Increase pixel count lights on HDRP

Unity Engine
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1

Hi!
I am trying to get a realistic scene for an architecture-VR project, with mixed lights all around my scene.

My problem is, only 3-4 mixed lights create realtime direct lightning. All the other ones no.

I know this can be solved increasing the pixel light count, but i cannot see that option in HDRP. I’m using HDRP 7.3.1 and Unity 2019.3.5f1.

Please help!

2

I think there is some misunderstanding about how HDRP handles lights here.

  • HDRP only does pixel lighting, no vertex lighting.
  • It handles up to 24 lights per tile on screen (a tile is 16x16 pixels)

Are you talking about the baked shadowmask ? Indeed this is limited to 4 baked shadow mask (as it’s store in only one texture, and it takes 1 color channel per shadows) and there is no way to increase this limit.

1 Like
3

I´m trying to light my scene using realtime direct light and baked shadows using HDRP. So i see this is not possible, no? I’m using shadowmask lighting mode for mixed lighting.

4

Hi, so as you are using shadow mask, you can only have 4 overlapping shadow at the same time. This is current limitation. However it doesn’t restrict you to 4 shadowed light. You can have a lot of shadowed light as long as there is no more than 4 of them overlapping. Please see: Unity - Manual: Lighting Mode: Shadowmask and Light overlap: Unity - Manual: Scene View Draw Modes for lighting

5

Hey, if you have a large number of “Mixed” realtime lights, you might want to look into “Baked Indirect” bakes (without shadow masks): you’ll still get great indirect light bounces, but direct light and shadows will be fully realtime.

If you use the “High quality” filtering for shadows in HDRP, you’ll get great-looking soft shadows. Obviously, the cost will be higher than baking with shadow masks, but it might be more flexible for what you’re trying to achieve, and iteration times will probably be lower, as indirect bakes usually require a much lower texel resolution to look decent (= faster bakes).

6

I tried to use “baked indirect” instead of “shadowmask” and still not all my lights get realtime direct illumination :S

7

You will get real-time direct lighting (diffuse, spec and shadowing).

You won’t indeed get real-time indirect lighting.