Selected texture format 'ARGB 16 bit' for platform 'DefaultTexturePlatform' is not valid with the cu

Jason-K · June 21, 2019, 9:33pm

Whenever I try to bake lighting I get the following error:

Selected texture format ‘ARGB 16 bit’ for platform ‘DefaultTexturePlatform’ is not valid with the current texture type ‘Default’.

I don’t know exactly what it means. I’m guessing I have a texture somewhere in my project set to ARGB 16 bit and I need to change it to something else, but that’s just a guess. I did some searching and found other people posting the same problem elsewhere but I cannot find a fix to it. If it is a texture that I need to change, is there an easy way to find that specific texture in a massive project? I tried searching for “Texture” in the project hierarchy but that only returns a huge list of folders labelled Textures and there are way too many of them to search through manually thanks to all the asset packages I’ve downloaded.

Edit: We’re able to get around this issue by using Baked Indirect lighting instead of Shadowmask. If we find a more proper solution we’ll post it here for anyone who finds this and isn’t okay with Baked Indirect lighting in their game.

Laumania · August 6, 2019, 9:17pm

I’m facing the same…and the baking never seems to stop. I’m listening to what you find

santins · August 7, 2019, 7:05am

I have the same issue… The only workaround as mentioned is using Indirect lighting as lighting method. If I find a better solution I’ll post here

RomainH · August 7, 2019, 8:58am

I got the same issue and I found that the generated texture called “Lightmap-0_comp_shadowmask” has no valid format in the Inspector. There is an error message just below this parameter.

spockTheGray · August 17, 2019, 5:39pm

Same… apparently it’s a known issue that just hasn’t been fixed… as a temp workaround to get rid of the error for now, unchecking ‘Compress Lightmaps’ does the trick:

Kay86X · January 4, 2020, 4:37am

Facing the same issue here, the problem is the shadowmask lightmap texture that has been generated. A solution I figured out for now is to select the “android Icon” as default texture platform in the inspector window (P.S developing for android)

NeatWolf · January 4, 2020, 10:21am

2020/01/04, Unity 2019.3.0f3, and the bug is still there :S
Is there any way to automate applying the correct setting to the texture?
Also which is the correct format for it?

christianmahler · January 13, 2020, 6:23pm

You can use the AssetPostprocessor for auto setting texture platform setting.

soleron · January 20, 2020, 12:32am

Yup, bug is still here.
If it is not a bug, someone should remove it from the console.
If it is still meant to be seen but does nothing, put it in warnings.

How?

Alan47 · January 20, 2020, 7:27pm

2019.2.18.f1 user here - I can confirm that this bug is still present. I can’t tell if it has any implications beyond that error message though.

M4R5 · March 24, 2020, 7:22pm

bump 2019.3.3f1

Bill-Sansky · May 15, 2020, 6:24pm

same here!

cineconcerts · July 23, 2020, 9:08pm

Same

thieum_1 · October 10, 2020, 1:38pm

You can just set the Lightmap-0_comp_shadowmask.png format to “automatic” in the Inspector after all.

z1654209516 · January 10, 2021, 6:39am

Hello guys! I think I found a really useful blog to show that we have chance to avoid this bug. We can turn off the “Compress Lightmaps” in the Lightmapping Settings which in the lighting component;
https://joyful-coding.tistory.com/11