archived-lighting

[formal veldt]

I just placed some idk

[night shell]

light probes would solve that problem with filling in your shadows

[night shell]

screenshot?

the placement of light probes matters quite alot

[formal veldt]

I could place more but the problem is they are too smooth for me

[night shell]

there are ways to make them sharper with custom shaders

[formal veldt]

like, this is how the weapon looks when recieving realtime lighting, which is what I like

and ill show you what it looks like from the probes

ok im having trouble making it recieve from probes again

but regardless it's like this but much more evened out

[night shell]

I get what you mean yeah

[formal veldt]

the black is lighter and the green is darker

[night shell]

light probes will often give you a smoothed out appearance lighting wise

but there are ways to make it sharper

but that is a different problem at the moment

I want to see your light probe placement with your scene

[formal veldt]

someone told me it couldn't be sharp because of how light probes work

and ok

[night shell]

they are not wrong but there are ways to make it sharp again like I mentioned

[formal veldt]

I don't know what's going on here since I didn't place those, these appear when I click on the plane

as for the scene ones

[night shell]

ok I'll pop up unity real quick give me a second

[formal veldt]

I basically just made a small test area

[night shell]

ah there it is

that is what I'm looking for

thats your probe placement for your entire scene?

[formal veldt]

yea I didnt want to bake the whole scene I was just seeing if it would even work

and it does unless I leave that area then it becomes inaccurate

but it still works

[night shell]

you should have light probes in your scene even with baked lighting, and entire scene coverage with light probes is important

[formal veldt]

I mean they are working I just dont like how they look on the weapon

[night shell]

well in that case we'd have to move to custom shader territory

orrrr

could try one thing that could potentially help

in your light probe grid

the gameobject

there should be a field for "Remove Ringing"

[formal veldt]

its turned on right now

[night shell]

turn it off

and rebake

remove ringing is what you get on the right image

[formal veldt]

ok, I gotta figure out how to make this plane actually use its lighting from probes again though

[night shell]

is it using a custom shader?

[formal veldt]

no

[night shell]

what shader

I assume standard?

or something similar?

making an object recivie light probes should be as simple as setting a dropdown

this is from the unity docs but on your mesh rendere component for your weapon plane

there is a field for light probes

set it to blend probes

[formal veldt]

its using URP/lit

this is what its been set to for a while

[night shell]

ahh

you have it set to contribute global illumnination

which means that when you try to bake lighting

its going to try and lightmap that object

turn that off

[formal veldt]

ok

[night shell]

you will have to probably rebake

but that should fix it

[formal veldt]

nope still black

oh it was metallic map

actually this doesn't look TOO bad tbh

but I like how dramatic the realtime one is

[night shell]

also note that if its black and your metallic was all the way set, you don't have any reflection probes setup in your scene so its reflecting nothing

[night shell]

well again like I mentioned we can fix that with shaders

looks like the remove ringing option might have helped a bit but you want a stronger light gradient

[formal veldt]

ok, how would I do that? I think ill try to take that route since this doesn't look too bad

[night shell]

and this is using URP yes?

[formal veldt]

yea

[night shell]

damn, gonna make things tougher but ok

but real quick just to show an example

I've done a similar thing on an uber shader I wrote a while ago

https://streamable.com/9omyby

[formal veldt]

unfortunately I dont know like anything about shaders lol

hm that does look more like what I was thinking though

as long as it's not black in areas that have some light

if possible I thikn it would be best to darken the shadows only if there's also a present bright light

kinda like how a camera will get dark in certain areas if you point it at a bright light

[night shell]

so a camera adaption?

[formal veldt]

or just raise the bright areas without lowering the dark ones

[night shell]

that would require post processing

[formal veldt]

ok ill show you what I mean

[night shell]

what you describe is camera adaption

[formal veldt]

I like how it's very dark here

but I also don't want it to be black here just cuz the contrast got cranked up

maybe JUST increasing the highlights could work, if that's too complex

without darkening the darks

[night shell]

on the object itself or the entire image?

[formal veldt]

just on the weapon

like, just ensure it isn't black when there is some ambient lighting

thats what I want to avoid

while still preserving that dramatic effect when there IS a nearby point light

if thats really complex though I can probably settle for jsut like, making the highlights lighter

to just give it a bit more contrast

[night shell]

well all of that is possible but again would require a custom shader

I'll see if I can do something

but in the meantime I would advise that you correctly setup light probes within your scene

so that all dynamic objects that aren't lightmapped would recieve indirect lighting correctly and consistently across your map

[formal veldt]

ill do that eventually and will probably have to buy Magic Probes or something since I don't want to do that all by hand

Im just using this area as a test zone

[night shell]

https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/simple-light-probe-placer-58290

there are free tools that make the process faster and easier

[formal veldt]

if I could like edit an existing shader within the shader graph I could maybe handle that since blender has something kinda similar

I looked at that one but it doesnt seem to cull/optimize the probes

just makes a grid of them

[night shell]

unfortunately this would require something that I don't think the shader graph supports

[formal veldt]

ah

[night shell]

yep thats how the tool works, to each their own I suppose if you wish to stick with buying magic probes

[formal veldt]

could I just do a postprocessing thing on that object? just mess with the color curve or something?

[formal veldt]

I just like to optimize it and I dont see any other free tool that does

[night shell]

I suppose but that wouldn't really get you close to what you wanted without screwing with the weapon colors

[formal veldt]

isn't that what the lighting does anyways, mess with the colors?

I wonder if I could even do like a slight bloom/glow on the weapon on bright parts, that might help make it more metallic

[night shell]

technically yes but wouldn't be that close to what you are intending to go for

how do I best describe it simply...

suppose I'll save it for later can't think of a simple one but

https://nedmakesgames.medium.com/creating-custom-lighting-in-unitys-shader-graph-with-universal-render-pipeline-5ad442c27276

this should help

[formal veldt]

hm ok I will look at it

https://youtu.be/Ov-OvUupKbM?t=217

the effect im gonig for is shown on the axe at this timestamp well

[night shell]

you can achieve that with proper PBR textures

[formal veldt]

what is PBR textures

[night shell]

physically based rendering, though its just physiclaly based textures in this case

albedo map, roughness map, and a metallic map

for that kind of look you would need to setup reflection probes

which is also an issue I noticed prior that you had

but that is how you get your proper metallic look to materials

[formal veldt]

hm, its more just that I'm going to have so many rooms I would need some way to automatically place them all

[night shell]

there isn't really an automated solution unfortuantely

game dev is tedious

suck it up

[formal veldt]

I also just don't understand exactly what defines a new reflection probe area

like how should they be spaced

[formal veldt]

I feel like there has to be some algorithm that can approximate it though

[night shell]

there are some but your going to want reflection probes as a fallback

[formal veldt]

I mean like, approximate where to place them

like finding the midpoint of each convex space or something

[night shell]

whats so hard about setting up a box though?

it really should only take you like a few seconds at most to setup a reflection probe

[formal veldt]

yea but multiply that by hundreds of rooms in tens of levels

it will become a big time sink and it feels like there should be at least a partially automated solution

[night shell]

not that I've seen unfortauntely

your next best automated solution is using raytraced reflections

[formal veldt]

well it would help if I knew exactly what kind of condition requires an additional reflection probe

I don't really understand what they even are

[night shell]

well I can tell you instead of working your way around it

[formal veldt]

like why do you need to bake that when the room is literally right there? just draw a line to the first wall it hits or whatever

unless its drawing like a million lines a second or whatever

[night shell]

slow down

[formal veldt]

ok

[night shell]

lets tell you what reflection probes are first

understanding these tools are important

I'll keep it as simple as I can

but reflection probes in unity are basically a volume, defined by a box. In the center of this box a 360 image of the enviorment is captured. This is used as the reflection for all objects inside this volume

example

I have a reflection probe in my scene here

roughly set to the bounds of the bathroom

in the center of the reflection probe volume

a 360 image is captured essentially

and all objects within this volume

will use that reflection

that is the essence of reflection probes

[formal veldt]

does it matter where in the room it is? like if it's too close to a floor or wall will that mess it up?

