Lighting Issues within URP in Unity

[storm barn]

How can i show you what you need to see?

[near moon]

You can select your lights in the scene hiearchy and in the inspector itll tell you the modes

Thsts the light type, not the mode

[feral sparrow]

"scene turns dark on scene change" is fixed by generating ambient lighting for a scene
baked lightmapping is not necessary for it

[storm barn]

I got you, sorry, its been a long day:

Ok, i'll look up generating ambient lighting as well, Thanks for the tip Spazi

[near moon]

Back sorry, was in the middle of something

So you have lights set to mixed which means they'll get included in the bake

Which is good

I suppose the next thing to do is to configure your lighting settings

Then doing a bake and see what comes up @storm barn

so for your scene creating a lighting settings asset is needed

and to speed things up i'll just list off what to tick (these can be changed later of course)

1. set lighting mode (which is under mixed lighting) to subtractive
2. under lightmapping settings set the lightmapper to Progressive GPU
3. tick off progressive updates
4. set direct samples to 16
5. set indirect samples to 32
6. set enviorment samples to 32
7. set filtering to advanced
8. for each of the denoising types that pop up set them to open image denoise

again, all of these can be changed and configured later, but basically just doing a somewhat low res lightmap to see how things look and what issues come up so we can fix them

[storm barn]

Ok 2 ticks and i'll try this, when i was searching about ambient lighting i stumbled across a post that said that it only happens in the editor, and not when its built, i wanted to see if that was apllicable.

nearly finished building

Hmm, something isnt right here! - didnt restart the scene at all in build mode, yet it invoked the screenfader.. in editor.. restarts but turns everything dark

So, onto your solution and then i'll check that out later

I dont see a denoise option for any of these drop downs:

[near moon]

those are the denoise options

open image denoise

for both Direct Denoiser and Indirect Denoiser

[storm barn]

Yep got that.

now generate?

[near moon]

yep

[storm barn]

ooh, i just got this i need to change the other scene to this setting, question is, will that affect this light generation?

[near moon]

no it wont

[storm barn]

ok comp is working really hard so i'll give it two mins to complete

[near moon]

you can drop the sample counts numbers even lower if you want it to go faster

i.e. instead of 32 can just drop to 16

but worth nothing that depending on how the scene looks this can sometimes lead to noisy results, but those can be fixed with denoising/higher sample counts

currently right now its just prioritizing what the baked lighting will look like roughly

and adjust/tune/fix issues until it looks good

[storm barn]

Its finished and it looks good!

lets test it 🙂

Just snacking, back in 5, and again, really appreciate your help, thank you

[near moon]

screenshot?

[storm barn]

Getting some strangeness actually:

i changed all the floor tiles to cast shadows no before the bake thinking about it

[near moon]

I saw some lights you have aren't casting shadows also

whoops worded that wrong, fixed it 😛

[storm barn]

Hmm

[near moon]

but lights that don't cast shadows will be treated the same in lightmaps, but since your baking them I'd go ahead and enable shadow casting on all lights

I wouldn't worry about the overlapping UVs, I never found those warnings to be much of a problem

[storm barn]

Ok ill do that now

Like here?

[near moon]

yes

[storm barn]

This is what i have, it looking right?

[near moon]

mhm

[storm barn]

K, now all changed, bake again?

[near moon]

yes

thats the downside of lightmapping, any changes made to lights need to be rebaked

[storm barn]

it destroys my computer, slow to move mouse, slow to type. need to upgrade

Ok, not as bright.. but this discolouration of some of the textures is strange:

If i click on both a light tile, and a darker tile, they both the same values, materials, everything.

spotted something

Darker tile has this lightmaps tab:

lighter one doesnt have it:

[near moon]

yep thats about right

since there is a lightmap and even after adding shadows, none what so ever only leads me to believe that most of your scene objects are not actually marked contribute GI in the static flags

[storm barn]

And i take it they need to be then

[near moon]

yes

very much so

[storm barn]

So i could select the full enviroment prefab i created and change those?

[near moon]

I'm not sure how your scene is setup but all I can tell you is that most of your meshes (those that are not dynamic or moveable props) should be marked static

[storm barn]

I see, you mean here:

They are for the navmesh?

[near moon]

nope

you can also mark it on the top right in the inspector when an object is selected

[storm barn]

So pretty much, i would just go anything Static, contribute GI right?

walls, roof, everything?

