archived-lighting

[mystic dew]

its really a lot of light probes and that can cause to different dynamic items shade different by close distance.

you can try to place light probes near from wall corners, light sources and shadows outline

blue - window hole
yellow - point light source
orange - shadow outline from window

[rich meadow]

That makes sense to me, I knew it was overboard. Thank you so much @mystic dew

[fickle needle]

1. You need to use shadowmasks if you want shadows over long distances without the cost, it'll switch from realtime shadows to baked shadows at a certain distance (if the building itself is dynamic, then I can't think of anything other then increasing shadow distance)
2. Maybe use meshes such as cubes/planes and set them to shadowed only, and place them around to cover the bleeding

[maiden trellis]

How can I make the lights not blend together, but still have them both affect shadows

[desert ruin]

is there a way to have a high emission on a material without turning it solid white with a colored glow

[dense wing]

it will not be quite good performance as a single probe also takes a lot of fps drop

[rapid kestrel]

Hi, I have a wall represented by one plane, so only visible from one direction. When baking the lightning I get these weird lightning artifacts. Any ideas how i can fix this?

[rocky peak]

@rapid kestrel did you make sure to "generate lightmap uvs" on that wall object?

[nocturne dock]

Hello! Anyone know how can I make the light be shown on white surfaces, like it does on all the other ones? Like you can clearly see the light on the red blocks... but not so much on the white ones..

[rocky peak]

Try turning the white blocks gray-ish. To see if it provides a contrast

[stable patio]

Try enabling Double Sided GI in material properties, it should fix your issue

[rich meadow]

is there a way to create a light probe group without it attaching itself to my other groups or is this just how it works?

[eternal bay]

Lumens are a second-order unit and thus scale by surface area

More specifically, they scale by solid angles (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_angle) - steradians are the unit you technically want, as they are a measure of how much "surface area" is present on a distanced sphere from a perspective point

[crude fox]

So, 10x bigger would basically be 100x lumens?

[eternal bay]

that rough heuristic should work, but remember that "bigger" is defined by perspective arc

if it covers 10 times the area on a hypersphere projected to the distance of the object's surface, then yes, exactly that

[crude fox]

Ah, that does seem more realistic for a bulb that close.

[eternal bay]

just checked on wikipedia- yep, luminous flux is defined in terms of steradians

1 cd · 1 sr = 1 lm

effectively, lux is defined by how much light comes from a source to a point- and game lighting systems extrapolate that point-measure to account for pupils not being a point-receiver, but an area; think of it like how you can't measure instantaneous velocity, but you can use a known value of it times a timespan to produce a distance

(because the amount of photons hitting a point is always zero / infinitesimal, but the amount passing through an area may be positive)

(given a point, unless there is already a photon at that point, it will never have a photon at that point- because Real Numbers are messy that way)

[crude fox]

It definitely looks more real for the size it's meant to be, but maybe a bit too bright?

[eternal bay]

that looks to me like a 100W lamp at that distance given the eyes are adapted to the environment

try the same image but with SSGI enabled, to simulate pupil contraction; the environment should dim, and the objects should look "realer" to what you'd expect from the lamp

[crude fox]

It's 25w

[eternal bay]

a 100w table lamp at "normal" scale should be about 750 lumens

220W is almost unheard of in table lamps

ahhh- yeah, that should be about 250 lumens at real scale

[crude fox]

220 was the lumens not the watt

[eternal bay]

Hm. Try the SSGI suggestion, and see what happens

if it's not that, then you may be using a non-PBR shader on your geometry on the desk there

alternatively, you've loaded specularity maps that are just fully white...

[crude fox]

I can't tell what ssgi is doing

[eternal bay]

super-simplified, SSGI takes the average brightness on the screen and tries to keep it at a set level

it's kinda like what your eyes do- they try to keep the amount of incoming light constant by dilating and contracting the pupils

[crude fox]

I can't see any changes

Or in Game view

[eternal bay]

okay that looks more realistic imo

got a moment to call me, perhaps?

[crude fox]

I can't at the moment. DM?

[eternal bay]

sure; just trying to avoid clutter until we have a solution to present

[fickle needle]

SSGI needs to be activated in camera frame settings as well.

[visual belfry]

What lighting settings should I have so a bake takes about 1 minute with an RTX 2080?

Setting everything back down to default results in discrete lighting (also changed back to GPU)

Aha, so having a plane scaled by 10 caused this. Because the UV was stretched over a larger surface, the lightmap resolution scaled with it

[visual belfry]

fixed the light banding issue by disabling "compress lightmaps" All other settings are default (besides being set to GPU)

[versed ginkgo]

Im using Realtime GI, and I've got a problem with indirect lighting looking different in project view and build...
in playmode everything is bright enough and color balance is good, after building project light is darker and as you can see in the picture it's supposed to be yellowish (as light source temperature) but it's white...
Is there a solution for this problem?... It has to look the same as in playmode.

[visual belfry]

do you have skybox enabled in editor?

[versed ginkgo]

yes

[formal veldt]

I have a GUI element that is effected by lighting, however it doesn't seem like it's affected by the shadows cast by that lighting

which I want it to be

you can see here it's dark

the gun

and here it's lit because its near a spot light

but when I step into the shadow cast from that spot light its still bright

[valid warren]

how do I assign the output texture of a reflection probe to a cubemap input for a material? When I use material.SetTexture() with a regular cubemap it works fine but I can't seem to get it assigned to the output of the reflection probe (the slot in the material inspector stays empty). The reflection probe is set to render realtime every frame and a reflection shows up in the preview window.

[formal veldt]

ok I think it maybe has to do with normal maps

my GUI element has a normalmap shader

but I dont think shadows affect normalmaps? idk

will I have to edit the shader or can I apply the global light level on top of this somehow

[formal veldt]

is it possible to darken a Canvas element when it's in shadow?

[cursive coyote]

I'm having some trouble with the 2D lighting, I've set the shadow intensities and setup the shadow caster scripts but it doesn't seem to cast a shadow

[undone condor]

height, intensity, and overall placement

one sec

@formal veldt lets figure this out in vc

[formal veldt]

eh I dont really like to VC

just tell me what you mean by height intensity etc.

[undone condor]

let me screen share in vc, you can be muted or whatever

[formal veldt]

I just wanna know what factors affect it

I have a sprite normalmap shader material if that's relevent

[undone condor]

its all about light placement

[formal veldt]

like how? its within the light range it's affected by the light itself already

it just treats shadows as if they were not there

[undone condor]

i need to see how your project works

[formal veldt]

its just a spot light and a Canvas set to Screen Space - Camera which has an Image with a custom shader

[undone condor]

i am quite stupid rn soo. sorry ask someone else

[elder dew]

is there a way to make my trailrenderer emit light?

i'm using 2d renderer URP

[sacred lynx]

j

[fresh oracle]

@karmic scarab Do you use global illumination?

[karmic scarab]

no

[fresh oracle]

try this

[karmic scarab]

nah, didn't work

[fresh oracle]

It could be a model issue

[karmic scarab]

Well, it's a cube

but stretched

[formal veldt]

anyone else have any ideas of how to make canvas elements affected by shadows?

[gilded cloak]

i have this lighting effect on an ability of mine that's trying to simulate a flash of light after an explosion. im wondering how i can make the color stand out on it. i make the flash effect i started with a high intensity and then used leantween to scale the intensity down over like 1-1.5s, it looks okay, but it lacks color which i was hoping for

[fleet nimbus]

i have an issue where my area lights aren't working at all

I have clicked on Generate Lighting in the Lighting window, still nothing

[main wolf]

1st option, you need to make the canvas mode to anything than screen overlay, then, you need to change the material to use shader that's affected by light and shadow
2nd option, you change the part that's affected by shadow into sprite, set it as camera's child, and change that sprite material so it's affected by shadow (I'm not sure if sprites are already affected by shadow or not)

[formal veldt]

I have it in screen space camera, with a normalmap shader. Will I need the shader to respect shadows or something? I dont know why it doesn't since it otherwise responds to all other light sources

[novel jacinth]

trying to add lighting to my 2D game and it seems to be working out well except for when the player goes below the light source

when standing anywhere below, its as if the light isnt there

I assume its because of the normal vector of the sprite is facing away from the light source

but is there any way to "fix" this?

this is how the player is positioned btw

the sprite is perpendicular to the ground

[novel jacinth]

ok I figured it out by changing the normal in the shader

[void tusk]

Anyone here that knows how to make Unity actually bake light? I'm like 2 days in and it's still stuck at 18% lol

[rocky peak]

it's a complex system with a lot of moving parts.

