I don’t want to make a bug report until I can get some verification from the community that this might be a real bug and not user error.
It is very possible I am not establishing good lightmapping settings. I am using the default initial values because I was only baking a test to see what it would look like. So far, I have been unhappy with the basic results because it seems that lightmapping in Unity/Beast hijacks color and speuclarity values for the whole scene so if I try to edit the specular values of a material after baking I have to rebake. This is not the kind of workflow I am used to (UDK).
That is simply a minor complaint (right now). The bug I think I found is this:
Lightmapping removes normal map data from models??
At first I thought it was just my eyes. Or that my bad settings were diluting the normal effect somehow. But I did a test that proves something is definitely wrong somewhere.
I removed the diffuse texture from the material of one of my objects. You can still see the normals affecting the way light illuminates the surface. Then, after baking, the surface is completely flat with no hint or trace of the normal map whatsoever.
Use Dual (with deferred rendering) / Directional lightmapping (with forward or deferred rendering) mode for use with specular, you can still see the results of editing the secular material in the scene view without needing to rebake.
Use Dual (with deferred rendering) / Directional Lightmapping (with forward or deferred rendering) for use with normal map textures.
I am actually already using dual. I believe that must be default because I did not change it. I don’t see deferred rendering as an option or mode in the lightmapping window nor in RenderSettings. Are you referring to real-time shadows when you say deferred? A previous project I was working on used Deferred lighting and we had real-time shadows. I am not using pro so real-time/deferred is not available to me. Directional Lightmaps require a pro licence. I am reading through the documentation on lightmapping now. I’ve just never encountered lightmapping in any package or engine which nullified specular editing and certainly not normal maps. So I thought it might be a bug.
Let me see if I understand your proposed settings correctly because I cannot get anything to work.
If I use Deferred Rendering, I should use Dual Lightmaps. If I use Forward Rendering, I should use Directional Lightmaps.
If this is what you are saying, then it is impossible to have specular control or normalmapping in lightmapped scenes in Unity basic. Deferred rendering is Pro only. Directional Lightmaps are Pro only. No combination you have described is available to me.
Using Dual Lightmaps with forward rendering results in no shadows. Using Single Lightmaps will produce shadows. But neither retain normal maps.
EDIT: User error, I can get shadows using Dual Lightmaps and Forward Rendering. I had missed a selection in my scene when baking. However, normal maps are still nullified.
Since I was using my own surface shaders anyway, I tried adding dualforward and fullforwardshadows optional parameters to my shader definition but this just resulted in turning my models almost black. Lots of fun. I’ve read through all the lighting documentation and don’t really see any solutions. Really flabbergasted by lightmapping that behaves this way. Never seen anything like it before.
There was one thing mentioned in the documentation that intrigued me:
Does this mean that I must name my shaders in this way in order for them to work properly? I’d like clearer documentation on any forced naming conventions within Unity…
Still hoping for some help on this. Right now the only thing I’ve been able to do is bake lighting on the scene but not the props, even though they don’t move. I still feel like there is no setting in Unity Free that allows for shadow baking and normal/spec mapping. Just want a confirmation of this.
