Day night cycle options in URP-- Night is just too bright!

Unity Engine
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I have a decent day/night cycle going with the sun moving and modifying overall brightness. I am trying to use mixed lighting and I find that the baked lightmaps are just too bright at night time. Ideally I would like to diminish the lightmap effect based on the time of day but I haven’t been able to find a way to do this. I don’t want to just have two light maps, one for day and one for night, unless I have the option to interpolate between them.

One thing I have tried is just doing away with the light maps. It’s more manual work, but I can get things to look pretty good without the baking. However I am seeing a different problem with this solution. I can start a scene 10 times in a row from the editor. About half the time things look great, and half the time there are odd, deep shadows that don’t make any sense. There’s no difference between these runs.

(There is on related issue to the problem I posted above… I have placed double-sided planes out of the field of the player’s view that obscure the sun when it is below the horizon on either side)

Thank you!

2

Just reducing the intensity of the sun is not enough to create a good looking night scene. You need to make additional changes to Post effects, the colour of the light, perhaps even the shadows, etc.

When it comes to cinema and games, in lighting the night is rarely the way it really is. So, it depends what kind of look you are trying to achieve. Sometimes it is more blueish, others more desaturated, others more contrasty and colourful. It’s a matter of art direction really.

Create a couple of different presets, see how it works for your visual needs. Then you can blend between them. i.e. two boxed regions on the same spot and animate their influence.

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