regal sail]

Ok. Maybe I wasn't understanding the role of mixed lights correctly. It sounds like I can use light probes to light my non-static items in a sort of quasi-real-time using only the baked lightmap and the probes with all lights set to bake?

[deft fiber]

Yes, you don't need any mixed or realtime lights to light dynamic characters if you utilize light probes and reflection probes

[regal sail]

Cool. So no limitations on the number of baked lights in that scenario. Good to know. Thank for explaining!

[deft fiber]

There are some practical limits to how many lights and light probes you can bake and store, but not fundamental ones

[regal sail]

Probably related to the number of lightmaps required to bake the entire scene I would imagine. More a memory issue than a processing issue.

[tight latch]

how do i fix inconsistent 2d lighting, the shadow works on my character on the right half of the light but not the left galf

[strange fog]

How can I imitate like sun lighting as im trying to do a dialogue clip and this just looks weird

[toxic eagle]

I want the whole room to be evenly lit but not matter how i bake it, it just dosent look good

[deft fiber]

It looks good to me
Light doesn't spread perfectly evenly in reality

I think you can switch light falloff to linear for the baker, which would make it more even
But even still there's going to be more light rays hitting the surfaces closer to the light

[toxic eagle]

well i guess i mean to say how do i make it better lit without the center blinding the player, my level is set at night and i want the room to be seen as well lit even if i were looking through the window outside

[deft fiber]

@toxic eagle Does your project use linear color space, HDR and a neutral tonemapping profile?

Lacking those it's very easy to burn through bright areas of the screen

[toxic eagle]

im not sure how can i check, i am using urp

[deft fiber]

Color space is in project settings, HDR is in quality asset, tonemapping is a post processing override

Anyway, the scene doesn't look that blinding to me
I'd worry more about fine tuning the brightness when the scene's visuals are being designed as those have an effect on the light bounces as well

You can also have local volumes with exposure override so the screen is brighter outside in the dark, and dimmer inside under the lamps

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/581390784121536522/867045222616399882/Desktop_2021.07.20_-_17.03.03.03.webm

Like this
But the other way around

[desert shadow]

How can i do this ligghting

better

there is no any shadows

and its to bright

[hot path]

why would there be shadows?

i dont see any objects that would cast them

also you are using directional lights

which light up the whole scene

you probably want one of the other ones

but im not a lighting expert

so i dont know which of those

[night shell]

his scene looks to be a full interior

the reason there is not any shadows

is becasuse its all interior. hes lighting with a directional light that is casting shadows for a scene that is going to be all indoors. It isn't going to do anything

if your trying to light the room which looks like its meant to be lit with the ceiling lights

you need to use point/spot lights placed under those lights

(or if your light baking, using area lights which would be more accurate)

and that room has WAY too much ambient light going on if its supposed to be an interior

if you are struggling to light anything and understand it, honestly just use real world references

look at how rooms of that type, or environments of that type are lit in the real world, then try to replicate that

@desert shadow

[main wolf]

increase light range, decrease light intensity

[neat sparrow]

Is this about what I should expect to see baking lighting? And will it actually take 8 hours? Seems extreme.

Actually the progress is now 13 minutes

To everyone passing by, here is your reminder to save your scene because you might say "bake lights" but unity will hear it as "start baking lights but then die".

AND THEN DON'T BOOT UP THE PROJECT AS YOU ARE GRABBING THE BACKUP FILE BECAUSE IT WILL BE OVERWRITED AND NOW IT IS GONE FOREVER

[main wolf]

No and no

But both depends on what you are actually after

[toxic eagle]

I've tried that, but then it becomes just a poorly lit room, even if I made the range 100, it won't fill the room with light

[deft fiber]

Show your light baking settings if you want feedback on them

There are many variables to hasten the process, especially if you're not doing a final bake

[fossil radish]

How did my game go from this in the editor to this in game

nvm just had to generate lighting

[untold rain]

What is difference between Realtime, Mixed, and Baked? Which is best for when the light is essentially a texture and should not change at all? (Is there an easy way to turn lights into textures?) I tried the emissive, but want to get the sort of shaded effect from some part lit up and other part not.

Baked is basically texture right?

[night shell]

baked lighting is basically textures yes @untold rain

[untold rain]

Is there a way to make baked lighting faster or less computational if I have like 400 in a scene for example?

[night shell]

realtime has no "baked lighting" textures, its all calculated in real time on the fly

[night shell]

yes

[untold rain]

I am aiming to create a night-time festival with as much emissives and bakes as possible.

[untold rain]

How might this be done for scene with a lot of lights?

[night shell]

well it depends on your goals though

are these lights to be changed all the time?

are there only really a few lights that would change?

or is it a mostly static environment where lighting stays consistent the entire time?

each of those goals have different approaches to how you can light

[night shell]

if you want the best performance this will be your best bet

[untold rain]

I have this.

I will probably have an entire level with about 400 of these, each cube is a light.

[night shell]

ohh your the same guy that was discussing that

[untold rain]

The spotlight gives a nice shaded 'texture'.

[night shell]

yeah for something like that I would advise that you don't use lights for that

use emissives

[untold rain]

It will get worse because I also plan on a festival scene of sorts.

Is there an easy way to just turn these into textures?

Will be using emissives for the 'festival'. For this "Disco Floor" I guess I need to turn these into textures, currently I just like the shaded effect the spotlights give

[night shell]

yes, unity standard shaders have an emissive field where you can input a texture that emits light

or a simple single color

you can create a shaded spotlight texture for the cubes

and use that as your emissive for the material

[untold rain]

Is there just a simple way to copy what I got currently exactly but just to a texture?

[night shell]

there are ways but I wouldn't use the unity lightmapper to do that

[untold rain]

I guess I can screenshot it in game and just drop it as a material

[night shell]

I would paint it manually in a program of your choice

i.e. photoshop, or if you have other tools i.e. substance painter and etc. use those

but I wouldnt use the unity lightmapper on that if I were you

[untold rain]

What are things that should have lights? I plan to make the first level environment a night time festival towards a night time disco hall

(Festival lanterns)

[night shell]

I would make actual light sources "lights" so i.e. lamps or actual spotlights that are in the scenes

typically my rule is that if its apart of something dynamic, i.e. in your case a changing emissive floor I would just stick with using emissives

if you have tons of little tiny light sources in your scene

I would use emissives for those

but for large light sources like street lamps or wall lights for example

I would use actual light sources for those

[forest rose]

Can anyone help me find out why there are lighting leaks in my level? I'm using probuilder

[night shell]

reflection probes

[forest rose]

I don't have any, do you mean add some

[night shell]

you can add some

or

you can go to the unity enviorment settings in the lighting tab

and turn the intensity multiplier for the sky reflections to 0

though I'd just suggest placing reflection probes so any dynamic objects you have, depending on their materials they will show up correctly when they are in your enviorment

but up to you

[forest rose]

The only moving object will be the player, no other objects will move

I'l try and set up reflection probes

[magic osprey]

Any idea how to make Lens Flare (SRP) work for HDRP for 2022.2.8f1? They used to just work on older versions from what I can tell, not sure if there's a setting somewhere I have to toggle?

