Do Baked Lightmaps Effect Performance?

Unity Engine
1

We are in the process of creating an app for the iPhone. In this app we will be using bake lightmaps on static objects.

My question is do baked lightmaps add more weight to the final build or does unity compress these lightmaps into your textures and then create PVRTC’s from them?

We were considering exporting the lightmaps and adding them to the textures with Photoshop to save memory. However, if Unity compresses these lightmaps at build time that would save us some headaches.

2

The lightmaps are compressed by unity (same as all other textures) and often times the lightmap is a giant atlas for performance reasons, so breaking it down in photoshop would be impossible. Everything is optimized for use in iPhone OS, just make sure your using single lightmaps.