It becomes a very problematically venture to bring a project with baked / real-time lightning data to an end.
Following situation, currently it takes about 100h to bake a complete project. But if you have to work from different locations (PC system, same build same project files) unity starts to rebake, because of any missing or not synchronized files from the cache folder.
Would it possible to locate all real-time/baked light-map data are required for one project, and restore them on another system with exactly the same project files to continue work on?
regards Q,
PS:
Why not add an option to the preferences…
Separate GI Cache on current project
[xyz:\anywhere.…]
And for sure move the required files from the global cache to the new activated location.
What do you think?
We had per-project GI Cache during the 5.0 beta and it turned out to be a problem because it would take up a lot of disk space when you had many projects.
Once the “Custom Location” in preferences was set, it stays the same after loading another project.
Would you so kind and explain how to set up a project based GI Cache?
There is no such option. We removed it during the 5.0 beta period because it wasted a lot of hard drive space when you have multiple projects. The cache is shared between all projects.
Thanks for the answer, but bad idea that to remove this great feature in the beta stage. You can be assured there are several advantages to have a project base cache. And who cares about disk space in a professional environment ?!
Think Google!
Hi @Quatum1000 ,
simply disable the continuous workflow (auto check) in the Lighting->Scene panel, and start bake manually.
All bake data will be written on a folder named as the scene, in the same scene location.
Committing on a VCS will commit also baked data.
Hope this help.
Marco
Thanks marco,
unfortunately the issue does not based to GI lightning data itself. The GI lightning data can be fast rebuild on the GI cache data that is located in Preferences. But if the GI lightning data does not fit with the “synchronized” GI cache data, then UNITY completely rebuild the complete scene GI lightning data on any changes.
Seems, you can work with GI on one machine currently. (As a win senior programmer I know to monitor the GI cache folder to fix it. but why?!) The idea of enlighten is to hold the most lightning information as possible to prevent rebuild lightning data on any changes.
http://www.geomerics.com/frequently-asked-questions/
Unity break a part of this feature with:
Perhaps its a management decision have a new “selling feature - GI cache on single project” for an upcoming GI-online-enlighten-service I recommended in a GI discussion last year.
No. We went from per-project cache to a global cache so projects using the same assets can share some of the cached results and to avoid that users with small SSD drives running out of space after opening a few projects.
Is unity produce for low budged PC only? Do you think, someone who works in professional team is not able to place 10 2TB SSD into a PC system?
Sorry, but with the decision to prevent GI caching a single project you locked up pro users from a professional work flow. Add “GI caching on single project” for pro users. This is a base request for pro users that pay for.
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Even switching between several a very large projects, we found that a 200Gb Gi Cache should suffice and if that cache size isn’t enough we can of course increase it… Can you please explain the issues you are experiencing where 200Gb is too small?
If you are spending 100 hours on baking your project, it sounds like you have way too high resolution or your UVs are set up so you get many small charts. I would like to understand your needs and if they are cache size related.
I think populating the Gi Cache with the current files we read when loading a lighting snapshot would help in your case?
- A help would be to separating the required GI cache files for an existing project. Anyway if these files are used by any other project (shared) or not.
If ppl working from different locations at the same project, (eg color graders, QAs and other artists) you can not expect them to (re-bake) re-render the whole project.
Same if I’m working from any different location, I want to be assured Unity does not try to render the GI again.
I want to copy the corresponding GI cache files from ONE project into any other location and tell unity load from there.
Means, storing the current the GI Cache related to a project into separate file/location?
Yes, but think about that unity should know about these location or file before starting to render GI again.
You can use a lightmap snapshot; that file will contain all the needed files from the GI Cache, so lighting will be loaded from the snapshot.
You say, the lightmap snapshot contain all needed files from cache. The manual say some different.
The snapshot is an Editor only construct so far, so you can’t access it in the player. When you change the scene, for instance by breaking a prefab connection on a lightmap static object, the snapshot data will get out of date and has to be rebuilt.
…
If you are pulling the scene to a machine with a blank cache or the cache data needed has been removed due to the cache size limit, * the cache will have to be populated first which requires the precompute and bake processes to run. These steps can take some time.
- My question is, why Unity require to populate and recompute and bake if a snapshot contains all require GI cache data then?
At last I want to pull the complete project files to any other machine without Unity starting to re-bake anything.
And I want to have the required GI Cache data for the current project in a separate location to prevent a re-bake (*manual documentation).
If I miss here anything. Please explain step by step how to prevent re-bake while pulling a project onto another machine.
Yeah, I see. I wrote that Manual page so I am contradicting myself. Let me clarify:
- This repopulation should only happen if you hit Build on a clean machine, because the intermediate files that are generated during the lighting build are not stored in the snapshot. I have updated the 5.3 version of the manual to be more clear on this (there are some more changes on the page that are 5.3 specific so I will not post it here as it will be confusing).
Loading the project with a scene using a lightmap snapshot on a clean machine should not cause it to start a rebake. If it does, we will fix it. Is this what you are seeing?
Yes.
I understand the problematically behavior of a shared GI cache on different projects.
I would recommended to have the (GI cache - snapshot) data physically separate from the snapshot, if it’s not.
And place the project snapshot GI Cache in the project _root folder.
- It doesn’t blow up the project MB size and traffic time for services like dropbox, mega, seafile, etc on selective folder synchronization.
And add an option -Clear scene GI cache- to Lightning > [BUILD].
2) It would be a huge advantage to keep the snapshot/(GI cache) data on selecting -Clear baked data-.
If enlighten is able to benefits from different GI cache project data, what do you think about a Mega Cache 5 Texel system?
Unity populate a separate mega cache including all possible combinations until 5 (or more) texel with a step of 0.2 per unit. How cares about if the mega predefined GI cache is about 300Gb or more? Waiting for enlighten is most worst part in the production process.
I can also think about a ultimate online (read only) GI cache Service. Perhaps OGICS.com?
This will become a money making machine.
You can clear the Gi Cache from the Preferences window.
Clear Baked Data will not Clear the Gi Cache.
You miss understood.
Anyway, I’m looking forward to the fix, > Unity does not rebake on an empty GI cache.