[night shell]

yes

generally

smack dab in the center of the volume is the best place for reflection probes

atleast the capture point

if that point is blocked or occluded you can offset it

[formal veldt]

what happens if theres places that are hidden by walls or corners

[night shell]

then the reflections of that area will be wrong

so to fix that you either use more reflection probes, or do other things to fix it

reflection probes only give you an approximation of reflections in an area

they wont give you the exact reflections, but something that is close enough

welcome to realtime graphics

[formal veldt]

are they going to be noticeable though? like will it be bright pink or black or whatever

[night shell]

depends on the materials in your scene

if you have alot of reflective materials in your scene that are mirror like materials you'll notice it

[formal veldt]

it seems like its basically just baking raytraces into a 360 texture to approximate it yea

[night shell]

*captures an image using a camera, there is no raytracing done

[formal veldt]

I thought cameras in games worked by raytracing each pixel

even if no bounces

[night shell]

nope

its rasterization

[formal veldt]

I thought thats what rasterization was lol

maybe im confused on the terms

[night shell]

you probably are, but I wouldn't worry too much

[formal veldt]

I assumed it took each pixel and used math to draw a line to what part of a tetxure it would hit

[night shell]

but its rasterization, and your thinking of raytracing, they are not the same

[formal veldt]

to color in that pixel

[night shell]

but anyway beside the point here

do you get the idea though of reflection probes?

also if it was raytracing you wouldn't be having any of these issues for the record

[formal veldt]

I think so, but what if two probes are intersecting? which one does it use

ive heard raytracing is very expensive though

[night shell]

whatever one has the highest importance, or whatever one that the object is mostly within

[night shell]

it is

[formal veldt]

on one hand it's a retro style game so maybe I could get away with it, but on the other it's retro style so people probably assume it wont be hardware intensive

[formal veldt]

does it like, visually "flicker" if you step between some critical boundary or does it smooth them

[night shell]

nope

it just blends between the two

like a fade

[formal veldt]

ok

I might not even need accurate reflections though, just shinyness. so I will get there when I get there I suppose. right now though it's just the lighting

ill look at that shader thing

[night shell]

but we are in rasterization, retro graphics are rasterized as well. even that game you are using as an inspiration/example

rasterization is a bunch of approximations and hacks to get you something that looks close

thats why its so fast

[formal veldt]

typo sorry

I meant might NOT even need accurate reflections

like I might not actually even use a "metal" texture

I just kinda want it to look shiny in some areas

I am not gonna have any chrome or things like that

[night shell]

it doesn't have to be chrome

everything will use a reflection probe even if its diffuse

obviously a different style that im going for in this case, but with your game its the same deal

[formal veldt]

surely I can just do some kind of specular or something to make it look shiny without having to actually reflect anything

[night shell]

if you want to insist on doing that sure yeah

just a basic specular lobe for shine

and no reflections

won't be able to get that nice metallic look though

[formal veldt]

hm I'm already lost on this video, I might just try some postprocessing stuff for now. I'm probably gonna have to actually learn shaders eventually I just don't want to do it right now. was mostly trying to fix my lighting after converting to URP for decals

[deft fiber]

Mostly by looking at the result and asking yourself if it looks wrong or not

I linked you one free light probe placer a couple of days ago, did that not work out?

[night shell]

suppose not, he wants an automated solution for probes

same with reflection probes

[formal veldt]

I mean, placing boxes for probes is one thing

but theres no way I can optimize it all manually

[night shell]

optimize it how?

ah I see what you mean

probes are not that expensive

[deft fiber]

I don't want to be discouraging but projects will go easier if you don't try to tackle a dozen new concepts and problems at once

[formal veldt]

maybe not, but I think it's worth $40 to optimize them for the entire game very quickly tbh

[night shell]

light probes are not that expensive

and if your game is not performant

the profiler will tell you what is actually not performing well

[deft fiber]

https://github.com/cgaueb/light_probe_placement this is the one I linked
Its purpose is to optimize them

[night shell]

most of the time its not the light probes, and its something else entirely

[formal veldt]

oh right I forgot you did link one that did that

I will definitely look at it

[deft fiber]

Sometimes the sane solution is to aim lower if doing things perfectly requires too much time or effort
Like I mentioned before, the minimum number of light probes you need is one

If you're not aiming for photorealism it could be acceptable that reflections aren't perfect

[night shell]

while were at it are you aware of any automated tools for reflection probe placement?

[deft fiber]

Often as devs we end up obsessing over things the players won't even notice

[night shell]

I haven't certainly seen any, if there are would be nice to know

[formal veldt]

thats what I was saying, I might not need to use probes cuz its not really reflections im after so much as just looking shiny

but again my problem now is the smoothness of the lighting... but even then that's something I can work on later

[night shell]

I was initally helping you because of a lighting issue mostly

[formal veldt]

what might work for me tbh is if I had like, the weapon rendered with probe lighting and rendered with realtime lighting

and depending on how strong the lights nearby are it fades between them

[night shell]

and you can do that with mixed lights

not sure what's wrong with the setup currently you have to where you can only have one or the other

something is not right there

[formal veldt]

huh I thought its because if you take from probes it doesnt add mixed on top of that

[night shell]

it always does

the common setup for probes for most lighting setups are to provide ambient lighting

then the realtime lighting is added ontop

[formal veldt]

hmm

let me see if I can do probe lighting and add a brand new realtime light

[night shell]

you should be able to, mabye the reason you thought you couldn't before was because you accidentally marked that contribute GI field on your mesh renderer which mean it was only using from lightmaps, and the resulting ambient light was always dark

so sure try it again if you can

[deft fiber]

I don't know of any
Placing reflection probes is kind of a trivial effort in the grand scheme of level design

Usually I expect it takes about ten seconds per probe if the rooms are reasonably boxy

[formal veldt]

hm ok it DOES work with realtime + probes

[night shell]

there it is

[formal veldt]

but I dont know if it works with mixed plus probes

[night shell]

it should in theory

mixed lights are also realtime

and have a realtime component

[formal veldt]

like this one looks a lot smoother as if the realtime isn't hitting it. but maybe it is? the green light is mixed

maybe I just need to somehow like, "cap" the influence of probe light

so its just faint ambient light when there is no realtime light in sight

cuz maybe what's happening is the dramatic lighting is just being flooded out by the probe lighting on the unlit side

[night shell]

its possible, again probes are typically low frequency and smooth, even though there are ways to make them sharp

but you can implement a probe influence once you learn this though https://nedmakesgames.medium.com/creating-custom-lighting-in-unitys-shader-graph-with-universal-render-pipeline-5ad442c27276\

there is a section where it shows you after adding realtime lights, where you can add contribution from global illumination (i.e. probes)

and in your custom shader you would create a custom parameter that controls the strength of the GI influence

[formal veldt]

hm, I will probably have to learn shaders then

they're prolly not as bad as im thinking lol

[night shell]

they arent

[formal veldt]

anything rendering seems like wizardry to me

[night shell]

if you are familiar with C# code

shaders are not too different

[deft fiber]

This should've been a thread but I still suggest you make that

[formal veldt]

I wonder if just for a simple test I could just toggle the probe lights on and off through a script if any light is in range or something

[formal veldt]

sorry, I think I'm pretty much done by now anyways tho

[deft fiber]

Next time then

[night shell]

ehhh I wouldn't do that honestly, your best off with a shader approach especially with how specific you want your lighting to be

because turning off "probes" in theory would do it for all other dynamic objects you have in your scene

perhaps getting rid of probes entirely and sticking with realtime/mixed lights + only a single basic ambient color for your dynamic objects might be more your speed honestly

it would mean though that many areas in your map if they are not within range of a light source they will most likely look a bit off or out of place due to the lack of accurate ambient/indirect, but you'd maintain those strong lighting gradients that you desire with the realtime/mixed lights for dynamic objects

[formal veldt]

the main issue is that pitch black areas will be a recurring part of the game and I don't want the weapon illuminated in there

ill probably just have to write a custom shader tbh

that's the good solution, I'm just lazy lol

[night shell]

yeah in that case shaders it is, suck it up

its not so bad once you learn it, as long as you are familiar with scripting it shouldn't be difficult for you

and the tutorial I linked is an extension of the shader graph, so while it will require you to do some code at first, once you have everything you need you can do everything else with nodes visually

[formal veldt]

are you sure you linked the right one then? because the tutorial you linked started by saying you should already be familiar with the shader graph

[night shell]

I mean what I listed isnt for beginners though

but I listed it because its a key to getting to the solution that you want

there are tons of tutorials on unity shader graph on yt or anywhere that you can find

[formal veldt]

fair

ill come back to that video after I learn shaders, thanks

[formal veldt]

@night shell one last thing, I just realized the green light was set to baked instead of mixed lol. this is how it looks with mixed. not bad tbh

[night shell]

not as strong as you want it though

[formal veldt]

it could theoretically look more dramatic for sure. but I will eventually learn shaders. just wanted to say that cuz I realized I made a mistake

[arctic isle]

oh hey there

[stoic cave]

how come global light is the only light sources that affects anything?

ignore the other 4 sprites because they have a custom material

[polar peak]

how i can do top down lightning, like how i can make these trees have a shadow on the ground

[polar peak]

thats a normal spot light i think, not 2d spot light

[stoic cave]

uh oh 🤔

YO

YOU ARE A GENIUS XD

omg I hate mistakes like these

[stoic cave]

since we are doing the same thing maybe this video will help that I'm currently watching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jf1w_wUibnA

[polar peak]

i have urp already but this is the left right kind of game, im doing top down game

[stoic cave]

isn't it still the same concept tho?