[neat sparrow]

Baking lighting leaves scene completely dark except for the mixed light.

This is what I use for the other lights.

I made all of the meshes (that I could) static.

Actually there is a small amount of light.

I just left it too dark maybe?

Lights need more brightness?

The lighting seems incredibly even, though the baking isn't done

It seems very equally spread out.

It is a horror game. I need them bright enough so that you can see but have a short range.

That way areas away from the lights are very dark and hard to see without your own light.

Any suggestions on how to achieve this?
Current brightness is 5.

[spiral iron]

Hey I need help, I created a 2d game and its as if 2d lighting doesnt exist.
there was but then it disapeared, been trying to fix for an hour, changing the Pipeline to 2d pipeline and no fix.

I cant even add 2d lighting

[neat sparrow]

Is it in the 2D panel?

[spiral iron]

No?

If you mean 2d object panel then no

[worn tapir]

are you using URP?

[spiral iron]

Yes

[worn tapir]

and im guessing you can still create the 2D renderer

but cant create 2D lights?

[spiral iron]

Exactly

[spiral iron]

I can make a 2d renderer, but doesnt seem to change much

even when setting it in project settings

[worn tapir]

Is that even possible?

from what I know you can only set an asset

not a renderer

[spiral iron]

Ithought you meant the asset

[worn tapir]

yeah no

[spiral iron]

How can I create the 2d renderer?

[worn tapir]

its under the same menu

2D Renderer

there is also a Universal Renderer

witch is the default

[spiral iron]

Where?

[worn tapir]

same menu where you create the asset

just a bit lower

[spiral iron]

ah this

Just made it now

what do I do with it>

?*

Btw thanks alot so far for helping me

[worn tapir]

go to your asset and assign it as a default (probably make it the only one too)

[spiral iron]

REALLY REALLY appreciate it

[worn tapir]

here

my list is a big big tho

you will probably only have one

[spiral iron]

changed it

now what?

Yes its in project settings

[worn tapir]

now in theory the 2D lighting should appear

[spiral iron]

It hasnt

[worn tapir]

...

hold on

[spiral iron]

Should I restart my project again?

maybe itll change something

[worn tapir]

maybe

always worth a try

[spiral iron]

Nope :/

😭

[worn tapir]

try to add a "Light 2D" component manually

[spiral iron]

How would that be done?

[worn tapir]

make a gameobject and press add component

then search for "Light 2D"

[spiral iron]

warning appeared

(again, thank you so much for help)

[worn tapir]

can i get a screenshot of the camera inspector

[worn tapir]

ah i see

the renderer is still the universal one

[spiral iron]

too what should I change it?

[worn tapir]

open this menu

[spiral iron]

to 0;?

[worn tapir]

this means the asset is not set yet

the new renderer should appear here

but it didnt

[spiral iron]

How do I set it?

[worn tapir]

in project settings as you said

but you can set it in two places

[spiral iron]

But the new one is till set

[worn tapir]

in Graphics and in Quality

witch one is set

[spiral iron]

FIXED

thank you very much sir

You have been a great help

[worn tapir]

yeah np

I have spent too much time in URP

so why not help

[spiral iron]

I really appreciate it and I wish the best of luck to you

[neat sparrow]

I baked some lights but it left everything dark and evenly colored. I want it to be bright, but I also want the light to have a dramatic falloff because it is horror themed and there are a few places I want to remain dark unless lit by the player. What can I change to make it more like this?

Also, 5 feels too high, as in realtime it looked good at .6 or something, I don't remember the exact value. Should it be this high?

[worn tapir]

could you explain what the problem is now

it already looks too dark to me

but in general if you want the falloff be more dramatic all you need to do is reduce the range

[main wolf]

are the level and the lights to be baked static?

[neat sparrow]

Yes.

I was struggling to get good values.

I want enough light, but a dramatic falloff.

I stopped working on it for now.

I think it looked fine with realtime point lights, I just wanted it to run faster (I plan on exporting this for the Oculus 2)

So I thought baking it could reduce the calculations

[main wolf]

try setting lighting mode to subtractive mode, and rebake.
iirc shadowmask mode renders realtime shadow if the mesh is inside shadow distance and only use baked shadow if it's outside shadow distance

[fair escarp]

having trouble with light baking in urp

here's how the scene looked before trying to bake

and now it's all dark after baking

i tried realtime global illumination but it didn't seem to work

my other scene works fine though and i can't figure out why

any help is greatly appreciated

[stuck jetty]

looks like your directional light does not include in the baking

[fair escarp]

looks like it, how do i ensure it's included?

it's here in the light explorer

[chilly kettle]

Can someone tell me, how to make possible, that unity creates good Lightmap-UV for relative small Models?
I do not get acceptable results with Margin Method "Calculate" nor "Manual" .

[deft fiber]

UV generation shouldn't be relative to size I think

But since texel density is not relative to size, small meshes often suffer from poor resolution and artefacts unless you increase their "size in lightmap"

[chilly kettle]

i think my problem is, that the model is split into way to much different shells

[deft fiber]

It could be that your mesh has just an awkward shape for lightmap generation in general, which is common for small objects

[chilly kettle]

I think the lightmap uv generation tool does not like the cables

[deft fiber]

It doesn't like any sharply rounded shapes

That's nearly the worst case scenario to auto-generate lightmap UVs from!

[chilly kettle]

i see 😄 i may have to create my own lightmap uvs in UV1 of the mesh i think?

[deft fiber]

You would, but it looks like the texel density is too low for baked lightmapping to show up in any meaningful way

[chilly kettle]

its 20 in this scene

[deft fiber]

Especially since the lighting of that scene is pretty soft

You'll probably want to try to light that mesh, including other small static meshes with light probes instead

[chilly kettle]

could be a good solution. You think a hand made Lightmap UV wont help much here?

[deft fiber]

Not unless you increase the texel density and/or scale in lightmap for that mesh a bunch too

But even if you put that effort in and dedicate the lightmap space for it, it might not even turn out much different in those lighting conditions

[chilly kettle]

Okay. thx 🙂

Easiest way would be ignore the "lightmap overlap" message, because the mesh looks fine 😄

[nimble geode]

I am using point lights in the scene on the positions of the room lights. The lights in the middle are contantly illuminated but the ones on the upper and bottom part are keep fluctuating.

