Light Mode: Mixed

This page describes the behavior of a Light component when you set its Mode property to Mixed. These are also known as Mixed Lights.

Mixed Lights combine elements of both realtime and baked lighting. You can use Mixed Lights to combine dynamic shadows with baked lighting from the same light source, or when you want a light to contribute direct realtime lighting and baked indirect lighting.

To use Mixed Lights, you must first understand the benefits and limitations of Realtime LightsLight components whose Mode property is set to Realtime. Unity calculates and updates the lighting of Realtime Lights every frame at runtime. No Realtime Lights are precomputed. More info
See in Glossary and Baked LightsLight components whose Mode property is set to Baked. Unity pre-calculates the illumination from Baked Lights before runtime, and does not include them in any runtime lighting calculations. More info
See in Glossary.

Mixed Light behavior

• The behavior of all Mixed Lights in a SceneA Scene contains the environments and menus of your game. Think of each unique Scene file as a unique level. In each Scene, you place your environments, obstacles, and decorations, essentially designing and building your game in pieces. More info
  See in Glossary depends on the Lighting Mode setting in the Lighting window. The different Lighting Modes have very different performance characteristics, and different levels of visual fidelity. For more information, see Lighting Modes.
• You can change properties of Mixed Lights at runtime. This updates their real-time lighting but not their baked lighting. When doing this, take care to avoid unwanted visual effects.

Limitations of Mixed Lights

• The performance cost of Mixed Lights differs considerably, depending on the Lighting Mode. However, because Mixed Lights always combine at least some realtime and some baked lighting, Mixed Lights always involve more runtime calculations than fully baked lighting, and higher memory usage than fully real-time lighting.

Note that if you disable Baked Global IlluminationA group of techniques that model both direct and indirect lighting to provide realistic lighting results. Unity has two global illumination systems that combine direct and indirect lighting.: Baked Global Illumination, and Realtime Global Illumination.
See in Glossary in your Scene, Unity forces Mixed Lights to behave as though you set their Mode to Realtime. When this happens, Unity displays a warning on the Light component InspectorA Unity window that displays information about the currently selected GameObject, asset or project settings, allowing you to inspect and edit the values. More info
See in Glossary.