[rocky peak]

But if it were me, my first step to diagnosing why it's stuck would be to try to bake static only. No realtime GI

and of course bake at crappy quality settings, just to see if it can complete

[void tusk]

I'm baking ultra crappy settings currently

I tried using both the CPU (I have a Threadripper) and GPU (RTX 3080ti)

[rocky peak]

What version of unity?

[void tusk]

2021.2.6f1 though the problem persists in older editors too. Not really sure how to troubleshoot as it won't bake even with said scene being empty lol

[rocky peak]

Okay let's start on a fresh scene. For science.

[void tusk]

Fresh scene works

[rocky peak]

1 ). What is your Direct Light set too? Mixed, Realtime, or Static?

[void tusk]

Realtime

[rocky peak]

That would be why

realtime = DO NOT BAKE

[void tusk]

Yes, but you still need to "bake" realtime lighting

[rocky peak]

no it's the opposite - realtime is calculated at runtime

"static" is baked

but has zero interaction

[void tusk]

enabling this requires baking

[rocky peak]

Do you know what "realtime lighting" is? Have you read the documents?

and are you sure you need realtime?

[void tusk]

It literally says precomputed realtime GI in the documentation

Did you read it?

You need to calculate it

[rocky peak]

Yes. I've been working with Unity for close to a decade now

And I have successfully baked maps, both large and small

and without needing a threadripper 😉

[void tusk]

And I am thankful for your assistance despite being talked down to

[rocky peak]

No I'm not attempting to talk down to you, I am trying to help you

If you're brand new to map baking you really don't want to tinker with Realtime. Yet.

you want to gain mastery of static first and leave realtime off

just to get the hang of it

[void tusk]

But telling me that I don't know what Realtime GI is when I am watching the Unity tutorial on the matter saying you still need to generate lightning to use it is just weird

And the documentation reads that you still need to precompute it

By pressing Generate Lighting

[rocky peak]

Yes if you were certain you wanted realtime lighting. But can you tell me what case scenario you're doing that will require Realtime GI? Can you tell me what it's pros are versus 100% static baked or mixed?

can you tell me the cons fo it?

Can you tell me if you need deferred versus forward? and why/

[void tusk]

I would love baked lights but it won't bake

Which was my problem

Even with realtime disabled

[rocky peak]

Well let's go to the beginning then

I recommend you set your Direct Light to "mixed"

[void tusk]

I have been stuck like this:

[rocky peak]

mixed means it will bake static light on items that won't move

[rocky peak]

Yes and when I was starting out I had the same problem - it wouldn't move past a certain point. I thought Unity was broken.

But it was me. I didn't udnerstand what I was doing

Turns out the rendering/lighting system is not straight forward

you have to make sure you set everything right to work in proper cooperation

[void tusk]

Yes, but there isn't exactly a lot of complications when having a single directional light set to realtime while point lights are set to baked

The only reason I am wanting baked point lights is because there is a per mesh limit on point lights

[rocky peak]

Well I thought the same too until I got better acquainted with the system

[void tusk]

Meaning you can only have a maximum of 1-8 lights affecting the same mesh

Including terrain

Because it is too expensive with more passes anyways

[rocky peak]

yes. And then that changes too, if you pick deferred versus forward rendering

[void tusk]

Deferred breaks my underwater rendering shader

[rocky peak]

And then each light has a different mode - mixed, realtime, and baked

[void tusk]

Yes, and therefore I have point lights set to baked

[rocky peak]

Forward it is. You can only have 4 Realtime ilghts

Or, last I checked, it was four only

[void tusk]

8 if you change pipeline settings

It's a slider

[rocky peak]

Are you targeting mobile or crappy computers as your platform? Or webGL?

[void tusk]

Nope

[rocky peak]

then you should be good

Okay - in a new scene, set your directional to mixed

this means it will grant realtime lighting to active objects, but also baked lighting to static objects

You can make yourself a 3D Plane and 3D cube as an example

Highlight your 3D Plane and 3D cube and check "static"

Objects not chcked as "static" will be considered "live" and will not get a baked map

[void tusk]

I really appreciate that you are breaking it down like this but you are genuinely mistaking the situation I guess

[rocky peak]

ahh well if you're feeling this doesn't help then I wish you luck

[void tusk]

You don't need to check static as long as you check contribute GI though btw

[rocky peak]

Objects not casting a light source, do not need to contribute a GI

[void tusk]

Check the dropdown after selecting staticl

lol

[rocky peak]

My friend I'm trying to help you. You don't want EVERYTHING in your scene to be realtime GI

that is why you can't finish a bake

[void tusk]

If you uncheck contribute GI your objects won't be included in baked lightmaps

[rocky peak]

if you have a house, and it never moves and never changes lighting, you want it static only

if you have lights that flash or change very fast- they can be realtime, but not baked. They will use light probes

[void tusk]

When you check Static it will always check contribute GI

[rocky peak]

if you want somethign that slowly changes lighting over time- like a sun in the sky or apulsating light, then you can calculate Realtime GI on it.

[void tusk]

So I was just pointing out the oxymoron in saying check static but not contribute GI when checking static by default checks contribute GI

And the documentation on contribute GI says it is required to for it to be included when baking lightmaps

[rocky peak]

Tell you what- how advanced are you with Unity? Have you been on Unity Learn yet?

[void tusk]

Yes, I am quite advanced with Unity

Which was my point

I have never had issues with the lightmapper previously

[rocky peak]

I see.

[void tusk]

And for this one map it will not bake at all

[rocky peak]

You've baked succesffully before then?

[void tusk]

Like zero progression

Yes lol

There is a difference between a bake taking a long time

[rocky peak]

Okay in that case if you're advanced then

ensure you've added lightmaps to all your items

[void tusk]

And having 0 progress after a day of baking

[rocky peak]

if you forgot it will frag your system

Then check your UV Charts in Scene View

Check for UV OVerlap and check your texel density

As needed, adjusty our Lightmaps to be smaller/less quality until the system stops fragging

[void tusk]

Currently can't select UV charts in scene view as it's not baked yet

Currently I have them all set to 0.01 scale and verylow resolution

I have absolute terrible settings and it simply won't bake

[rocky peak]

Uncheck Realtime Globall Illumination. Only check Baked Global Illumnation with Lighting Mode set to Shadowmask

[void tusk]

I currently have

And it's stuck

[rocky peak]

even on a scene with just a cube and just a plane?

[void tusk]

No, baking just a plane and a cube works fine. Adding a single terrain breaks it though

[rocky peak]

How big is your terrain?

[void tusk]

1024x1024 with lightmap scale set to 0.025 and lightmap params set to Very Low

[rocky peak]

alright and your directional Light settings?

[void tusk]

Mixed currently

https://i.gyazo.com/70774b35a8cc2f35aad5960f285f6ce0.mp4

It'll be stuck like this

You might be thinking to just let it wait

No effect sadly as I did that overnight lol

[rocky peak]

No. My dinky thinkstation can bake one terrain, one plane, and one cube in five minutes flat

So yours shoudl too

with a threadripper

Clear your GI cache

for science

[void tusk]

If I use a third party lightmapper called Bakery, it bakes the lightmap perfectly in 3 minutes flat. But the asset is not compatible with URP12 yet

[rocky peak]

Oh URP... you own my soul. And yet do not do enough...

[void tusk]

And the reason I upgraded to a newer Unity version in the first place was a fatal memory leak when adding more than 4 layers to the terrain

100% reproducable so I made a repro case and submitted

[rocky peak]

Unity's terrain system could use a facelift

[void tusk]

And they said it was fixed and coming in the next bugfix patch and that was 3 patches ago

[rocky peak]

They'll get around to it

I hope

but did clearing your GI cache help?

[void tusk]

Giving it a go now

[rocky peak]

to be clear- on the basic scene or on your target scene?

[void tusk]

Clearing the GI cache should clear project wide

[rocky peak]

yes but I'm curiuos where your attempting to bake

If you can pull it off in a basic scene, right, but still no go in your target scene, it might mean corrupt UVs

or at least, I've had that issue happen to me

[void tusk]

Well I do have overlapping UVs on some objects but that has never caused this issue before

I can disable those and see if it helps

By choice in case you were wondering

[rocky peak]

Overlapping shouldn't break everyting.

but bad corrupted data from a modeler who put shitty UVs in COULD do it

and I have had a situation where I've had to turn off a bunch of objects, and literally hunt down a culprit mesh

Inefficient yes. But rare, thankfully

[void tusk]

But it shouldn't matter if they are disabled though?