[upper fable]

Seems like you are overexceeding the pixel light count

[nimble geode]

The similar kind of point lights are positioned on all the lights in the room. Can a elaborate a bit about pixel light count?

[upper fable]

There are limit for the count of lights that single object can be affected by. You can google "pixel light count" to see how to increase that on your render pipeline, note that having too many lights affect single object can have big impact on performance. If you start seeing too much of a slow down caused by the lighting, you could consider switching to deferred rendering path

[nimble geode]

Thank you for the explanation

[vestal aspen]

Hello, is there a way to make a point light "Override" ground color instead of mixing with it (I understand it's the intended behaviour but you know...)? Like, the circled object point light is blue but it looks green due to the ground being orange

[deft fiber]

I think you'll need to call DynamicGI.UpdateEnvironment or one of the related methods to update the ambient lighting to match the sky
https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/DynamicGI.html

If you're only changing the exposure you might not need to update it wholly

[night shell]

is there a higher setting than high?

actually you can change the resolution to something higher

the high preset has 512

you can write 1024

or 2048

that'll increase your shadow resolution, should help mitigate those artifacts

[lethal loom]

Anyone know why point light isn't working correctly? I'm using a custom unlit shader that uses MAIN_LIGHT_CALCULATE_SHADOWS and ADDITIONAL_LIGHT_CALCULATE_SHADOWS, yet for some reason the point light shadows keeps breaking

[foggy condor]

I'm new to HDRP (and unity for that matter) trying to make indoor scenes. But my rooms are underground so all these tutorials using ambient light are irrelevant.. anyone got any nice resources or links to educate myself? Something that explains each component or override? Or perhaps some cheat sheet for realistic values? Or a video lighting something underground?

And to the guy I talked to the other day, yes, we converted to HDRP 😁

Sample image:

(I know the table is overexposed. And that everything is too red. I want to keep the red quality of the scene)

[worn tapir]

so from what I understand you want to fix the overexposure right?

This looks like a picture without tonemapping try adding aces and see how it looks

now about good resources... there aren't that many good / past beginner info out there about betting lighting right
(at least from my experience)

most of it is trial and error

[deft fiber]

https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.render-pipelines.high-definition@13.1/manual/Physical-Light-Units.html there is a "cheat sheet" indeed

[foggy condor]

Yes but I think I already know how to do this. I'm merely looking for resources or tutorials right now. Perhaps for low light conditions or underground scenes

I'm using a volume on each room (it's a long story why no global volume). How do I simulate that there's no ambient light in this scene? Right now I'm using a gradient sky and have the colors set to black. Is there any other way?

Because at first, I got that soft grey-blue light from the default skybox all over my scene..

So yeah I got many questions about low light and underground light conditions

(Tonemapping is there btw)

[deft fiber]

Even indoor scenes tend to have some ambient light, which is what baked light probes are for
If you need absolutely dark shadows you'd use a black sky as you do, or an Indirect Lighting Controller volume override

[foggy condor]

Alright cool. Thanks for the tip!

[timber lichen]

any tips for some fog? im using the fog provided by unity from the environment settings but a problem with it is that there is also fog in buildings,any way to fix this or should i use smth else?

[proper aspen]

Is it possible to add a shader to a light 2D?

[willow jewel]

do u know how i can deal with my shadow because it look weird ? maybe make the whole caractere ?

[sterile shuttle]

Hi everyone!
Does anyone know what would make these two components different ?

Two different projects, same Unity version, same import settings (except if I missed something when checking)...
My friend needs the "Receive Global Illumination setting"

[little mason]

anyone able to point me in the right direction. I have all my lighting baked due to it needing to be for performance. however, i need to switch from when the lights are on, and when the lights are off. I've read online that swapping between lightmaps during runtime is possible but i am confused from what I have read. is anyone able to point me in the right direction of what I will need to do to accomplish this. the switch happens one time and doesn't occur again in the scene.

[arctic isle]

Are the static flags on the top right checked?

[arctic isle]

I believe that this is what you need
https://github.com/laurenth-personal/lightmap-switching-tool

[mellow sleet]

A

[sterile shuttle]

hi !
Yep, 2 flags, I don't remember which exactly but both had the same ones

[deft fiber]

Left one is the debug inspector

[sterile shuttle]

Thanks, I'll check that !

[valid elm]

hi game devs

can someone help with this
i need to add a separate light probe detached from the existing one
is that possible?
thanks

[summer aspen]

@valid elm Don't cross-post, please if you are moving post here delete the other one.

[valid elm]

oh ok sorry

[warm otter]

hi, i have a problem with the shadows. Sometimes the shadow caster on an object doesn't work (Look at the video). Also I'm using the UDR Renderer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmFaY5PhDQs

[deft fiber]

What is "UDR Renderer"?

[warm otter]

ah sorry, i mean URP

[warm otter]

do you know what the problem could be?

[deft fiber]

No, but I think I see someone reporting it once or twice a week with URP 2D renderer
No follow up posts or replies, though
I'm not familiar with troubleshooting it

[warm otter]

okay, do you know another way to create shadows with a light source?

[deft fiber]

Which suggests to me it was a trivial fix, the problem disappeared on its own, or they got stumped and gave up

[deft fiber]

You might need a custom 2D lighting system, or use 3D lighting instead
URP 2D* isn't currently compatible with mixing 2D and 3D, unfortunately

[warm otter]

okay thanks 👍

[deft fiber]

If you find a fix for it, I'll gladly hear it so I can pass the knowledge on

[warm otter]

for sure

[warm otter]

I switched the unity version of my project from 2021.3.11f1 to 2022.2.9f1, and now it works!

[gusty moat]

I want my Light to only shine at a specific layer (for ItemInHand always lighted) but if I change the culling mask of the light component in the debug inspector to no matter what, it always just renders everything. What am I doing wrong?

[rancid hull]

Anyone have experience with either of these fog assets? https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/vfx/shaders/fullscreen-camera-effects/atmospheric-height-fog-optimized-fog-for-consoles-mobile-and-vr-143825#description
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/vfx/shaders/fullscreen-camera-effects/dynamic-fog-mist-2-48200#description

[rancid hull]

Also would be interested if anyone has any recommendations for tools for Realtime GI. I noticed this one, and might get it, assuming it's performant on most devices: https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/vfx/shaders/fullscreen-camera-effects/radiant-global-illumination-225934

[quaint echo]

hi

[glossy pike]

some static objects in my scene are not receiving light. help?