[polar peak]

nah, i want shadows not light

[stoic cave]

shadows without lights 🤔

[polar peak]

yea only in 2d

[arctic isle]

afaik you can set that in the shadow settings of a light ('Shadows' -> Shadows Only)

or if it's 2D if you add a shadow caster component (?) you can have a sprite only emit shadows. It's a bit different with 2D

[stoic cave]

I'm trying to make a shader that works with 2D lights (URP) but idk how to do. I managed to get something at least lol. It's just black but it is at least affected by light

is this the right way to do so far? 🤔

uh should this be in #archived-lighting or #archived-shaders ? lol

[arctic isle]

shaders

[stoic cave]

okay

[unique mango]

yo anyone quick question

Why light cookies flash

I have 2 light cookies and they are flashing and they are just bright squares

and file format is tiff

or tif

[copper ocean]

Hey! So im just getting into the whole "bake lightning" business.

Ive manged to successfully bake some lightning for my scene.

In the scene i have some 30+ point light sources. All set to Mixed Lightning.
Now ive baked these on the terrain plane they are positioned upon. But now some of them are not illuminating the non-static objects in my scene.

I am very confused why this is the case.

[arctic isle]

Check Window > Rendering > Light Explorer, some lights may have fallen back to baked.

30 mixed lights are a lot 👀

[copper ocean]

I just checked, they're all still Mixed

having a road with lanterns placed along it. Was kind of hoping they'd all be able to cast shadows :#

works great when im not using the baked lightning. apart from the fact that my fps drops to about 15

did i mess up my baking settings somehow?

[arctic isle]

I was going to recommend Shadowmask mode 🤔

your lights should have the baked and realtime shadows on, right? and the objects you're looking to cast / recieve shadows should have the relevant settings on

then the next place to look is shadow cascades

[copper ocean]

pretty sure theyre both on ye?

here's the reciever

its like unity's saying "Oh, there's baked lighting for this one, ima just ignore its realtime lightning then"

[arctic isle]

Is the ground etc set to receive shadows?

[copper ocean]

its like so strange. Theyre exactly the same. the "units" are duplicates of eachother from justnow. And the lanterns are duplacates of eachother before the baking.

wait what, the ground isnt recieving the shadows either.

now im extra confused

or is it. wait.

oh nvm, it's working

Its just the "bottom" lantern in the image doesnt cast light nor produce shadows

even copied the settings from the working light onto the non working light, just to make sure there wasnt any funny business

putting the shader to baked lightmap it looks like this btw.

so the lantern thats "working" didnt get baked or something

[arctic isle]

Hm... I'd say try to see if this problem reproduced with just the two lanterns and maybe one player character, try to isolate the cause

[copper ocean]

like, rebake with all the other lanterns disabled?

[arctic isle]

I'm not 100% sure what may be going on...

Yeah

[copper ocean]

alright, ill try

[arctic isle]

GPU lightmapper should be faster btw

[copper ocean]

btw, should i be disabling the gameobjects recieving the shadows while baking? i.e. my units

Yea, i cant seem to be able to enable it

[arctic isle]

no, it doesn't matter

[copper ocean]

dont know if my graphics card is too bad or not 😦

just getting this when i try to chose the gpu

[arctic isle]

which version are you using?

[copper ocean]

2022.2.15

[arctic isle]

oh 😦 and which graphics card? it's strange that it's not giving you a reason for the fallback

[copper ocean]

using my trusty old GTX 960 :>

[arctic isle]

okay it's possible it's not supported

[copper ocean]

i asumed as much. But i was kinda wishing for some more verbose error message x)

gotta try and get my hands on a better computer... but ive been studying at uni for 3 years so havent really had the funds.

[arctic isle]

sorry about that mate-- is it less than 4GB VRAM?

[copper ocean]

think its 2GB

[arctic isle]

then it isn't supported on 2022 (but it is on 2023.2!) but we should probably be a little more specific about it

[copper ocean]

o.O maybe i should download the latest then

Alright, finished baking now

seems to work

i did however change a few things from last bake that i forgot to undo...

The terrain's Scale in Lightmap was lower than it is now.
One of the point lights radius is lower than the other lanterns.
And i think i changed the Lightmap Resolution from 10 to 20

cant remember.

Ill try and re-enable all the lanterns and see if the problem still exists

[arctic isle]

resolution increases bake time / makes lightmaps nicer, but it doesn't affect anything realtime, you can keep it low for debugging

[arctic isle]

logged a bug for us to improve that error message / UX, thanks!

[copper ocean]

hah, youre welcome

This doesnt have anything to do with my issue does it?

as i understand it, it should only mean that two different surfaces might share light data

[arctic isle]

oof haha no it's because of the resolution and scale in the lightmaps

[copper ocean]

or 133 in my case

[arctic isle]

shouldn't break things if you're debugging realtime stuff

[copper ocean]

right ^^

ouff, baking time estimated to 20 min

I'll get back to you when its done x)

keep the emojis flowing, estimation dropped to 10min now

!

alright, the results are in

Still not working correctly 😦

seems like its not baking some of my lights

am i simply having to many lights?

[deft fiber]

These settings are marked in blue and bold, which means those properties have local overrides
Make sure all the lights you're testing have matching settings
Also, the light range seems kind of big
Depending on how your scene is scaled relative to them, it could be that many light ranges are overlapping your dynamic meshes which could cause the light limit to be hit

[copper ocean]

i was actually thinking of that. Their range is kind of big.

maybe my design is just bad.

maybe fewer lights, with larger range is better

like, alot fewer

[deft fiber]

That would not change the potential range overlap

Fixing of which doesn't require reducing the number of lights

[copper ocean]

im not following

[deft fiber]

You should first simply visually confirm the light ranges by selecting the lights, and see how many reach your meshes at once
If they do overlap, you can decrease the ranges and see if lighting starts working
Worth trying before you start redesigning your whole lighting setup

If you're on URP the per object pixel light limit defaults to 4, and can go up to 8

[copper ocean]

aye, i have it set to 8

looks like around 8-9 are reaching my units at the same time

[deft fiber]

That seems more than should be necessary considering the space between

[copper ocean]

well, it was an aesthetic choice. As i didnt want the lights to come off as so harsh, but rather have a sort of smooth fall off

but more than likely, there are other methods of achiving that effect

[deft fiber]

This is how I'd limit them
This keeps maximum overlapping lights at 4 and cuts them off around where the light becomes imperceptible anyway

[copper ocean]

oh, but thats sort of how they are atm i think.

hang on let me double check that

ouff, nevermind, they have far longer range

alright, i modified their range to be somewhat closer to what your example showed. Ive hit the bake button, illget back to you on how it went

Seems like the baketime was reduced significantly btw

[deft fiber]

The range's effect on dynamic meshes is not dependent on baking, so you can test that separately

[copper ocean]

ah, then it made no difference

it seems to be the actually baking data that stops the lights from doing their thing

i dont understand

I put the exposure a little higher so its more easily shown, but like alot ofthe lights arent getting baked

And incidentally those are the ones that continue to light the scene in realtime, whereas the ones that does get baked just stops any realtime rendering.

even tho all of the lights are set to Mixed

[kind mortar]

i change my settings in bakery but it seems to reset back to preset stuff when i press render and renders at that

im trying to lower lightmap resolution so i can get this to fit on an android device

it just isnt saving

[hot yarrow]

(moved from #archived-shaders bc this channel is more accurate)

In a deferred shading pipeline, is it acceptable to use an emission "coefficient" stored with diffuse color in the GBuffer, rather than having a separate render target for emissive materials?

I'm trying to avoid a huge gbuffer, but if it's most physically accurate to have emissive surfaces in a different texture then I'll do that

[rugged galleon]

This look right for baking lighting on an RTX 2070? Getting 128 mrays/sec, which seems low

very little GPU utilization

[hot path]

my 3070 gets like 520 or something

and low gpu use still

[timber lichen]

why does this happen in the dark. every time I move it changes

also the walls are clipping

[muted tinsel]

I am not entirely sure if this is a lighting issue but I have been trying to mimic this type of coloring in my textures within my own scene in Unity but am not sure on how to achieve this.

Specifically referring to the color of the trees, but it applies to pretty much everything else in the scene as well. This is what the it looks like in my own scene. The same exact textures are used in the trees on both images. Does anyone have any insight into how to make the colors pop like they do in the first image? Help would be extremely appreciated!

[deft fiber]

The trees are unlit and tinted by vertex colors
The shadows below them are decals rather than real shadows

[deft fiber]

What do you mean by that?

[quaint coyote]

Yesterday, I was so so confused about my project's lightmap problems. I read all lightmapping troubleshooting guide in unity documentary. I understood these hardly..
Today, I solved well. Now, Im learning from my mistakes. It looks beautiful now. Better than old one with that lightmap problems.

The mistakes were that box.

I mean vehicle garage place

There was lightmap problems because the number of vertex/edge was low. I've increased the number of vertex/edge again. Then the problems were solved.

Problems solved.. Understood. But I dont know why would the lightmap not work properly when the vertex/edge number was low

I was like serious.

