Mastering Unity 2017 Game Development with C# - Second Edition

Dynamic lighting

Dynamic lighting is the opposite of baked lighting. With baked lighting, all lighting information is precalculated, that is, calculated ahead of runtime. Dynamic lighting, however, is calculated at runtime. This means that Unity accepts all lights affecting an object as input, the object itself, and its surrounding objects, and then produces the best lighting approximation it can. The upside of dynamic lighting is that it changes and updates in real time as objects transform in the scene. The downside is computational expense (it's expensive) and realism, as quality sacrifices are made to produce lighting effects in real time. In short, you never want to use dynamic lighting unless you absolutely have to! Thankfully, Unity ...