bring my light back, unity

[grand chasm]

here

so how can i~

[trail swift]

gimme a sec i'll get with you

[grand chasm]

okay

[trail swift]

so first things first need to understand how your scene is setup

can you do me a favor and show me what your scene looks like in the baked lightmap view

[grand chasm]

okay

[trail swift]

make sure show lightmap resolution is on

which is on the bottom

[grand chasm]

here

[trail swift]

and send me a screenshot of your overall scene

in baked lightmap view

[trail swift]

just this but in baked lightmap view is fine

[grand chasm]

i dont know wdym

im a real beginner

[grand chasm]

(sorry)

[trail swift]

its alright

in unity within the scene tab, you have a dropdown menu that shows you different modes in which you can view your scene in

[grand chasm]

this right?

[trail swift]

yes

[grand chasm]

oh

[trail swift]

there is a dropdown menu that shows you all of those options

[grand chasm]

yea\

i see

[trail swift]

switch to this

and make sure

that this is also on in the menu

it wont look exactly like mine

[grand chasm]

okay, wheres my scene

[trail swift]

did you toggle this

if you did

your scene should look something like this

[grand chasm]

i did

[trail swift]

so you toggled it and thats how it looks in your scene view yeah?

[grand chasm]

yes

[trail swift]

well that tells me that you haven't marked any static geometry in your scene, leading to those really ugly results

[grand chasm]

what~

[trail swift]

its alright i'll give you an overview

so just for a general overview, when it comes to lightmapping it goes like this for a scene

1. mark static level objects as static (specifically marking the contribute GI flag). In here you are specifically marking objects that don't move or are interactable in the sense that they can be moved out of place or destroyed. Generally in most scenes your level geometry will always stay the same so that is typically the one that gets marked static

2. changing your lights that you want to include in the bake to either mixed/baked mode (for demonstration and teaching I will have you switch the lights to fully baked)

3. then finally its as simple as generate lighting, and then from there we will likely run into some issues that I will show you how to solve and make it look better

got it? @grand chasm

[grand chasm]

so i just need to make all my objects that doesnt move static?

[trail swift]

yes

[grand chasm]

all that doesnt ever move

[trail swift]

yes

this is important as I showed a previous person yesterday, if you mark everything as static via the contribute GI flag

you'll run into issues like this...

finding the screenshot give me a second...

here I have a lightmapped scene, but this stack of pallets are dynamic and moveable

when they get moved, you get issues like this

this is why you only mark objects that don't move or change as static

when it comes to marking an object as static

this is how

[grand chasm]

look

what about

[grand chasm]

im changing something on the scene

[grand chasm]

like moving furniture

[trail swift]

how do you mean?

[grand chasm]

look

i have a christmas tree there

what if i want to delete it

and place something else there

[trail swift]

ahhh, lightmapping stuff is not permanent

if you still need to change objects in your scene you still can

[grand chasm]

i did contribute GI tho

[grand chasm]

oh oke

[trail swift]

I'm only saying that you should mark objects static that dont move within runtime, or within the actual gameplay

if you need to change or move objects while you are designing the level within the editor then you still can, you'll just have to rebake lighting when you are done

do you understand?

[grand chasm]

ok

[grand chasm]

yea

i switched my light to baked

[trail swift]

so your lights are switched

[grand chasm]

yup

[trail swift]

have you also marked your objects with the contribute GI static flag?

[trail swift]

i.e. here?

[grand chasm]

not moving objects yes

[trail swift]

well with that all set, show me how your scene looks in the baked lightmap preview

[grand chasm]

wait wait wait

[trail swift]

you should see something similar to this

[grand chasm]

how do i bake properly

[trail swift]

I'll show you in a bit

this is all about showing you how to bake a scene properly

[grand chasm]

oh

[trail swift]

we are just setting up your scene first

[grand chasm]

i missunderstand

[grand chasm]

i need to show you like this?