[deft fiber]

glad you got it worked out

[quaint coyote]

thanks

it was wtf moment for me

bc I was so confused

[deft fiber]

In my experience this directly shouldn't be a factor
But maybe it changed how the lightmap UVs were generated

[quaint coyote]

Understandable

@deft fiber I solved this.. just learnt from one video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dY_DSgU_IPA

it was wtf moment because why would the lightmap not work properly when the vertex/edge number was low. now I understood.

Now I'm going to make a rendering video that the vehicle garage.

[deft fiber]

The edges are added so that the interior floor can be separated, that forces them into different UV regions
The initial problem in this example is that the lightmap pixels below the wall are both inside and outside the room, so light leaks

[quaint coyote]

Ohhhhh

This makes scenes.

I should learn generate lightmap bake/real-time more.

[deft fiber]

It's a very complicated topic, but it's easy to improve just by doing it and getting a feel for how it works

[quaint coyote]

True true.

[indigo jewel]

Hi I am having some troubles while importing blender .fbx to unity, it looks like the mesh is reversed like a socket, so maybe it's a normals problem, I tried calculating normals in the "model" section of the prefab but it didn't work either, does someone knows what I could do ?

[muted tinsel]

How would I achieve real shadows vs just decals, as well as avoiding the tint by vertex colors?

[deft fiber]

If you want it like your reference, you want to avoid real shadows and instead use vertex colors and a decal

Not the other way around

[muted tinsel]

Ohh you were referring to the reference! I see

[deft fiber]

If recalculate doesn't work, invert them manually

Recalculate relies on the mesh not having any openings

[muted tinsel]

I was able to figure it out thanks to you! Now they look just how I was aiming for in terms of color~

Regarding the decals, I drew them myself with a bit of a blue tint. Is there a way for them to have a sort of multiply effect though? I'd like to use decals for shadows on buildings as well but they look more like a flat color has been placed over the area

[deft fiber]

Drew them? Is the blue thing a decal here

[muted tinsel]

Yep

This one is just a square

[deft fiber]

Not sure
The reference game only uses decals for tree shadows and other simple blob shadows

[deft fiber]

Otherwise it uses old school projected mesh shadows, with no self shadowing and only in the case of significantly big meshes

Curiously from what I could see the palm trees were one of few unique meshes that were unlit
Even other trees in the game had directional shading

[muted tinsel]

Oh wow, okay. I'm only taking notice of these things this time around

[deft fiber]

As far as I know the closest equivalent to old school mesh shadows for Unity is this
https://github.com/rhedgeco/UnityShadowVolumeGenerator but I don't know how practical it is

[muted tinsel]

Thanks! I'll take a look at it and see

[rugged galleon]

Anyone else, like 130 mrays/sec for baked lighting, with an RTX 2070 Super or thereabouts?

Is around 130 mrays/sec normal for that graphics card or similar?

[hot path]

also it depends on what scene i imagine

i had a fairly simple scene

[timber lichen]

I put the walls together

[arctic isle]

130 is pretty normal for that card. I can sometimes get 1k on my 3090 👀

In more recent versions of Unity we have greatly improved stability and optimized the GPU utilization. For some reason you can't profile it directly from the task manager (as you have tried above) and you need special tools to view vram occupancy and the like.

@hot path afaik it's not scene dependent, but lucky for you today is GPU Lightmapper benchmarking day, so if you guys have questions lmk.

[stoic cave]

lmao this word highlight makes sense literally 😂

[deft fiber]

If you don't want the walls to clip, I assume you wouldn't place them too close together
The shadow problem could be an issue with z-fighting due to clipping geometry, or possibly a problem with extreme light bias values

[fervent swift]

Hi there, Is there a way to lower the rendering quality in the scene view because im having trouble rendering my URP scene and moving around the view without unity being very slow

Thank you!

[arctic isle]

you can try turning off effects, gizmos and lighting all at the top of the scene view

[fervent swift]

Thank you @arctic isle !

[forest rose]

Would anyone know why one side of a reflective surface would be clear but the other would be greyed out?

From the inside, the light is shining from the west side of the room so not sure if that has an affect

[hot path]

well this isnt lightmapper benchmarking, but how do I profile GPU object draws? is there a way to see what is actually taking GPU time? like specifc lights, specific objects/batches, yknow, stuff like that? Ive seen unreal's profiler lets you see at least what indivual lights are costing you, i asked a similar question in #archived-hdrp but i havent gotten an answer yet

[arctic isle]

not sure actually

[dim violet]

1st image: the spotlight is slightly touching the cube
2nd image: the spotlight is slightly not touching the cube

I'm pretty sure the 1st image should show a cube with a few pixels lit on it, this however looks like as soon as it detects that a spotlight is interacting with it, it behaves as if the spotlight is a point light, does anyone know why?
The cube has the default material. I'm using the built in pipeline.
Also the reason why the cube is so dark is because I turned off every other light source in the scene to achieve pitch black.
I even tried deleting the new lighting settings and reverting them to default, but still the same outcome sadly.

also these are the spotlight settings

[frank grove]

after baking my scene some surfaces were destroyed. Any idea how can I fix this ?

[deft fiber]

Use scene window debug view modes to confirm texel invalidity and UV overlap errors

[fervent swift]

Hi there, is one of these a shadow mask and one of them a lightmap? or are they both lightmaps - and if they are - why would there be two lightmaps and not just one?

Thank you!

[frank grove]

Shouldn't something appear red if there was a problem ?

[deft fiber]

Yes
Currently debug views are available only after a bake for that scene if the editor hasn't been closed

Both texel invalidity and UV overlap look pretty clear to me, still
And I expect you have some warning about it in the console

[frank grove]

Ah so I need to rebake

[deft fiber]

If you want to precisely diagnose the problem yes, though you may be able to fix some things blind

[frank grove]

many things red now 😛

[deft fiber]

Texel invalidity happens because of mesh backfaces exposed to lit surfaces, which terminates lighting on those surfaces
Lightmap UV overlap usually happens when meshes don't have "generate lightmap UVs" checked in import settings, or because they don't fit on the lightmap

Check import settings first

[frank grove]

You are right ! I will change settings and rebake. Thank you !!

[deft fiber]

I would check quality settings
If your "pixel light count" is too low to fit the lights, they would fall back to vertex lighting which seems to match your problem description

[dim violet]

I could swear the default value had 4..
must've changed it, thank you!

[ruby sail]

can i get a step by step on how to do this? I've been told its in the model of a prefab but i don't see that option

[lapis charm]

hey there people

having a huge problem im not very happy about

how is this fixed? this has been an issue ongoing since the beginning of my project and i cant work it out

[lapis charm]

Fixed it sorta ^ :) still would appreciate advice on why this happens though.

[limpid notch]

Hey, we have a problems with lightmaps, we use Bakery, but when I try to bake lightmaps in unity, I have the same problem, can somebody help?

[deft fiber]

Looks like you're hitting the per mesh pixel light limit

[lapis charm]

Huh. What do you think could resolve it? Really deep into that project right now and need to figure some sort of fix. I went into the terrain settings a few times, adjusted some of the settings - and nothing. Only thing that seemed to mess with it was important vs non important settings of the lights I was using but I need them in the scene.

[deft fiber]

Which render pipeline are you using?

[lapis charm]

Apparently none, started off as a project in 3D

I am not at all knowledgeable of Render Pipelines besides knowing they exist and where to change it

so maybe there's an issue there

[deft fiber]

Since you're on built-in render pipeline you can simply increase the pixel light count from quality settings as much as you need to

[lapis charm]

Are you serious? That is surprisingly simple

[lapis charm]

Right now its 4 - what is a number you suggest that probably won't destroy FPS or anything

I'm assuming 8 or something

[deft fiber]

Performance depends on many things in your project, but with lights every mesh in their range will be rendered wholly anew for each light, and at least twice for each shadow casting light

The usual way to optimize lights is to decrease their ranges and slice big meshes into smaller ones, to limit the number and complexity of meshes that will need to be rendered again
But with Terrain there's no simple way to slice it

[lapis charm]

I've noticed, it's not fun. However I've worked with it though. There's fog surrounding the player at all times allowing for pretty easy low res rendering with distance and that's made FPS easier on me. Lights seemed to be the only issue as of right now, I don't know why I didn't think of the Render Pipeline. It should be good now that I adjusted it to work

[deft fiber]

With something like URP you might get some free optimization out of the box, but also it has a hard cap of 8 for the light limit in forward rendering path

Both of them support deferred rendering, which would be another option
With it lights are really cheap as the cost of rendering is per affected screen pixel, rather than per mesh, but there's an upfront cost to that as well as some limitations such as no AA no transparent materials

New versions of URP additionally have forward+ rendering path which only renders lights per mesh 'per screen tile' as far as I understand, which combines the strengths of both

I don't recommend rushing to upgrade, as changing render pipelines will cause some extra work, break custom shader compatibility and the newest ones can have instabilities

[stoic cave]

how would you solve this issue where the light of the wall is on the right side even though the light comes from the left?

this is how the original texture looks like

[limber delta]

I may not understand the issue correctly, but can't you just flip the asset?

