so this area that you can walk around in

[nova dagger]

thank you I will try these settings

Im going to bake it again and ill see how it turns out

[woeful light]

Did it work?

[nova dagger]

Its still baking

[hexed musk]

After baking show debug views for lightmap UV overlap and texel validity

[woeful light]

😮

[nova dagger]

you mean like the UV viewer after its done?

[nova dagger]

yeah its crazy how long it takes

[woeful light]

well.. 60x60 is a big scene 😄

[nova dagger]

yeah its a little bit huge

alright its done

ill send a ss in a second

the walls are definatelly a little bit better but the ground hasnt really changed too much

[hexed musk]

No, "texel validity" and "UV overlap"

[nova dagger]

oh sorry ill post them right now

texel validity ^

UV overlap ^^^

its almost pure white that one

[woeful light]

If you click on your ground tile and open the lightmap preview, how does this look?

[nova dagger]

if you just want the baked lightmap it looks like this

and here is all the other stats

[hexed musk]

Ah, looks like every quad/plane has a size 0 on the lightmap

[woeful light]

i think!!! the shells of each indiviual tile is so small that it only gets 1 pixel of light information.
But that makes no sense, be cause you can see several squares in the debug.

[nova dagger]

so each square only gets 1 pixel of light? making it look pixelated?

even though it should be working

you guys have any ideas to fix this? 😅

If we cant its fine Ill just try to search the forums again now that I know more about what's going on but thanks for the help so far

[woeful light]

First thing: Make a new scene, add just a very small part of your scene there and have a look if it bakes correcty to make sure the mesh and mdoels are okay.. thats what i would do

maybe a 5x5 meter part

[hexed musk]

The mesh is kind of problematic as the surfaces are made of tiny disconnected tiles
Preferably you would merge the vertices they share

[nova dagger]

with the same walls and ground or just random textures?

[nova dagger]

they arent disconnected, the whole ground is one giant game object I made in blender, the way I made it is by making one tile, then duplicated it 3 more times to make a square, joined that square duplicated to make a larger square and so on

after that I just joined it all together and made it one object made up of many smaller objects

maybe I could to fix this, make one giant ground with no pieces just a solid blocks but im not sure that will make a difference because the walls are also messed up

[hexed musk]

Joining them into a single object doesn't merge the vertices

[nova dagger]

yeah it still leaves the loop cuts inside

if that is the problem I could go back into blender and make sure everything is joined properly

[hexed musk]

Merged, specifically
Select all floor tiles, do "merge by distance"
Repeat for walls and ceiling

I'm not totally sure if it's better to have the whole floor merged or to merge them on a per-room basis

Either way, every non-merged seam like that will get margins on the lightmap and eat into the available space

[nova dagger]

oh alright I understand

[nova dagger]

in blender?

[hexed musk]

Yes

[nova dagger]

alright

ill try it

I might have to redo the inside though as I joined it a while ago by accident

also @woeful light

idk if im being stupid but this is meant to be working right?

this is pretty much everything i have to join together

[hexed musk]

I imagine it would speed up bake times if the place was sliced into sections
As it is, every light ray must be tested against every poly of the joined geometry

[nova dagger]

how long should baking a large area usually take?

okay everything now is completely black but I think I just have to bake it

yep its good now

@hexed musk I joined everything re-baked now its just this

oh wait its still baking nevermind

[hexed musk]

Joined or merged?

Joining connects multiple objects into one object
Merging connects multiple vertices into fewer vertices

[nova dagger]

I did the merge by distance on everything

so merging

yeah also its all pitch black right now

im going to try to add 1 light

[hexed musk]

Perhaps the automatic UV generation couldn't handle the geometry as it is (or it's not enabled) or something else is wrong with the mesh
Hard to speculate

[nova dagger]

I think it might be because there was no light

but I added light and its doing the thing again

[hexed musk]

I don't know what causes the UVs to collapse like that if they really don't have seams anymore

Seems that you'll have to create some test rooms in blender to figure out a process for creating geometry that works with baking

[nova dagger]

Yeah I think you might be right

Ill try make smaller sections making completely joined walls with no vertexes in the middles

im just going to test for a while

but thanks for the help its almost fixed there is just something we are missing

okay i made one big room

every single wall is just 6 faces

the ground is one block so another 6 fafces no loop cuts in the middle im going to import this and see if this one works with shadows

oh my god

that was the answer

@hexed musk@woeful light

when i made it one big mesh

instead of multiple slices put together

it works perfectly

thats the answer

so yeah thanks a lot for helping I thought I was going to have to delete unity

[woeful light]

