[Request] Lightmass improvments

Development Rendering
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After writing post on forums I thought I should repost it here for readability.

Since Lightmass is not going away anytime soon I’d like to request some options that would reduce build times and general useability:

  1. Build Only Indirect Lighting - After checking it Lightmass would build only GI Light Cache and Ambient Occlusion. Often we just don’t need baked shadows. Especially for big outdoor areas.
  2. Bake only Light Cache - this option would build only GI Lightcache without any lightmaps (as far I as understrand Lightcache doesn’t need lightmaps as it is all stored inside small “probes” trough the level ?). Again very useful as often only thing needed is GI and there is no point in build rest.
  3. Bake only direct lighting + ambient. No GI or shadows. Just direct and enviromental light bake.
  4. Bake only shadows. Similiar to the 3 but also bake shadows.

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2

Thanks for the suggestions. 2, 3 and especially 4 would all be notably faster than a currently lighting build which would provide faster iteration. On the other hand, allowing some components of lighting to be built but not others would create new edge cases and maybe unexpected behavior when loading a map saved with a partial build. It should be ok as long as you know what you remember what you picked.

Note that we’re working on making lightmass builds async, so that you can continue working while Lightmass is doing its thing. That won’t reduce the turnaround time on seeing results, but should allow you to work more efficiently because you can do something else in the meantime.