Bake multiple scenes together with Baking Sets

If you load multiple scenes simultaneously in your project, for example if you load multiples scenes at the same time in an open world game, you can add the scenes to a single Baking Set so you can bake the lighting for all the scenes together.

Refer to Understanding probe volumes for more information about Baking Sets.

Create a Baking Set

To place multiple scenes in a single Baking Set and bake them together, follow these steps:

  1. From the main menu, select Window > Rendering > Lighting.
  2. Set Baking Mode to Baking Set.
  3. In Current Baking Set, select an existing Baking Set asset, or select New to create a new Baking Set.
  4. Use the Add (+) button to add scenes.

You can only add each scene to a single Baking Set.

To remove a scene from a Baking Set, select the scene in the Scenes in Baking Set list, then select the Remove (-) button.

Bake a Baking Set

Select Generate Lighting to bake the lighting in all the scenes in a baking set.

The Universal Render Pipeline (URP) uses the settings from the Baking Set, and serializes the results in the Assets folder, in a subfolder with the same name as the active scene. You can move or rename the folder.

For faster iteration times, disable Bake next to a scene name. This stops Unity baking lighting data for this scene. This might result in incomplete data, but it can help reduce baking time when you're iterating on parts of a large world.

Load a scene

Unity doesn't automatically load the scenes in a Baking Set when you select the scene in the Scenes list. To load a scene, select Load Baking Set.

When you load multiple scenes together, the lighting might be too bright because URP combines light from all the scenes. Refer to Set up multiple Scenes for more information on loading and unloading Scenes.

You can load multiple scenes together only if they belong to the same Baking Set.