[stoic cave]

yes but that will flip the shape as well

I don't wanna flip the shape

[limber delta]

Yeah

Ok i see

[stoic cave]

should I just make a shadowless asset or something?

but then it will look too flat maybe

[limber delta]

Or perhaps another one with light on the left side

There might be a better way though, I don't have much experience with 2d lighting

[stoic cave]

what if I have a lightsource diagonally from top left

[limber delta]

Is possible perhaps design it in such a way that you can actually flip the same asset. Would save resources

Yeah. That's a good point. Someone else will have to chime in

Have you looked into this https://youtu.be/DI9bSVTBlsA

[stoic cave]

aha

that guy was funny tho lol

but do I have to make one sprite for each direction

no thanks

[limber delta]

Alright 😊

There is this one as well https://youtu.be/kpt7Ft5y8v4

[deft fiber]

You would make the base color shadowless, or at least without directional shadows and let the shadows be handled by normal maps and 2D lighting like in the tutorial above

[stoic cave]

you talking about this one?

[deft fiber]

Both do the same thing using different techniques

[stoic cave]

oh ok

[deft fiber]

Hand painting the light directions is mainly feasible only for low resolution art, and in the case of pixel art that's the only feasible way

In other situations a normal map can be generated from a height texture or a 3D source asset if you have that

The above tutorial uses the base color map to generate the normal map, which results in incorrect depth and shape, but kind of works anyhow

[limber delta]

Great info. I learnt something 😊👍

[stoic cave]

Spazi is always here for me to help ❤️

[deft fiber]

[stoic cave]

this is my first game where I play around with lights and shaders lul

[deft fiber]

Gimp also has a decent height map to normal map filter if you don't want to get Photoshop

[stoic cave]

aha

[arctic isle]

you'd probably also need to make the shading on the sprite flatter so you can light it using the normals and the lights. Usually just bringing the contrast down does the trick.

[forest rose]

Is anyone able to help me with an issue? I'm using a glass material that someone made for URP where one side of the glass looks transparent but another side is completley greyed out for some reason. I'm not sure what the issue could be. I do know that directional light is coming through the side of the normal looking glass

[deft fiber]

I would examine the glass material on a quad in the middle of the room, to confirm there's nothing extra in the way there, and that it really does look like glass

Showing the material properties (and shader if it's a custom one) could help as well

[stoic cave]

yo this kinda reminds me of bump mapping when I worked with 3D modeling before

[deft fiber]

If you use a quad instead of a cube here, is the flipside opaque then?

[deft fiber]

It quite literally is!

[stoic cave]

pog

[forest rose]

Didn't realize but the quad is not

[deft fiber]

So, the opaqueness we're seeing is not the glass shader's backface, at least
Maybe there's extra geometry in the way with a different shader

[forest rose]

I actually think it's a unity problem since I didn't apply any material to the Quad

Like there is a setting I haven't switched on

That would explain why the material isn't looking like how it should when it's horizontal compared to how it's working when it's vertical

From this angle it's fine

From this it's not

[deft fiber]

This is expected behavior
Backfaces are culled by default and in most cases we want them to be culled

[deft fiber]

Here we're looking at two transparent materials which are being sorted by object origin depth from camera, so one of them always will be drawn first
One or both of them seem to be sampling scene color, which I believe excludes transparent materials, so they can't be seen through each other

[forest rose]

Ah gotcha, that's interesting to hear actually

Would it help if I added that this building is kind of double glazed where the inside is facing towards the inside of the room and the other glass is facing outward?

[deft fiber]

In the first image it appears that the inner glass panes are facing outward so they'd not be rendered when looking out from inside

[forest rose]

It's now more interesting because rotating the glass actually breaks the shader

[deft fiber]

You probably have some inverted normals there

In the second image of the two you see the trouble with transparent materials being seen through each other, as their render order easily gets messed up

[limpid notch]

Anyone know how to fix this? Mainly happens at the bends

[forest rose]

Everything is pretty normal on Blender, Everything is facing the right way. Blues facing in and red's facing out

[deft fiber]

Hmm, Bakery?

[limpid notch]

Yes

[deft fiber]

Then I don't know
It has its own specific issues

Maybe they have support channels or resources

[limpid notch]

Ye but when I do the same with unity, I have same problem

[forest rose]

Sad times, that's what I figured. Thanks for the help anyway!

[deft fiber]

Ah, sorry, I was replying to Sewu
I don't see any issue with the normals or mesh here, but worth double checking that no geometry is overlapping
If the room won't be seen from the outside, it's best not to have outside windows at all
Keeps the window setup simple

[deft fiber]

Can you show the problem you get with GPU Lightmapper? There's no issue that visually matches exactly what we're seeing with Bakery here

[limpid notch]

3h baking xd

[forest rose]

Windows on outside deleted but still causing issues

[deft fiber]

Are the foggy and clear glass different materials?
You said the shader breaks when you rotate it so maybe there's some problems within the shader

[forest rose]

They are the same material, What I have noticed though is that the shader only breaks from the horizontal side of the map for some reason

[deft fiber]

So, it seems to be a shader problem

[forest rose]

Never had this problem before, which is a shame

I found a way of getting around it by just creating a new object in Unity and just replacing it

it's annoying but i'm happy to do it

[fervent swift]

Hi, I am trying to cast a shadow from the directional light onto the ground, but no shadow is being created - ~~when i make the object smaller it works ~~, but not sure why (actually not sure that works). Would love to hear your thoughts here. Thank you!

[deft fiber]

Is there any circumstance where the shadows appear?

[fervent swift]

if a put small cube at the scale of 1,1,1 the shadows are cast from the cube onto the ground - thank you!

[deft fiber]

Can you show that cube with the shadows placed next to the house?

[fervent swift]

sure

[fervent swift]

do you want to see house at original scale?

[fervent swift]

house and cube (house is way bigger)

put next to cube- it llooks ike when I zoom camera in - the shadows appear is that a specific setting?

[deft fiber]

Yes, since the shadows appear on the house as well up close that suggests you need to tweak shadow distance in quality settings

[fervent swift]

awesome! That fixed it! Thank you

[fervent swift]

when working with lighting in detailed scenes is there a certain scale objects should be? Would it make a difference and is it better if you scale objects to be small to improve bake times/and performance? Thank you

[fervent swift]

for example i added a light probe group to my scene (attached) and it is tiny, which makes me think the model is just too big --

[deft fiber]

Make them in real world scale or close to it
You determine the bake resolution and using real world metrics makes it easier to calculate those values and notice errors

By default one unit in editor equals one metre

[fervent swift]

awesome, thank you!

[deft fiber]

In my experience a newly created light probe group occupies a 2x2x2 meter cube

[fervent swift]

Thank you

[deft fiber]

@fervent swift It also ties into every other scale-dependent setting, such as physics, light emissive intensities and shadow distance, as we've seen

[fervent swift]

incredible

I appreciate all of your help

[hot path]

hmm, whats wrong with the other 2 couch cushions? Im aiming for a look like the first one, not sure what i messed up

[deft fiber]

A normal map issue
Looks most likely to be using DX type normal map rather than GL

[hot path]

its something material related, becuase if i switch the other two to use the same material as the first one it works

[deft fiber]

Should be simple enough to figure out what's the meaningful difference between those materials

[hot path]

ah i forgot to import the normals as normal map, didnt get a warning though, weird

well lets try this then

looks good now, thanks

[fervent swift]

Hey, are light probes beneficial to objects that are not dynamic? Thank you

[deft fiber]

Yes, a mesh renderer that has "contributes to GI" but is set to receive lighting from light probes doesn't require any lightmap UV space or lightmap calculations
That's how you want it for static meshes that are too small or have too much detail to be effectively lightmapped

[atomic bramble]

Hi everyone, I'm working on a project in Standar Render pipeline (can't use URP or HDRP). And I have a light issue that I can't figure why it doesn't work. It need to be baked. here some screenshot of what are my setting for the lighting and some example of the issue. Its my first years modeling and using unity so it might even be the model or the unity setting. Keep in mind that everything is from blender and sketchup. Everything should have they own UV generated too from unity.

[spring igloo]

Hello, I am creating a game for the oculus quest 2, so it is built in android. And all pixel lights are, for no apparent reason, converted to vertex lights. How can I change this?

[deft fiber]

One possible apparent reason is that you have a platform specific graphics level in Quality settings, which would be limiting pixel lights

[spring igloo]

Excuse me, let me add a bit more context, in the project they stay as pixel, but when built they convert.

[spring igloo]

Oh, I see, let me check.

Right, I am using URP so I don't believe I can change that from Quality settings.

Oh! Nevermind! Located what I needed.

Thanks Spazi since you guided me into the right direction.

