Directional Light: Realtime vs. Baked give completely different results (images attached...)

Hello everyone!

I'm working on a test-scene and played around with the baking options on the directional light.
If i choose to bake the directional light it gives me completely different results than realtime.

I didn't change anything else in the scene - just toggled the Baking option.
Isn't that supposed to look "almost" the same, no matter if i bake it or not?
Please see the attached images. The whole thing seems to be significantly darker when baked.

Direct light set to "realtime":


Direct light set to "bake":


Any ideas?
Thanks!

 

What would be the point of baking if it looked exactly the same? The 2nd image looks much more realistic - hence baking.

 

Are you baking with Specular direction maps? (Remember specular is inherent on a realtime light as it's view-based)

 

Hey!
Thanks for your replies!

Yes, i like the 2nd version better as well. But it would be great to design the whole level in realtime so it doesn't have to bake continuously while working on the level.
Once i'm done, i wanna set my lights to "bake" and kinda get the same result i had when working on the level.

No - no specular direction maps used here

 

Try with specular. From the angle of light it may not make a huge difference (spec maps can be hit and miss), but I should think it would least add some reflection to the end of the ramp, which seems to suffer more from the darker maps.

 

I'm not exactly sure what you mean with specular direction maps - do you mean using the specular workflow instead of roughness? Or is there some baking option in Unity for specular maps?

 

Under General GI in the Lighting panel, there's a dropdown with three options:

Non-Directional
Directional
Directional Specular

http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/LightmappingDirectional.html

(note that Directional Specular does not work on iOS)

 

Ahh... thank you!
I'll try that and see what results that will give me. Unfortunately it's gonna be a mobile game :-(

 

Yeah it's is a shame, but they use a ton more memory than normal lightmaps.

If you just want to lighten things you, you could try increasing the Bounce Intensity on your lightsource (do it very small amounts as it can make quite a big difference). There's also a global Bounce Boost in the General GI section.

 

Yes, that's what I'm fooling around with right now. I kinda get there.
Still it would be nice to get close results when switching from realtime to baked.
Thanks for your help though, Pix10!

 

Idk if this is true but It seems that when you Bake the lighting it bakes AO too which could cause the darker look...When I have a Real-time Directional light with continuous baking enabled it doesn't bake AO and it makes objects look lighter than a baked directional light...

 

Hi!

I may have a different solution. I had a problem, which I think might be the same as you're having - my scene looked completely different with my directional light set to bake vs set to realtime.

It turned out I had to set all my mesh renderers to "static" in the light window. To achieve this, open the menu Window/Lighting. Your lighting window will come up. Here, select the "object" tab.

Choose the scene filter "Renderers". Select the renderers of all static (i.e. not moving) objects (do this in the scene hierarchy).

With all of them selected, tick the box "Lightmap Static".

This makes these objects be affected by baked lights.

I found your post while searching for an answer to my own problem. Is this your problem too, or you already found another solution?