The Lighting window

The Lighting window (menu: Window > Rendering > Lighting) is the main control point for Unity’s lighting features. You can use the Lighting window to adjust settings related to the lighting in your Scene, and to optimise your precomputed lighting data for quality, bake time, and storage space.

Related APIs

You can perform many of the functions available in the Lighting window in scriptsA piece of code that allows you to create your own Components, trigger game events, modify Component properties over time and respond to user input in any way you like. More info
See in Glossary, using the LightingSettings and Lightmapping APIs.

Lighting window layout

The Lighting window contains the following elements:

• The Scene tab
• The Environment tab
• The Realtime Lightmaps tab
• The Baked Lightmaps tab
• The control area, at the bottom of the window

The Scene tab

The SceneA Scene contains the environments and menus of your game. Think of each unique Scene file as a unique level. In each Scene, you place your environments, obstacles, and decorations, essentially designing and building your game in pieces. More info
See in Glossary tab displays information about the Lighting Settings Asset that is assigned to the active Scene. If no Lighting Settings Asset is assigned to the active Scene, it displays information about the default LightingSettings object.

The Scene tab is divided into several sections:

• Lighting Settings Asset controls
• Lighting settings - Realtime Lighting, Mixed Lighting and Lightmapping settings
• Workflow Settings

Lighting Settings Asset controls

Use the controls in this section to assign a Lighting Settings Asset to the active Scene, or to create a new Lighting Settings Asset.

Property:	Function:
Lighting Settings	The Lighting Settings Asset assigned to the active Scene.
New Lighting Settings	Click this button to generate a new Lighting Settings Asset in your Project, and automatically assign the new Lighting Settings Asset to the active Scene.

Lighting Settings

Use this section to view and edit the properties of the Lighting Settings Asset or LightingSettings object assigned to the current Scene. See Lighting Settings Asset.

Workflow settings

This section contains settings that help you debug your Scene.

Property:		Function:
GPU Baking Device		Use this to change the GPU that Unity uses for precomputing lighting data. This property is visible only when you use the GPU Progressive Lightmapper backend.
Light Probe Visualization		Use this to filter which Light ProbesLight probes store information about how light passes through space in your scene. A collection of light probes arranged within a given space can improve lighting on moving objects and static LOD scenery within that space. More info See in Glossary are visualized in the Scene viewAn interactive view into the world you are creating. You use the Scene View to select and position scenery, characters, cameras, lights, and all other types of Game Object. More info See in Glossary. The default value is Only Probes Used By Selection.
	Only Probes Used By Selection	Only Light Probes that affect the current selection are visualized in the Scene view.
	All Probes No Cells	All Light Probes are visualized in the Scene view.
	All Probes With Cells	All Light Probes are visualized in the Scene view, and the tetrahedrons that are used for interpolation of Light Probe data are also displayed.
	None	No Light Probes are visualized in the Scene view.
Display Weights		When enabled, Unity draws a line from the Light Probe used for the active selection to the positions on the tetrahedra used for interpolation. This is a way to debug probe interpolation and placement problems.
Display Occlusion		When enabled, Unity displays occlusion data for Light Probes if the Lighting Mode is set to ShadowmaskA Texture that shares the same UV layout and resolution with its corresponding lightmap. More info See in Glossary.
Highlight Invalid Cells		Enable to highlight tetrahedrons that Unity can’t use for indirect lighting. For example if the Light Probes are very close together.
Recalculate Environment Lighting		When enabled, Unity automatically calculates environment lighting using the SkyManager for all open scenes, if you haven’t generated precomputed lighting data.

The Environment tab

The Environment tab contains settings related to environmental lighting effects for the current Scene. The contents depend on the render pipelineA series of operations that take the contents of a Scene, and displays them on a screen. Unity lets you choose from pre-built render pipelines, or write your own. More info
See in Glossary that your Project uses.

The Environment tab is divided into two sections:

• Environment
• Other settings

Environment

The Environment section contains lighting-related settings and controls that apply to the environmental lighting in the current scene, such as the Skybox, diffuse lighting and reflections.

