Thread by @delaneykingrox

#gamedev DM question.

So lighting comes in two main forms- static lighting and dynamic lighting.

Static lighting is where you precalculate information because it is "static"- i,e, it doesn't move so it doesn't change.

Dynamic lighting is updated on the move.

Static lighting is a hack, and relies on your scene staying still. You can still have dynamic lights in the scene (like your muzzle flash or explosions) but most of the lights and shadows in the world are rendered to textures called light maps.

It basically works the same way you would paint an additive layer over a picture in photoshop to put in lights.

So, with open worlds, you pretty much rely on dynamic lighting for your exterior world. This is because of day/night cycles.

Baking the entire world at every angle and strength a sun can be at for every object in the world?

Not a good idea.

What we can do, however, it bake things like ambient occlusion for objects, and fake bake some of the lights ( for example, lights casting a light and shadow onto just the wall) in the shader.

Interiors may benefit from baking, but not exteriors.

As for baking parts of your scene separately in Unity, I haven't had to do it, so I can't give you any advice.

I suspect you would bake the major modules as separate levels and stream them together to make one continuous level.

I have only needed to work on dynamic levels.

I will leave this open for unity lighting experts to help you. X