[trail swift]

yes

[grand chasm]

oh yea

[trail swift]

there we go

[grand chasm]

yeeee

[trail swift]

so the purpose of why im wanting to see that

is because

I want you to do a flyby of the scene

and make sure that everything looks good

how?

make sure that the checkerboard pattern you are seeing

is mostly consistent size wise

across your whole scene

this is important to ensure that everything looks good

each little square is a lightmap pixel

if they don't all look consistent then we'll have problems later that we need to solve

so some things we need to watch out for

if you have a case like this

where surrounding geometry has alot of lightmap pixels

but objects like this don't

then there will be problems in the bake, but we can fix it

the next thing also to watch out for

[grand chasm]

erverything is okay

[trail swift]

might be hard to see but you can see these rings are too small

they are as big as one of those squares

which means those objects are too small to be lightmapped

so you should not mark it as contribute GI static

[grand chasm]

nah i dont have anything small on my scene

[trail swift]

well good

then the next step

is simply baking

[grand chasm]

should i switch back or smth

[trail swift]

yes you can switch back to shaded

[grand chasm]

what do i do to bake normally

[trail swift]

go to your lighting panel

[grand chasm]

this right

yeah

here

[trail swift]

create new lighting settings for your scene

[grand chasm]

ye

don

[trail swift]

which should show you all the options of the lightmapper

[grand chasm]

ye

[grand chasm]

my project is for vr

tho

[trail swift]

im aware

[grand chasm]

i should set this settings?

[trail swift]

nah not yet, just showing you all of the options are no longer greyed out

but since your project is for VR

and I assume you want maximum performance

we'll set the settings with that in mind

[grand chasm]

yea

[trail swift]

we can always change these later

[grand chasm]

i need 72 or 90 fps at least

oculus quest 2

[trail swift]

first thing is to set this lighting mode to subtractive

[grand chasm]

done

[trail swift]

now for your lightmapping settings

this is where the fun begins

[grand chasm]

😭

[grand chasm]

yep

[trail swift]

you do have access to the CPU version as well, the reason why that exists is that the GPU lightmapper can fail

the cpu version is slower but it is reliable

but for speed and saving time in our life

go for GPU

[grand chasm]

ye

done

[trail swift]

and for these settings for a first time bake I generally set them to the following

[grand chasm]

i made it GPU

[grand chasm]

done

[trail swift]

next is to set filtering

set it to advanced and set it to the following

[grand chasm]

oke

[trail swift]

if you have this option I suggest setting it to this

[grand chasm]

done

[grand chasm]

done

[trail swift]

couple of last things

since your on quest

[grand chasm]

what is it

[grand chasm]

yeah i regret

[trail swift]

change the directional mode to non directional

[grand chasm]

done

[trail swift]

and then for good measure, I like to enable this

[grand chasm]

what

oh

donee

[trail swift]

make sure when its enabled also

to go back in here and set the filtering for the ambient occlusion

[grand chasm]

done

[trail swift]

now save your scene and click generate lighting

[grand chasm]

done

[trail swift]

shouldn't take too long, though im not sure what hardware you are currently using

[grand chasm]

god help me...

[grand chasm]

Ruzen 7 5600H + RTX 3060 good?

[trail swift]

yeah thats not bad

shouldn't take too long then

[grand chasm]

yupiieee

[trail swift]

whats the estimated time for your bake

[grand chasm]

says 2 minutes

[trail swift]

should show you on the bottom right of the unity window

[trail swift]

not bad

[grand chasm]

yupie

not final but im scared

[trail swift]

send me screenshots of the scene when its complete

its alright, those issues can be fixed

just let it run

[grand chasm]

god help me pleasee

[trail swift]

?

