Upgrade to HDRP causes dark scene and HEAVY shadows; bounty available

Using 2019.3.0f1, I upgraded all my materials, did the HDRP wizard and fixed all issues, ran the “Upgrade Unity Builtin Scene Light Intensity for High Definition”, and then ran my minecraft clone test project to test how the HDRP process works for procedurally generated objects and find myself confronted with a very dark scene as you see below.

While the game is running I run the “Upgrade … Scene Light Intensity…” option again and I get a well-lit scene but with the same heavy shadows as seen below.

I took snapshots of the light component and camera and procedurally generated terrain before and after to see if I could spot the difference but I could not find what changed.

Would anyone know 1) What that “Upgrade Scene Light Intensity” is doing so I can implement it myself and 2) Why these shadows are so overbearing; I notice a big FPS hit and I’m guessing it’s all shadow.

Many thanks in advance!

Anthony

Update: I notice that changing the Emission setting on my directional light does what it’s supposed to and this I was able to make the scene brighter, but the built-in “UPgrade Scene Light Intensity” option threw me off since I looked at the emission and the value didn’t change. It must be changing it internally, however, it just doesn’t seem to be updating the value on the UI. A bug I think, unless there’s some other sinister forces at work that I’m unaware of.

Shadows, however, still remain a mystery… willing to pay someone to set up my scene correctly.

AnthonyPaulO

just do this:

Lighting settings also diferent from legacy. Why don’t you just read the documentation?

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Thanks for replying, but “just doing this” doesn’t work, and I am reading the documentation, some of which leads nowhere (eg. docs on Visual Environment says to go to GameObject → Rendering → SceneSettings except that it doesn’t exist for me) so I’d appreciate less condescension and some actual help, especially since I’m offering to pay for it and not expecting a free handout. As a professional developer who has zero knowledge of game graphics trying to learn the fundamentals, legacy, and SRP/HDRP at the same time is overwhelming, but I’m slogging through the examples in my Lighting/Shaders book one at a time, and I could use an assist and don’t mind paying for an initial setup while I’m at it.

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You need to go to the lighting panel and sort out your sky as well as sorting out the sky in the HDRP asset. You have zero GI in this scene.

If you aren’t able to bake anything then you should provide a Volume with suitable sky parameters so at least the IBL (reflection probe) will fill in the black parts for you.

The volume needs to be set to global if you haven’t already. IMHO you would be better off creating a brand new HDRP project, opening the demo scene and transplanting your stuff into it. This ensures you haven’t missed anything and provides a great point of reference.

I don’t think upgrading to HDRP is a thing that Unity should’ve supported for these reasons but we are here now. So make a new project, copy your stuff into it one bit at a time and you’ll work it all out pretty quick.

Reading about it will send you in circles at this point.

Thanks Hippo, I’ve tried this already but I’ll give it another whirl. Good to see you’re still around, I remember you being a staple on the forums way back in 2012.