[rocky peak]

if they are turned off and not in the scene, the corrupted UV data will not break it

overlapping UVs are not he same as corrupted

overlapped UVs produce shadowy artifacts but you should still finish a bake.

[void tusk]

Hmm clearing the GI cache is at least looking like it did something

[rocky peak]

let's hpoe that was it then

it filled up it's cache and couldn't proceed

Like dropping windows down to less than 8GB on HDD. - breaks weird things

[void tusk]

Sounds unlikely as it was at like 1.5gb only while the cache size is set to 128gb

[rocky peak]

well that would be a shame if its still not fixed, and is unable to bake a terrain

my thinkstation can bake a default terrain with a single directional light set to mixed and do it in five minutes or less

[void tusk]

Meanwhile I have a threadripper 3970x and an rtx 3080ti, 128gb ram and a kingston fury 4TB m.2 ssd and can't prevent Unity from crashing and burning when performing basic tasks

[rocky peak]

something does certainly seem wrong with that

depending on how this acts, may require an inspection of whether Unity is corrupted. OR possibly a driver fail on the GPU

[void tusk]

It bakes the terrain now at least

[rocky peak]

then perhaps something was corrupted in the GI Cache - even though it was not full, it was not capable for some reason?

[void tusk]

But won't bake the target scene. So something is corrupted in relation to that I guess

Gonna have to enable gameobjects one by one sadly

[rocky peak]

That's horrible news but information you now have that you didn't before

try adding the terrain from the target scene into a new scene and baking by itself

see if that creates a break

[rocky peak]

lovely

you have corrupted data somewhere, I suspect

[void tusk]

Trying to enable gameobjects

lol

[rocky peak]

so now it's a question of hunting down where that corrupted data is

I do recommend baking the target terrain in a new scene first

in case something is corrupt on that

[void tusk]

This is a fresh scene because that was one of the first things I tried

after the whole terrain issue previously

[rocky peak]

I see

[void tusk]

If you got that memory leak once it would brick your project and scene

[rocky peak]

so fresh scene + default terrain: Bakes.
fresh scene + target terrain: Breaks.

do I have that right?

[void tusk]

No it actually bakes the target terrain now, just not anything on it

yet

[rocky peak]

that's good news too!

At this point, I'd start with my static objects. I usually organize them under an empty called "STATIC ONLY" to make it easier

and I'd go through to see if everybody was set to static like they were supposed to be

and I'd also check that the meshes in question have "Generate Lightmap UVs" checked

[void tusk]

Phew I have way too many objects to only arrange them under one object. But I am going through the list now

All the lights are set to baked though in case you were wondering

[rocky peak]

Good to konw

know*

you probably want at least one directional set to Mixed

but I highly suspect you've got a 3D Mesh in there with corrupted data, and when Unity gets around to baking it, it shits the bed.

Or you have a 3D mesh that does not have "Generate Lightmap UVs" checked

Hmmm I just tired baking on a cone-primitive prefab without "Lightmap UVs" checked. It hsouldn't break a bake cycle. Just has ugly UV artifects

[rocky peak]

Hmm.. your trees. If you turn them off do you get better results?

[void tusk]

Any way to search for fbx's in the project folder though? to make sure I get everyone

.fbx or t:fbx does not work

[rocky peak]

type t:Model into your project search

Or check here

[void tusk]

Got it

[rocky peak]

Go through and see that Generate Lightmap UVs is available

[void tusk]

Yeah on it

[rocky peak]

that being said I just baked in URP starter scene with custom mesh, and it does bake. Just looks awful

so something else may be wrong in the scene

[void tusk]

Hah, just wait until you try to build I guess

[rocky peak]

it builds fine. And installs to my quest 2 without issue

just still looks like crap

[void tusk]

I had an issue in 2020.3.20 something where it took hours to build the default scene

[rocky peak]

I see.

[void tusk]

It was running 100 shader compilers on my CPU taking forever to compile variants

Not 100 but something pretty close to that

[rocky peak]

hmm...

well let's hope this works the

[wicked leaf]

So I've been doing the lightning tutorial from unity creative core pathway and on the indoor lighting part they say (more or less): create emissive material, apply it to an object. Set workspace as specular, enable emission, choose HDR colour and set intensity at 2.5. Now click on the draw mode and choose Emissive. You can see that the object with your emissive material is marked as yellow to show you it's emissive.
Well that doesnt happen to me, nothing is shown in this view mode. Additionally whatever the whitish-colour I choose the object starts to 'glow' red and intensity changes randomly to values between 1-1.5. Latest Unity 2020.3LTS version. Anyone able to explain this to me?
Obviously I'm a newbie

Honestly the deeper into this tutorial I go the more everything breaks, after (seemingly) doing nothing else than what it said previously I bake a lightmap and everything is almost white with most of the shadows gone, not even talking about subtle reflections from other colourful lights

Oh and one time after setting objects to static like it said Unity tells me: itll take 8 minutes to bake it. Great, I go for a quick smoke, come back. Time left: 12 hours. I'm so lost lmao

comparison how it looks in the tutorial ready version vs mine

[rocky peak]

Is this teh same version the tutorial calls for?

[modest flower]

its possible the renderer fell back grom GPU to CPU, as for WHY, thats a different issue, maybe you can reduce lightmap sizes, that usually solves it for me (but you bake more lightmaps this way)

[rocky peak]

They change tiny nuanced things between each Unity version and it's annoying.

[modest flower]

is this an "appropriate" way to use lightprobes? if not what is the optimal pattern for placing them (without additional plugins)

it works, but it takes a bit of time too do

[tribal lion]

Any idea on this?, wheel spokes should be like the left wheel, not the right one, they are way to thick

They have the same materials, and settings on the mesh renderer

[tribal lion]

I'd place them when there are obvious light or reflection changes and in between those to blend properly

[wicked leaf]

the tutorial simply says Unity 2020.3, Im currently using the latest release so 2020.3.25f1

also worth mentioning that initially tutorial scene looked very similiar to the 'finished' one with the exception of shadows being ugly etc, things that I was supposed to fix as I go through the tutorial. And one time I just bake it and everything becomes white lol

[tribal lion]

Lowering the shadow bias seems to do it

[fleet nimbus]

tried switching to Spot and that didnt work either

only point and directional does for some odd reason

[void tusk]

Now that is what I call a Unity standard light bake

[rocky peak]

ahh so it's working now?

[void tusk]

Lmao, not exactly. But at least it finishes a bake now.. sometimes

If you try to cancel a bake you need to restart the editor

[rocky peak]

that's annoying

[void tusk]

80% of the time it just won't bake but 20% of the time with the same settings it will

[rocky peak]

that is just bizarre

But sounds like a unity bug then

[void tusk]

Honestly in my eyes it's just standard Unity

[rocky peak]

For science, have you tested it in 2019? Can yout est it in 2019

[void tusk]

Like if I want I can still just make a new scene, add a terrain

add 5 layers to the terrain and paint a dot with all 5

and Unity will cry and crash

On a fresh project even

[eternal bay]

Crossposting from HDRP:

If anyone here has a thorough understanding of the lighting subsystem in HDRP, I have made a patch which allows you to render to separate pseudo-layers per-camera via the renderingLayerMask property, and haven't been able to get lights to not span the gap between masked layers. I'm hoping to make this viable for use, but my understanding of real-time lighting is limited at best.

https://gist.github.com/Dessix/14e6b3c8c0b73e1454d54db06e908c98

[void tusk]

Unity is just utterly broken for me idk

[rocky peak]

alright WEIRD thing to try. Do it for the science - right-click and run Unity as Admin. I'm guessing of course

[void tusk]

https://i.gyazo.com/bdccb84bee1a870258b2ab0342ec9f6e.mp4

Already running as admin due to access problems on the harddrive previously

Preparing bake will just spam like this until I focus on Unity

Which will always return it to 0

and unfocusing Unity will return it to this state of completing many times over with no progress

[rocky peak]

okay... well last question - do you have more than 40GB of free space on her HDD? That causes weird Unity gremlins if it's not the case, @void tusk

[void tusk]

Have like 120GB left on that SSD

But I am getting OpenCL errors CL_OUT_OF_RESOURCES despite this clearly not being the case

[deft fiber]

@void tusk Have you done test bakes in small, simple scenes?
Baked lighting is usually not preferred in large outdoor scenes because bake complexity and lightmap sizes grow immense
Or if you do it, only do it for terrain and light probes

If you still get issues baking with the simple test scene, I'd start troubleshooting hardware and driver problems on the SSD and GPU tbh

[void tusk]

What is my alternative?