[grand chasm]

done but

[trail swift]

its a start

[grand chasm]

wdym😭

whats next

[trail swift]

fixing the issues that we have at hand now

its not the end of the world though

the result is closer, but we can get even closer to your original

but the good news is that your results are better than they previously were

[grand chasm]

agree

[trail swift]

so first thing to check

[grand chasm]

what do i do now

[trail swift]

I know you had a light on the right for that equipment area and now its no longer in the bake

which can be due to a couple of things

but is there a light there?

or are you using emissives

[grand chasm]

emmision

kds

asdfasf4

oh sorry

[trail swift]

first thing is to click that emissive material

and show me a screenshot of the material settings

[trail swift]

thats your color settings, not your material

and that is not the emissive in your equipment area

[grand chasm]

the bulb has emmission

[trail swift]

that is what I was referring too

[grand chasm]

and theres light above bulb

actually

map looks ultra good

emmisions need to be fixed only

[trail swift]

so looks to me why your light might not be showing

is that its actually inside an object

in a lightmap if your lights are inside objects they will not appear in the bake

[grand chasm]

ye

it was

[trail swift]

so if your light for that equipment area was inside the bulb it needs to be out of it

yep

for some reason lighting overall still looks odd

are there shadows enabled for your lights?

[grand chasm]

emmision

[grand chasm]

no

[trail swift]

enable them

[grand chasm]

omg my parents gonna rape me now

on all of lights?

[trail swift]

yes

we are baking lightmaps so it wont affect performance

but it'll certainly help make it look alot better

[grand chasm]

gonna have soft

done

[trail swift]

bake it again

the scene lighting

[grand chasm]

baking

will it solve emmision?

[trail swift]

no because we haven't fixed it quite yet

[trail swift]

but it looks like for some of your materials your emission mode is set to baked which is what I wanted to check

if the emission mode is not set to bake then it won't be shown in the lightmap

if it is set to baked, and the emission is still not lighting up anything then that is because the intensity of said emission is too low

[grand chasm]

yep

its set on baked

[trail swift]

so then the emission intensity is too low

[grand chasm]

wdym

[trail swift]

the color is not bright enough to light the enviorment around it

[grand chasm]

wait

[trail swift]

in here you adjust the intensity with the slider on the bottom of the color panel

[grand chasm]

so what do i do to fix

god help me

[trail swift]

well well, nice and moody

[grand chasm]

what do i do to fix emmision thingy

im confused

[trail swift]

.

[grand chasm]

for how much

[trail swift]

it could also be that emission object is not marked static

[trail swift]

not sure

[grand chasm]

so just adjust intenstiy?

[trail swift]

yes

if the intensity at its current value is too low and not lighting up anything, then increase it to a higher value

you can always reduce it later

but also make sure that emissive object

is marked static

that could also be potentially another reason it may not be affecting the enviorment

[grand chasm]

done

baking

i gtg

can we contact tomorrow?

its 2 am for me

[trail swift]

sure, just @ me

[grand chasm]

my eyes hurts

[grand chasm]

thanks a lot!

this looks better than i did at least

[trail swift]

might also help to look at tutorials next time 😛

[grand chasm]

lmao

[grand chasm]

@mint quest here

before

after

[mint quest]

Okay what did you do between the two steps

[grand chasm]

thing which is up

so i baked the light

and i need realtime back

[mint quest]

okay please select your light and view the inspector

what kind of light is it?

[grand chasm]

this?

[grand chasm]

wdym?

i have Baked option selected everywhere on my lights

[mint quest]

Okay great, can you turn them all to Mixed? We can try to bring back the Realtime shadows while preserving the optimization from the baked lighting.

Can you bring up Window > Rendering > Light Explorer?

[grand chasm]

is this okay

i changed to mixed..

also all my static object is set to contribute GI

[mint quest]

Okay fantastic

[mint quest]

Can you click on New Lighting Settings?