Lol. i thought it has a reason that you use this small tiles

[nova dagger]

well at least I cant make this mistake again in the future lmao

there goes around 2 days of my life I will never get back

I love unity

[woeful light]

most times, the problem sits infront of the screen 😄

but you should keep in mind, that you should divide your Biiiiiig scene in a few parts.. not in 5000 like you did, maybe in a few 😄

when i startet, i tried to merge and join every mesh togerther, because i thought its very smart to reduce the drawcalls.. but big meshes can also cause troubles

[nova dagger]

too true

[nova dagger]

yeah thats probably a good idea I mean im obviously making the backrooms if you didnt recognise it so im going to make many more giant world for each level so

I might have to use occlusion culling to make it runnable

[nova dagger]

how long have you been doing unity

[woeful light]

5 years now

[nova dagger]

damn thats a long time

made any cool games?

[woeful light]

Im working in a more serious company 😄
But i have a hobby game project since 1 1/2 years now. ^^

[nova dagger]

yeah working for a company is pretty cool its kinda hard to just stick to making games on your own as an income

so you just get set projects from different big games to work on when you are in a company like this?

[woeful light]

Nope, we sell work-safety-courses in Virtual Reality

And in my free time, i do a towerdefense ^^

because i need to free by creativity somewhere 😄

[nova dagger]

oh thats really cool im still learning about how other jobs can use unity and stuff like the navy as well

[nova dagger]

thats also pretty cool

im still thinking if I should get into a company in a year when I finish my college, is it worth it?

being self employed sounds pretty good too though because you make the project and everything involved its very free compared to a company that kind of directs you in a sense

[woeful light]

its different to be self employed as a worker or be a lone gamedesigner. If your game does not get sold well, you earn no money.. so you are always stressed to sell games as good as possible ^^ You can use Unity in many companies that do serious stuff. I would never look for a job in a company i work right now, because i didnt know that they do stuff like this 😄 Well, i created the VR part of the company when i joined them, but its still unknown that we have a game-dev team in our company ^^

https://www.instagram.com/mystic_towerdefense/
Thats my game ^^

[nova dagger]

yeah thats true its a lot more pressure for a solo game developer

when in turn you have a company which provides a steady income and many opportunities

but then again you just have to have 1 good idea and then you are set

[nova dagger]

really neat its like a low poly TD game?

I havent played many so I cant really compare it to much

but it looks cool

what device will it be on?

[woeful light]

not really lowpoly.. im loving details to much 😄

We wanted to go for mobile, but we focus on PC right now

[nova dagger]

a "stylized" tower defense is probably a better way of saying it

[woeful light]

yes completly stylized

[nova dagger]

yeah I could definitely imagine this as a mobile game

[woeful light]

i only do stylized stuff ^^

or try to.. 😄

[nova dagger]

yeah it does look pretty cool

[woeful light]

im not so happy with it at the moment 😄

[nova dagger]

to do stylized games I feel like your art skills also have to be equally good to your programming and other skills no?

[nova dagger]

how come?

[woeful light]

I hate bad graphics and i am very self-critical ^^

my colleague is programming, i do all the visuals

[nova dagger]

ahh right that makes sense

I do more programming thats why I struggled with the lighting stuff

but also

[woeful light]

its extremly deep programming.. i could not do this ^^

[nova dagger]

stylized games dont always have the best graphics right?

[woeful light]

but good stylized props are hard to do ^^

[nova dagger]

yeah with the enemies and the defense

[nova dagger]

I could never pull off stylized lmao

[woeful light]

its not like "Ok, i cant do realistics so i do stylized" 😄
Stylized is way harder as realistic stuff i think

sometimes i do to much details and have to go back some steps to keep it stylized 😄

[nova dagger]

yeah I could agree with this with realistic you have to follow rules get the lighting right get good textures, with stylized its just so much more work you have to put in, in the art sense that it probably takes more practice

[nova dagger]

yeah too much detail is never good

some games just overload absolutely everything with details and it just looks untrackable and cluttered

[woeful light]

Yep ^^

[nova dagger]

anyway it was cool talking to you I have to get to remaking my entire map but yeah see you later 😁

[woeful light]

Good luck

^^