Night to day transition with baked lightmaps?

Hey guys,

I have a game about a little guy in a boat. The game session lasts 5 minutes, and over the course of that time, it goes from night time and ends at dawn. However, it's not real world environment that needs a physical sun or moving shadows - it just needs to feel like its going from night to dawn.

This game is for WebGL 2.0 and up, so I would like to bake as much lighting as possible. The only thing that really needs a dynamic shadow is the little guy and his boat. Everything else can be baked.

However, how can I got about baking nice bounced lighting and all that, while still allowing the scene to look like it's getting closer to morning? I find that if I bake my terrain and object lightmaps, they do not get affected by the main directional light getting brighter. This is true for trees (and their billboard lods as well)

TL;DR

I have a scene that transitions from night to day, but it doesn't need a moving sun source.
I only need my directional light (sun) to cast dynamic light and shadow on/from my main character.
The rest of the world can be baked.

How do I set this up so that I can bake most of my lighting, but still transition it from night to day?

 

Hey @kemalakay

Thanks for the very clear reply. I've read a little but about baked indirect, but I was worried that it has to large of a performance hit for webgl compared to the others. Is this true?

To get a better understanding of my scene, here are two screenshots - one from the start of the game (night) and one from the end (daytime). The only thing that needs dynamic lighting and shadows is the character - everything else can be baked. As you can see, the sun shadows don't move - the only thing that changes are:

Sun Intensity and Color
Ambient Intensity and Color
Fog Color

As you can imagine, baking lightmaps means that they are baked at a particular time of day, and changing those values above has no effect on static baked objects. Also, the tree billboards in the back are stuck in one lighting scenario too

 

For games with large outdoors areas realtime lightmaps in a lower resolution make lot more sense.
It only updates if you change a light that is contributing the to GI.

 

Interesting, thanks for this. Could you elaborate a bit more about the performance implications of going with realtime lightmaps vs. baked? Especially for WebGL, if possible.

Also, which settings would you suggest to have? Right now, I am using "Mixed" for my main light source, and both Realtime GI and Baked GI checked in the lighting settings.

 

Just use realtime lighting/shadows. Performance in WebGL is good. Just enable WebAssembly and Graphics Jobs in Player Settings. You can even use any image effects you want.

 

Thanks @kristijonas_unity and @Stardog , but those seem to be conflicting opinions

To Stardog's point, the Unity manual itself says that the performance of WebGL applications should be close to native GPU applications.



Also to your point, Stardog - I found the Graphics Jobs checkbox and enabled it. What does it do exactly?

I cannot find anything for WebAssembly, though

 

I think WebAssembly is in Publishing at the bottom.

Here's some WebGL examples I made that I get 60 fps with (2500k cpu, GTX 1060). Use a fresh browser session with few tabs loaded. You need to right-click to enable mouse sometimes.

Realtime shadows. This one should give memory error when increasing the Grass Distance to full, and putting the Grass Amount near the top:
https://cdn.rawgit.com/st4rdog/WebGLExports/f4b0f2b2/2017.10.24/index.html

Realtime shadow, baked at distance:
https://cdn.rawgit.com/st4rdog/WebGLExports/f4b0f2b2/2017.04.12/index.html

Realtime shadow, baked indirect:
https://cdn.rawgit.com/st4rdog/WebGLExports/f9eb54b9/2017.9.1/index.html

Realtime shadows. Left-click drag to move. Right-click look around:
https://cdn.rawgit.com/st4rdog/WebGLExports/f1a4bf2b/2017.11.08/index.html

The main problem with WebGL is memory and polycount. I have only had performance problems with some skinned meshes using the navmesh. Too much grass on a terrain will also cause the game to hit the memory limit. Increasing it beyond 256 doesn't do anything for me.

Also, another thing, you will have to edit your game with WebGL 2.0 graphics emulation (Edit > Graphics Emulation > 2.0). The fun part is that Unity won't remember this so you'll have to do it everytime you load the game.

 

Fantastic information and experiments, @Stardog Thanks so much.

Your Fortnite example is probably most relevant to my project - terrain, grass, third person camera, etc.

And ya - that damn bug that resets your WebGL 2.0 emulation eeeeverytime!

 

Curious - what are your light settings for the Fortnite example? Here are mine.

 

It's the same except Default Skybox, no Realtime Global Illumination, and Linear fog 30, 170.

Also, at default settings the tris are about 90k, 56 set pass calls, 50 shadow casters. There is 3000 trees, but camera draw distance is only 220.

 

Interesting - so if you have both Realtime Global Illumination and Mixed Lighting OFF, then you must not have any of your scene objects as "Static"? Otherwise, how are you getting any environment lighting?

 

Only the terrain is static, but not Lightmap Static. Everything has to be dynamic because blocks can be placed and trees cut down.

 

@frogwise Necroing an ancient post but just wanted to say your game looks really pretty. Did it get released?