Lightmapped objects using the LOD component have black on them

Unity Engine
1

Hi,
I have been experiencing a bug ever since I started using Unity (almost a year ago), but I have finally decided to report this bug as I am developing a mobile game and this makes using LODs with lightmaps impossible.

When baking lighting (non-directional) on objects that use LODs, all of the LOD’s besides LOD 0 become black where the light shadows should be. Here are some screenshots:

I quickly made a demo scene using the default Unity cylinders to show off the bug so the developers can fix it.

Here is how it looks when viewing everything up close (they are all at LOD 0):

1142×557 161 KB

It looks fine of course because everything is viewed up close.

Here’s how the scene looks when the LOD 1 is shown for each cylinder:

As you can see, this looks very bad. It’s almost like the shadows became replaced with complete blackness.

This bug makes LODs look horrible, and LODs are a must when making games for mobile.

Please fix this, thanks.

2

That’s because you need to place light probes in your scene. LODs higher than 0 will only receive indirect/ambient light from light probes. It’s annoying, but this is all by design: LOD Group Baked Lighting - How To Use?

3

Dang. There should be a way to not have to do that.