So, I only found this out just now, but there is a new Asset released on the Asset Store.
It is called Bakery, and it is a GPU Lightmapper.
I am definitely shocked that one dude got this done while the official Unity GPU Mapper is still…well to be on its way. I am not trying to promote the asset or anything but just wanted to share the news because I know that a lot a people are interested in GPU Lightmapper.
So far it seems good and fast enough but it is still early and there are some few drawbacks (it doesn’t support directional lightmaps yet and is only for nVidia cards.) The dev seems to be active so I am not too worried.
So, coming back to the GPU lightmapper of Unity, can we have some information about its development progress?
I think you have your info wrong. The above posted videos which are not even near a preview release, are AMD tech which may or may not make it to Unity. I certainly hope so but nothing is announced. The only part of that video that Unity is picking up for now is the GPU lightmapper, which is basically the PLM but on GPU using Radeon Rays. That is it.
On the other hand, we have a working asset on the asset store. It does have its drawbacks, but the author is promising to bring directional baking soon, and then, there is pretty much no difference to what the Unity GPU Lightmapper will do in terms of its features.
To conclude it, it is not BS. There is no BS in this story. One dude released a working version, and on the other hand we have announced but hasn’t arrived yet feature from Unity. If there is BS, then it probably is Unity’s and no one elses.
Also, AMD Raytraced solutions (from the above videos) are probably not going to be around now and is probably set for next generation of rendering (maybe a year or more from now). Current generation of lightmapping is raytraced anyway, just using non-AMD API, I assume. Which also means the features mentioned in the above cannot be the reason why Unity GPU Lightmapper hasn’t been released yet. It is not a new tech that came around recently. It has been there for a very long time. It doesn’t explain what Unity was doing for the last few years when AMD Rays were not there, but supposedly working on the GPU mapper.
To sum it up, one dude got it done. And it makes me think whether it is not as hard as it seems or this dude is very good. Either way, I am happy there is finally a GPU solution and when Unity GPU Lightmapper arrives, we have an alternative.
And to top it off, with the past history of Unity and lightmapping, it will take more than few patches to make the GPU Lightmapper worth it.
Nope. A windows only + nvidia only asset without progressive nature is not comparable to the announced and worked on version Unity does. It’s not a bad asset by any means, cute and good stuff and nice if you know that it’s done by one guy on the top of an existing Nvidia 3rd-party core. But it’s very-very-very far away from a full solution like Unity will release as soon as they are done.
I like the physically correct nature of his maps BTW. And I like the asset, but again, it’s not comparable by any means. That’s the BS.
If you insist, then I suppose there isn’t much to say. I don’t find nVidia only solution particulary problematic since it only requires the dev to have a nvidia card not the end user. I can’t imagine a dev having issues because he doesn’t have one when he is knee deep in a project that requires GPU baking. Just go out and buy one. His whole project probably scales much bigger anyway.