[stoic cave]

omg normal mapping is so cool. I made a completely flat sprite with no shadows and got this 3D looking thing

here is my normal map

not sure about the texture tho lol

ty @deft fiber and the other dude 😄

[night shell]

question

is the dynamic occlusion field on the mesh renderer component strictly for occlusion culling only?

or is it also related to the camera frustum culling (i.e. which unity uses by default when no occlusion culling is baked or being used)?

the docs make it seem like its only for occlusion culling, but is it also for frustum culling when there is no occlusion culling?

[main wolf]

iirc, no. cmiiw, camera frustum culling only uses mesh renderer's bounds

[night shell]

I know it uses the bounds

But what I'm asking is that when there is no occlusion culling data in use

Does dynamic occlusion resort to the classic frustum culling? And does disabling it mean that its always rendering and not being culled (and enabling it means the mesh will be culles by the camera frustum?)

Or is the dynamic occlusion field only for when the occlusion culling system is in use, and it has nothing to do with frustum culling

Not sure if I'm phrasing it correctly but I think you get what i mean?

Someone from the unity team might need to clarify this for me

[deft fiber]

Looks good, though the green channel is inverted here
This would be a "DX" normal map instead of "GL" that Unity uses

[stoic cave]

hmm I made the normal map in Gimp

[stoic cave]

any settings I messed up with maybe?

[deft fiber]

"Flip Y" inverts the green channel

[stoic cave]

is the green areas of the normal map where the light will be the brightest?

,

[stark temple]

A normal map is directional information, it doesn't create any occlusion, so brightness is completely dependent on the location of the light source

[stoic cave]

oh

ah now it makes sense about the first video for pixel art that I watched where he made one sprite for 4 different directions

so a normal map basically does that but for all directions in one sprite

[deft fiber]

Two separate things, so occlusion settings don't affect frustum culling
If you open Occlusion window's Visualization tab and select a camera, you can visualize both occlusion and frustum culling to see when either or both take effect

[arctic isle]

im the other dude? 😂 I'll take it

[stoic cave]

yeah I guess the other dude was both you and @limber delta 😂

[arctic isle]

what a community we are

[stoic cave]

haha

this is much better than stack overflow

I made some new art with Dall E and added normal maps to them 🙂

but it's weird the walls casts shadows on the platforms 🤔

[fervent swift]

Thank you!

[weary wigeon]

Can I ask a question to any technical experts out there?

I have a basic level and I really like the look of a decal projector projecting a big texture over the ground, quite a big one - it adds color, visual interest and looks really cool. Should I avoid this entirely for performance reasons, or is it a legit way to add visual interest to a scene?

[arctic isle]

It really depends on how many other things are going on. If you profile it and you see that it's okay for the platforms you're targeting then by all means follow your creative vision. Otherwise I'm sure there are ways of getting to a similar result with a bit more elbow grease (maybe shaders / post-processing / lights). It really depends on what you think is acceptable given your creative vision 🙂

[night shell]

ah ok, so basically the dynamic occlusion has no effect on frustum culling

[fervent swift]

Hi I am looking to 'rent' a cloud GPU for lightbaking and these are the different options, hoping to find something not too expensive yet good - was thinking RTX4000 is that going to be ok? The better they get the more expensive but hoping to get a good value…

here's other options

Thank you!

[ruby sail]

I’m messing around with baked lighting and bakery. Should I place all my assets in the scene before I test lighting, or just the room then assets?

[charred moth]

I think changing to shadowmask + progressive gpu can maybe fix your issue

[arctic isle]

Yeah that should be quite enough 😄

[arctic isle]

Can you rephrase the question? If you are worried that objects you don't want in the lightmaps/probes data [assets] will mess up the bake, they won't. What CPU/GPU Lightmapper and Bakery do before a bake is take a snapshot of only the objects included in a bake [room] (regardless of whatever else is in the scene) and use just that geometry to calculate lighting. So you don't have to worry about it and you can place as many of your static or non-static assets you wish.

[ruby sail]

I’m mostly confused about the process as a whole. The room I’m creating lighting for has a lot of lamps and indirect lighting, but the tutorial video I watched added the assets like couches, skybox, etc, after baking the light.

So to have objects affected by the baked lighting, I need to put them down before I bake, or before I render with bakery?

Also, should I only render with bakery once I’m sure of my light placement, or keep messing with it while testing lights. I notice it takes a long time to render, which is difficult for trial and error.

[arctic isle]

So to have objects affected by the baked lighting, I need to put them down before I bake, or before I render with bakery?
You need to put them in before you render if they are static geometry that you expect will contribute to and receive static lighting.

[fervent swift]

Thank you!

[arctic isle]

Also, should I only render with bakery once I’m sure of my light placement, or keep messing with it while testing lights. I notice it takes a long time to render, which is difficult for trial and error.
You can lower the settings and the bakes will be faster. I would recommend doing so until you have a good feeling that your lighting is well set up, then cranking the settings up and doing a full bake. This is the same way you would work with the normal Lightmappers.

I know that the creator of Bakery also made a realtime preview, but that's at additional cost.

[fervent swift]

Hey I've been struggling with this issue for a while, so any guidance would be appriciated. Not sure if its a hardware thing or my settings are wrong . I am looking at a tutorial and the developer is able to move the window lights/shadows in real time - I have the same settings but my real time looks worse (2nd image) , however when I bake the lighting in enlighten it looks good - is this a CPU thing, or am I doing someting wrong? Thanks in advance!

[fervent swift]

better * pic of lighting in my scene

I think it has something to do with shadow distance, but not sure why

[arctic isle]

Perhaps shadow cascades?

[fervent swift]

ah ok i am going to learn more about that, thank you

[fervent swift]

@arctic isle, yes, this^ helped solve the issue! Thank for your help

[ruby sail]

I see, I’ll put all static objects in first then, and lower the settings for both while testing. Thank you so much for the detailed response!

[silk igloo]

I'm in the process of learning how to use light for a day/night cycle to make my terrain pitch black when the directional light represented as the sun is down, requiring the player to use point and spot lights placed around the environment to light the way. But, my environment (the Plane 3D GameObject and the structures on it made out of transformed Cube 3D GameObjects) is staying bright enough to see at any time of day while my player character (a Capsule 3D GameObject) and the targets around the map that he shoots (Cylinder 3D GameObjects) become lighter or darker depending on the time of day. I'm trying my best to solve the problem on my own by baking the lighting and changing different settings like setting the Environment Reflections Intensity Multiplier to 0, but nothing seems to fix the issue. Would anyone have any insight that can make the process easier?

For additional context, I use a script that manages the light based on the time of day by cycling through gradients for ambient, fog, and directional light from 0f to 24f, where 12f is noon. I can also provide any additional context needed!

[arctic isle]

Hey, for a day/night cycle you need realtime gi. Try unchecking baked gi and checking realtime gi, as well as realtime environment lighting. Rebake and try again 🙂

It is quite expected that baked lighting will remain on the static geometry as it does now.

[river parrot]

Hello, all >

[silk igloo]

ah, that would make sense. though, when I tried to use realtime lighting before, the point and spot lights had a nasty habit of bleeding through walls and flickering that baked lighting fixed when I tried that instead. are there any helpful techniques or tips I can use to prevent that effect if it happens again?

[covert geode]

Hello guys, not sure if this should go on #🖼️┃2d-tools or here.
Im looking into ways to optimize my 2d lighting

What is happening is that, on my scene, im using 30 2d spotlights without normal maps, only 1 blend style and it is already lowering my fps from 650 to 250. So, not great.
Been searching the internet for answers and i did all i could and it doesnt really change

Using URP of course

[gray pawn]

pretty new to unity, any idea why my scene is lit like this with 0 lights in the scene?

[deft fiber]

Ambient environmental lighting from the sky most likely

[gray pawn]

thanks, got it

[quick fractal]

https://gdl.space/acezeqohac.cpp I made a slope block but you can see the lighting is wrong why?

[deft fiber]

The slope polygon is likely facing the sun more directly so that'd make it brighter

[glossy pike]

i switched unity versions of my game to prevent bugs with URP's physics, but now when i bake lights it says its going to take days and it doesnt bake at all. help?

these are my lighting settings

[deft fiber]

URP's physics?

[arctic isle]

if you have animated materials make sure those renderers are not set to contribute / receive GI

[deft fiber]

Also look for any warnings or errors in the console, for instance if the GPU lightmapper falls back to CPU for some reason

Possibly besides the point but URP or any render pipeline doesn't deal with physics at all

[glossy pike]

after i switched to urp, the physics started getting kinda messed up

[glossy pike]

the animated materials arent static

even if i disable them, it still keeps going on

[arctic isle]

afaik, any material that uses the shadergraph time node will currently cause the bake to keep restarting the "preparing bake" stage-- we have a fix for this in the pipeline, for now the workaround is to not have any of those be static or in any way contribute to GI

[glossy pike]

none of them are static

do you think its my version of unity? its 2020.3.47f1

[arctic isle]

no, quite unlikely that there's another bake loop in the 2020 version... just to confirm, does the bake just keep restarting the Preparing bake stage?

