I am making a game where the player goes through the same hallway over and over. Each time they go through the hallway might change. The player and hallway are always in the same world space.
At first, I was just changing the objects and so I had baked lighting for the environment and real time for the objects (chairs, paintings, etc). I have decided that I want to sometimes change the walls, ceiling and floors.
I struggle with lighting a lot and think its my weakest skill in Unity. Whenever I completely get rid of baked lighting the scene looks awful.
Baked Lighting
The ceiling is dark which I think is due to the area light. Would I need to use another light instead?
Also, when I move the camera the lighting becomes really blown out.
Would it be easiest to have each hallway be its own scene with baked lighting and load each one when needed? Or is there something I’m missing with the real time lighting settings?
I do plan on using Unity 6 and have no problem upgrading this project if that helps.
Thanks!
I use Realtime GI in my project, instead of Baked, mostly because I have a lot of lighting that can dynamically turn on/off over the course of playing a single level. Unless that’s the situation you’re in, I’d probably recommend you don’t use Realtime GI. So, if you load a level, and the lighting stays fairly static while playing that level, I think Baked would be better in terms of visual quality and performance.
I think your approach of separate scenes feels best to me. You can make your level geometry into a prefab, so that you can place it into multiple scenes, and then optimize the lighting/visuals in each scene as needed.
That said, Baked lighting also supports/supported the concept of multiple baked lightmaps for a single scene, which you can swap in/out. I think it’s a bit janky to get it working, but it’s possible. This was a recommended approach for scenes that want Baked lighting, but have a handful of different lighting states, like a way to turn all lights on/off dynamically.
But I like your approach of multiple scenes. My instincts tell me you’ll probably want multiple scenes anyway, to make it simpler to customize the behavior of things in each scene.
(Just as an aside, from that blown out screenshot, it kind of looks like your light’s intensity is extremely high, and its Indirect Contribution is very low. Maybe try increasing the Indirect Contribution of that light if it’s not lighting the ceiling at all.)