Property:		Function:
Skybox Material		A Skybox is a Material that appears behind everything else in the Scene to simulate the sky or other distant background. Use this property to choose the Skybox you want to use for the Scene. The default value is the built-in Default Skybox.
Sun Source		Select a Light to use as the sun in your Scene. Unity uses this Light to simulate the effect of sun position and intensity on the Skybox and your Scene. If you set this to None, Unity considers the brightest directional light in the Scene the sun. Lights whose Render Mode property is set to Not Important do not affect the Skybox. For more information about the Render Mode setting, see the Additional settings section of Lights.
Realtime Shadow Color		Define the color that Unity uses to render real-time shadows in Subtractive Lighting Mode.
Environment Lighting		This section contains settings that affect ambient light in the current Scene.
Source		Use this to define a source color for ambient light in the Scene. The default value is SkyboxA special type of Material used to represent skies. Usually six-sided. More info See in Glossary.
	Skybox	Use the colors of the Skybox set in Skybox Material to determine the ambient light coming from different angles. This allows for more precise effects than Gradient.
	Gradient	Choose separate colors for ambient light from the sky, horizon and ground, and blend smoothly between them.
	Color	Use a flat color for all ambient light.
Intensity Multiplier		Use this to set the brightness of the ambient light in the Scene, defined as a value between 0 and 8. The default value is 1.
Environment Reflections		This section contains global settings for Reflection ProbeA rendering component that captures a spherical view of its surroundings in all directions, rather like a camera. The captured image is then stored as a Cubemap that can be used by objects with reflective materials. More info See in Glossary baking, and settings that affect global reflections.
Source		Use this setting to specify whether you want to use the Skybox for reflection effects, or a Cubemap of your choice. The default value is Skybox.
	Skybox	Select this to use the Skybox as the reflection source.
	Custom	Select this to use either a Cubemap asset or a RenderTexture of type cube for reflections.
Resolution		Use this to set the resolution of the Skybox for reflection purposes. This property is visible only when Source is set to Skybox.
CubemapA collection of six square textures that can represent the reflections in an environment or the skybox drawn behind your geometry. The six squares form the faces of an imaginary cube that surrounds an object; each face represents the view along the directions of the world axes (up, down, left, right, forward and back). More info See in Glossary		Use this to specify the Cubemap to use for reflection purposes. This property is visible only when Source is set to Cubemap.
CompressionA method of storing data that reduces the amount of storage space it requires. See Texture Compression, Animation Compression, Audio Compression, Build Compression. See in Glossary		Use this to define whether or not reflection textures are compressed. The default setting is Auto.
	Auto	The reflection texture is compressed if the compression format is suitable.
	Uncompressed	The reflection texture is stored in memory uncompressed.
	Compressed	The texture is compressed.
Intensity Multiplier		The degree to which the reflection source is visible in reflective objects.
Bounces		A reflection bounce occurs when a reflection from one object is then reflected by another object. Use this property to set how many times the Reflection Probes evaluate bounces back and forth between objects. If this is set to 1, then Unity only takes the initial reflection (from the skybox or cube map specified in the Reflection Source property) into account.

Other Settings

The Other Settings section contains settings for fog, HalosThe glowing light areas around light sources, used to give the impression of small dust particles in the air. More info
See in Glossary, Flares and Cookies.