[glossy pike]

nope, it stays on global illumination then the time just goes up

it doesnt bake at all

[deft fiber]

If installing URP made your physics go wonky, I'd suspect there could be some weirdness with your project or its settings in general
I'd export the scene to a fresh project with the same version and try baking there
And just for science do a test bake with just some default cubes on the new project first to make sure everything works for sure

[arctic isle]

then it's not the same thing. follow what @deft fiber said, it's likely that you're trying to bake with higher settings than your computer can handle. GPU lightmapper was still in early-ish development in the 2020 version.

[glossy pike]

i think i found the problem

in my probuilder mesh it still has the material on it

from when i set it earlier

[arctic isle]

Does the bake progress now?

[deft fiber]

In my experience "preparing bake" can get stuck even with just an overly complex scene

[glossy pike]

yeah

[arctic isle]

"Preparing bake" just means we're hashing all the meshes / lights etc. so a very complex scene will take a long time to prepare. Especially in earlier versions when we didn't use GPU tiling a very complex scene wouldn't even fit in VRAM 😿 (depending on your resolution / supersampling)

In later versions we use some nice tricks so we can now fit a 16K buffer (4K lightmap, 4x supersampled) on a 2GB GPU. Preparing this would still take a relatively long time...

[glossy pike]

another slight problem, the skybox shader thing is set to static but it doesnt contribute gi, and the shadows are two sided. theres not supposed to be any light on the ground, i have a directional light but all lights in this area are disabled

[deft fiber]

If they're not Contribute GI static, baked light will pass through them
I would pad the walls with static shadows-only blocks

[glossy pike]

alr, thanks for the help!

[surreal walrus]

hey so, I wanted to make my object emit light so I added point light objects inside them, it seems to work but if I'm not facing a specific angle the light disappears

[surreal walrus]

update: it seems to work on anything but the map itself

for some reason

only works at specific angles

so I am very confused as to what could be causing this issue since I found no fix on the internet

everything you see w the black squares and white stripes is part of a single mesh

[surreal walrus]

an other update: raising the intensity of the light to an absurdly high number makes it seen from all angles BUT it's an insanely high number so it doesn't make sense to keep it this way

[surreal walrus]

OK Deferred Rendering fixed it, thanks a lot guys you were of great help

[uneven karma]

Anyone know how I can make only the side facing a light source be lit, much like this image?

[surreal abyss]

how would i go about setting up a lighting system where it is fully lit EVERYWHERE, except you cannot see at all through walls, like what this image shows

[uneven karma]

figured it out, it was a point light map

[surreal abyss]

still not figuring out how to do this

its a 2d platformer

[gusty tendon]

hello/

i really love the look and style of dcs and wanted to recreate the lighing seen in the following pictures

and was wondering how to do that while still maintaining SOME sanity and framerate as this will be uploaded to vr

[uneven karma]

You need to provide more clear details of what you are trying to do, because I have no real clue what your goal is

[deft fiber]

I guess URP 2D lighting could fit that purpose

[languid blaze]

i'm not sure what the best place to ask this is -- I need to estimate how bright an area looks. I am using that information to decide if an enemy's eyes should adapt to light or dark.

Right now, I'm shooting a bunch of rays and sampling the light probes wherever those rays hit. I then take the log of the average brightness to get an "exposure" value, which the enemy's eyes slowly adjust towards. I then use enemy's current exposure level to decide if they can see the player.

So, for example, if the enemy has been staring at a sunlit wall, its eyes should be adjusted to a very high exposure, making it impossible to see a player standing in a torchlit cave. But if the enemy was staring at a dark wall instead (maybe it's night-time), then the enemy's eyes should be at a very low exposure, letting them see the player

Is there a particular function I should use to calculate the average brightness, and thus the exposure? I randomly chose to square each brightness value, then to take the square root of the average at the end.

Ideally, I'd do roughly the same thing the HDRP exposure system does...

[languid blaze]

a lot of this is just gonna be down to good physically-based rendering

so, having good maps that reflect how rough and metallic the surface is

that's what gives you the pretty highlights

[west flax]

i have max quality but the lightning works only in editor and not in build

help

light is set to important too

nvm got it to work

[gusty tendon]

thats what im tryna do i want to create a map with unity terrain cool skyboxes and little tips and tricks to basically trick the mind into thinking it looks cool when in actuality its just like bumped up metalic or good directional lighting

[night shell]

by maps he means the texture maps that you are using for your materials on your model. not the game world

well done texture maps that are physically based will get you good looking materials

and from those good looking materials you have to have good reflection/specular tech and lighting

[gusty tendon]

so more that just the base color but metalic and normal maps too?

[night shell]

albedo, metallic, normal, occlusion, etc.

the end goal is to accurately portray and replicate the materials on your assets

[surreal walrus]

so the bake seems to work but it the map still looks the same

any idea as to why that is

[surreal walrus]

the actual lightmap works

apparently

but it doesn't display in the shaded view

what could be the cause??

[night shell]

The shader that you are using

[surreal walrus]

the standard lit shader

however

at the time of writing this

I managed to solve the issue

apparently

if the base color for my material which I used is black

no baked lighting shows up

who would've thought

[night shell]

Thst makes alot of sense actually

But yeah who woulda thought, first time ive seen that. Someone forgetting they assigned a black color/texture as their albedo

[surreal walrus]

yeah I spent 2 days trying to solve this issue only to figure it right now

[copper moon]

Hi everyone!

Just joined the server since I have been struggling with this for a while -- is there a way I could have 2D lighting affect objects that are in certain orders of a layer?

I noticed there is an option to separate objects by sorting layer, but the issue is that it causes ordering issues with my existing objects.

Thank you!

[west flax]

uhh

why my lights are less in build? using urp

its much darker

[west flax]

i fixed this once but dont remember how tf

its only terrain that is dark. stone gameobjects are ok. terrain trees and terrain grass is also ok

ahh i remember now! terrain software bug

[crimson fable]

Does unity support parallax corrected cubemaps?

[night shell]

Yes

[surreal walrus]

so I'm not sure where to ask this so I'll ask it here, I am looking to change the material emission through a script, to a color and then back to the original color in a smooth manner

any idea on how should I go about this

[quaint coyote]

guys, what its called?

[deft fiber]

That means "zero bytes"

[quaint coyote]

no, I meant what does it denote

pardon if this seems like a noob question, im kind of a noob

[deft fiber]

Size of lightmap textures in memory

[quaint coyote]

ohh ok.

[night shell]

in memory + disk space

@quaint coyote

though suppose one could just call disk as memory anyway 😛

[deft fiber]

From what I understand usually Unity reports texture sizes as they are in memory, but if they use crunch compression they can be smaller than that on disk

[night shell]

ehhhh actually they report the disk size

I've disabled mip maps and used crunch compression and those sizes are reflected in that window

[deft fiber]

That seems to be correct

[vernal sentinel]

can i have some help with my flashlights light

not working the way i want it to work

heres the light component im using

[deft fiber]

What's the way you want it to work

[vernal sentinel]

really

it works fine until you walk anywhere near a wall

then that big white thing appears in the corner

i dont wan that to be there

[deft fiber]

Are you sure that's from the same light component?

[vernal sentinel]

pretty sure yeah

it actually might not be one sec

it wasnt heres the actual one

[deft fiber]

Nothing's probably wrong with the light, but if you have multiple light components then you get multiple light spots

[vernal sentinel]

ok

i deleted the one i wasnt using and it solved the issue

thanks man

[gloomy marten]

any tips how to improve the lighting ?

there are to many artifact shadow

[night shell]

those artifacts are invalid texels

caused by rays terminating when they hit a backface

so you likley have some backface geometry in that area, probably the glass or window meshes you have?

[gloomy marten]

does that also include walls that are only planes or those that only have one face?

then, how about this ?

this error also appears but UV is already set

[night shell]

yes

[night shell]

also invalid texels

usually the overlapping UVs warning isnt a big deal

but chances are that you don't have any lightmap UVs generated for your mesh

so for those meshes enable "Generate Lightmap UVs" in the mesh import settings when you click on the model files in the project window @gloomy marten

[night shell]

or for the record, only one face that is visible to the player

its ok if they are not visible to the player or the main play area but if you have backface geometry in your scene that is visible by the player then you need to either fix it (either by making the mesh thick and two sided, enabling double sided GI on the material settings) or remove it

[gloomy marten]

wow, thanks

that is a very big help

[west flax]

why does this happen? these are shadow cascades, but changing their settings in urp renderer didnt help me particularly

[deft fiber]

I think I've seen it before but it remained a mystery
Does it occur on other more generic meshes with the same material, and is the material using some custom shader?

[forest rose]

I don't know the exact reasons but why would the reflections show the sky when it's inside?

[night shell]

do the bounds of your reflection probe intersect with the floor geometry?

if a mesh is not within the bounds of any reflection probe it will fallback to the skybox reflection

[quaint coyote]

oh well maybe

[quaint coyote]

yeah its true.