[deft fiber]

What kind of light
In what conditions

[glossy pike]

i have an area light above this room, and the grass is supposed to be green.

this entire wall isnt recieving light at all

ive tried clearing baked data lots of times but idk how to fix it.

[rancid lava]

anybody knows why my shadows are correct at the top but very thin towards the bottom? I'm using billboards to cast shadows on my sprite (to fake depth), it works great with directional lights, but when point lights are too close, the shadows turn into these weird pin heads.

this is also weird, when I rotate my pointlights, the shadows rotate as well

[deft fiber]

What kind of billboards exactly?

If your sprites are aligned with the shadow caster camera plane, where that actually points would be ambiguous in the case of omnidirectional point light shadows

[rancid lava]

it's a shader that displaces vertices so the plane behaves like a billboard

[deft fiber]

You might be able to get it working better if you make them face the camera position, rather than the camera plane

Otherwise you may need to do separate billboarding just for the shadow casters

[rancid lava]

my game's in orthographic, I wonder if it works with perspective, sometimes iso behaves weird, I'll give it a shot

[deft fiber]

Punctual light shadow casters always act as perspective cameras

[gusty moat]

anybody knows how I can make my item in hand always lighted? that in a dark scene the item in hand is still visible and not fully darken Im using hdrp

[deft fiber]

The simplest way might be to set the material's base texture also as its emission map

[gusty moat]

Ah thanks that'd do! I tried creating a spot light and make it light only a specific layer but it always affected every layer however I think changing the textures would work, thanks!

[deft fiber]

Light layers are another way ^^

[gusty moat]

I was just messing around with it because Ive never used it before

[reef schooner]

how can I change the temperature?

[gusty moat]

directionalLight.colorTemperature = 1500f;

[reef schooner]

thx

[reef schooner]

Do you know how I can change the Multiplier value?

[gusty moat]

you need the HDAdditionalLightData Component in Script there you can change the multiplier
var light = gameObject.GetComponent<HDAdditionalLightData>();

[reef schooner]

And then light.???

[gusty moat]

try volumetricDimmer

[reef schooner]

unfortunately no

[reef schooner]

is there another option?

[gusty moat]

its changing for me:
if(Input.GetKeyDown(KeyCode.L)) data.volumetricDimmer = 0;

make sure you have using UnityEngine.Rendering.HighDefinition; imported

[reef schooner]

The libary is imported

[gusty moat]

try: GetComponent<HDAdditionalLightData>().volumetricDimmer = 13.0f;

[reef schooner]

no

[gusty moat]

zeig mal zeile68

[gusty moat]

the component could not be found

make sure you have the component attached to your gameobject

[reef schooner]

ja ist drauf

[gusty moat]

Light + HDAdditionalLightData

[reef schooner]

Achso beide?

[gusty moat]

ja

[reef schooner]

habs bis jetzt nur so

[gusty moat]

do in 68: directionalLight.GetComponent<HDAdditionalLightData>().volumetricDimmer = 13.0f;

[reef schooner]

Klappt DAnke 😇

[polar peak]

why are my celling yellow even though the texture is white

[polar peak]

okay i baked light and it's less yellow but still a little yellow

[chilly mural]

Hi all, upon switching scenes from the main menu to gameplay, my skybox disappears and the lighting becomes dark (left is loaded in-editor, right is loaded in-game)
Is there a URP setting I need to enable?
I have two sets of lighting settings, have clicked "generate" in the lighting panel, and yet I'm still experiencing this.

Also, I am loading the scenes additively and wonder if somehow the lighting settings are being maintained from the main menu (no lighting, just UI)

aha

I had to use SceneManager.SetActiveScene(scene) in order to use the correct lighting settings :)

[scarlet knoll]

how do you update lighting in unity? I put a bunch of area lights in my level and it didn't seem to change anything

[sterile shuttle]

neither the normal and debug fixes it for us, sorry :(
I'll keep looking

thanks though

[upper fable]

What is ”fill light”?

[scarlet knoll]

Oh sorry I made a bunch of area lights, I think I got some terminology mixed up

[scarlet knoll]

This is the map I'm trying to light. Its a basic prototype, Its going to have a ceiling which will block the directional light currently lighting the rooms. It seemed like it would be a pain to try to evenly light it with point lights, and spot lights.
What would be the easiest way for me to light these rooms?

[deft fiber]

Fixes what? I thought the main issue was being in the debug inspector where the Receive Global Illumination option is missing

[upper fable]

Area lights do not support realtime lighting, you have to bake the lights

[deft fiber]

In HDRP they would, but yea!

[deft fiber]

If you want very even or smooth lighting, you could learn the baked lightmapping workflow

[surreal crown]

Hi everyone i placed some baked lights in my scene, market static objects and set directional to mixed mode. I have this problem with baked lightmaps any idea on how to solve?
Console says there are some overlapping UVS

[worn tapir]

honestly this just looks like one you your lights is just too bright
and to fix the overlapping UVs you need to make another set of UVs for lightmapping (uv channel 0 for textures and uv channel 1 for lightmap)
or you can enable "Generate Lightmap UVs" in the model import settings

[amber dagger]

does anyone know what caused everything to go pitch black when I build my game?

I didn't turn off any of the light btw

only things with emission or unlit shows

[amber dagger]

Oh wow it was freaking Decal bug, removed that from rendering feature and it worked

[fossil radish]

How do I fix this black tree thign when I get closer it works but not from far

billboard length i think

[deft fiber]

What build platform, render pipeline and editor version were you on?

[deft fiber]

Your billboards seem to be rendered without any lighting
I'd check what shaders they have, but no idea what the root cause might be
It kinda looks like you're editing a prefab in isolation mode
If that's the case, check if the error persists outside of it

[fossil radish]

fixed it

[deft fiber]

What'd turn out to be the problem?

[fossil radish]

didnt put the billboard length up

[amber dagger]

Windows, URP, 2021._2.14

[amber dagger]

Anything transparent is rendering fine, all opaques are just pure black

[deft fiber]

Why not use the LTS?

[amber dagger]

That is the highest something I need supports, as well as hybrid rendering pipeline

Also there were no problems at all, until I wanted to test out decals, which worked fine in the editor

[tight moss]

if I have some light models like lamps and chandeliers that have proper emissives set up, should i bother adding any point lights to my bake or just tweak the emission until it looks right?

[topaz lion]

guys wtf is this

[night shell]

light leak

[topaz lion]

how

[night shell]

ok just respond in one thread pls, don't be cross posting

but as for why, could be many reasons

you could have a point light not casting shadows

and its range is intersecting the room thta you are in

or your room mesh walls are not set to double sided shadow casting, which is another way a light can leak into the room even if its casting shadows

but can you please elaborate more?

i.e. showing off your scene, any lights in that area, how the walls look over there, etc.