I can't use global illumination and I can't bake lights?

[deft fiber]

Realtime lighting

[void tusk]

No, that does 100% not work at all

[deft fiber]

Enlighten is out of question?

[void tusk]

Isn't enlighten deprecated?

[deft fiber]

It's un-deprecated again on some versions and pipelines

[void tusk]

Huh

Genuinely didn't know

[deft fiber]

https://forum.unity.com/threads/update-on-global-illumination-2021.1067015/

[void tusk]

Gonna try it

[deft fiber]

This with the test scene?

[void tusk]

I can get it working with a test scene

Problem is that it is incredibly inconsistent in when it breaks

I can bake 5 times with the same settings and 4 will fail whilst 1 will succeed

I can gradually start with an entirely disabled scene, enable 1 by 1

and at some stage it breaks

so great, I have located the corrupted gameobject

[deft fiber]

Progress!

[void tusk]

Only even with that disabled it will break again on another gameobject

and it won't break at that same gameobject next time

So there is no definitive cutoff at where the lightmapper breaks

And there is no warning

Half the times I even try to start the lightmapper this happens:

[deft fiber]

Hmm, both with CPU and GPU baking?

[void tusk]

https://i.gyazo.com/bdccb84bee1a870258b2ab0342ec9f6e.mp4

Yes sir

I use a Threadripper and an RTX 3080ti

If I use a third party lightmapper like Bakery

It bakes the scene in 5 minutes flat

Whilst Unity at best uses an hour

Sadly the third party is not compatible with newest URP etc

So it's not an option

[deft fiber]

ah, I mean it breaks with either? as you can't use both at the same time, right

[void tusk]

Yeah, it breaks with either

[deft fiber]

At least that confirms it's probably not an issue with those parts, which is good

[rocky peak]

are you using any light probes?

[void tusk]

None

[rocky peak]

Hmm. The forums say you can disable progressive updates. Have you done that?

[void tusk]

Yep

[rocky peak]

well damn

[void tusk]

I got it working once though so I have finished baking once, but I am not exactly itching to make any changes..

[rocky peak]

have you been consistently clearing your GI cache as well?

[void tusk]

Yeah

This result is good though so I'm happy with that

But I'll be in for the same shitstorm next time I want to bkae

bake

[rocky peak]

That's good ot hear but it's still frustrating because if you DO have a change - it's giong to be hard to implement

maybe next time, try going to the advanced filtering and turning off denoisers. For science

[void tusk]

I'll try @deft fiber s suggestion for trying Enlighten next time I think

Maybe that'll help

Even though I originally thought it to be deprecated

[rocky peak]

I had heard the same too but at this point, you're not being done any favors with standard

[deft fiber]

I haven't tried its comeback version yet, no idea what it's like

[rocky peak]

I was re-reading the Asset page for Bakery -It says it supports URP

[void tusk]

It does

Urp 11

Current URP is URP 12

Baking with Bakery is super quick and good

But you get warnings that disable all realtime lighting

Including point lights on spells projectiles etc

Due to the lighting assets being incompatible with current version of unity

[deft fiber]

Hasn't 12 been out for quite a while?

[void tusk]

Problem is Unity rewrites the codebase for functions like this constantly which means sometimes it's a waste for asset devs to update

Until the next major x with x amount of features etc

[stable lichen]

Is there a way to edit lightmaps in photoshop?

[rapid kestrel]

I have both static and dynamic object in the scene. When baking with 'Bake Indirect' all dynamic objects appear darker in comparison to the static object due to the indirect light acting only on static object. How can can an even lightning in the scene? Is the a way to increase the lighting intensity on dynamic object only to compensate the indirect intensity?

[deft fiber]

Lightmaps are stored in a folder as image textures when generated, I think they can be edited no problem

[alpine briar]

How can i make my Baked lighting look more like my Realtime Lighting?

my realtime lighting is perfect but when i bake no matter what the settings it just looks like crap

[deft fiber]

What do you mean crap? Usually people have the opposite problem

[alpine briar]

baked shadows look extremely soft

everything is darker

just doesnt look good

id just use the Realtime but this project is for mobile so i cant

[deft fiber]

Softness is determined mainly by the size of your light sources, and the resolution of the lightmap
Overall brightness usually doesn't change but I suppose you could make the lights brighter? Or increase exposure with post processing

[alpine briar]

i tried upping the resolution of the lightmap but its the same

i also tried putting the intensity higher on the Directional Light thats lighting up the whole scene

just doesnt look good, ive been messing around with the settings for like 3 days but i just cant get it to look good i dont know what to do

[deft fiber]

The whole scene is not the issue?

[alpine briar]

wdym

[deft fiber]

sorry, misread
It's very hard to give any advice on this info alone
probably wouldn't hurt to share pictures of the realtime vs baked lighting

[alpine briar]

alright one sec

[alpine briar]

Realtime @deft fiber

Baked

just looks darker and the shadows are just blurry in the Baked one

even if i put the lightmap resolution up

[rocky peak]

What shadow mode are you using? And what kind of a lightbox do you have?

[alpine briar]

im using Subtractive with Progressive GPU

[rocky peak]

Are you using a procedural skybox? Or something else?

[alpine briar]

its a HDRI thats basically just a gradient of white and grey

[rocky peak]

okay - show me a picture of your Environment tab, under lighting

[rocky peak]

Okay to get a better shadow color, try setting yoru Enviornment Lighting Source to "Color" and changing your Ambient color to a more skyblue-ish color. Something lighting anyway.

FYI: A good HDRi or EXR Skybox does wonders for baked lighting

On to the Shadow mode - For what reason are you using subtractive?

[alpine briar]

Cheaper for mobile

this is a project for a mobile game

[rocky peak]

Are you on URP and Forward?

[alpine briar]

URP

it does say Forward Renderer when i go to the setting im using

[rocky peak]

Primo

for mobile, anyhow

[alpine briar]

gonna try changing the HDRI

i just dont get why it looks so different to realtime

[rocky peak]

Make sure you tell the Lighting tab to source colors from skybox

[rocky peak]

Baking is a complex, nuanced art

Also - the Unity Baker is kinda.. .well. Stupid.

Bakery does great things. But may not be compatible with your URP

[alpine briar]

Well im glad i got someone to point me in the right direction atleast

[rocky peak]

Well don't thank me yet - let's see if I can solve the fuzzy issues

I don't always solve problems here. but sometimes I can nudge in a new/better direction

okay show me your Directional Light properties

[rocky peak]

Is this Unity 2021?

[alpine briar]

Nah 2020

2020.3.25f1

[rocky peak]

Alright are your walls set to static, and baked?

[alpine briar]

Yeah

[rocky peak]

In the top right of your Scene view, you'll see "Shading Mode"

[alpine briar]

u want me to go to Baked Lightmap?

[rocky peak]

yeah

[alpine briar]

even if i set the lightmap resolution to the max it still pretty much looks the same

[rocky peak]

Do you know what "resolution" you're viewing these at? For example, did you accidentally set yourself to "Very Low" ?

[deft fiber]

Honestly the baked version here to me looks... better? Or at least more correct
It's darker because the alley is occluded by its walls from being lit by the sky
The resolution is trickier, as realtime lights use much higher resolution shadow maps generally

I guess you could remove the darkening by not baking ambient occlusion

As you can see in that debug view, lightmap resolution is not static across all surfaces, but it can vary
You could optimize and improve it by increasing the relative lightmap UV size of the walls that recieve high resolution shadows, but that could get ...manual

Still, objects have a "size in lightmap" setting somewhere I recall

[alpine briar]

i maxed that out but it looks the same

[rocky peak]

I believe it's on the "Model's" settings

Nope I lied

You can set that on the instance of the mesh in the scene, my pardons

[deft fiber]

Did you yet show the settings you use to bake?

[alpine briar]

i understand but i just dont want this mushy look, im using the realtime as reference

[rocky peak]

First, did you confirm what settings you're on? Low-Quality versus High-Quality?

[alpine briar]

these are the settings im using

[deft fiber]

Lightmap resolution of 15 and max lightmap size 512 are rather low

Reasonable, but not quite maxed out

[alpine briar]

no no i mean i maxed it out in a previous bake

not this one

[rocky peak]

My screen might be slightly different than yours but do you mind going to your project settings, and showing me what your "Quality" screen looks like

[left helm]

Does the generated lighting save any kind of metadata of what lightmap settings were used? I baked my lighting a long time ago but did not save the lighting settings, I want to know the environment lighting ambient color I used in particular

[rocky peak]

show me above that too - the part where all the "Quality" settings are listed

[deft fiber]

Realtime shadow resolution is based on the distance you're viewing it at, so it can be functionally infinite
Baked shadows are limited to the surface's size in lightmap, that's pretty fundamental

[rocky peak]

If you have the original scene with the primo baked lighting you can open it up and look at your light rendering tab

[left helm]

I don't think I have the original scene, but ill take a look if I can find it, I assume there is no other way to check these settings otherwise, thanks!