[timber lichen]

Hi everybody after upgrade to URP I'm having problems with lights: in the android build the spotlights have sharp outlined border, but in the editor they are ok. Can anyone help me ?

[quaint coyote]

btw I turned off lightmap compression to generate lightmap, but disk space shows 250 or higher mbs. All because of increasing vertex/edge of models, right?
Lightmap convergence shows 80. before was 4.

like directional lightmap shows 80

[night shell]

so before your size was 80, but turning off compression its now 250?

[quaint coyote]

No I meant, I turned off compression thats it.
Im saying, when one model exists, my size was 48 mbs.
but I changed to put another model, the size was 200-500+ mbs.

2 models are the same number of vertex/edge

[night shell]

but UVs are different

[quaint coyote]

but different like one is obj and another is fbx

[night shell]

ah

[quaint coyote]

So, the reason is increasing number of vertex/edge of the model?

[night shell]

well if its the same exact model but different format

[quaint coyote]

yes

also different number of vertex/edge

[night shell]

ok im getting confused a bit

this is all getting reported in the lighting window?

after you finished baking a lightmap?

as far as I understand the only circumstances in which you can change the size beyond the obvious kinds (that being changing resolution, compression, etc.) is either adding or changing objects that have different UV sets

so for example one model might have a simpler generated lightmap UV set

while the other is more complex

and therefore mabye needs to have more of the lightmap or lightmaps to be generated for that model

[deft fiber]

If you only turn off compression, the exact same lightmap will be a bigger file, even if you don't generate it again

Lightmap convergence shows 80. before was 4.

Not Converged: Baking is still in progress for these lightmaps.```

(The option for Lightmap Compression in Lighting window doesn't update the texture, but changing compression on the texture asset directly does change it and how Lighting window reports it)

[night shell]

^^^

[tight prism]

Hey if I can have a bit of help I am struggling lighting my world In unity with bakery. I am using my skybox as the lighting with no directional light which works with the base gpu lightmapper but now that I have switched to bakery the map is just pure black aside from emissions that give off light. Anybody got any clue why this is happening?

[quaint coyote]

no, this is all getting reported in the lighting window while its baking a lightmap.

it was taking almost 14-18 hours

there were remaining

[night shell]

oh while its baking? I wouldn't worry about what it reports while its baking since then it would compress the lightmaps after all of them have been baked

[quaint coyote]

understandable

[night shell]

as for it taking that large amount of time that sounds like a seperate issue

which we can help with if need be

[quaint coyote]

if there were remaining, whatever finished, the size will show 700 mbs or higher ig
bc im using cpu, not gpu, cuz I dont have gpu

[night shell]

sounds like you are baking scenes with a massive amount of lightmapped objects, and/or at a very high resolution

[quaint coyote]

yeah yeah true. there is many objects and I was baking at very high resolution

[forest rose]

Everything is just outside of the mesh boundary

[arctic isle]

You need to add a new... I think it's called a Skylight?

Bakery uses its own lights for everything including environment lighting. Then you need to link up the skybox with the environment lighting in the lighting window as well if I remember correctly.

[tight prism]

Just tried that, the lighting on the map doesnt match up too well with the skybox

weird colors and such

[arctic isle]

You usually don't need the lightmaps to be super high res unless you're calculating very complex geometry (which lightmaps are not particularly good for anyway).

Lightmap Resolution is actually a misnomer which I've been advocating we change in the Lighting Window because it actually refers to the Input Resolution. This means that we take the UVs for each mesh and atlas them in the given resolution (texels per unit). For meshes with few triangles/faces it's actually not so impactful if you're at 20 or 40 or 80.

[arctic isle]

you should make sure to match the light color with the skybox and vice versa

[arctic isle]

when you say after upgrade to URP do you mean that you went to URP from BuiltIn or that you upgraded URP from a lower version?

[tight prism]

I pressed the match light to scene and thats what it gave me

[chilly kettle]

Bakery cant handle Transparency in Shader/Textures. That my cause that the leaves of your trees look that bad.

Had similar problem with trees

[tight prism]

I have cutout on them, does that not work also? and its doing this on every project

[chilly kettle]

I had to set them to opaque everytime i baked and switched back to the transparency later

Not sure if Cutout is working

[tight prism]

okay I will make sure to do that, but it still does not match to the skybox no matter what I put

[chilly kettle]

Did you put a bakery skylight in the scene?

[tight prism]

yes

[chilly kettle]

Hm.. i didnt use bakery for a while, but i think that didnt work for me neither

[tight prism]

here is another example

has a weird yellow and purple in some areas

Not to mention the snow is glowing aswell

[deft fiber]

Bakery probably has their own forum or discord with people more familiar with its problems

[sonic edge]

Hey guys, any chance to blend the shadow with the light? I want the light "negates" the dropped shadow somehow for a realistic approach. Need both lights in realtime btw, maybe should I switch to HDRP to achieve this?

[deft fiber]

What do you mean by blend? As far as I can see the shadow seems to be blending with the light already

[timber lichen]

I upgraded a core 3d mobile project but I tried with a project from scratch and the behaviour Is the same

[sonic edge]

To "remove" that part of the shadow, I can only get that result if I burn the shadow with the light... but shouldn't be necessary to use so much light intensity

[deft fiber]

A "shadow" is the silhouette of an object that's blocking the light source
"Removing" a shadow implies letting light from the light source pass through the object
Even HDRP doesn't support translucent shadow casters
If you're going for realism you probably don't want that opaque objects to cast translucent shadows anyway

I think you might mean soft shadow filtering which HDRP does have

[sonic edge]

tried in HDRP and the result is a bit better, ty for the help

[deft fiber]

To make sure you're using this feature to the fullest make sure your shadow filtering is set to high quality and that your camera is using TAA to smooth the dithering
With that it's the light diameter/size that affects how much the shadow will spread over distance

[ruby sail]

Does anyone know what's going on with my lighting in these areas? The rest of the map looks good. I'm using bakery to render, but I'm pretty sure the issue begins when I use the unity generate lighting.

[night shell]

some of those look like lightmap UV issues

don't see any signs of texel invalidty

but given that its bakery it could also have its own set of issues

[main wolf]

the reflective floor needs to be inside the boundary to be affected by the reflection probe iirc
or maybe you can manually assign the reflection cubemap texture into the floor material (although you might need "non standard" shader for that)

[zinc flume]

Can we like get better system than Reflection probes as well? Currently, there is no support for specular lighting in large scene. The diffuse side get solve by APV but I hate to have grid of ref probes like that

[zinc flume]

The diffuse gi is in really good place. Can scale with Apv and fine control with light map and ssgi. But reflection system. Ugh

[night shell]

use raytracing then 😛

[zinc flume]

Not practical.

[night shell]

screen space reflections + local reflection probes are as close as you can get really

[zinc flume]

Even Fortnite have to have fallback option from Lumen

[quaint coyote]

ohhh that makes scenes. understandable.

[west flax]

nvm it was microsplat

[arctic isle]

👀

We're looking at improving our reflections, but there isn't anything I can share at the moment. I led a meeting recently about it and it seemed we were in good alignment 🙂

[tame valley]

Every time I start the editor, I must to click MeshRenderer first, otherwise the sunlight can't light up the character, is it normal? I am useing RealToon URP.

[forest rose]

I did find the issue after all, the borders weren't big enough even if they did surround the room. There might be a 1m gap on all sides for the probe to work instead of me just slightly surrounding the room

[timber lichen]

why does the lighting look so weird here (shadows and weirdly lit areas)

or most importantly, how do I fix it

[night shell]

two sided shadow casters

and or use a light blocker

[timber lichen]

is that what I have to do or what causes it

[night shell]

you only get shadow leakage like that when there are backfaces

[night shell]

is what you have to do

[timber lichen]

oh

[night shell]

but either cauesd by backfaces, or the lack of geometry, or you have geometry that is too thin

that is what can cause that light leaking from realtime shadows

or shadow bias/normal bias on the shadow settings for the light but usually not

[timber lichen]

oh it's baked

yeah it fixed most of the issues thanks

there's still stuff like this but that's okay for now

[night shell]

In the case of lightmapping you'll need light blocker meshes, and similar issues that being thin geometry can also cause it as well

[thin mason]

Does anyone know how to fix this lighting issue with the plants? I'm using URP with Unity 2021.3.11f1

[paper maple]

I am not sure if this is a lighting problem, but it looks like it.
I am having this problem where there is a white light, I am not sure how to remove it

[deft fiber]

What type of lighting are you using, and can you get any better view of the issue

You could try changing the lights, shadows or materials to see if any one of those seems to impact the issue

[deft fiber]

It looks like your plants are getting direct lighting from the sun coupled with total lack of ambient lighting

Speedtree shaders not supporting ambient lighting used to be a limitation in some Unity versions, but I'm not sure if it still is

[fervent swift]

Getting this shadow burn when baking - any thoughts on what may be causing this? (Are there any ways to test different light sources hitting it, to test it out)

[night shell]

cna be caused by improper lightmap UVs