[topaz lion]

well theres 2 lights + 1 global light(black) in the scene

its a closed block

[night shell]

question

is this meant to be an interior scene?

no windows?

[topaz lion]

yes

its just the main menu screen room

[night shell]

if its an interior with no windows, then there is zero reason you should have a directional light

but also that spot light on the left there looks way too close to the wall

and im not sure if you have it set to casting shadows or whatnot

[topaz lion]

1. Light is from the flashlight

2. light is to see the flashlight a little bit

oh! i found my problem! thanks!

[night shell]

what was it?

[topaz lion]

unity is making problems again.
unity created a spot light itself for some reason.
tbh unity is making troubles the whole day already and theres a nother one

[dense mural]

I'm also having a problem with light leak, the first image is the spot light that is causing the problem, and the second image is the other side of the doorway that is allowing light to pass through

im on urp, i've messed with the normal bias settings, etc. and it hasn't changed anything

I tried decreasing the range a lot, but I need to have it above a certain level or else the room can't be lit properly

[dense mural]

even a shadows-only cube doesn't block the light

the light is set to cast soft shadows

[deft fiber]

It looks like your spot light might have an angle close to 180°
Shadows can get very buggy with wide angles

If that doesn't fix the problem, I recommend to make a test scene to replicate the lighting setup with a new light and some default cubes to get a clearer look and to verify that you do get shadows of some sort

[dense mural]

It seems to follow seamlessly, so I'm not entirely sure if the angle is the problem

I'm assuming that if it were a bug related to a big angle, then it wouldn't have a smooth behavior like that but i could be wrong

[deft fiber]

I don't see anything relevant here to shadow casting
This is not an effective testing scenario, it's too dim to even see if it's working or not

[dense mural]

that isnt a test scene, thats still my working scene

I can make a testing one though if that would help

[deft fiber]

I heavily recommend it
Make sure to test with brand new default light settings first, and give it enough intensity and range for there to be no ambiguity

Even with shadows off you do get shading which means that surfaces are shadowed when facing away from the light, as well as when moving away from it or towards the edge of its angle

Shadow casting means surfaces block light from hitting surfaces behind them

[dense mural]

okay so I made a simple test scene, one image shows a side with the spotlight set to 180 degrees, the second is just a camera looking at the hallway, and the final image is what the main camera renders in the game view

so I still have the same problem

[deft fiber]

I'd also check with narrower angles to be sure, like 30° narrow
Still, I expect you should be getting some
Verify that the quality settings asset you have enabled supports shadows, and that the bias settings are not wack
If you make a new quality settings asset, iirc that matches the default high quality tier

[final lance]

trying to understand more about some low level graphics stuff and just want to make sure I'm right

so there are bit planes, which are just 2D arrays of bits where each bit represents a pixel on a screen. With 3 bit planes you can represent color on an image through RGB channels. My confusion is around stencil buffers

I know that light mixes additively, which means that theoretically you'd need at least 3 bit planes to create a stencil buffer right? But it looks like you can create a stencil buffer from only one bit plane

and are bit planes and frame buffers synonymous? finding information about this stuff is hard

[amber dagger]

I think it maps each pixel on screen instead of bit plane with lets say 0 or 1, 1 will assign color rgb

If you have multiple, then its 0, 1, 2 etc, intersections can be calculated separately and there are many approaches

But for simplicity, its either 0 or 1, when 1 it remaps the color rgb

[dense mural]

im on URP, so it seems like it should be controlled through my URP Asset

Cast Shadows is unchecked, but checking it doesn't do anything

I tried with 28 degrees and it still shows through the wall

it seems like adding the wall does nothing to the light

I just tested with a point light, and it has the same issue

The point light has a different behavior though, it only shows through the wall once it gets pretty close to the opposite side (still shouldn't allow any light to come through though, I mean it's still on the other side of the wall)

it looks like the solutions online say to either bake my lighting (which I dont really see as an option, as I need my doors to be able to open and affect the lighting outside the room, so baking would either cause the light to go through the door or not pass through the door even when it's open), or switch to HDRP which I'd rather not do. Are there any other ways around this?

The same issue happens with an even simpler scene, plus it has some shadow artifacts

setting the cubes to two sided fixes the problem with the point light, but the spot light still shines straight through the cubes

[deft fiber]

You said you tweaked shadow bias settings

I think those are messed up somehow now

[dense mural]

I believe I just messed with my URP asset, I just changed the normal bias back to 1 for those tests though

messing with it doesn't seem to fix anything, it just plays with the artifacts

[deft fiber]

Make a new one with default settings

[little condor]

That will happen if the light is inside the cube. Click on the cube and set Mesh Render > Lighting > Cast Shadows to Two-Sided to fix that particular issue. Without that setting, lights do not see polygons that have Normals which are facing away from it.

[dense mural]

Just tried that, no changes

[dense mural]

That works for points lights but not spot lights in my scenario

[dense mural]

^

[dense mural]

^

[deft fiber]

At this point I'd make a new URP project with the sample scene and test lights over there

And I wouldn't even try to do shadow casting 180° spot lights because they never work right

[dense mural]

yeah it seems like it still doesn't work in a brand new urp project either with a high enough angle, so I guess that's the problem

thats kinda annoying, because my lighting in my scene wont really seem realistic without it, but I guess it'll have to do

[deft fiber]

You could substitute a point light with a mesh lampshade
Though you won't get a soft edge for it

HDRP probably has every lighting feature you're longing for

[runic cobalt]

Can someone explain this to me:

I am using URP with complete backed lighting static

[deft fiber]

Can you explain what to explain

[runic cobalt]

it seems to somehow blur:

Underneath the ball - like the walls are not going straight etc

[deft fiber]

Right, that's screen space ambient occlusion showing its limits

[runic cobalt]

ah alright

[deft fiber]

Since it's screen space, it has no information about the corners that are behind the ball so it just stops drawing the corner shadow

[runic cobalt]

Im new to this so screen space is something I need to read up on

it means that it jsut "knows" what is in the view of the camera?

[deft fiber]

Yes ^^

[runic cobalt]

The reason why I am going for static baked lighting is so that I can push the FPS super high

[deft fiber]

If you're using baked AO, you probably won't benefit a huge deal from having SSAO on as well
Though, if your environment will have more texturing and clutter than that, these kinds of flaws would become much less noticeable

SSAO costs a lot of performance too

[runic cobalt]

lol I just saw this:

now its on xD

Where do I check if SSAO is on?

