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Question Why do baked lights need different intensity values than Dynamic lights?

Discussion in 'Global Illumination' started by PinguPongu, Oct 14, 2022.

  1. PinguPongu

    PinguPongu

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    Feb 2, 2021
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    Hey all!
    Is there a reason why I have to lower the intensity of a baked light to get comparable results to a dynamic light with higher intensity value?
    So I am in the process of making a big scene, which requires very bright and intensive lights, sometimes with values in the 1000's . But when I switch them to baked and bake the lights in the scene, everything gets blown out.
    And then it's just a matter of lowering the intensity (sometimes by a factor of 100), and baking, then tweaking and re-baking etc. So by the end a baked light will look very good, but a dynamic light with the same intensity will not even be visible.
    Is there a reason for this behavior and is there a way to fix this? Why does the lightmapper see things differently to me?
     
  2. r9shackleford

    r9shackleford

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    Jul 23, 2019
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    I suspect this is due to bounces. Were you using realtime GI before?
     
  3. kristijonas_unity

    kristijonas_unity

    Unity Technologies

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    Feb 8, 2018
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    Which render pipeline are you using? In URP (in linear color space) and HDRP, realtime and baked light intensities should match. In the built-in render pipeline, they won't.

    As @r9shackleford pointed out, the differences could also arise due to indirect bounces. That would be especially apparent if you have baked lights very close to the lightmapped geometry, which would result in very bright texels.
     
  4. PinguPongu

    PinguPongu

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    I'm sorry for the late reply.
    I've turned the bounces off and the Realtime GI as well. Currently I'm using the URP and unfortunately with the Gamma Color Space.
    Here are my settings:
    upload_2022-11-18_13-28-54.png

    Recently I have been lighting a big scene that needs a light with the intensity value of 5000. But I need to lower it to the value of 250 before baking, for it to yield the same result. I don't know what I am doing wrong.
     
  5. kristijonas_unity

    kristijonas_unity

    Unity Technologies

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    If you are using Gamma color space then baked and realtime light intensities will not match. If you'd want them to match, you have to make use of Linear color space.
     
    PinguPongu likes this.
  6. PinguPongu

    PinguPongu

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    Feb 2, 2021
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    Thank you so much!