During the development process, we always want to have some feedback on the end lighting. Some developers prefer setting Lightmapping to Auto, so that they receive instant (not) visualization of the changes and lighting’s behavior.
I have finished baking my scene and I decided to change one object from static to dynamic. This causes the entire baking to relaunch. The object is only affecting a small portion of the scene (basically it is an emissive material that is placed outside of the window) and its reflection is barely present.
Unity should definitely implement some smart algorithm to see whether such user changes, post-baking, really worth redrawing the entire lightmap from scratch. This is very cumbersome, especially when the scenes are large and full of details, and hinders the development process. It is getting quite tiresome to have the map rebuilt over and over again for any tiny change I perform, for instance the light simulation surface I changed.
I am not an expert on lighting and how Enlighten works, to be completely fair. I am sure, however, that there can be an algorithm to pre-determine whether the change the user makes will eventually affect an object that is 5 walls away and by no means affected by this change - and yet it is re-baked.
Uh, there is an algorithm and light travels and bounces and travels and bounces again. There have already been massive simplifications. Go out side at night and look at all the places light has traveled from and all the refractions and reflections it’s gone through in those travels.
You might consider what I’m going to try and use Vertex Lit textures on objects rather than Point Lighting although I’m not really fond of the look Vertex Lit shader makes in every situation.
As far as all the ‘re-bakes’ just uncheck ‘Auto’ in your lighting setting and arrange you scene and than bake manually when you have it arranged to your satisfaction.
@goat_1 , I was not complaining about re-baking because I had set it to Auto. I was complaining about the fact that it has to rebake again. Also, I am aware of light bouncing, but that object in the scene did not appear to affect anything else besides the floor and the ceiling. The house is pretty complex and another room far away was being rebuilt because I simply changed the static flag of an object 5 rooms away - THIS was my complaint
@LawyerOfGod , this would be a good idea, though I am not sure why the preview would be faster than the actual baking. What we definitely need a preview for is the Area Light.
I would, @ . For exterior scenes, it really wouldn’t bother me. For a horror game, however, you need to have constant visualization of the game to make sure it instills the atmosphere you’re after. Plus, I wouldn’t like to bake the scene and see tremendously different results from what my eyes adapted to in the development process.
Yes, but it’s the kind of things you do when everything else is finished. You don’t need to see what the game will look like to create the assets you need and write your scripts. After the baking, you can make adjustments before building the game.
