Lightmapping questions

Unity Engine
1

I have a large terrain with lots of trees. I want to lightmap the terrain, but I don’t care about the trees (lightmapping every tree would probably require too much ram for an iOS game).

I set the terrain as static and all the trees as static. Clicking bake starts baking lightmaps for everything, I don’t want this!
Click Bake Selected only bakes the terrain, but I don’t get shadows of the trees.
Is there anyway to get shadows of the trees on the terrain without having lightmaps for the trees?

Also, the only lightmap shader that I can find under legacy->lightmapped, is this the correct one? Why legacy?

2

Ok, I tried baking everything, with Low setting, Single lightmaps, after hours, this is the result:

The terrain looks fine, but the trees look very strange, does beast handle alphatesting correctly?
Anyone had similar problems baking trees?

Some more questions:

  • Is there any place where I can select the lightmap textures sizes? Right now seems to be using 1024x1024 for everything.
  • I think I understand how Dual/Single lightmaps mean, my game will have a camera with a fixed distance (RTS style), so if I’m correct, there’s no point using Dual lightmaps, right?
  • The shadows look too dark, is there any way to change the constrast without editing the lightmaps one by one?
  • After baking I got 50 lightmaps, and this is a very small scene, is this normal?
3

  • Yes you can resize the lightmaps but whatever you adjust it to, annd maps will be applied accordingly, and can only be done in powers of two.

  • Single would be fine.

  • Turn adjusting the bake settings.

  • It shouldn’t be normal unless every tree is a seperate mesh, even then, 50 lightmaps at 1024x1024, too much space would be taken in the build.

4

Hmm, so it is not normal, but I only have 3 different tree meshes on the scene, any clue why it generated so many lightmaps?
Maybe it is related to why the trees look partly black?

5

It’d only be abnormal if it only included the trees, but if again you’re going for visual quality, that’s okay.

Unity creates a lightmap for each object marked as ‘static’, meaning it will not move like the trees and bridge and etc. Only reason is that you have a lot in your scene, which then if that’s the case it’s alright.

As for the shadow darkness, change the shadow strength

6

Here’s a full depth documentation on lightmapping :stuck_out_tongue: every you pretty much need to know:

http://unity3d.com/support/documentation/Manual/LightmappingInDepth.html

7

“A value of 0 will result in the object not being lightmapped (it will still affect other lightmapped objects).”
Thanks for the link!
That’s exactly what I wanted for the trees, so now I can only have lightmaps on the terrain, very nice!

8

Hmm, seems that the Shadow Strength is pro only, any other solution to change the shadow constrast?

9

You can adjust the ambient light in the render settings to adjust the contrast of the shadows. Of course this will affect the entire lighting solution so other changes will be needed to compensate.

You could also simply edit the lightmaps in an image editing program to adjust the levels.

10

Sorry to necro this thread, but it seems better than opening a brand new one. I am doing everything in my power to lighten the shadow intensity of my lightmaps. I’ve adjusted the ambient color in the render settings to be ridiculously bright. I’ve adjusted the shadow intensity on the light to be very, very light. Every time I bake, the shadows are the same darkness. What gives and what is the real solution for this? I’ve tried the Photoshop editing method, but it’s extremely tedious to edit and then convert to the higher dynamic range each small adjustment.