i hv many small low poly props for sure

[sour plaza]

There's no hard or fast rules about what kind of mesh is poor for baking

But in general it's about polygon density and surface area

As far as I understand the raycasting process is more expensive when there are a lot of polygons nearby to test against

And each lightmap texel ("texture pixel") will fire rays outward during the baking

Each object needs its own space on the lightmap texture, with margins around it to prevent light bleeding from nearby objects, so small objects are very inefficient

As far as I can see, you have relatively similar polygon density on all your objects since they use the low poly style

So it might not be an issue but best to check for it in any case

[wicked vigil]

thts pretty good insight

thanks

yea i found many lowpoly in ooutdoor dont really require lighting, so i wanted to remove some, especially bushes or flower pots

[sour plaza]

When baking lighting you should also place Light Probes (and at least one Reflection Probe)

Light probes sample light conditions during the bake much like lightmap texels, but they pass it onto objects that don't have any lightmaps

This means that dynamic objects can receive baked lighting as well, and that you can have meshes that are Contribute GI enabled (so they can cast shadows and reflect light during the bake) but also receive GI only from probes rather than lightmaps

So they don't use up any lightmap space

Tiny objects should not be Lightmap Static at all and be lit only by probes like dynamic objects would

But objects that would lightmap awkwardly but still have an important contribution to the lighting could receive GI from probes while contributing

Your bushes could use one of the two methods

[wicked vigil]

how efficient are light probes with mobile game?

[sour plaza]

I believe they are generally cheap, but I have no mobile optimization experience

An advantage you have is that you can place them as sparsely (or tightly) as needed

[wicked vigil]

ok great leme try

[sour plaza]

So there's no need to make a dense grid of them, just a few of them per area

You need them where lighting changes

But if it really doesn't change, you might not even need them

If you have no light probes placed, there's always the scene's own ambient probe as a backup

But it will not recognize shadows from any objects

[wicked vigil]

hmm i dont think we are priotizing shadows for dynamic object for now, but yes, but i certainly look into light probes to add them spots tht would require beautifying view.

[sour plaza]

Shadows in the context of probes are entirely different from dynamic object shadows, I was unclear

[wicked vigil]

ok

[sour plaza]

For example the cube on the right contributes to GI shadows during bake, but uses the scene probe for its own shading

Because the scene probe only has the sky light, the cube is bright even when occluded from the sky under the roof

Here the three cubes on the right all receive lighting from probes now added to the scene

So the leftmost of the three is occluded by the roof