Is there a maximum number of light you can create in a Project?

Graphics Lighting & Global Illumination
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1

So far my project has 3 scenes. Each scene has lights:

Scene 1: 5 lights total - 3 Baked, 2 Mixed
Scene 2: 55 lights total - 25 Baked, 10 Mixed, 20 Realtime
Scene 3: 10 light total - 10 Baked

I’m currently working on scene 3 (scene 1 and 2 are unloaded). Problem is, when I try to add another (Baked) light, an existing one disappears (it doesn’t actually disappear, it simply stops emitting light).

So have I reached some kind of limit? It’s not a scene limit since scene 2 has waaay more lights than this scene…

2

So - im no light expert, but i have encountered some similiar issues - and what i discovered through questions and answers , forums etc, is that there actually is indeed a max amount of lights that can affect areas at a time. There is a bunch of lighting debug utilities, and tools that can help you visualize this, unfortunately, as i said, im no lighting expert, and i dont even remember the tools names etc atm.

But in short, yes, there is limits, not so much to how many lights you can have, but more so , to how many affect any one given area at a time. (You can see these grids / nodes easily with the debug tools on). Perhaps look into that as a start. GL

3

Hi, will this still happen if opening one scene only? (not load & unload)

Yes, there’re real-time lights limitations. (mixed lights are considered as real-time & baked lights)

Built-in RP:

  • Forward: default is 4 additional lights per object, but can increase in project settings → quality
  • Deferred: seems to have no limitation

URP:

  • Forward: 0 - 8 additional lights per object.
  • Forward+: no limitation per object, but 256 (Desktop), 32 (Mobile), 16 (GL ES 3.0) per camera
  • Deferred: seems to have no limitation

HDRP:

  • You can set the maximum lights allowed per screen in HDRP settings
  • Decrease the light ranges to have more lights in one tile
4

The 8 light limit is not about only 8 lights allowed in scene, it’s a mesh can only by affected by the nearest 8 lights.

Take this as an example: let’s suppose your bunker is one mesh, ok? So, you place 9 lights inside of it. The bunker, being one mesh, will only be affected by 8 of the 9 lights. The 9th light will only affect other meshes, since your bunker has already reached its limit.

One way to circumvent this would be to divide your bunker into several parts, as if it were a modular system. Each part can be affected by 8 different lights.

Another way would be to change the rendering path from Forward to Deferred. The latter is precisely for when you need more than 8 lights on scene.

Set Forwand redering you can More 16 light pro room…

5

Baked lights act as Realtime lights until they have actually been baked, so they still count towards the Realtime light limits (as others have explained already) until then. I am not aware of any limit for baked lights, as long as your machine can handle the baking process.