[deft fiber]

If on URP, the Renderer Asset

[runic cobalt]

I probably will be purchasing Bakery when I am comfident enough

[deft fiber]

Baked lightmapping will naturally have corners occluded from light, but this I think adds an extra pass of shadowing

[runic cobalt]

SSAO OFF:

SSAO ON:

I see 0 diff haha

[deft fiber]

I think it's mostly unnecessary due to how far the Progressive Lightmapper has come
It has some very specific-purpose features that some projects may really benefit from
But unless you really need some of those I wouldn't worry

[deft fiber]

Are you sure it's the correct asset you're modifying? Each quality level references an URP Asset, only one of which can be active at a time, each of those references a Renderer Asset

[runic cobalt]

ah 😉 ->

[boreal iris]

Hi all! Do any of you have any ideas why my lighting is so strange?

Notice how shadows flicker when I move my camera, and how there is a "circle" of no shadow in a sense that follows me around

I'm sure it's an easy solution I Just really can't figure out what to google & do't know much about lighting/render pipelines (I'm on URP if that matters)

[deft fiber]

The "circles" are shadow cascade borders
Though I think they're just a victim of your shadows glitching out in general, rather than the cause

[boreal iris]

ahhh interesting. Yeah I figured there was something funky going on with my lighting here

[deft fiber]

I'd look for weirdness in the settings of your directional light / URP asset shadow settings
In case there's no apparent messed up settings, I might just try to copy their settings over from a fresh URP sample project

But if you show those properties I can take a look

[boreal iris]

tysm! Here is the directional light inspector

& the lighting tab

[deft fiber]

The light is realtime, so these won't affect it
URP has "Render Pipeline Assets", by default in Assets/Settings/, which contain the settings for light rendering

[boreal iris]

sorry I'm having trouble finding that

[deft fiber]

There's always a reference to it in Project Settings window under Quality, find the active quality setting level and look for a render pipeline asset reference field

[boreal iris]

ohhhh

[deft fiber]

Yes, clicking on that "Render Pipeline Asset" will reveal its position and let you see the properties through the Inspector
Kind of roundabout, I know

[boreal iris]

oh ok gotcha so this is waht you wanted to look at? thanks for this btw

[deft fiber]

Yes ^^
Nothing in either really sticks out to me
I might try tweaking the light's Near Plane upward, and the URP asset's Max Distance downward, just to see if that helps any

But chances are it's something else

[boreal iris]

TRAGIC 😂

[boreal iris]

I will try that

[deft fiber]

If something's messed up it'll almost always be fixed by bringing stuff over from or to another non-messed up project
Or at very least doing that often reveals the problem

With weird bugs it's worth checking what version you're on, in case you're behind patches or on an experimental release

[boreal iris]

I'm on 2021.3.18f1, I think that's a stable release?

oh it got cut off

would it have anything to do with needing to bake a lightmap? also it should be known that the trees in the video are painted on with the unity tree terrain painter tool

[boreal iris]

appreciate the help btw 🙂

[deft fiber]

It's one of the newest LTS releases so it's almost as fine as you can be

[deft fiber]

Baking shouldn't have any effect since the shadows are realtime and your directional light is realtime

[boreal iris]

hmmm like just copying some file?

[deft fiber]

I might pass the renderer and pipeline assets over, or make a package of the problematic scene and import it in the fresh project to see if the problem follows

It can be hard if you have a lot of files and don't know what you're looking for and/or avoiding

[boreal iris]

yeah that's for sure 😅
I don't think I changed that much, one thing is that the assets that are casting shadows ar enot native to URP and I changed their shader to URP/tree

[dense mural]

Aight so just when I thought I was done, I'm getting these artifacts now. I can fix it by turning up my near plane, but obviously this isn't ideal. My ceiling pieces are perfectly aligned, and are completely flush

[boreal iris]

ok so I think it has to do with the three shader I posted above. I put some random cube in with the default shader and it is not affected by this weird shadow bug, but all the trees that use teh shader in the screenshot above DO have that issue. The issue is that those trees only show up properly if they use that shader

sorry for the blue box I used OBS to record that and forgot to remove my camera LOL

because if I just use urp/lit as the shader I get this

admittedly that DOES fix the shadow issue

but now my trees are white 😉

[deft fiber]

Well found out!
I'm not familiar with the speedtree shaders at all, unfortunately

[boreal iris]

it has an appeal but not the aesthetic I was going for 😂

[deft fiber]

Other than that they've had spotty support in SRPs
Maybe you can find more online

[boreal iris]

Well at least the problem has been identified! Thanks so much for your help @deft fiber 😄

[ruby epoch]

Howdy! First time posting here. Just getting into Unity for some VR Chat environments. I have experience in Unreal, so most of my engine knowledge is from there.

I'm having an issue with light leak. This mesh I brought in is solid. When viewed in Blender (eevee) or Unreal, there is no light leak. It's coming from the directional light. Why am I seeing this in Unity? Thanks in advance!

[cunning sentinel]

could be a problem with the lightmap settings, or mesh import settings
I heard some lightleak problems are solved by a higher lightmap resolution but idk if it will work for you

[main wolf]

seems like it's realtime lighting though.

[hot path]

Ive been confused about this for a while, why are my trees being reflecting so much more light than the ground when the flashlight is far away? Id like to make the ground brighter and mimic more the reflectivity of snow

[deft fiber]

Make sure your walls have some thickness and/or pad them with shadows-only smooth shaded geometry

In my experience Eevee has very similar shadow rendering as Unity, but Eevee fills in leaks like these with screen space shadows, something you'd need HDRP in Unity for

[deft fiber]

Two main reasons which also hold true in the real world
The ground material seems to be much darker, so it absorbs more light rather than reflecting it
The ground is at a glancing angle, so less light would be reflected directly back

These effects both are more pronounced if the material is smooth or metallic, but both of these materials look like they should be pretty rough and completely nonmetallic

It's best to base your environment colors referencing a forest at day, where you might notice that trees and the ground are roughly the same in terms of color brightness

Furthermore real forests often have more shape variance with grass or shrubs that also stick out like the trees do, so the tree trunks aren't the only surfaces facing the light directly

I'd also try to avoid sharp 90° angles, for example giving the trunk contact point some flare shape

[main wolf]

Or give the ground a normal map

[limber delta]

Hi guys, after switching platform to Android the baked light in our scenes looks horrendous. There's extreme banding happening. Any idea what causes this?

I've tried upping the lightmap resolution to 120, no difference, upping samples, baking with indirect lighting mode, higher texture resolution, deactivating crunch texture, high quality compression. Probably more stuff, but nothing seems to make a difference.

