Static vs. Dynamic Lighting. When to use each one?

Development Rendering
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1

Hi there!

So I’ve been learning a lot about Lighting lately but something still bugs me:

I’m not sure when to go with pre-built lighting vs. going fully dynamic.

I know building times must be taken in consideration, plus lightmap storage in memory vs GPU calls, but when does one thing outweigh the other?

Do you have any general guidelines you follow when trying to pick which way to go?

2

You would go with dynamic lighting only if:

  • You require variable lighting
    conditions, that require slowly
    changing from one to another, across
    either whole game world or its large
    parts, such as time of day changing.
  • Your game levels are procedurally
    generated(there might be some
    exceptions).
  • Your game levels are being altered
    during in real-time.
  • Your game world is simply to large to
    be light-mapped.

For anything not mentioned here, make full use of static or combined static and dynamic lighting.

3

Cool, thanks for your answer!

4

What do you mean by - world to large. Are there any concrete parameters for the size?