Troubleshooting

This is a list of common problems, their symptoms and solutions.

Shadowmasks are not baked

Check following things:

• Bakery's Render Mode is set to Shadowmask.
• Masked lights have both Unity and Bakery light components on them.
• Masked Bakery light components have "Baked contribution" set to "Indirect and shadowmask".

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Shadowmasks are baked, but Unity renders real-time shadows instead

You're in Distance Shadowmask mode, it's expected. Read more about the difference:

https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/LightMode-Mixed-Shadowmask.html

https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/LightMode-Mixed-DistanceShadowmask.html

• To switch between two modes, you can use "Distance Shadowmask" checkbox in Bakery main window.
• If you're on 5.6, go to Window->Lighting->Mixed Lighting->Lighting Mode to switch the mode.

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Using a version control system I copied the scene to another PC and it doesn't look right

Make sure you followed version control guidelines.

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Baking same asset in one scene breaks its UVs in another scene

The reason here is UV padding adjustment. It modifies the UVs in the asset, so spacing between UV charts is optimal, meaning they never leak over each other and there is no much wasted space. Unity has a manual Pack Margin option on model assets, but it’s limited since it applies the same exact value for all meshes inside the model, while each mesh can get drastically different size in the final lightmap based on its surface area. Therefore Bakery overrides it with automatically calculated per-mesh (instead of per-model) padding. However, because “optimal” varies depending on baking resolution, it can be problematic to reuse the same asset in isolated scenes with different lightmap size. There are multiple ways to solve it:

• Generate your own optimal UVs. UV padding adjustment only applies to models with auto-generated UV layout (aka “Generate Lightmap UVs” checkbox) and never touches custom data.
• Use UV padding: increase only checkbox and first bake the lowest resolution scene, and then the rest.
• Just disable UV padding adjustment. Results will be similar to built-in baking.
• Use two different models for different lightmap resolutions, so each will get the most efficient set of UVs.
• Bake both scenes together.
• Lock UVs using Save UV padding to asset

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Denoiser throws error 505 or Unknown error

Update the driver.

If you are using a Kepler GPU, try switching to legacy denoiser.

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I get an “Out of memory” error

This means rendering needed more video memory from your GPU than it has available.

First, try closing any other graphics-intensive programs (browsers too).

If the problem persists, the most likely reason is that the resolution you selected is unreasonably high for the given scene. Resolution is defined by Texels per Unit (this section also has a list of reference values) or set explicitly in Lightmap Groups. Reducing it will help. You can always selectively use high resolution for important objects via Scale in Lightmap.

If the error happens during GI phase, try setting GI VRAM optimization to Force On in advanced settings.

If you have terrains in your scene, make sure Terrain optimization is enabled.

If you have a very high amount of painted trees on your terrain, try disabling the Export terrain trees option.

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After importing Bakery I get errors containing “obsolete” and “UnityUpgradable”

Before importing Bakery, make sure you don't have any compilation errors in your project.

Restart Unity, reimport the package. Click “I made a backup, go ahead” if Unity asks.

See this page for more details.

It is also known that some versions of Unity Hub have a bug preventing API updater from running.

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I get a "Can't load" error

If Bakery says it can't load something, make sure you have enough free disk space on the drive used for temporary data.

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I get a "Launch timeout" error

This error can happen if your GPU took more time than it is allowed by Windows TDR.

• Try lowering the value of Tile Size, especially if it's higher than 512, so baking job is split into smaller chunks.
• Depending on the pass being processed, try lowering the Samples value (e.g. GI samples, Skylight samples, etc).
• Reduce geometric complexity of the scene, if tile size/samples don't help.
• Try disabling Terrain Optimization.
• As a last resort, disable TDR registry keys. This will prevent Windows from resetting the driver, but your computer may appear unresponsive during the bake.

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I have an Android project, and lightmaps don't look good

Android banding artifacts

Texture compression settings

Sometimes, when working on Android projects, you may encounter banding artifacts, with gradients having discrete steps of different hue. This is caused by texture compression and HDR encoding Unity uses for this platform, which often turns out to be "Double LDR" (see details). The problem is not exclusive to Bakery and will as well happen with built-in lightmaps.

Select lightmap assets and set texture compression quality to High or None (try both).

Note that setting it to None will use more video memory on the device.

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I get too many lightmaps

Possible causes are:

• Texels Per Unit value is high or Max Resolution is low. Bakery packs objects from open scenes into multiple lightmap atlases and packs them as rectangles (in a fashion similar to this) with their size dependent on (surface area * texels per unit). If some object can't fit into existing atlases, a new one is allocated. New atlases are always as large as the Max Resolution parameter, or smaller (but not smaller than Min Resolution), if the estimated surface area of remaining unpacked objects is below some threshold. You can also increase Min Resolution a bit, replacing a bunch of small (but dense) maps with a few large (but possibly with some empty space).
• If you bake multiple open scenes and Split by scene checkbox is on, different scenes will never share the same lightmap, therefore multiplying their count.
• If Terrain optimization is on, terrains will always use a separate lightmap.

Pre-atlasing your scene in your modelling package of choice and using the Original UV mode instead of relying on the auto-atlaser can significantly improve packing effectiveness.

Since v1.71 Bakery prints number of future used lightmaps to console when enabling/refreshing Checker Preview. You can experiment with resolution/density settings until the desired value is printed.

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I get jagged shadows

Jagged shadow mitigation

Apparently you are baking very sharp shadows at low resolution. Try increasing shadow spread parameter on the light (direct or point) and optionally enable bicubic interpolation.

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"Exporting scene - preparing" is taking too long

• Try setting Atlas Packer to Default.
• Make sure you use reasonable Texels Per Unit value.

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Stuck at "Waiting for Unity to initialize the probes..."

There isn't much Bakery can do about the logic of Unity lighting data asset generation (there is no API in the engine to control it at the moment). Try to focus editor window (especially scene view) to wake Unity up.

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Baked prefabs instantiated at runtime in a build have no lightmaps

Because Unity technically has no support for prefabs having lightmaps, it can omit lightmapped shader versions from builds, not realizing they are needed. You can fix it by going to Shader stripping settings and enabling lightmap modes you use.

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Speedtrees look fine in the editor, but black in builds

Also related to shader stripping. See the prefab solution.

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HDRI produces scattered bright spots (fireflies)

Typical "fireflies"

Removing sun from HDRI

This artefact comes from the fact your HDRI has very bright, yet very small parts, typically sun. Rays will miss it often, producing occasional spots when they don't. This problem is well known in many offline ray tracers as well.

• Use Direct Light for the sun
• Remove sun from HDRI (also recommended by Unity)
• Possibly downsample/blur the HDRI

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