Unity 2018 Shaders and Effects Cookbook

Baking lights in your scene

Rendering lighting is a very expensive process. Even with state-of-the-art GPUs, accurately calculating the light transport (which is how light bounces between surfaces) can take hours. In order to make this process feasible for games, real-time rendering is essential. Modern engines compromise between realism and efficiency; most of the computation is done beforehand in a process called light baking. This recipe will explain how light baking works and how you can get the most out of it.