Lightmapping in forward rendering

News & General Discussion
1

Hello,

I’m trying to lightmap my scene to get the following results (in forward rendering mode)

  1. All static objects lit with my static lights casting beautiful shadows and picking up GI and AO etc (hence why im lightmapping!)
  2. Static objects casting their shadows onto a terrain
  3. Normal and specular detail present on static objects
  4. Dynamic objects to cast realtime shadows by a directional light
  5. Dynamic objects picking up normal and specular

Is this possible? I must render in forward rendering mode.

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Quick checklist:

  1. All my meshes are marked ‘static’
  2. All point spotlights are on
  3. Shadows are on in lightmap window
  4. Using ‘Dual Lightmaps’ in forward rendering
2

Bump-/Normalmapping and specular from bake-only lights isn’t possible with single lightmaps at all. Specular highlights are camera dependent and thus cannot be baked. Bump detail should to a certain degree be bakebale - but with Beäst it isn’t. And for the record: when I tried it with Cinema 4D a few years ago it didn’t work, either (just in case some Beäst discussion should arise saying that the renderer is inferior or whatever).

Shadows only work in dual-lightmaps because the baked shadows are faded out neac-camera and are replaced by realtime shadows. So that won’t work for Unity Free. Sorry. Directional Lightmaps work with baked bump and specular but are Pro-Only as well.

Regarding the baked shadows: Did you check whether you’ve actually enabled the shadow property on the lights and they are also baking?
Try turning on “baked only” in the light settings to see if they are actually baking at all.

3

I have Unity Pro so that shouldnt be a problem. I think the lack of shadows is a problem to do with that particular asset, I ran a very simple test scene with just the truck and there was no way I was able to bake shadows (all other surrounding objects did cast shadows).

So in forward rendering there is no way to have a static object have beautiful lighting (lightmaps), high normal map quality and realtime spec?

4

Sure you can; if you have pro like you said you can use either dual lightmaps or directional lightmaps, like motionblur said. I’m not sure how you’re making the leap in logic from “there’s something wrong with my truck model” to “you can’t have lightmaps with normal mapping and realtime shadows on dynamic objects”.

5

*The reason the truck didn’t cast any shadows was due to to not activating ‘Generate Lightmap UV’ on the FBX importer settings.

Using ‘Directional Lightmaps’ I get lightmapping (with shadows) + low resolution normal mapping.