			Property:	Function:
FogA post-processing effect that overlays a color onto objects depending on the distance from the camera. Use this to simulate fog or mist in outdoor environments, or to hide clipping of objects near the camera’s far clip plane. More info See in Glossary				Enables or disables fog in the Scene. Note that fog is not available with the Deferred rendering path.
	Color			Use the color picker to set the color Unity uses to draw fog in the Scene.
	Mode			Define the way in which the fogging accumulates with distance from the cameraA component which creates an image of a particular viewpoint in your scene. The output is either drawn to the screen or captured as a texture. More info See in Glossary.
		Linear		Fog density increases linearly with distance.
			Start	Set the distance from the Camera at which the fog starts.
			End	Set the distance from the Camera at which the fog completely obscures Scene GameObjectsThe fundamental object in Unity scenes, which can represent characters, props, scenery, cameras, waypoints, and more. A GameObject’s functionality is defined by the Components attached to it. More info See in Glossary.
		Exponential		Fog density increases exponentially with distance.
			Density	Use this to control the density of the fog. The fog appears more dense as the Density increases.
		Exponential Squared		Fog density increases faster with distance (exponentially and squared).
			Density	Use this to control the density of the fog. The fog appears more dense as the Density increases.
Halo Texture				Set the Texture you want to use for drawing a Halo around lights.
Halo Strength				Define the visibility of Halos around Lights, from a value between 0 and 1.
Flare Fade Speed				Define the time (in seconds) over which lens flaresA component that simulates the effect of lights refracting inside a camera lens. Use a Lens Flare to represent very bright lights or add atmosphere to your scene. More info See in Glossary fade from view after initially appearing. This is set to 3 by default.
Flare Strength				Define the visibility of lens flares from lights, from a value between 0 and 1.
Spot Cookie				Set the Cookie texture you want to use for Spot Lights. The default is ‘Soft’. To revert to ‘Soft’, select None.

The Realtime Lightmaps tab

The Realtime LightmapsA pre-rendered texture that contains the effects of light sources on static objects in the scene. Lightmaps are overlaid on top of scene geometry to create the effect of lighting. More info
See in Glossary tab shows a list of all lightmaps generated by the EnlightenA lighting system by Geomerics used in Unity for lightmapping and for Enlighten Realtime Global Illumination. More info
See in Glossary Realtime Global IlluminationA group of techniques that model both direct and indirect lighting to provide realistic lighting results.
See in Glossary system in the current Scene. If Enlighten Realtime Global Illumination is not enabled in your Project, this tab will be empty.

The Baked Lightmaps tab

This tab shows a list of all lightmaps generated by lightmapperA tool in Unity that bakes lightmaps according to the arrangement of lights and geometry in your scene. More info
See in Glossary for the current Scene, along with the Lighting Data Asset. If Baked Global Illumination is not enabled in your Project, this tab will be empty.

Control area

Controls for precomputing lighting data are at the bottom of the Lighting window.

Property:	Function:
Auto Generate	If Auto Generate is enabled, Unity precomputes lighting data automatically when you make changes to the Scene. This data includes lightmaps for the Baked Global Illumination system, lightmaps for the Enlighten Realtime Global Illumination system, Light Probes, and Reflection Probes. Unity usually begins the bake a few seconds after you make a change to the Scene. If Auto Generate is disabled, you must manually invoke a bake yourself, using the Generate Lighting button in the Lighting window, or the Lightmapping.Bake or Lightmapping.BakeAsync APIs. When you precompute lighting data using Auto Generate, Unity does not store the Scene’s precomputed lighting data as Assets in your Project. Instead, Unity stores this data in memory and serializes it as part of the Scene. This property is only available if the active Scene has a Lighting Settings Asset assigned to it. Note: From Unity Editor version 2022.2, Auto Generate mode is unavailable when the Entities package is installed. When you generate lighting in a project where you have installed the Entities package, the Unity Editor opens all loaded subscenes, which may slow down Editor performance.
Generate Lighting	Click the Generate Lighting button to precompute lighting data for all open Scenes. This data includes lightmaps for the Baked Global Illumination system, lightmaps for the Enlighten Realtime Global Illumination system, Light Probes, and Reflection Probes. Click the dropdown menu on the right hand side of the Generate Lighting and then click Bake Reflection Probes to bake only the Reflection Probes for all open Scenes. Click the dropdown menu on the right hand side of the Generate Lighting and then click Clear Baked Data to clear all precomputed lighting data from all open Scenes without clearing the GI CacheThe cached intermediate files used when Unity precomputes lighting data. Unity keeps this cache to speed up computation. More info See in Glossary. This button is enabled only if Auto Generate is disabled.

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• [Lighting Settings Asset] added in 2020.1 NewIn20201