[deft fiber]

I think the only real workaround is to have the walls that need hi-res shadows have a bigger size in the lightmap

But it is kinda weird if it stays blurry even when you increase the resolution as you say

[rocky peak]

that's part of why I was wondering if they stuck themselves to "Low-Quality" in the Quality screen. IIRC, you can "double-click" the quality you want to view the game at, and if you click "Very Low" it will mimic what Very Low looks looks like (aka, will have crappy bakes)

[deft fiber]

this is at texel density 40 and max lightmap size 1024, a kind of a worst case scenario with thin shadow casting objects but it doesn't look terrible

[alpine briar]

you mean this?

[rocky peak]

Yeah

So you're on Medium - is that the default medium from Unity?

[deft fiber]

texture quality here also affects lightmaps

[alpine briar]

no its

[alpine briar]

this one

[deft fiber]

That one doesn't have the texture quality setting

[rocky peak]

Yeah I was gonna say - you keep showing me your render pipeline info

but your quality settings override the render pipeline in some areas

and you might have your Shadow Resolution set to "Low Resolution" only in the quality settings

you do not have a "High Quality" or "Ultra" setting in your game, which is likely by design if you're targeting Android/Mobile

[alpine briar]

i just removed those as i didnt need them

[deft fiber]

"Shadow resolution" is just for realtime shadows, but yea
Lightmaps are considered ordinary textures

[rocky peak]

ahh my pardons

[alpine briar]

sorry im really beginner to Lightmapping and Baking and all this

[deft fiber]

It can be quite confusing! I have no idea why quality settings are split between the quality tab and pipeline assets

[rocky peak]

Well in that case I suppose tinkering with the Adv. Filtering could help/

but yes - setting the walls with the shadows to a larger size on the Lightmap atlas

[alpine briar]

it says "Object's Size in lightmap has reached the max atlas size"

[rocky peak]

This is my progressive - 12 minutes done from baking but I changed the Baked Shadow Angle a touch - set the Plane size to 2, and then added Adv. Filtering and it cleaned up pretty well. It's not even finish with the bake and is looking to be pretty sharp

[deft fiber]

So, what's the max lightmap size currently

[rocky peak]

Yes you are running into the "riddle" of lightmap baking.

[alpine briar]

the max i can set it to is 4.5

[deft fiber]

here's the earlier scene with lightmap resolution / texel density 80, still 1024 max lightmap size

[deft fiber]

I mean this

So as you can see here, it's the lightmap resolution / texels per unit that's mainly responsible for how crisp the shadows are

It can't be maxed out, you can increase it until unity dies

[rocky peak]

but please don't do this. lol

[alpine briar]

i put it up to 4096 and baked the lighting and it still looked the same

[deft fiber]

With what lightmap resolution / texels per unit?

[alpine briar]

so i just discarded that as not a part of the problem

[deft fiber]

This is a function of multiple variables

[alpine briar]

15

[deft fiber]

That is quite low

Try 40

[alpine briar]

This is for a mobile game with a big map thats why im trying to keep it low

as the mb size racks up quickly

[deft fiber]

It does

[rocky peak]

well then again, you're running into the Baking riddle.

You want it to look good? that means a BIG texel st

[alpine briar]

i dont mind putting the texel size up

[rocky peak]

So what is going to happen here is a "balancing act". You need to figure out how much is "just enogh" that you're willing to live with

[rocky peak]

Also, keep in mind that on a small screen, you may not see those blocks

The screen you're going to view this on may be too small

so you can get away with slightly blocky shadows

[alpine briar]

Yeah but i failed to mention this isnt like a phone game

i say Mobile as in im running it on the Oculus Quest 2

[rocky peak]

Ahh plot thickens

[alpine briar]

Haha

[deft fiber]

Lightmaps aren't free
sometimes they're cheaper than realtime lighting, even on mobile
But you have to figure out where the bottleneck of your platform is and find the best compromise of settings

[rocky peak]

Quest 2 is more adv. than a simple phone - it's got some sharp processors

Patchi is on point (as usual)

[deft fiber]

You could up the texels per unit, see how it looks, see how it runs

[rocky peak]

Although Quest 2 is a "mobile" platform, it's not a phone and you can get away with some stuff and use bigger texels. OR even use a few more real time lights believe it or not

[alpine briar]

No no i get that but this is just 1 level of many levels, that means my lightmaps are going up to 200mbs per level

[alpine briar]

True true i was running with Realtime at like a good 60fps but 60 isnt good enough for VR

[rocky peak]

You may want to pick smaller levels then, with real time lighitng

[rocky peak]

truth

[alpine briar]

Quest 2 headsets have up to 128gb so i should be fine

[rocky peak]

But forward rendering URP can do 4 real time lights

[alpine briar]

128gb/256gb models

should i just experiment with the texel size?

try 25-35?

[deft fiber]

That's all part of the balancing
Lightmaps take disk space, need to be loaded from disk and kept in vram
Realtime lights are heavy on the GPU

[rocky peak]

What kind of graphics are you leveraging? Are you trying to do somethign that looks like Dr. Who Edge of Time? Or something more like "Bait!" ?

[alpine briar]

in-between

[rocky peak]

Both of those feature small levels

tiny spaces mostly

[deft fiber]

Yes, do experiment
You won't get rid of the blurriness until you give it the resolution it needs to work with
And you won't know what solution has better performance until you test them on the target platform

Optimization based on guesstimation is a big trap

You end up doing a lot of work that amounts to nothing

[rocky peak]

I feel called out...

[deft fiber]

Been there 🤣

[rocky peak]

Anyway the Dr. Who game is 5GB to get the maps it does have

But in any given level, you'll notice it's pretty controlled on the lights

While I don't have the game project in front of me (... and let's face it it was probably made in Unreal, not Unity), well I bet it has one directional light for the sky, one light around the character, and then it probably bakes the rest

[alpine briar]

are those 2 the only VR games you've played? @rocky peak

[rocky peak]

No they were just a few examples I gave

I've played a lot of VR games

Was there one in particular that you had in mind?

[alpine briar]

No no but i wouldnt say they're great examples considering they're both just more of "experiences"

rather than games

[rocky peak]

All games are experiences.

Some are just more focused on the mechanics (beat saber) and some more on a story and atmosphere (The Wolves in the Walls, Dr. Who, Moss, name it)

But by all means - tell me what game you'd say is more similar to yours. "Less experience" and more "game"

[alpine briar]

im just surprised your not using Half-Life: Alyx or Boneworks or Walking Dead S&S and such as an example as people usually do haha

its great to see someone talk about the other games too

Boneworks was made in Unity tho which is interesting

[rocky peak]

AHh well I'm an off-beat kind of character.

though I should admit now I haven't done Boneworks yet

I'm looking at the preview though

[alpine briar]

have you played the other 2?

[rocky peak]

I'll be my let foot it's primarily baked

[rocky peak]

Tried Walking Dead and I wussed out. I used to be fearless but not anymore. I also wussed out on FNAFs.

I've got HLA in the hopper just need to actually go through it some more

[alpine briar]

Oh man going through that cemetery tunnel (forgot what its called) is creepy as hell

game makes you do it many times too haha

i think the game was made in Unreal tho

[rocky peak]

Yeah pardon me while I NOPE tf out.

lol

I couldn't even finish watching the miniseries let alone play the game

this soft squishyiness looks baked to me

[alpine briar]

Oh yeah the lighting defo is baked in Boneworks

they were gonna release it with realtime lighting

but they realized it was too demanding

[rocky peak]

Boneworks is 20Gb

[alpine briar]

theres some gameplay of it out there with realtime lighting

[rocky peak]

I bet the Adeno can handle it

WD: S&S is 40Gb

and WD looks like UNreal

[alpine briar]

Yeah

defo looks like Unreal

[rocky peak]

https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/tech-blog/skydance-interactive-shows-how-it-injected-vr-physicality-and-melee-combat-in-the-walking-dead-saints-sinners

I'm assumign so

at least, I assume that's why they have this guy on the Unreal Engine blog

anyhow. Back to lighting

keep us posted on the progress of your game and don't be afraid to clock a few Texels in your maps. Dr. Who is 5Gb. Boneworks 20GB. Surely something in between the two shouldn't turn an eye.