[near moon]

yes

[storm barn]

Ok

[near moon]

if its not marked static it won't be included in the bake

[storm barn]

It was already ticked

[near moon]

tick it again

should override

the general rule of thumb I tell everyone for lightmapping, mark everything static that isn't dynamic (i.e. doesn't move, get destroyed/disabled/hidden) because again if it isn't the lightmapper is never going to see it

[storm barn]

Ok, but you are right in that most of the floor tiles do not have "Contribute" In the compnent tickbox

Ok, so i disabled, and renabled it

before i bake im sensing i should allign all objects to have contribute ticked in their component properties

[near moon]

that field should be ticked automatically honestly when its done through this menu

[storm barn]

You're right it did, all ticked

[near moon]

but if you want to be certain

[storm barn]

so rebake now

[near moon]

you can go by hand and double check if you want to be certain

[storm barn]

screw that

😄 i trust you

K, Baking, back in 4

350 objects with overlapping UV's lol

[near moon]

I wouldn't worry so much about it, generally in my experience the only time I've had issues with overlapping UVs are with complex objects that I auto generated lightmap UVs for in unity where sometimes you'll get random black/white texels and sitching issues, but there are ways to get around it

[storm barn]

Ok, so the floor is evenly coloured but looks more duller than id like, i guess i can fix that in material. but.. some of the walls in one room appear very black:

They're all supposed to be the same material/colour

[near moon]

something is still wrong... there is still tons of light leaking through

are you sure they are all marked contribute GI static? and are casting/reciving shadows?

[storm barn]

I did just notice a small gap in the roof

between the window and the top plane

Ah..

no its a cube.. i was thinking Plane only render one side dont they.. but its a cube so its not that

[near moon]

are you sure your lights in your scene are casting shadows?

[storm barn]

cAsting shadows and Contribute on

was before last bake

[near moon]

static shadow caster is off

[storm barn]

Ahh crap

was that it?

So fix that for all walls

[near moon]

either that or you still have tons of lights in your scene that aren't casting shadows

[storm barn]

Im pretty sure all lights were sorted and youre right there were plenty of walls without static shadows

rebake again

Rebake present the same results:

[near moon]

confused but have some solutions in mind, first off do your meshes all have auto generate lightmap uvs enabled?

[storm barn]

Im looking in the mesh components and i dont see that setting?

Got it, was ticked:

No thats optimise you said auto-generate

I think we can assume they all have these settings:

I guess "Generate"?

Tickign that Generate bock made them look hoorendous:

But i havent rebaked..

You know you said about light leakage? there are gaps in the windows, you can see light leaking through the bottom, do you think that could be it?

[near moon]

rebake

sorry

was doing something

[storm barn]

Rebake with all of those checked right? Generate Uvs..

[tame root]

Looking at those last images I think the geometry may have some serious issues with texel validity, especially the walls.

[storm barn]

Probably.. i modelled them in blender...

[tame root]

What that means is that some of the faces may be backwards

[storm barn]

thinking about it i could switch them for cube objects

and resize/scale

[tame root]

Ah! Okay can you go and solidify them

You have the right idea here

[storm barn]

I'm actually terrible at Blender and havent used it in a long time, i mean, effectively thats import and add solidify modifer, right? i could do that. do i just take Solidify at its default settings?

clueless at this, even more so when it comes to Unity

Blender i mean!

long day..

instersting observation, since ticking that box and re-baking, the overlapping UV's as decremented by 50%

[tame root]

Yeah, or whatever settings look good for your scene

[storm barn]

Rebake:

I'll switch those walls out for Cubes and see if that helps

[tame root]

At the top of the scene view can you click that moon-looking icon and select Texel Validity from the list?

[storm barn]

its weird how the other walls are fine though? around the lebel

level*

It seems attributed to direction of light

bout outside all around the back

[tame root]

Maybe you just have no indirect light in your scene

Are those light probes?

[storm barn]

Directional light here?

[storm barn]

Dumb it down please 😄

[tame root]

What are those spheres in your scene

[storm barn]

Waypoint markers for mesting AI navmesh

i just had a little sphere model on them so i could see them 🙂

No sorry!

that one is a bowling ball

[tame root]

Okay great

[storm barn]

With my mates face on it:

[tame root]

I love my job

[storm barn]

I love this community tbf.. cant believe how helpful everyone is

Makes it easy to want to jump aboard the train really

[tame root]

Yeah it's pretty great!