I'm on Unity 2021.3.19f1. URP.
Lighting settings attached.
Using basically the very low URP pipeline asset.
Please let me know if you need any additional info.

Thanks!

[chilly kettle]

Is it a lightmap problem?
Did you check the lightmap debug view?

[limber delta]

I suspect it is.
Which one?

I see no problems there

All looked good before the switch to Android

[limber delta]

Yes, tried those 🙂

[chilly kettle]

and the lightmaps looks pixelated too?

[limber delta]

I set up a test scene and it does look better

[limber delta]

let me check

[arctic isle]

@limber delta check your lightmap encoding settings in the player settings for android

[limber delta]

yes it does

[limber delta]

will do!

[limber delta]

Wow., damn, that was it. Thank you so much. You guys rock.
What are the disadvantage of using high settings?

[chilly kettle]

i would say that you need more disc space

[limber delta]

Thank you so much for jumping on this!

[arctic isle]

Longer import / load times, but that depends on the size of the lightmaps / your compression. It's basically "less" compressed.

[limber delta]

alright, again, thanks. that was like magic 😂

[arctic isle]

I know compression artifacts when I see them 🕵️

[limber delta]

haha

[chilly kettle]

Isnt Unity performing a denoise to reduce them?

[arctic isle]

The denoiser affects sampling artifacts and is applied right after the bake (right after sampling lights / materials and shooting rays etc.) but before the lightmap is exported to a file / applied to the scene. Compression and encoding is something performed per lightmap and can be changed after the bake per platform.

[chilly kettle]

okay 🙂

[arctic isle]

These are the same kind of artifacts you'd get through jpeg compression. It's a tradeoff for not having gigantic files. Thanks for jumping on this though!!

[modest ibex]

Hey guys. I have an issue with baking directional light with clamped cookie texture. In real time it looks fine, but after baking, everything that's outside the initial texture is threated as white instead black.
This is how i wan't it to look baked

but this is what i get :

[chilly kettle]

Did you try to invert the cookie? ^^

ah nvm

[modest ibex]

But then i'll get shadows where the lights should be :d

[chilly kettle]

Yeah 😄

Did you enabled baked cookies support.

[modest ibex]

yup

it seems to work fine with spot light. It's just the directional light that messes it up

[chilly kettle]

Hm. Could be that the cookie is not set up correct. Can you show the import settings of the cookie?

[modest ibex]

Sure, 1 sec

I see some option there that might help, ill check that out first xD

Nope it didnt 😄

[chilly kettle]

Just to check out if this helps. Whats happening if you change the Wrap mode?

And bake again?

[modest ibex]

The repeat works, but that's not the effect im going for xD

I don't want those spots to repeat - just want the rest to be in full shadow

[chilly kettle]

Yeah, i know ^^

Can you send me the cookie? I'll try if i have the same problem

[modest ibex]

sure 🙂

Do You prefer some other format?

And thank you for all the help 🙂

[chilly kettle]

Hm. Its working for me

[carmine hedge]

Hey

Problem : I have 15 rooms. I put 3 lights inside just one of rooms. Whenever i click "Generate Lighting" button, the yellow error says there are 800 objects which has overlap UV. it shows me that light reach the other rooms aswell.

Question : How can i manage my lights to be baked just for that one room?

[chilly kettle]

Your problem is the overlapping lightmap uv's. Not the baking process.

[carmine hedge]

hmm, they are actually duplicated version of total 30 objects. what is the best aproach to make UV2 island for them? thanks

[chilly kettle]

Did you check the "create lightmap uv" for all of your objects in their import settings?

[carmine hedge]

no i created UV2 island inside maya because some of them are moduler pieces and placed some of their edges eachother

[chilly kettle]

Uv overlap means, that you islands are to close to each other, so they share one texel on the lightmap, which causes that the light from shell1 can bleed onto shell2.

you should increase the padding of your UV shells in maya

For baked lightmaps, you must place lightmap UVs in the Mesh.uv2. This channel is also called “UV1”.

[carmine hedge]

actually its my first try and i don't know still i should increase the empty spaces between the ares. because in this scenario i have the artifacts on model.

[chilly kettle]

have a look here. Thats a FAQ for almost every lighting problem:
https://forum.unity.com/threads/lightmapping-troubleshooting-guide.1340936/#post-8467235

[carmine hedge]

okey thank you sir

[hot path]

Done with this part

[hot path]

Can you elaborate on this? All im getting on google is lens flare lol

[deft fiber]

Like, the opposite of taper
A tree trunk often spreads out to form the roots near the ground, which would be one way to break up the sharp angles

[hot path]

Yes, I wonder if there is any way to get the snow to sparkle a little when its lit up like in the real world?

[hot path]

Uhhh how would I do that?

[deft fiber]

With modeling software, most likely

[hot path]

I didnt make these models though and the unity tree editor goes wild

[deft fiber]

Then you're a short on options in that regard
What color is your ground material anyway? For snow it looks incredibly dark

[hot path]

Bright white lol
One of the snow textures on using has some rockiness in it but i think its fine

The whole scene is extremely dark as its meant to mimic very dark night time

Is there a good way to make the trees look buried in the snow?

[hot path]

Btw i dont think i can model the trees because i need the trees to be affected by wind

[deft fiber]

That usually isn't a problem but I don't know your workflow, nor am I familiar with speedtrees in general

[hot path]

Ok, idk if you read this part of my question, but is there a good way to make the trees look buried by snow?

[deft fiber]

It looks kinda a lot darker than I expect but I'm not sure how to fix it, beyond my initial advice
It looks like BiRP which has different light attenuation that I'm not so familiar with

[hot path]

Im using URP

[deft fiber]

Well, maybe color space has an effect on the harshess of shadows? I'm really not sure at this point

[hot path]

Maybe? Im using HDR and the ACES tonemapper

[deft fiber]

In linear or gamma color space?

