Why realtime and lightmapping results so different?

I’m just learning lightmapping right now and I notice there are so many options to change the baking results as compared to the realtime results, such as skylight, bounce, etc. With so many settings, the result is that I always get a different result from baking than realtime lights and shadows. Is there anything that I can do to get exactly the same results from baking as from realtime lighting?

Well, i don’t know exactly what you need, but on the “Objects” panel, when you click on a static object you get a “scale” option. That number is how much of an area will the object take in the shadow map. if you have 1, it’ll take 1 to 1 and well that’s too much. You can click on show resolution to see the size in real time in the viewport. (Usually i put something around 0.1 ~ 0.2 and is enough)

Over at “bake”, if you want a baked object to also receive and cast real time shadows as well, you should use Dual Lightmaps as the mode (and forward rendering).

Bounces, you can use that to transfer color to static objects close by.

Ambient Occlusion is that effect that things are darker where walls intersect because basically that area should receive less ambient light. Max distance is the distance that the engine will take into account when measuring a point on how much it is occluded. The lower the number the closest the geometry needs to be. (if you have it at say 0.3, the geometry that will affect the calculations can’t be farther than that or it won’t be considered.)

Contrast is just that. Contrast.