[grand chasm]

yea

done

[mint quest]

Choose GPU and choose Direct Samples: 32 / Indirect Samples: 32 / Environment Samples: 32 and Lightmap Resolution: 8

[grand chasm]

want to mention that my project is for vr

[mint quest]

Yep, we're gonna make it look great 🙂

For now we choose low lighting settings so we can get quick bakes, we will increase the quality later

[grand chasm]

done

[grand chasm]

okay

[mint quest]

Okay click Generate Lighting so we see what happens

[mint quest]

What is that redness

[grand chasm]

i wish i knew

i can restart my project

i didnt save it

[mint quest]

No no let's keep working

[grand chasm]

oh okay

[mint quest]

I see a lot of emissive materials here

[grand chasm]

yea

[mint quest]

Which are the lights for your scene?

For this particular room

[grand chasm]

dont understand

im beginner sorry

im stupido

[mint quest]

Do you have Light objects in your scene?

[grand chasm]

you mean this?

[mint quest]

Yes

[grand chasm]

46

[mint quest]

So for this particular room you showed me with the christmas tree

[grand chasm]

whats my light for this room?

[mint quest]

can you show me the Scene View so I can see where the Lights are

Yes!

Are you only lighting it using the emissives?

[grand chasm]

theres only 1 for it, and its a point light

[grand chasm]

im using emmision so it look glowy

[mint quest]

Where is that one light? Is it the ceiling lamp I can see?

[grand chasm]

yep

[mint quest]

Okay can you select the object with the Light component?

[grand chasm]

here

[mint quest]

Select the Point Light

and show me the Inspector for it

[mint quest]

Can you increase the Intensity to maybe 2 and do Generate Lighting again?

[grand chasm]

okay

[mint quest]

It is probably going to be too bright but I just want to see whether it works at all

[grand chasm]

holy..

[mint quest]

Spot Angle should also probably be something like 90 or less

[grand chasm]

here

with intesnity

but other areas is red

only some parts which is above seems to be ok

[mint quest]

I am not sure what all this redness is, it doesn't look like a Lighting issue maybe a shader/material issue? It looks like you added emission to materials that shouldn't have any or something

[grand chasm]

i have emmisions to objects that needs it

should i restart

[mint quest]

Okay can you select something that is red

[grand chasm]

red color?

[mint quest]

Yes

Let's take a look 🕵️

[mint quest]

Okay these are supposed to be red I suppose

Can you select something that is red that shouldn't be red

😄

[grand chasm]

wdym

🥹

[mint quest]

Like an object that appears to be red above

but you don't want it to be

[grand chasm]

maybe i should try to delete red materials

[mint quest]

Then you'll probably make everything magenta

I don't think it's going to help

[grand chasm]

i didnt understand about select something that is red that shouldn't be red

[mint quest]

any part of these red areas we should take a look at

[grand chasm]

this for example?

[mint quest]

No, the rest of your level which I can see in the screenshot above

[grand chasm]

like

i should choose red object

which is in red area

[mint quest]

Yes

[grand chasm]

okay

lemme find

i found a book which is just red, but i noticed this

[mint quest]

Okay that looks fine 🙂

Let's work on your level area-by-area then to troubleshoot it

Are you happy with how this christmas tree room looks?

More or less? 😄

[grand chasm]

this looks good

thats before this

[mint quest]

Okay I think it's just a matter of tweaking some of the settings.

Select your Point Light like before

[grand chasm]

yup

[mint quest]

Use 1 for the intensity and reduce the spot angle to 90

[grand chasm]

done

[mint quest]

click Generate Lighting

[grand chasm]

here

red thing is still present

[mint quest]

Yes we will deal with that later

Trying to not do everything at the same time

[grand chasm]

if im using baked i dont have this red thing

oke

[mint quest]

Instead of Mixed ? Okay that's interesting. Probably has to do with your emissive materials

[grand chasm]

i can try to disable emission

[mint quest]

You can use Baked for the Lights if it solves your issue

[grand chasm]

also realtime works

mixed makes this red

[mint quest]

Okay go for baked then

[grand chasm]

okay

[mint quest]

nice

if that's supposed to look that way

What is missing here the most is shadows

[grand chasm]

can i ask a question

[mint quest]

Yes

[grand chasm]

as i understand theres no way to bring this kind of a light? thats before i baked all for my first time

[mint quest]

There is- what you saw here was the realtime light. You can get the same look with baked lights

[grand chasm]

i need to get realtime

🥹

[mint quest]

do you need that object to be lit with realtime lighting? does it move?

