So this was a thing every single I placed my first tree and added a flashlight to my character.
Basically what happens is the second the very outermost edge of the flashlight (spotlight) touches the tree or its leaves, the whole thing lights up like a christmas tree, instead of only the parts that are touched by the flashlight.
This is also the case for other light types, as the directional lights for the sun and moon, also cause this effect. Instead of a steady change in brightness as the time changes, you can see the brightness of the trees snapping slightly lower or higher.
I have found 2 Answer posts on this, but neither of them even got an answer submission. And they were both posted a good few years back.
Both have a comment suggesting it’s how the standard shader deals with the standard Unity Tree Maker trees, and that Advanced Foliage Shader fixed it. The thing is, I’m not paying around £60 for a whole shader package, just to fix a small lighting issue.
Can someone please let me know what exactly is causing this lighting problem? Is it really the shader, or something I can change in some lighting or shadow options? I already tried setting the lighting on the scene to realtime, baked, and mixed. As well as changing lightmap settings for the trees, but none of those things worked. As well as setting the tree as lightmaps static, and changing some settings for that.
EDIT: It’s just the leaves that act like this. The trunk and branches light up fine.