Version: 2021.1
Light Explorer extension
The Progressive Lightmapper

Lightmapping

Lightmapping is the process of pre-calculating the brightness of surfaces in a Scene, and storing the result in a Texture called a lightmap for later use.

Left: A simple lightmapped scene. Right: The lightmap Texture generated by Unity. Note how both shadow and light information is captured.
Left: A simple lightmapped scene. Right: The lightmap Texture generated by Unity. Note how both shadow and light information is captured.

Lightmaps can include both direct and indirect light. This lighting texture can be used together with surface information like color (albedo) and relief (normals) by the Shader associated with an object’s material.

The data baked into lightmaps cannot change at runtime. Realtime lights can be overlaid and used additively on top of a lightmapped scene, but cannot interactively change the lightmaps themselves.

Con este acercamiento, nosotros intercambiamos la habilidad de mover nuestras luces en gameplay por un aumento potencial al rendimiento, ajustándose a un hardware menos poderoso como lo son las plataformas móviles.

Unity provides the following lightmappers for generating lightmaps:

For advice on setting up a lightmapper, see Lightmapping: Getting started.

Light Explorer extension
The Progressive Lightmapper