Okay so did you change the env lighting to have a 0 indirect multiplier?

In the settings you showed above

[storm barn]

Ahh you could be onto something here

[storm barn]

0 , 0

[tame root]

Go for 1 let's see what happens

[storm barn]

Rebake on change?

[tame root]

Yes

[storm barn]

Ok, 5 mins, potato laptop

[tame root]

And I guess the skybox color should also have indirect intensity 1? Did you change that intentionally?

You can also make bakes faster by reducing the Lightmap Resolution and Max Size (you don't have to bake 4K Lightmaps while we troubleshoot)

[storm barn]

Ok will do! lol. every day is a school day 🙂

[tame root]

Those are in the Scene tab in the Lighting Window

[storm barn]

I think i was following some different tutorials and got things confuddled if i'm honest

[tame root]

happens to all of us, no worries

[storm barn]

Sorry which settings to reduce?

lightmap res currently at 40, should i put 5 for now?

[tame root]

Yeah that should be ok

It will be a little blurry but much faster

And max lightmap size at 512 looks good, nice

[storm barn]

So rebaking at those settings again

though after the bake just done, still the same black walls

intensity now at 1 as well

for this new bake

[tame root]

Can you focus the scene view on that wall

[storm barn]

jesus thats almost instant

[tame root]

Select the object and look at the inspector

[tame root]

There should be a Baked Lightmap thumbnail, click on it (In the inspector window to the right)

[storm barn]

Yep links over here:

[tame root]

Oh

Can you go back to the Lighting Window and uncheck "Realtime Global Illumination"

[tame root]

It's at the top

[storm barn]

Done and rebaked:

[tame root]

okay can you show what material you're using for this object (in the meshrenderer)

[storm barn]

I tried a different material before this hoping that would fix it

same result

[tame root]

Can you select Render Face "both"

(and rebake)

you're sure that the model has "Generate Lightmap UVs" checked right?

[storm barn]

I did a cube with the same texture as well in the test:

Baked a cube in with the texture and it looks fine

I sleected all my models and clicked Generate UV's

that was done in Davids advice previously

i could progress with the cubes for these walls but the glass ones.. could really do with fixing those

Internally, a slightly weirder output

[tame root]

It looks like that because of the lower resolution

In this view can you go to the Texel Validity mode again?

[storm barn]

no materials on these ones:

yeah thats eye bleach:

[tame root]

do they have child objects that have the mesh renderer?

[tame root]

So this means that you have a bunch of back-faces in your geometry

[storm barn]

Yep!:

So i can't really use these models without fixing the backfaces?

Its the same here though:

[tame root]

Not with lightmapping 😦

[storm barn]

Yet it looks exactly as id like it do:

Thats what i cant get 😂

All the way around:

Then that corner.. dark

Office next door starts getting darker:

[near moon]

wait...

you have a directional light in the scene yes?

[storm barn]

Yep

[near moon]

whats the shadow strength

[near moon]

aaaah

the directional light is only realtime

make it mixed

and do a quick bake

[tame root]

😂 I thought it was set above I was just scrolling to see that

[near moon]

yep me too lol

[tame root]

pain

[storm barn]

That did make the scene a tad brighter:

[near moon]

did you do a bake?

[storm barn]

yes mate

[near moon]

is your roof marked static?

[storm barn]

yep:

[near moon]

hmmm

[storm barn]

Could for good measure do a untick/retick on all if you think it could help

[near moon]

can you switch the scene to baked lightmap view

[near moon]

turn off the checkerboarding pattern

which should be at the bottom of the menu of scene modes

[storm barn]

Still in this menu?

[near moon]

yes

I can sort of see that the lightmapping is working

[tame root]

"Show Lightmap Resolution"

[near moon]

which tells me a few things

we might need to switch the mixed lighting mode

orrr

[near moon]

switch the lights to fully baked modes

yeah so that confirms some of my suspicions

[tame root]

Most of the light you have in there is realtime direct light then

[near moon]

yep

[storm barn]

Did you mean from components sorry?

or lighting inspector?

[near moon]

the lightmapping window

[near moon]

yeah thats one way to do it

[tame root]

So I am seeing a bit of a fundamental issue with how this is set up, which is that you are using one light from the outside to light the entire scene through windows

Do you have any more lights?

