Hi there, I’ve created an external level to test baked lighting on the static meshes I create . I’m making use of the ‘Lightmap Density’ viewport visualiser to check to see if my density is okay. As you can see, the majority of the model is green bar a couple of red bits.
The thing is, I started at a lightmap resolution of 512 and started going down until the mesh turned green. The lightmap resolution is sitting at around 90 now and I’m confused as to how this is correct. Is that literally applying a 90x90 pixel lightmap to my mesh? That’s pretty low isn’t it?
I’m not sure if I have my ‘ideal density’ set up correctly as seen in the image below. That’s what I’ve been using to judge the density.
Here’s what my model looks like after the bake has done and honestly it looks pretty good but I’ve been watching tutorials where people have been putting 1024 lightmaps on things far smaller than this desk.
It really depends on what you are doing. I start with a high resolution, and then gradually lower it until performance and quality are balanced. An Arch-Vis project would have a much denser lightmap than a regular video game. Also, you should be using a power of two (e.g. 128) for your lightmap resolution.
The Ideal Density is a goal-setting tool. When it’s at 0.2, it’s showing that in the viewport when turning on lightmap density view mode as compared with the actual lightmap resolution on the mesh and from the lights. It’s more of an average to contrast with or measure, as I understand it, as opposed to showing you the actual performance of the lighting and mesh settings.
In the Unreal info on it (in the doc pages), it’s from blue to green to red, right? So, at 0.2, the Ideal Density, I think, is at the 20% point along that spectrum. But this is in relation to the lightmap resolutions in the scene. So, the lowest lightmap resolution is the blue, and the highest is red in terms of an Ideal Density. When your actual highest LM resolution in the scene is 1024 or 512, and the lowest is 32, you’ve only got 3 resolution values between those high and low ones (64, 128, 256)…making the Ideal value a stringent reference point in the spectrum as it’s comparing your lightmaps against a mid-range value, such as 128 (which is a low resolution for some lightmaps that require detailed shading or certain kinds of shading in lights). Try raising the Maximum Density value under Build settings in the Density Rendering Options, and it’ll probably turn the red areas to orange or yellow at least. Otherwise, I suggest trying a different mode of measuring lightmaps quality in the scene.