[grand chasm]

no

[mint quest]

Okay, if you need to get all the realtime lighting back, you need to revert all the lights back Realtime, clear your baked data and also make your emissive materials realtime as well.

In my experience you would get much nicer lighting if you bake it and much better performance as well. If you don't know how to work with it, however, it can be overwhelming to troubleshoot...

[grand chasm]

i just want to preview how lighting will look

also, how do i clear baked data

[mint quest]

click on that little arrow next to Generate Lighting

[grand chasm]

thanks

lemme move my lighting

so it will be in position how it should be

so it will look good when baked

[mint quest]

that makes a lot of sense

[grand chasm]

it looks.. weird

was became

[mint quest]

let's just focus on placing the lights, you can't really get a perfect preview like this

[grand chasm]

😔 4

so i wont be able to bring old light back at all🥹

[mint quest]

Spot angle 1 is very low

can you do 60?

[grand chasm]

its 12 now

23

okay

done

1 minute brb

im here

@mint quest sorry for ping, are you here?😅

[mint quest]

Yep

[grand chasm]

im done

i moved the light

[mint quest]

This light you were showing me?

[grand chasm]

i changed spot angle

its 23

[mint quest]

Does it look any better?

[grand chasm]

yeah mayb

[mint quest]

Can you click on the checkbox next to "Draw Halo" ?

[grand chasm]

ok

yea

[mint quest]

It should show you where the light's effective area is

[grand chasm]

no

it doesnt

just how it was

[mint quest]

Can you click on the gizmos button at the top right of your scene view? Is it toggled on?

Only send screenshots from the scene view (not game) so I can see the gizmos

[mint quest]

okay select the Light

and zoom out a bit

[grand chasm]

oooh

i edited it

[mint quest]

You can turn off the text mesh pro gizmos if you want

Click on the downward arrow next to the gizmos button and deselect anything that has text mesh pro

[grand chasm]

OOOHH

i CAN SEE HOW AND WHERE LIGHT WILL SPREAD

[mint quest]

yupp

[grand chasm]

okkkk

doneee

[mint quest]

ok so maybe we can focus on just this one light and then you can take the knowledge and apply it to everything else

you said that all the geometry is static?

[grand chasm]

yep

[mint quest]

ok cool, can you turn that light to baked and click generate lighting?

[grand chasm]

only this light?

[mint quest]

yea

[grand chasm]

okay

[mint quest]

everything else will probably turn black, don't worry

[grand chasm]

this kinda weird

[mint quest]

brb a sec

[grand chasm]

oke

[mint quest]

Hey I'm back

[grand chasm]

Oh sorry

Wait

2 min

[grand chasm]

ok im gere

[grand chasm]

so whats that

[mint quest]

it's the "Halo" that I asked you to check before. If you uncheck the checkbox it will go away

[grand chasm]

oh yea

looks. good😍

oh my god, this looks so christmassy😍

[mint quest]

you can increase the sample counts and lightmap resolution in the lighting window to get a nicer image once you're happy with the overall look 🙂

(remember we set them to 32 and 8 before for quicker bakes)

don't go too high though, as that will lead to very long bake times

maybe 64 for direct, 2048 for indirect, 256 for envirnonment

then 32 or 48 for the resolution

[grand chasm]

your recommendations?

[grand chasm]

okay

thanks

[mint quest]

Happy to help, hope all goes well!

[grand chasm]

thanks a lot!

oh my god...