[near moon]

he has alot of localized ceiling lights which hes showing off there

[tame root]

Ah sorry

[near moon]

one note also, for some of your ceiling lights make sure they are not placed inside objects @storm barn

otherwise they will be occluded

[storm barn]

Ok

so did another bake after changing to Baked:

[near moon]

probably because the lights are occluded like I just mentioned

[storm barn]

how would i verify that please?

[near moon]

select one of the ceiling lights, press f or double click in inspector and check its position

if its inside the ceiling light mesh

its being occluded

the position of the light that is

[storm barn]

Reemmerb i still had realtime off from when Girgo asked to untick:

[near moon]

yeah thats fine

[storm barn]

kk

Like that you mean?

beucase its sat inside it a bit?

[near moon]

thats the mesh, not the light

[near moon]

yep

[tame root]

bingo

[near moon]

called it

so to fix it either 1. unmark the lightbulb mesh as contribute GI or 2. move the light so its not inside the mesh

[storm barn]

Ok but these lights are duplicated all over the level, wouldnt we see similar issues on other walls?

[near moon]

potentially

depends where the lights are placed

[tame root]

I think that you need to block the realtime light from your directional

It's the model that's at fault here I think and it's causing all the weird artifacts

[storm barn]

When i went to untick that, it asked to change children

i guess not?

[near moon]

the child object is just the light so it doesn't matter

[tame root]

The reason why they don't appear in other places is I think because the directional realtime light is too bright and it's hiding the lightmap

[near moon]

there we go

the light at the end of the tunnel

its in sight

😛

[storm barn]

LMFAO

How much you want

take my money

Thank you SO much!

[near moon]

the problems are not gone just yet though

still have some issues left

for one that directional light

[storm barn]

werid stuff still to look at but i bet its not the same issue

[near moon]

so I would actually start by disabling the directional light

and tune your local lights and make sure they are actually working first

and doing some iterative bakes

making sure of course each light you have placed is actually being cast and not occluded

[storm barn]

Disabling directional makes it look even weirder:

[tame root]

Disable and bake

[storm barn]

Yeah i made sure to change every lightbulb when you said the solution

Bake:

[near moon]

see a couple of things going on, the obvious being the low lightmap resolution but that makes sense with what im seeing, but I'm seeing alot of ambient light + the skybox reflection

can you disable your enviorment reflections for now?

[storm barn]

Spaced out a few lights:

[storm barn]

changed to this

[near moon]

I would just drop the intensity multiplier

[tame root]

We turned that up before, I suppose it should be turned down for now. I really thought this was a one-light scene 🤷

[near moon]

yeah I don't blame you lol

but yeah enviorment reflections off and at 0

so we can hopefully look at just the diffuse lighting

[storm barn]

.5? or all the way?

[near moon]

0

[storm barn]

K

[near moon]

with it how does it look now

[storm barn]

Currently set at this pre-bake

[near moon]

you don't have to rebake when changing those

[storm barn]

Ah ok

[near moon]

there we go, so we can see the ugliness more clearly, thats good

lightmap UVs front and center seem the be the biggest issue here

are you auto generating them for your meshes?

[storm barn]

you mean like this?

[near moon]

yes

hmm

[tame root]

from here it looked like the UV scale is quite off, right?

[near moon]

true it does look inconsistent

though im more confused by the walls/ceiling and how they seem unaffected

they look completely unlit

what shader are you using on them?

[tame root]

URP lit I believe ^

[storm barn]

Yep!

[near moon]

thats for a floor tile, not the walls/ceiling

[storm barn]

O....M....G

[near moon]

?

[storm barn]

No materal/Shader

i guess thats why its unaffected

[near moon]

no thats just the parent you have selected

there are children objects for it

[storm barn]

im tired, sorry daved

[near moon]

its ok lol

[storm barn]

David*

[storm barn]

I mean, i sleected all materials and did the "Convert to URP" when i had all the pink issues

[tame root]

The wall not the window 😂

[storm barn]

so they should all be using the same shader

[tame root]

just to make sure

[near moon]

so that confirms that

[near moon]

worth mentioning a bit unrelated but when it comes to modular meshes like I see how your environment is constructed in the future I would avoid that since you can run into alot of lightmap seam issues

but anyways

[storm barn]

Yeah i didn't know anything i just dove in. How would you do it? like long cubes for a wall and just change tiling offsets for material?

