Official Progressive CPU Lightmapper

I found problem in Lightmap Size and Resolution. In CG Offline Render we need to wait 24 hour to render a single image in some cases. If we increase resolution and Lightmap Size in unity, The quality will be same but needs 24 hour to bake in unity too.

In my test:

Lightmap Size : 2048
Resolution : 100

Memory used :27 gb during bake
Time : 7-10 hour

Also i have tested 4096 size and unity crashed because RAM limitation

PC Spec :
4790K
32GB DDR 3 Memory
960 GTX


Update:
Baked again in low res
Resolution : 14
Size 1024
Bake time ~30 min

 

Hi guys, this is driving me mad. I've tried everything, please advise.
I'm using the progressive lightmapper and it looks quite promising except for the massive black squares I keep getting on the lightmaps.


This is my checklist so far without any progress:

• Mesh with Generate LightmapUVs checked on.
• Lightmap parameters with Backface tolerance to 0.
• Cleaned Cache. And set maximun size to 20GB.
• Exported to a new clean project.
• Pretty much tried every parameter in the Lighting/Scene tab.
• Changed the reflection probes bounding box size inside and outside the mesh.
• Lightmaps with Enlighten work just fine, but the result isn't that good.

Here are more images showing my setup.

 

@JuanMaldonado

1. Did you try unchecking "Compress Lightmaps"?
2. Letting Unity generate lightmap UVs isn't always a good idea, especially if you have less than desirable topology

 

1. Just rebaked with "Compress Lightmaps" unchecked and the issue maintains. The black squares change randomly on every bake. This is the result from the new bake.
   
   
2. Creating custom UVs for me right now is not an option. Besides this problem does not appear when I use Enlighten, so there must be some glitch with the Progressive Lightmapper or I'm doing something wrong.

 

Probably is, but just out of curiosity, have you tried baking with PLM without letting Unity generate lightmap UVs? I believe Unity will fallback to UV1 if you do, which may produce different results. Also, maybe try assigning different models to separate baked tags(?)

These are only suggestions, @Jesper-Mortensen is definitely better equipped to answer these types of questions.

EDIT: I noticed your AO ray distance is extremely small, is that having an effect?

 

In Unity, Generating Lightmap UVs when importirng a mesh without custom UVs is like the first rule of lightmapping.
This is not an option for me since I'm not creating UVs (unwrap) in the 3d software.

Just FYI, the result without Generate Lightmaps UVs would be something like this:


EDIT: @buttmatrix Nope, the AO max distance doesn't seem to affect the result.

 

Yeah, this likely has nothing to do with UVs since Enlighten is using exactly the same generated UVs and has no artifacts like these.

 

Witnessing black spots as well.... Seems to be affected systematically by filter radius, at least.

EDIT: The issue seems to be related to area lights, specifically. I have not reproduced the error with point or directional lights.

 

Thanks for reply.
Also, is there a solution for randomly appearing transparent blocks in directional lightmap image? Every time I have a finished bake there's always 2-5 of these blocks.

And I have to correct them manually in image editing software (yay, manually editing lightmaps).
And they look like white blocks on the actual surfaces inside the editor.
They appear randomly at every rebake, looks like some kind of crash during lightmapping.
And yes, I have backface tolerance already set to 0.

 

Looks like the problem is with the area lights. Decreasing the filter radius does reduce the spots size but they still appear.
Here area some tests:

1. Using Area lights. Filtering radius = 0


2. Using Area lights. Filtering = none


3. Using Point lights. Filtering radius = default
​

 

If you'd like, I can post some screenshots for different permutations of the settings later.

EDIT: I'm not sure what to say at this point. I was unable to reproduce the artifacts in 5.6.0f3 (see attached) regardless, of filtering, resolution, AO, directional mode, etc. I will try again this evening in 2017.1.0b1

 

My issue, holes in directional lightmap that look white on surfaces, is also an area light problem. So it appears that we are having the same exact problem, just different symptoms.
My solution for now is to replace area lights with planes containing emission - this solves the issue for me.

 

@BORODA Nice workaround. Baking is faster with emissive planes than using area lights and quality is similar, not as good but it works for now.
Here are some screenshots for comparison:

 

Yes, quality is degraded, but at least it doesn't generate all this garbage. For my cases, where the area/emissive lights only affect a relatively small area this workaround works much better.
At least I can use the actual ray-tracer instead of cranking up resolution of enlighten up to the sky to get small details in light visible.

 

So p3 doesn't contain any fixes for progressive? Any info when this will land?

 

This problem occur around double sided faces:

 

That patch is being lit by an area light?

 

No. An directional light for outdoor scene

 

Hey All,
When baking small scenes the progressive baker works well, however when I attempt to bake larger scenes (even with very small parameters) the editor crashes with no memory issue. Also, if I use enlighten to bake the larger scene it completes after about 3 hrs but the shadows do no render on some objects even though I can see them in the shadow mask view.

