[URP] Addressing Runtime Lightmapping Constraints for Level Editors
Solution
Unity 2021.x - Unity 6.3.x
Published 30 days ago
The integration of your level editor presents a technical hurdle regarding precomputed lighting, as the Lightmapping class and its associated baking functions are strictly restricted to the UnityEditor namespace and are stripped during the build process.
Standalone builds cannot generate or update Lightmapping data because the Progressive Lightmapper is an Editor-only tool, forcing developers to rely on real-time alternatives or custom solutions.
Currently, Unity does not provide a built-in solution for Lightmapping at runtime within a standalone build. This constraint impacts the development of your level editor and similar tools that require efficient pre-computed lighting for dynamically generated scenes, as real-time lighting often impacts performance. To manage lighting in your level editor, follow these architectural steps:
- Verify that the Lightmapping engine is not invoked in runtime scripts to avoid compilation errors during the build phase.
- Implement
Adaptive Probe Volumes(APV) to provide high-quality global illumination that can be adjusted more flexibly than traditional Lightmapping. - Use
ReflectionProbe.RenderProbeto dynamically update specular reflections when your level editor environment is modified by the user. - Utilize the
GPU Resident Drawerin Unity 6 to optimize the performance of real-time lights, which can serve as a substitute for baked Lightmapping data. - Explore third-party runtime baking plugins that utilize custom compute shaders to bypass the native
UnityEditorrestrictions.
Additional Tips:
- Use
LightmapSettingsto dynamically swap existing baked textures if your level editor utilizes a modular system with pre-defined assets. - Monitor the development of the modular Lightmapping backend, which is intended to decouple baking processes from the Editor in future Unity 6 iterations.
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Content inspired by a Unity discussion post.