Presets, Baking And Storing

Magic Lightmap Switcher provides several ways to bake and store lightmap and other scene data.

1. Presets

Presets provide an easy and fast way to record and save settings for various scene elements. Each preset is actually a snapshot of the scene settings for different lighting options.

1.1 Creating Presets

To create a preset, go to the Storing tab of the MLS Manager window and click "Create New..." in the Presets section.

After clicking this button, a new preset will be created and added to the list, and the Preset Manager window will open, in which you will see the options for the preset you just created.

Now you can press the "Start Recording" button to activate the preset recording mode. MLS will capture any changes you make to the supported objects of the scene or project. When any changes are committed, the object will be added to the appropriate group in the preset.

When you have made all the necessary changes to the scene, you can duplicate the preset, then start recording the active preset again and make new changes. Eventually, you will see a list of presets you have created in the MLS Manager window.

1.1 Baking Presets

When you click on the "Load" button next to the corresponding preset, the settings recorded in the preset will be applied to the scene. Then, you can start baking in Once, Queue mode, or just start baking manually as usual.

1.1.1 Once

Options are available in this mode:

• Store Baked Lightmap - available if you have already baked the scene. This starts the process of saving the data of the currently baked lightmap.

Please note that this option is available if you already have baked lightmaps, make sure that the baked lighting matches the preset.

• Bake And Store Lightmap - starts the baking process of the loaded preset and automatically stores data after baking is completed.

1.1.2 Queue

In this mode, you can bake all the presets you have created automatically. After clicking the "Bake And Store Lightmaps Queue" button, the process of sequentially baking and saving all presets selected in the "Presets" list will be started. For more information about all options, see here.

2. Manual

In this case, there are two workflow options:

• You set up the lighting on the scene and bake it using standard methods. In this case, after the baking is completed, you will only need to set the name of the lightmap and click the "Store Baked Lightmap" button.

• You set up the lighting on the scene, assign a name of the lightmap, and click the "Bake And Store Lightmap" button. After that, the baking process will be started and the baked data will be automatically saved.

Since you are not creating presets in this workflow, MLS does not know which objects it needs to track in order to then interpolate in lighting scenarios. This is easy to fix, you need to open a special MLS Tracker overlay and manually specify which MLS objects in the scene or project it should register changes.

Please note that if you are using Adaptive Probe Volumes, you will need to manually create lighting scenarios in Baking Set so that MLS can control the blending of presets of the built-in APV Unity system. The names of the presets must match the names that you assign to the lightmaps before saving.

Don't forget to activate the scenario in the Baking Set for which you are baking the lighting at the moment.