Best way to light static and non-static objects - Example: House

Hi,
I've been trying to figure out how to do this, but even with the Unity docs, other website and forums I haven't been able to wraps my ind around it completely.
It's all about lighting.

I have a house (basic modern home). When I make the house (lightmapped) static and bake a lightmap it looks fine!
I've got 1 directional light. Set to Baking and Soft Shadows (rest default).
All object in the house are set to Lightmapped Static. All objects cast and receive shadows.
Using Unity Pro 5.3.6.

But doors and windows should be able to move and cast shadows. So I need real-time shadows as well.
But the door and windows should not look out of place. So making them non-static and removing them from the lightmap is no option as they will look very different.
And because both the doors and the windows have glass (transparant) and wood (non-transparant) the baked light-shadow does not work when moving a door or window!
And Mixed mode does not seem to work.

It doesn't seem right to just add a duplicate of my directional light (set both to an intensity of 0.5 instead of 1.0) and make that duplicate a realtime light.

Using Precomputed GI doens't look half as good either.

I'm really confused in what setup I should choose to get the scene lighted using the power of baked lightmaps but still have realtime light/shadows for moving objects. The theory is simple, putting it into practice however....

Thanks for any suggestions!

Marco

 

Basically, because Unity does not have mixed lighting, there isn't a way to achieve what you want yet. It was originally planned for 5.3, then 5.4, and now 5.4 still doesn't have it.

If your target hardware allows it, you should have all your lights in real time - this will enable real time global illumination and point and spot light cookies (for IES lights) as well.

 

Right. I understand and that's more or less what I suspected. But. That does leave you without the nice baked lights effects such as bounces and better defined shadows. That's really too bad! Hopefully Unity will add a working version of Mixed mode lights soon!

Thanks!

 

Bounces are still included - Unity has real time global illumination (i.e. bounced light). You can read about the global illumination system here.

 

Real time lightmaps can give you nice 'bounces and better defined shadows', at high settings, such as here:




(images by Alex Lovett)

Considering you need both dynamic objects and high quality, Realtime lightmaps look like only solution for you.

 

Dynamic doors will always be an issue with a lightmapped setup. The best you can do right now is plan your lighting around it, so when the door's closed, there won't be a section of light on the ground outside it.