Search Unity

  1. Megacity Metro Demo now available. Download now.
    Dismiss Notice
  2. Unity support for visionOS is now available. Learn more in our blog post.
    Dismiss Notice

Quick Question: Is it possible to only build the Shadowmap?

Discussion in 'Global Illumination' started by HenryChinaski, Oct 24, 2018.

  1. HenryChinaski

    HenryChinaski

    Joined:
    Jul 9, 2013
    Posts:
    108
    Hey guys,

    I have - like many people - big problems to illuminate my fairly large scene right. The GI baking takes ages and the results are comparably bad. On the other hand, I am totally satisfied with the look without GI but since I use a whole bunch of lights the performance is bad (even in deferred). I would like to bake the static shadows for the distance but ignore all the GI. I thought this must be a built-in feature, but I cannot find such an option.

    So my quick question:
    Is it possible to only build the Shadowmap and ignore GI?

    Those are my settings:
     
  2. thefranke

    thefranke

    Unity Technologies

    Joined:
    Jun 20, 2015
    Posts:
    153
    Hey HenryChinaski,

    with Enlighten there isn't a good way to do this, however if you can switch the Lightmapper to the Progressive backend, you can see there will be an option called Bounces which you can set to None. This will cause the Lightmapper to render direct light only.

    Cheers
     
  3. HenryChinaski

    HenryChinaski

    Joined:
    Jul 9, 2013
    Posts:
    108
    Thanks for the hint!
    I tried the progressive lightmapper once and the editor crashed, but maybe it will work when bounces are set to zero.
    So I do understand you right, that the scene then will look exactly the same as without GI? I just ask instead of trying it immediately, because the process normally takes about 8 hours.
     
  4. thefranke

    thefranke

    Unity Technologies

    Joined:
    Jun 20, 2015
    Posts:
    153
    Your lightmaps will only contain direct light. The Bounces parameter controls how often light bounces from one surface to another, so setting it to None will effectively prevent the Lightmapper from casting any indirect light.

    You can test this with a simple scene before baking your project with let's say two walls standing upright on a plane next to each other, one red and one white. If you get a red bounce from one wall onto the other it should vanish once you set the Bounces count to None, but the baked lightmaps should still contain direct light and shadows.
     
  5. HenryChinaski

    HenryChinaski

    Joined:
    Jul 9, 2013
    Posts:
    108
    Thanks a lot for your help!
     
    thefranke likes this.