I was making a modular pipes set, and for some meshes I had to import custom LODs because those generated in-engine changed profile of the mesh too much and lead to visible LOD pop-ins.
After finishing everything, setting up lightmap resolutions, LOD distances, and so on, I baked the light to see if everything’s fine. And then I noticed something odd.
SPECIFICALLY after baking lighting, those props that had custom LOD imported started to display their lightmap density higher than they should, after they switch to the first LOD.
Well, I thought maybe something is wrong with the lightmap channel of the LODs that I imported, so I double checked them, and everything is totally fine.
Then I noticed that if I place the prop on the scene, the lightmap density is consistent between all of its LODs. But after baking, they turn to red on the first LOD and beyond.
What’s more, they don’t even have custom LOD as the first LOD. I.e. a prop with LOD1 generated in-engine, LOD2 imported, LOD3 generated in-engine. And lightmap density begin to change on LOD1.
LOD0
LOD1
If I duplicate the props and set them to show LOD1 (i.e. lighting not baked on the duplicates)
What’s up with this nonsense?
Do I have now to remove all custom LODs and generate in-engine to have uniform lightmap density across the assets? Because I don’t see any other way - there’s no way, that I’m aware of, to individually set the lightmap resolution per LOD, only for the whole mesh altogether (please do not tell me to look under “build” settings in LOD, that’s not the lightmap resolution that the engine will be using, that’s the resolution of a UV channel that will be generated to use for lightmaps).