[mint quest]

increase intensity and indirect intensity

[grand chasm]

thats how it should look

[mint quest]

oh then don't touch it!

[grand chasm]

im making horor

yapeee

[mint quest]

amazing

it looks great!

[grand chasm]

thanks

[grand chasm]

@mint quest sorry for ping.. Ive tried my game now. Performance looks awesome! But..

Since light is baked my player is black. just black
also i cant identify what and how covering my left eye. its just white..

I cant fix this today, i gtg sleep. I hope you can help me tomorrow

[mint quest]

Hey, you need LightProbes for this 🙂

[trail swift]

Thanks for filling in @mint quest , our time zones are very different lol

Though suprised you suggested changing light mode to mixed

He mentioned his target platform was quest 2, and i know with mixed lighting there is still a realtime lighting component with it

[mint quest]

I was still trying to figure out what exactly they wanted

Yeah baked is definitely a better option for performance reasons

But they did say "I want the realtime back" so I wasn't sure what to suggest 😄

[trail swift]

Well i see hes almost there now so 😛

[mint quest]

Yup!

[grand chasm]

Performance is just great😊

[grand chasm]

What’s that?

[trail swift]

Light probes assist with lighting dynamic objects in your scene

So remeber when I mentioned to only mark static geometry and not dynamic geometry?

[grand chasm]

Yea

[trail swift]

Light probes are a way to bring the lighting back to those dynamic objects and make them properly blend with the baked lighting of the scene

It works by basically having an array of points all throughout your scene, and when lightmapping these points are used to sample lighting at specific points in your scene so that they look correct

For placement there are alot of tools on the asset store you can use to automate the placement of these light probes since it can be tedious to setup

[mint quest]

Specifically LightProbes are for indirect lighting (aka light that has already bounced at least once)

Which is why I had mentioned Mixed lights which have a realtime direct component

So now it's a bit more complicated than with just baking a static scene... You can feel free to place Light Probes all over your scene (GameObject > Light > Light Probe Group I believe)

Click Generate Lighting and make sure your player mesh renderer (and any attached objects) receive lighting from Light Probes

I probably won't be around tmr but here's the manual page- not too complicated to place the probes and do a bake https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/LightProbes.html
It may be enough for what you need

[grand chasm]

okay thanks

[grand chasm]

like this?

@mint quest ive tried but its still black..

sorry for ping tho~

is that because of Mixed setting?

like do i need to set mixed for this

[trail swift]

no

generally you should be placing probes where there are changes in lighting

but also for your probes, do not place them inside geometry because otherwise they will be black

notice how the probes are placed here

mostly in lighting transitions

but honestly that can be hard to get right, so the other thing you can do is simply place probes in a consistent array through the entire enviorment

like here

or here

[grand chasm]

okay

@mint quest sorry for ping but.. do I need to switch to Mixed setting for lights?

[mint quest]

Hey, if you need the realtime direct lighting yes, if you're ok with just the indirect from the probes then no

[grand chasm]

Okay thanks! Also, do you know how to export VR game for standalone (android) properly? I just have my left eye covered white other one is good. Maybe when I’m exporting for android it thinks that I’m making this game for a smartphone so it uses 1 display only?

[mint quest]

I would try to post in a relevant channel about that, it's been some time since I've worked with VR. To my knowledge, if you have the right setup with the XR package it should work

(you can also connect your headset and build directly to it to test)

[grand chasm]

okay, thanks

[grand chasm]

@trail swift seems like things like "flashlights" doesnt work with baked light or probes causes it.. Do you know something about it?

also sorry for pinging you if youre busy..

[trail swift]

im going to assume that mabye by accident you set your "flashlight" lights to be baked/mixed instead of purely realtime

[grand chasm]

but if its set to realtime, it should work right?

[mint quest]

Yes

[grand chasm]

okay, thanks a lot!

[mint quest]

(Direct light only, but it's all you need I think)

[trail swift]

you might have to rebake if the flashlight was baked prior