Catacomber

Is anybody having any trouble using Baked Lightmaps on mobile with Unity 5--and not getting shadows? I've googled this and found that baked lightmapping can be a problem with Unity 5 but no clear answer. I'm not really hung up on this as shadows will probably decrease performance on mobile but just wondering why they are so darned hard to get to show up! : )

Kaemalux

Omber is graphically wonderful in my opinion, if you want to make some test to improve player experience is fine, but if you have to lose too much time or fps could drop drastically / performances get worst, i would keep it like it is. :)

Catacomber

Thanks, Kaemalux but there are a few graphics problems. The terrain textures are blurred. I googled the problem and fixed it by adding a material to the terrain. I'll put up some new screenshots when I get a chance. The difference in graphics quality is not just a little difference for the terrain. It's startling--everything is much smoother and more beautiful.

I'm not the only one who had that problem. This appears to be a Unity 5 problem---I updated to Unity 5.

So if it was good before--it should be just better. : )

But I'd like to improve the terrains further by baking lights and shadows but somehow can't get the shadows to show up. Googling on. Not sure that fps would drop. It should actually get better with static objects and baked lightmaps. Learned a lot about lighting and shaders--that's for sure. : )

Quoting...

"well for all that i know using static objects and light mapping combined with # program strict reduced my draw calls from 110 to just 12..the point is if u follow the simple rules and do smart coding 30fps will be awarded..sure light mapping takes ages ,sure not using dynamic typing is pain,and sure compressing every texture is time taking etc etc..but in the end u get something beautiful out of it..."

Firrerreo

Are you auto-baking or manually building them? I've had a few issues with the auto stuff before.

What shader are you using on the terrain and can you see the lightmaps in the editor, or are they missing on everything?

Catacomber

Am afraid I'm a noob when it comes to light mapping although I'm trying to learn as much as I can.

I made a nature terrain material and use that on the terrain. That fixed the blur rinses.

I don't use General Illumination. I just hit the bake button.just assumed unity will do what it has to do with them.

I have shadows on and receive shadows checked

Somewhere I read that trees should be static but need to have a 0 instead of a 1 in scale in light map so it won't disappear.

I can see textures for the light map in the editor in the scene but don't know if I have to do anything with them.

Thanks for any help. Feel a little lost here.

Firrerreo

You know, I think I remember seeing something on the unity forums about lightmaps being broken on mobile devices for GLES2.0. Something with shader keywords, I'll look to see if I can find the thread again.

From what I can recall, I *think* it was something to do with directional lightmaps. On the lightmaps tab, try changing Directional Mode under General GI to Nondirectional, disable continuous bake, and just manually rebake.

And yeah, static objects are baked into lightmaps, basically things that won't ever move in your scene and wouldn't need to have their shadows updated. If you don't have any wind in your scene, trees can totally be static then since you won't have a disconnect with leaves and branches moving and the shadow staying still. Otherwise I'd probably do a mixed solution and lightmap all your basic non-moving objects, and let the trees continue to cast dynamic shadows, or employ a blob shadow on your trees so it's easier to compute and still looks ok.

Here's a decent explanation of all the lighting options to go along with the Unity included GI documentation.
http://www.edy.es/dev/docs/unity-5-lighting-cookbook/

Firrerreo

Found it. BOOO.

http://issuetracker.unity3d.com/issues/opengles2-baked-gi-doesnt-work-on-gles2-anymore

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/baked-lightmaps-not-showing-on-mobile-device-ipad-android.310945/

Can't believe it has under 100 votes. Pfffffft. Added one.

Catacomber

Thanks for your detailed help. I really appreciate it. : ) That lightmapping tutorial was very helpful.

Non-directional seems to help. I put a lot of area lights in a cave and tweaked some things and the cave does cast shadows now. Working on the surface terrains next will see--maybe I need a better terrain shader--looking in the asset store--found a free one or two.

Thanks for the Lighting documentation. I can't use anything but baked because on mobile anything else takes up too much processing power.

Getting there. Thanks again for your help. I see the auto button in baking now and not using it. : )

Also I see since my cave is now well lightmapped that Unity just applies the lightmap I don't have to do anything at all. This has been a bit of a learning curve--thanks again. : )

Firrerreo

Yay glad it's working out! Hopefully they'll fix that bug soon to allow directional again.