[alpine briar]

Yeaah but Boneworks is a PCVR game haha

lots more space there

[deft fiber]

My test room with the ridicuous 80 texel density was 5mb

[rocky peak]

ahh

either way I don't think you should worry yet

[alpine briar]

@rocky peak i think i just figured out the issue

i was increasing the Lightmap Resolution

but not the Max Lightmap Size haha

[rocky peak]

that's pretty much what Patchi said

[alpine briar]

i dont need everything to be at a high resolution tho

only some of the walls need those sharp shadows

the rest are just normal

should i manually go through the non important ones and decrease their resolution? they look the same either way

[limber moth]

Ive been having this weird issue with spotlights, they have been coming out as these series of dots, when I create a new spot light this happens as well, and my old ones that were placed before had the same issue

Is this a common issue? Because I do not know whats causing it

[alpine briar]

okay so im finally starting to get that detail, but my lightmap size has gone 4x @rocky peak @deft fiber

about 600mb just for this level

Actually i just realized

i can keep all the lighting for everything the same and just increase the important parts

[rocky peak]

If it's the strategy I'm thinking of, I've employed it. I've slammed "crap" lightmap settings on on most everything, and then only gave "high" resolution treatment on select things.

Since this is a wall, you might even entertain leaving JUST that wall as "realtime" lighting, so you get crisp shadows. And the rest as baked. There's a natural delineator at the edge anyways

[alpine briar]

Yeah i tried leaving that wall as realtime

didnt look that great tho

this is working now tho

i put my max lightmap resolution too low

[rocky peak]

good deal

[alpine briar]

i am really grateful that you and @deft fiber helped me out

[rocky peak]

I haven't seen this before, outside of someone using a Cookie

[alpine briar]

i was almost gonna give up on this whole lighting thing

have been trying to get it to work for the past few days and its finally going somewhere

[limber moth]

Yeah its really weird

[alpine briar]

btw my realtime lighting has this weird blue tint @rocky peak

but my realtime shadow color is just grey

do you happen to know why this is happening?

[rocky peak]

Realtime ambient/shadow lighting has a color link under Subtractive

[rocky peak]

and then the baked shadows has a color link under environment

I closed down my Unity project with the lighting in it, so you'll have to go check the Render > Lighting tab yourself

[deft fiber]

Looks like the light is attempting to use a texture or a cookie that is somehow configured incorrectly, might be of wrong type, wrong clamping settings or something

[alpine briar]

you mean like the "Realtime Shadow Color"?

[limber moth]

So how would I fix that, since a newly created light has the same issue

Only spot lights

[rocky peak]

yes

[alpine briar]

Yeah thats on grey tho

[rocky peak]

try changing the color

try matching them to be the same

[alpine briar]

This is what happens when i put it to black

[alpine briar]

ah alright

[rocky peak]

.o

[alpine briar]

Also how does Ambient Occlusion work? no matter what setting i put it on it doesnt do anything to my scene

[deft fiber]

Are they using light cookies?

[alpine briar]

what do these settings even do?

[limber moth]

I do not know what that means

Here is what it looks like in the inspector

[deft fiber]

Cookie is not set to anything so that's probably not our issue

[rocky peak]

If you hover your mouse over the titles and leave it for a second, it should provide you with a pop-up/tool tip that tells you what it does

[rocky peak]

Also, at this point there's a few things you'll want to do if you really want to get good with the rendering system:

1. Open up the Unity Docs, and read about every field. Look up Ambient Occlusion, and what these contribution fields do.

2. You'll want to head to Unity Learn, sign up, and take their lighting courses (it's free). If memory serves, there is a "Making things look great In Unity" course, and an intermediate lighting course.

3. You'll also want to do a set of 100 set-ups, 100 push-ups, 100 squats, and a 10km run every single day too.

Okay that last part is a One-Punch Man reference 😛

[alpine briar]

Lol i cant do the 3rd step, if i do it i wont be considered as a game developer

[deft fiber]

AO simulates soft shadowing of tight geometry
It's the reason why your alley is much darker with baked lighting

[alpine briar]

i know what ambient occlusion is, but its not doing anything when i bake my lighting

scene looks the same when turning it on or off

[rocky peak]

No your AO is there

AO is subtle

[alpine briar]

is there anyway i can make it

less subtle

[deft fiber]

Not with any simple slider, no

[rocky peak]

AO can be kicked into gear a few ways.

1. There is an AO texture map you can add to your individual wall textures. You can paint areas of the wall that will hardly ever get light. So, the mortar, as an example,.

2. Post Processing has an AO setting you can add on the fly.

3. AO only appears in the crevices where it's that much harder for light to reach it. So, if you're not seeing it, chances are your scene is just too bright

[deft fiber]

You can have more light, or more shadow via less light, but neither really increase the contrast of AO

It's a bit weird that AO is a separate bake, because it's practically all part of the same package

The alley is also recieving less sunlight, and less bounce lighting from the sun in turn

[deft fiber]

Oh, here the max distance looks to be so small it probably won't darken the whole alley
And usually it is somewhat small, a meter or two

[alpine briar]

Whats like a starting point i could set it at?

Also can i use Reflection Probes on Mobile?

baked reflection probes

[deft fiber]

I have never made mobile projects but I haven't heard of such a limitation

[deft fiber]

I think 1 is the default

[rocky peak]

I'd like to provide you a recommendation to not say mobile.

When you say "mobile" people will give you advice tailored to working on both Android and iPhone, and that's very specific. They'll also assume that they don't have GPU to rely on (because most phones don't have such a thing, with some Samsung Galaxy phones being an exception).

The Quest 2, however, has decent GPU, and is considerably more capable than the average "mobile" device.

And yes. Quest 2 can handle a baked reflection probe

I've even done some tests with realtime probes

[alpine briar]

the problem is that most people dont know what the Quest 2 is haha

[rocky peak]

If they don't know what the Quest 2 is, then you don't want their advice anyways.

VR and Quest 2 is a very specific platform, with very specific quirks.

For example, some shaders work great in a 2D phone platform game but then break like mad in VR. You'd think they'd be the same? Only there's two cameras you're dealing with on a Quest 2, and they render in a specific matter. And if you're asking someone "Why is my shader broken? Im' targeting mobile" they might give you the wrong advice.

[white gate]

im having some trouble with light i have really dark shadow spots

[lucid sage]

Lights z fighting?

[stark temple]

https://help.vertx.xyz/graphics/lighting/light-limits/choose-pipeline

[lucid sage]

I see, but whats the difference between baked lighting and real time?

[stark temple]

Baking is an offline process where you convert all the lighting into textures which are applied to the objects instead of being recalculated each frame.

[lucid sage]

Alright but if you were too build the game would the lights be able to still affect shadows or is it just static?

[stark temple]

It's all very complex https://docs.unity3d.com/uploads/Main/BestPracticeLightingPipeline5.svg

[lucid sage]

Alright thx helps alot, ill check it out

[lucid sage]

Anyone got a tutorial for baked indirect lighting?

[kind light]

how to render a scene like this with only occlusion?

[alpine briar]

i agree, Thanks

[rocky peak]

You could leverage post-processing effects to de-saturate the color and increase the contrast.

[timber lichen]

how do you do 2d lighting?

the most I found requires universal pipe renderer

which I think i have to create a new project for it right?

[nova pewter]

i created the first image in blender and have ported the scene to unity so i can begin working on gameplay. any tips on how i can make my unity lighting look the same as my blender lighting?

[rocky peak]

Good morning from the Mountain Time.

When asking yourself how to accomplish something in Unity, it will be of benefit to break down you questions into steps.

Step 1, for me was "How do I make a black sky with a GIANT friggin sun?" - The answer was to make a new Material, set it to Skybox > Procedural. I give this new material a GIANT sun, with decent convergence, and relatively low exposure. I set it's tint to black and it's ground to a dark orange.

I go to my Render > Lighting tab, and I see this to my Skybox, and I set my Directional Light as the sun, and I rotate the sun until it's nearly down, under the horizon.

Then I set up my lighting tab for a bake

[rocky peak]

Here's a first pass:

obviously more tinkering is warranted.

[nova pewter]

thank you! this is incredibly helpful!

[timber lichen]

can anyone help with this?