[near moon]

more like long quads, but not too big as to be too large for a lightmap

[storm barn]

Fair enough, i should read up on some level design really

[near moon]

so now that were here

go back to the baked lightmap view

I wanna see how the area looks

even though we can sort of already see it I wanna verify some things

[storm barn]

Thats not offering much:

[near moon]

your sure your not inside the ceiling?

[storm barn]

Exact view:

[near moon]

move the camera lower

[storm barn]

ffs...

whys that do that!?

[near moon]

you did mention your celing was a cube

in baked lightmap view there is no backface culling for a reason

[storm barn]

Aaah ok

[near moon]

so good news is I can see its working

some obvious low sample ocunts and low resolution artifacts but that is to be expected

no directional light though

but we did disable that

[storm barn]

thats still disabled

yep

[near moon]

can you do another bake?

but double your lightmap resolution?

not the atlas size

[near moon]

now do a bake

[storm barn]

New reuslt:

[near moon]

can you deselect the floor

[near moon]

the highlight gizmos are sort of in the way

yeah there we go

[storm barn]

stitching issues you was referring to it looks like

leaky

[near moon]

yep

thinking...

the brighter areas look decent

don't see too much issues there

its just the floor meshes that are a problem

re-enable the checkerboard pattern

[storm barn]

Learnt a lot tonight!

[tame root]

Can you reduce your indirect filter to 2

Aggressive filtering can lead to leaking

[storm barn]

Done that and rebaked:

[tame root]

Hmm can you go back to the texel validity mode?

[near moon]

could try something actually...

can you do us a favor and zoom out to show your whole scene?

[near moon]

one thing I've typically done with interior scenes to stop leaking is to encase them in large oclcuding cubes/meshes

that are quite thick

[storm barn]

That sounds really clever i have to admit

so, do a massive cube? that encases the scnee?

[tame root]

More like 6 cubes

[near moon]

^

[tame root]

Because if you do one the inside of it will be backfaces which is bad news

[near moon]

think of it like housing the scene in a cardboard box, its not completely solid inside

now granted

your scene has windows

so you'll have to model your blocker mesh around that

[storm barn]

Got ya

[tame root]

That's why I recommended doing the solidify before

[storm barn]

This is going to be something i have to pick up tomorrow gentlemen, if i yawn anymore i'll swallow my tongue 😂

I'll encase it in the 6 Cubes like you said tomorrow

[tame root]

Get some rest! Great work with the project so far 🙂

[storm barn]

Thanks guys! - really appreciate the support!

I'll be on in the morning, not sure about you guys 🙂

cheers!

[near moon]

just a quick example to show you when you get up later to show what an exterior solid mesh can do for an interior scene to alleviate light leaks

and another

worth showing this since this solution in some instances like you can see won't completely 100% alleviate light leaks but it can help quite a bit

example of a blocker

doesn't have to be this messy, but just an example

[storm barn]

Thanks David, and good morning both!

Up a bit earlier than i like, wind decided to throw a bin at my house and it woke me up.

Wasn't a great start, i got to my laptop and as soon as i touched it, it crashed... and heres the clanger.. i disabled the autosave script thinking it was causing an issue, forgot to re-enabled it when i ruled it out.

Lost all changes..

Anyway.. loaded it up this morning, changed all the lightbulbs again like you suggested and tinkered with light according to yours and giorgios latest.

Here is the miracle part.

I fixed the SceneLoading Issue at build, i changed the scene name and forgot to update it. I then checked position of directional and it was semi inside the roof and too close to the building. So i moved it around the side to where the faces were blackened:
and Voila, It looks Ok.

Play, restart, looks ok. Build, restart, looks Ok.

Absolutely clueless, and astounded, as to how this issue has gone away. But Grateful none the less!

It isn't perfect, but its a first project for me i only started a few weeks ago. (i modeled the pieces a year ago, spent 2 weeks in unity and gave up) Its just a mock up of my office at work so i can have some fun with it and test my capabilities.

I'm hoping i can make something semi-comical, and use it as some team-building exercise when i'm out visiting teams 🙂

I would again, like you sincerely thank you for the amount of time you spent with me on my issue, i recognise thats some serious dedicated time out of your life! - Happy to throw you a few beers! - DM me an email address and i'll paypal, it won't be much i'm not rich though lol.

[tame root]

That is quite the story, very happy to hear it all worked out! Kudos to you for persevering and seeing this through despite the issues.

As we sometimes say, Unity works in mysterious ways and I am glad it chose miracle today 👼