What is the concept of Lightmap Resolution and how does it affect scene quality and memory?

• A. Lightmap Resolution determines how many textures are used.
• B. Lightmap Resolution determines texel density of baked lightmaps; higher resolution improves quality but increases memory usage and bake time.
• C. Lightmap Resolution only affects dynamic lighting during runtime.
• D. Lightmap Resolution changes scene scale.

Answer: (B)

Lightmap Resolution determines texel density of baked lightmaps, meaning how finely lighting information is sampled on surfaces. In Unity, static geometry stores lighting in lightmap textures baked beforehand. Increasing the resolution gives more texels per surface area, so shadows and subtle lighting details become crisper and more accurate, which improves scene quality. But higher fidelity costs more memory to store the larger lightmap textures and longer bake times because the lightmapper has more texels to compute. Dynamic lighting during runtime isn’t affected by lightmap resolution, and it doesn’t change scene scale. To optimize, balance resolution with viewing distance and object importance, and consider compression or separate lightmaps to manage memory and bake time.