[proper holly]

just import URP from the package manager and modify materials to use URP shaders, there's an automated process for it

googling "unity how to migrate project to URP" should give you enough info to pull this off

[timber lichen]

thanks didn't know you could do this

are there any differences between urp and standard 2d?

[proper holly]

i haven't used it that much, but the main differences are in performance, lighting and shaders

shouldn't give you much problems

[timber lichen]

ok perfect

[timber lichen]

it doesnt work

it doesnt show me the 2d lighting

like global light

i did all the stuff to make it urp

[rocky peak]

I've never done 2D lighting in Unity so I may not be able to help.

But were you following a tutorial or osmething?

[timber lichen]

yes

https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.render-pipelines.universal@7.1/manual/InstallURPIntoAProject.html

this

and

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihurRMKz2es&t=32s

[rocky peak]

Okay... so what is precisely going wrong. And what did you expect to happen?

[timber lichen]

when you click light

[rocky peak]

That doesn't tell me what is wrong.

Can you give me a time stamp from the YouTube video that you are specifically stuck at?

[timber lichen]

i was sending this screen so it can help better understand

following the tutorial

before directional, there should be a 2d light option

[rocky peak]

Did you do the step where you setup a "2D Renderer" ?

[timber lichen]

yep

[rocky peak]

Okay. Show me your 2D Renderer settings

[rocky peak]

Under your Assets folder, you should have a "Settings" folder. Click in there. There should be a 2DRenderer data item

[timber lichen]

doesnt appear

[rocky peak]

Are you saying you don't have a Settings folder?

[timber lichen]

just have scenes and scenes

[rocky peak]

Interesting. Do you have something called a UniversalRenderPipelineGlobalSettings ?

[timber lichen]

where should i check?

[rocky peak]

Try typing it into the search bar

[timber lichen]

nope

cant find it

[rocky peak]

This indicates to me that your project did not make a successful switch to URP

and without URP, you can't work with the 2D Renderer, and therefore, you can't work with 2D Lights

The easiest way to get a URP project going is to create one from scratch via Unity Hub

If you choose to go the route of making a new project that is URP to begin with, Unity provides a nice "2D URP" template that jumpstarts you.

[timber lichen]

cant find 2d urp

downloaded urp

its a 3d studio

[timber lichen]

why do you have the 2d urp but it doesnt show up in mine????

[rocky peak]

I am using Unity Hub 2.4.3 with Unity Version 2021.2.0b4. What are you using?

[timber lichen]

2.4.2

[rocky peak]

It could be that Hub 2.4.2. doesn't have access to that template

[timber lichen]

imma look into that

[rocky peak]

meanwhile, you can still try to convert an existing project to URP. There is more than one step to converting a project to URP.

Not only must download URP, and then install, it, but you then have to create a URP Scriptable Render Pipeline asset, and you must plug that into your Project Settings too.

[timber lichen]

i did that too

that's why i find it strange it didnt work

[rocky peak]

So you right-clicked your project, went to "Create > Rendering > UniversalRP" ?

[timber lichen]

yep

[rocky peak]

ahh so. this is a critical step to "Configuring your Project for URP", and is step two in the tutorial you linked me too.

But you just said "I did that too", but then turned around and said you didn't actually do it

[timber lichen]

i meant yes

idk why i said nope

[rocky peak]

Well I'll leave you too it then. Good luck.

Remember, Unity requires attention to detail. You have to read everything. You can't skip a step.

[timber lichen]

yeah

[dense wing]

how to make lights to react to audio??

[lucid sage]

timing should work

[lucid sage]

Why this weird coloring?

[stark temple]

Lightmap compression

[lucid sage]

how to fix?

[stark temple]

https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/Lightmaps-TechnicalInformation.html

[lucid sage]

thx

[civic ivy]

Is there a way to make a light effect only 1 specific gameobject? I cant use layers because this is done at runtime, and there may be any/unknown number of lights and objects.

[timber lichen]

i did it! i ported the thing to urp

[rocky peak]

Excellent! Does that mean you have access to your 2D Lights now?

[timber lichen]

yes

[rocky peak]

Excellent. Good luck.
[ Insert Hunger Games: "May the odds be ever in your favor" Meme here ]

[left helm]

Is there a good way to fix these shadow lines in the lighting build? These are 2 seperate meshes

[rocky peak]

Are these baked?

[left helm]

Yes, I used MeshBaker to bake the objects to one mesh, then I generated the lightmap, these are static shadows

But 2 different meshes, this is where they split

Mesh ends at the orange line

[rocky peak]

Yeah this is what we call a "UV" seam. Double check that both meshes have the same Lightmap settings. If one of them is set to a lower resolution, for example, that would explain why their baked shadows are so disparate

[lucid sage]

Ooh that helps a ton too

[lucid sage]

nvm But they are two separate objects and for some reason when i look at it different it's perfect but when i look at it a different way then it shows this weird line for some reason

the first one is trash but the second one is perfect

oooh wait its when i go close its perfect but farther away to not

how would i fix this?

[deft fiber]

Are these images from the same bake? I don't recognize this issue right away

[lucid sage]

yup

its a mixed bake

[deft fiber]

@lucid sage and are the lights in the picture lighting the ceiling dynamically or by using the light map?

If they're baked on the lightmap, the lighting shouldn't be able to change

[lucid sage]

They are spot lights

oh so its not baking at all?

[deft fiber]

Spot lights can be dynamic or static

If you disable the lights, is the ceiling still lit?

If the ceiling darkens, their light is dynamic, and so subject to things like object light limit

[lucid sage]

The ceiling is not lit when i disable them

[deft fiber]

So, the light is not baked

[lucid sage]

ooh alright

so it cant be mixed, it has to be on baked

[deft fiber]

It can be and probably should

Both the lights and the ceiling/walls need to be Contribue GI Static

[lucid sage]

ok well now it just looks weird

[deft fiber]

Your lightmap looks to be very low resolution and might be catching artifacts from somewhere, but at least it's working

[lucid sage]

alright cool

i think ill keep it like that for now since its a prototype

but thx for the help, appreciate it

[deft fiber]

It's good to keep resolution low at testing stage for quick generation
If you want you can check for "texel validity" and "UV overlap" in viewport draw modes in case they reveal any obvious errors

[lucid sage]

got it

[oak snow]

Figured to pop in here if someone knows a bit more about cameras than I do, as you can see, the Camera doesn't show anything 😂 😭

[lucid sage]

rendering

[civic ivy]

Can anyone help me with this? Is this possible at all?

[deft fiber]

Why can't you use layers at runtime?

[civic ivy]

There's a max of 32 layers, and there may be any number of lights and objects at any given time

my current work around without the torture of creating my own shadow caster is to max out of 4 lights for any object (last 4 layers are reserved for that)

[deft fiber]

This sounds like a pretty extreme case

[civic ivy]

trying to do doom style sprites that get the proper rotation of a sprite for accurate shadows

like a character facing at the front of a sprite, but a light on the left gets the left facing sprite to cast a left shadow on the right

brain melting stuff, it's killing me lol

[deft fiber]

So, doom style sprites which cast shadows as if they were solid?

Am I getting that right

[civic ivy]

I think so, but just in case, time for a bad ms paint diagram

contributes to the illusion of 3D, at least in theory, I have to implement to test it

simulated

[deft fiber]

@civic ivy First instinct would be to have shadow-only meshes for each sprite, but I suppose preventing those from shadowing the sprites themselves would be tricky

[vapid oar]

So I'm using tags and culling masks for a space sim. Basically to simplify my issue I have the inside as a 1:1 model with the character controller and a camera that only renders that culling out anything not part of the 1:1 scene, and the spaceships/planets et all are scaled down and on another scene with other cameras that have culling for the space scenery only and not the 1:1 interiors. My issue is I have a reflection problem on the 1:1 model, but it applies the reflections to the space models and its' very obvious. I can't find an option to select what the reflection probe applies to and have a separate set of them. Anyone know if I've overlooked anything or if I need to do more trickery?

[fallow thicket]

is it possible to build multiple maps in a queue?

using unity's default light baker

[wise hawk]

So

This is something I did a while ago

What you need to do is handle billboarding on the GPU.

there's some caveats though

The shadowcasting pass renders the object much like you would draw it to the screen, but only depth

the problem is the specific way that different light sources are rendered in terms of perspective

Directional lights are an orthographic view from an infinite distance, rotated along the transform of the light

that's not too bad

Spots' up axis seems arbitrary, which can be a problem with the billboarding if you're trying to determine which way is up for the sprite

The real issue though is point lights. They render 8 times and then composite the result. I could not get it to work with this at all, some of the frames are upside down, the projection makes them wider in some areas than others... it's really a mess

If you figure it out please post back. I ended up just accepting that my billboard shadows would look wrong at some angles

But yeah. You need to do all the math for selecting the viewing angles/billboarding inside the shader, that way it's available to the shadowcaster pass.

