Thread

[timber ledge]

making a thread

so this is just the standard Lit material

[nimble gulch]

alrighty!

[timber ledge]

it's not actually emitting any light

[nimble gulch]

ah okay

[timber ledge]

additionally, the scene isn't going to use it for environment lighting

so it won't light up objects in the scene

You should use a Skybox material.

Can you show me the texture you're using?

[nimble gulch]

how i do that?

[nimble gulch]

eyah sure

[timber ledge]

You may need to change how it's imported first.

[nimble gulch]

its flipped but i just rotate it 180 in unity

[timber ledge]

Okay, that looks like an equirectangular projection.

[timber ledge]

Change the Texture Shape from 2D to Cube

Then change the Mapping to "Latitude-Longitude Layout"

[nimble gulch]

k i did it

[timber ledge]

Confusingly, "Cube" doesn't just mean literal cube-shaped textures

it just means that it's a 360 degree texture

[nimble gulch]

oh okay

its just gray for me now

[timber ledge]

Now, switch your material to the Skybox/Cubemap shader

[nimble gulch]

okay

[timber ledge]

Yeah, since the image just went missing from the material

the Lit material wants a normal 2D texture

You'll then want to assign your new cubemap into the "Cubemap" field in the inspector

also, you'll probably want to have the image rotated correctly

[timber ledge]

one more thing: do you have this material assigned as the skybox in the Lighting settings?

or did you just stick it on a big sphere or something?

[nimble gulch]

sorry i went afk

gimme one sec

[nimble gulch]

is this the texture or the material?

[timber ledge]

Neither. This is the Lighting window.

ctrl-9 to open it

[nimble gulch]

oh oaky

i dont even have lighting settings for it

oh mb

yhh

nah

[timber ledge]

okay, you've assigned zsky as your skybox material

[nimble gulch]

thats this

[timber ledge]

so once you set up the material correctly, you'll have a working skybox

[timber ledge]

That's your material, yes.

which is using the Skybox/Cubemap shader (correct) and has no cubemap texture assigned (incorrect)

[nimble gulch]

oh i see

i got it to work now

thank you!

[timber ledge]

nice (:

you can adjust the Exposure on the material to make it brighter or darker

[nimble gulch]

ah okay

[timber ledge]

This is less relevant in URP, since it's not doing physically accurate lighting

it's very important with the HDRP

[nimble gulch]

would it be too much to ask on how to bake lighting?

[timber ledge]

the sky needs to be actually as bright as the real world sky in that case

[nimble gulch]

ah okay

[timber ledge]

go over to the Scene tab of the lighting window

create a new lighting settings asset in it

turn off Realtime Global Illumination and turn on Baked Global Illumination

at that point you should be able to just hit "Generate Lighting" and get baked lightmaps

note that lightmaps will only bake for objects that are marked as Lightmap Static

(if you check the "Static" box, that flags the object as being static for everything)

[nimble gulch]

am i doing this on the directional light

or it doenst rlly matter

[timber ledge]

No, the lighting window.

[nimble gulch]

ohh mbmb

[timber ledge]

However, you should make sure that the directional light is either Mixed or Baked

and make sure it has shadows enabled

If the directional light is Realtime, then it won't affect the light baking process at all

[nimble gulch]

okay i have it on baked

ima follow what you said above

[timber ledge]

There's a whole lot to read about when it comes to lighting. I'm still figuring some of it out

https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/LightingOverview.html is pretty useful

[nimble gulch]

oh sweet

[timber ledge]

(realtime GI lets realtime lights produce indirect light as well, which you might want)

it's more expensive to use both systems at once

[nimble gulch]

does the "lighting mode" matter

[nimble gulch]

oh

and i heard i should render with my GPU

[timber ledge]

They're very different, but I don't know much about them

[nimble gulch]

oh okay

how long does baking usually take?

not sure if this is good or not lol

[timber ledge]

The time will go up and down quite a bit

[nimble gulch]

ah okay

[timber ledge]

However, if you have a large scene with a ton of static objects, it will take a while

[nimble gulch]

ah okay i see lmao

[timber ledge]

You can turn down the quality settings in the lighting window to get a faster bake

[nimble gulch]

i got loads of stuffs

i can wait it out hopefully

so you said the number will go down?

and when it hits zero its done?

sorry if its a slow question haha

[timber ledge]

You can click on this bar to open a window that shows all background tasks

it'll have a little more information

There may be a few separate phases

I know I go through two when baking lightmaps

[nimble gulch]

aw dam

pls tell me this sint accurate 😭