[hot path]

Im pretty sure i turned it to linear

I can try changing it back later

[deft fiber]

Then I'm even more puzzled why your shadows look so deep fried

Maybe that's just image compression

[hot path]

It might be that might directional light is as low intesity as possible without literally emitting low light

[hot path]

Deep fried is probably image compression

But it is stoll darj

Still dark i agree

Whoops i meant no light

[deft fiber]

To make trees look buried in snow, I assume that means there would be a pit, hole or "dimple" in the snow around the tree trunk, but I don't see any simple way of doing that
You'd somehow have to convert the tree positions to a fine vertex deformation map, I suppose, and that's not easy
Getting the typical glint or glimmer of snow isn't easy either, the devs of Journey had a panel breaking down the shader that makes their sand glint in the same way

[hot path]

Well looking at my reference snowy forest, the dimple is very small

From a distance it just looks like a 90 degree angle

[surreal crown]

Hi guys, baked light maps, no lights in this room and i got this result, any idea what could be wrong? I set baked global illumination, i have directional light with intensity=1. Some materials have emissive maps on some meshes ( low intensity) and i have post processing with a bit of glow effect. The white walls does't come from emissive maps i think, i also tried to remove them from material but got same result

[hot path]

What happens if you disable the directional light? Or turn down the intensity

@deft fiber this is how it looks if i set it to literally pure white btw

also checking now, that banding on the flashlight (in this image at least) is very accuract

hmmm

[dull flame]

hey guys, i am using HDRP and i am creating a room geometry procedurally at runtime. i'd like to have a bit more of a realistic lighting. currently everything that is not directly lit by the sun is just grey. some indirect light would be amazing. i don't know much about HDRP and lighting in unity in general but from what i think i picked up is that the whole procedural thing is a bit tricky since most of the lighting magic is prebaked. does anyone have any tips or resources for me?

[surreal crown]

same result

[zinc flume]

-Rtx for fully dynamic lighting but very costly.
-SSGI is almost fully dynamic but you need to use it with reflection probe which require baking(you can try realtime reflection probe + time slicing but it's costly)​.
Apv is hybrid. You bake indirect contributions of static objects and your dynamic object will receive that gi(but they wont contribute to it)

[hot path]

hmm, after fixing up the normal map, it looks like this now

it looks so bad with the insane contrast between the ground and trees

hm

alright

[hot path]

does anyone have ideas to fix this?
looking at the message i replied to for this message, it makes some sense, but i really dont want it to look like this, and the ground material is def not darker than the tree material, unless im stupid and missing something

[dense mural]

Idk whats been happening but I just cant seem to get rid of these lighting issues. Anyone know what could be causing this?

im on URP btw

[chilly kettle]

looks like double geometry

[dense mural]

youre saying it looks like I have objects stacked on top of each other?

[deft fiber]

The likely cause for lights ignoring meshes is the pixel light limit per mesh

[dense mural]

Im wondering if it's because my modular ceiling prefab is just two planes without connecting faces, but adding side faces results in weird behavior like the second image

[dense mural]

Ill try messing with that setting

[dense mural]

This worked! Bumped it up and it's working as expected now. Why exactly does this setting exist? I dont know why youd want to limit the number of lights that can affect an object\

[deft fiber]

In forward rendering path every mesh within a light's range will be rendered again for each light affecting them

It quickly adds up with bundled lights, large meshes and or large light ranges

[dense mural]

oh okay, that makes sense

thanks a lot, and thanks again for all the help with my older problems!

[main wolf]

first, check your scene with full white ambient, see if there's already contrast color between the tree and the ground texture
then, revert the ambient, and remove all texture, then check how the scene looks like without diffuse textures.

[hot path]

wdym by full white ambient?

like 1 intensity directional and white color?

or

[hot path]

scene with flashlight on

flashlight off

(flashlight on is obviously what im showing in my nighttime demos

@main wolf ok so for the next step do you mean remove ALL textures? how do i do that without ruining the small work ive already done?

maybe i should just take a backup for this step or what

[main wolf]

Just the tree and the ground, and yes, you should make backup, or better, use subversioning like git or svn

[hot path]

both sounds good

[main wolf]

this is surprisingly weird, so the ground is indeed brighter than the trees 🤔
I didnt expect that honestly

[hot path]

ACTUALLY good opportunity to ask this

tiling bad see

uhhh what channel should i ask this in

its not lighting i know that

[main wolf]

shader?

[hot path]

should i be using a shader for better texture mapping? or are you just ssuggesting a channel

im assuming shader isnt just a random shot in the dark lmao

[main wolf]

you can add texture to detail input to break up the tiling, both default urp lit and standard shader have it iirc

[hot path]

btw what am i supposed to put on my tree and terrain

because when i delete the texture it just looks like this

textures*

[main wolf]

Is the ground doesnt have any texture assigned?

[hot path]

i deleted the terrain layerss

[main wolf]

ah so it's a terrain

[hot path]

yes

i thought i made that clear

lol

[main wolf]

🤔 let me try a quick set up using terrain

[hot path]

if it matters im using URP 12

[main wolf]

I use white texture here instead of removing the whole terrain layer

[hot path]

i thought you said you didnt want diffuse textures? should i put one in for my demo?

[main wolf]

yep, since default terrain texture is a checkerboard gray 😅

[hot path]

weirdly, some of the trees are really dark rn

hmm

[main wolf]

yeah, that's weird
btw, is the flashlight using light cookie?

[hot path]

yes

i was just gonna turn it off

to try

hm

when the flashlight is off, they go pitch black

but when the flashlight is on

they CONSUME light very much

not absorb but you know what i mean

if i walk really far away

they are still bright

but the ground lighting tapers off quickly

vs

its really weird that the tree reflects light so much vertically

but not much horizontally

[main wolf]

Wait... My gizmo just went missing

[hot path]

wait which one

wdym

[main wolf]

the one you use to move object around

[hot path]

lol where'd it go

[main wolf]

need to restart unity to make it appears again smh

[hot path]

why did it disappear?

[main wolf]

no clue

[main wolf]

It's just like Spazi said above

The ground is at a glancing angle, so less light would be reflected directly back

While the trees reflect more light since they tends to be at perpendicular angle, thus they will looks brighter

[hot path]

yeah in the original screenshots tho it looks REALLY bad imo

imma try the original scene without light cookie

[main wolf]

you can reduce it by making the tree root (where it meets the ground) wider, and/or adding normal map and/or grass to the ground

[hot path]

i dont know how to change the model

and normal map is in my most recent version

its just not super strong of normal map

since its just snow

[main wolf]

the other thing I can think of is hiding the trees with fog, but it's more of a hack

[hot path]

opinions on the looks of this?

[main wolf]

It does look better.

For reference

[hot path]

good flashlight positioning , very nice

[main wolf]

that was a real life image I found on google 😅

[hot path]

i still agree.

i think my ground compared to my tree looks brighter than the ground in the picture compared to their tree

i think adding roots would be nice

but not entirely sure how

overall it looks nicer, but i would maybe like a better flashlight cookie

idk ill leave it for now

[main wolf]

and I still cant find how to add light cookie in urp 😅

[hot path]

off to #archived-shaders to figure out good texture mapping for my terrain

[hot path]

its just in the light

lol

at the bottomn

[main wolf]

I think urp 10 doesnt have one yet

[hot path]

oh