What are the key considerations when baking lightmaps for outdoor scenes?

• A. Mark outdoor objects static, set appropriate lightmap resolution, adjust ambient lighting, sun/sky lighting, bounce settings, and UVs for lightmaps.
• B. Bake lighting only for indoor objects.
• C. Disable ambient lighting.
• D. Use real-time shadows exclusively.

Answer: (A)

Baked outdoor lighting relies on precomputed global illumination to give realistic shading without runtime cost. The best way to capture this for outdoor scenes is to include outdoor geometry in the bake and provide proper lightmapping data and indirect lighting parameters.

Mark outdoor objects as static so the lightmapper can bake their lighting into lightmaps, which lets the engine reuse precomputed lighting at runtime and saves performance. Choose a lightmap resolution that balances detail with memory: too low and large outdoor surfaces become blotchy; too high and you waste texture space and increase bake times. Set ambient lighting to a suitable level since it provides the base illumination where direct sun isn’t touching surfaces, helping create believable overall mood. Configure sun/sky lighting to model the main directional light (the sun) and the sky’s contribution, so shadows and indirect light match outdoor conditions. Adjust bounce settings to control how much light reflects off surfaces between passes; this shapes how bright and diffuse the scene feels, especially on the ground, walls, and foliage. Ensure UVs for lightmaps are properly laid out (non-overlapping, appropriately scaled) so the baked lighting samples map cleanly to each surface without seams or artifacts.

Together, these steps produce stable, high-quality baked lighting for outdoor environments. The other options fall short because baking only indoor objects omits outdoor illumination, disabling ambient lighting removes global illumination entirely, and relying on real-time shadows alone is costly and defeats the purpose of precomputed lightmaps for outdoor scenes.