Shadow mask view:


Shaded view:


Everything is the same color in shaded view.. Any idea why?
Cheers,
Colton

 

Isn't that area already covered by a baked shadow? In that case, shadow mask never has an effect, which is a correct behavior for it.

 

But this tower is all the same color (360 degress around) as the in the screen shot, should it not be lighter where the shadow mask shows light blue?

EDIT : I have attached a screen shot that shows where to camera is in relation to the tower.

 

Ah, alright, the background area below gave the impression that the color of the tower was influenced by a baked shadow.

 

Yea unfortunately the castle wall below is also suffering from the same issue, shadow mask shows baked shadows but shaded does not..

 

I finally got a good result with these settings to reduce less noise:
Direct samples: 1000
Indirect : 10.000
Resolution : 14
Backface Tolerance : 0

All lighting with emissive materials

Linear color space + natural color grading

6-7 hour bake time (Same as cg render used Rove3D)

the below screenshot is after 1 hour baking

 

Very nice, well done! I'm impressed you were able to achieve that level of clarity with emissives only. What are your AO settings?

Would love to see screens from the full bake

 

Thank you. I will upload more comparison screen shots and demo exe and videos with my lighting setup .

I found Linear color space a lot better for lighting . It's used in UE4 and offline renderers. I didn't know that.


Bake Time: 5.27
Res: 14, Sample count : Direct-1000 Indirect-10.000 AO: is off. AO is not necessary for Progressive and All path tracer renderers
http://imgur.com/a/K8ZBO

 

@aliyeredon2 Could you elaborate on what you mean by, "AO is not necessary for path tracer renderers"? It may not be necessary, but it may be desirable in some cases, hence it's inclusion.

Also, can anyone describe the tradeoff between direct samples and indirect samples? I understand fundamentally what is happening, but I noticed PLM default settings for direct samples is an order of magnitude (or more) lower than indirect samples. What is the logic behind this configuration?

 

There is no trade off.

Direct samples are used for the soft shadows from baked lights (spots, points, directionals and area lights) and indirect samples for everything else.

You only need to crank up the direct samples if you have really soft shadows.

 

About AO:
In my experiences in VRay and other offline renderers and PLM, AO automatically caused in corners by indirect shadows. So it's not necessary to add additional AO to corners by settings.
Also AO needs to bake in High resolutions to get good results in PLM.
For example in this screenshot i didn't used AO at all:


So you can see AO applied by indirect shadows automatically
My goal was "Natural Looking" for interior scenes. You can use AO for games to looks more beautiful similar to Far Cry games thats used high amount of AO in game

About direct samples, No you can use default settings. I have just used 1000 to ensure about final quality.

 

Literally never seen baked GI this smooth in Unity, until now.

 

What is different than before in settings?

 

Before I was using Enlighten . The settings are similar to yours, but with maxed out texel resolution.

 

Without bakedAO?

 

Actually, in those screenshots I have a Baked AO of .001, but since your earlier comment I have turned it off and the difference is negligible.

 

Hey guys... does anyone have issues with the editor suddenly crashing when the PL is launched. I am on Unity 5.6 and even with a simple scene like a plane, the editor will just crash once it hits the baking stage. There is no crash log, no warning, it just crashes and I am forced to exit. Is there a way to generate a crash log in Unity?

 

I just started experiencing crashes on a (now relatively large) scene. It would prepare the bake, then crash the editor once the bake started. I have a bake going now after turning off 'Prioritize View'. Not sure if this will help you KRGraphics, but something to try.

 

Hey @jStinson,
Having the same issue as you with crashing in fairly large scenes with an out of memory error. Unfortunately turning off prioritize view did not help. Please post if you find a solution to this!
Cheers,
Colton

 

Open task manager and check Ram used when preparing to bake. For large scene you need more Ram. For example sometimes my scene with 32gb memory crashed with high resolution (High means 40 for my case )

 

Hey @aliyeredon2
Yea I know what the error means and unfortunately we are currently running bakes on a computer that only has 16gbs of ram. I was just hoping there was a quick fix instead of purchasing more ram.
Cheers,
Colton

 

Baked lightmapping needs specular directional, without this the results area really bad in some scenes that I made in the past. I tried the "reflection probe" solution and.... the solution is worst when I compare both system. The metals lost all the highlights.

 

send some screen shots from both solution. I think Reflection Probes is good enough because some of scenes has no direct light.

 

I don't think so, I have some scenes without specular you lost all the metal details, the metal are like wood.

 

Send me screenshot

 

Are you a Unity developer?

 

This thread may be more appropriate for your question.

 

No. I just want to see what is problem

 

@aliyeredon2 I cannot show you material with NDA

 

Ok Guys, after some test you can improve the specular problem BAKING THE LIGHTS in reflection probes. Actually the lights disappear from reflection probes (user don't have any option to change this, or I didn't find it) and without lights in render probes, how could we see specular in reflections???