Anyways that would make it faster, so if you can do it, it's a good idea

[deft fiber]

Where would the billboard face in situations with multiple lights?

[wise hawk]

Towards the camera, which is positionned where the light is

It's rendered per light

Like

the shadowcaster pass you can imagine as it rendering the scene from the perspective of each light, one at a time

this is why pixel lights get exponentially expensive to render

If your billboarding shader is setup to face the camera, it will face the lights individually for the individual shadowcasting renders

[deft fiber]

I see!

[terse thunder]

Hi, i am getting this output in some mobile while everything is fine in editor and most of the phones

Can someone help me with that? My unity version is 2019.4.29f1

[summer aspen]

Likely an unsupported shader. Test with default mobile shaders.

[terse thunder]

Its a default standard shader 😕

[summer aspen]

mobile shader specifically

[timber lichen]

Any reason why I set the lighting to baked then generate it it's black

I figured it out

[mortal oasis]

why tf is unity baking lightmap with some wrong uvs even though i disabled generate lightmap uvs option in mesh settings and made custom uvs in second channel

this is my second uvs in blender and i can see that they are the same in unity in mesh uv viewer but baked lightmap is still using wrong uvs

i missed some setting or what

[mortal oasis]

seems like there no way to make unity to not scale or move my uvs

[timber lichen]

https://gyazo.com/a645e3ca64075203a6cfc430669193f9

What's gone wrong here?

[hallow nimbus]

turn off lighting at the scene mode (the bulb icon)

[timber lichen]

no i mean the way the floor essentially toggles vibrancy depending on where i look

you may need to turn brightness up on device to see what i mean

[south birch]

I've got an issue with a torch mechanic I'm working on, I added in a Spotlight source, attached it to my main camera but the light keeps flickering

[hallow nimbus]

oh i see, you didn't really exactly pointed out the problem so i just assumed to that you can't see the scene, my bad

well i haven't really studied the lighting stuff yet in Unity so apologies if I can't help you out

[timber lichen]

It was light leak

my game broke earlier so don't worry lmao

[south birch]

When I'm looking around the spotlight flickers, but if I'm looking at a certain direction and moving the light will stay on, or stay off (keep in mind the spotlight is constantly enabled in the inspector so no reason why it shouldn't be off. Or flickering)

[deft fiber]

@timber lichen Realtime light limits per object

[timber lichen]

i tried merging the probuilder cubes

but is there a way i can make the walls a single geometry to keep my light limit low

[deft fiber]

The light limit is per object so you'd have to split the level into multiple objects, rather than merge them

If your rendering pipeline supports deferred rendering, you could try that, as it doesn't have the per object light limitations or expense

[olive jetty]

ayo, this normal? it is using my integrated instead of dedicated GPU

and can't seem to be able to change

[median ruin]

does anyone know whats going on with the shadows

https://streamable.com/djlvll

[deft fiber]

I had a similar issue which apparently was caused by polygon faces that are too long, too thin and extend way out of the camera's range so shadow's don't render properly
But I'm not sure if that's the case at the ramp
I'd try messing with shadow cascade settings to see if that has any effect

With my long polygon issue it seemed that only the first shadow cascade was affected for whatever reason

[median ruin]

I mean every single object in the scene is a stretched cube

So this might be causing it

Thx for the info

[supple kelp]

Is there any way to see what my baked lighting looks like without having to wait 8+ hours every time I want to change and test the lighting?

[supple kelp]

Help! I made a reflective box using reflection probes and it's reflecting the dark surface underneath it. The reflection probe shows a black box in the spot where the reflective box is and its reflecting itself help

[paper orbit]

is it just me or is lighting somehow broken on Unity 2021.2 / URP 12 in builds? It looks like the environmental light is simply missing in builds while it's working fine in editor.. I'm seeing this both in windows editor / uwp build and mac editor / mac build

[deft fiber]

Use less samples and resolution for non-final bakes
Bake on GPU instead of CPU if your hardware supports it, 8 hours is a long time

[deft fiber]

I believe you can exclude objects using culling masks from the reflection probe, and to set a minimum clipping distance so it ignores objects that are too close

[versed garnet]

Any idea of why this could be happening?

[willow timber]

Hey anyone know how to get this kind of lightning in unity?????

[supple kelp]

My lightmap resolution is 3

[deft fiber]

Does that even produce anything usable? What about samples
Also, what sort of objects do you have marked static?
If you have meshes that are small or have high polycount marked static, or even worse, small high poly meshes, it can lead to exponential bake time costs

[supple kelp]

Mainly just walls and floors and stuff, which have just 2 triangles

[deft fiber]

Hmm, nothing that should add up to long bake times

[indigo crag]

Do anyone got a free flare texture to share to my light? Cant find any

[sacred sail]

Not sure where to post, but i think heres the best bet. Anyone Know how to make TextMeshPro match the local lighting in game? (Not UI)

[gritty fractal]

Is there a hack to widen the top of a spotlight cone?

damn it! Ok, thank you.

[unique flower]

After baking my objects are no longer reflecting any light from the sun. (tried baking at higher resolution as well with no success)

thats without baking

thats after baking (i have reflection probes in my scene and light probe groups)

[limber delta]

I have the same problem. It's because the geometry isn't continous (in my case at least). I'm also wondering if there is any way to fix it? Otherwise I won't be able to work with modules for the walls and the floor etc. I'm using Unity 2021.2.4f1 and baking lights (URP).

Tips, play around with the lightmap resolution and make sure you lightmap UVs are good. Upping the res seems to help out a lot.

[deft fiber]

If you're on built-in render pipeline, you can change the TMP font material's shader to Distance Field (Surface) and you will get lighting

[deft fiber]

It's not that the reflection is missing but it looks like the sun's light is missing entirely

I believe your directional light needs to be of type Mixed to work with Shadowmask lighting mode, and marked static

[unique flower]

so i need mixed lighting on, if i do this i get my reflections back but then baking does not really change anything. shadows are no longer nicely baked as they are when using "baked"

[hexed linden]

Hey. We are having some problems with some lightprobes We cant figure out why this is happing, Our lightprobes gets over blown and looks horrible. it also get strance from in the middle of no where.

[warm plover]

Anyone know how to fix this problem with light?

[deft fiber]

There's something messed up with your configuration, that's not what mixed lighting should do

If you want reflections, your sun needs to be of type mixed, but from your screenshot it appears the directional lighting is not working at all with baking

For best visuals you would use Mixed directional light with Shadowmask on in baking settings

This will treat the sun as a realtime light up close for reflections and crisp shadows, but fade to baked light when viewed from far away

Aside from that you have to choose whether to use a purely baked directional light that casts no reflections and writes shadows directly on the lightmaps, or a purely realtime light with only indirect lighting written onto the lightmaps

[unique flower]

Ok thanks for the information

[onyx sonnet]

Hello, is there anything like Lumen in Unity Engine, even in Preview state or all lights need to be done manually ?

[pulsar aspen]

https://forum.unity.com/threads/unreal-lumen-global-illumination-without-rt.1116928/

There is Global Illumination in unity yes.

[deft fiber]

Vague question and vague answer
The thread seems to have little more than people arguing about experimental and theoretical lighting solutions

[deft fiber]

SSGI seems to be the most similar to Lumen
Enlighten also works but it has its own limitations

[hoary hemlock]

Anybody know the best way to do interior lighting for a procedural dungeon? Struggling to come up with a solution that looks good and is performant

[Built in pipeline btw]

[deft fiber]

There are many ways, none of them best
Realtime lights are not bad, and if you can use deferred rendering you'll have a lot of freedom how to scatter them around
Baked lightmaps look great and it's possible to store them in prefabs, though I've never tried that for myself to see how tricky it is
Then there's also Enlighten which is an interesting hybrid solution, but with which your mileage might vary wildly

[hoary hemlock]

interesting

does deferred allow for a lot of point lights?

[deft fiber]

Significantly more than forward rendering, for cheaper

[hoary hemlock]

interesting! I'll give it a shot thanks

[timber lichen]

help

lighting is turning off when i look left

[deft fiber]

You're going to have to provide more info than that

[timber lichen]

Yes

Wait

This is the normal light

When i look at it

And this is the light when i look just a bit left

Just a bit, not much

And also when i go far from the light it starts turning off

This is the light when im close to it