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Unity Engine

Debug Draw Modes for lighting reference

Explore the Debug Draw Modes in the Scene view to understand and debug the lighting in your scene.
Read time 5 minutesLast updated 13 days ago
The Scene view has several Debug Draw Modes to help you understand and debug the lighting in your scene.
Use the Scene view View Options toolbar to select a Debug Draw Mode.
If you use the Universal Rendering Pipeline or the High Definition Render Pipeline, not all the modes appear. You can use the Rendering Debugger window to debug lighting in these pipelines.

Lighting

Contributors / Receivers

A wooden village scene in Contributors / Receivers mode. Most of the geometry is orange and doesn't contribute to global illumination. The green rock and post receive global illumination from lightmaps, and the purple shields receive global illumination from Light Probes.

The Contributors / Receivers mode displays the following colors depending on whether objects contribute to and receive global illumination:
  • Orange means the object doesn't contribute to global illumination. To change this, use the Contribute GI flag in the object's Static Editor Flags property.
  • Green means the object receives global illumination from lightmaps. To change this, use the Receive Global Illumination setting in the object's Mesh Renderer component.
  • Blue means the object receives global illumination from Light Probes. To change this, use the Receive Global Illumination setting in the object's Mesh Renderer component.
You can customize the colors that appear in the Contributors / Receivers debug draw mode. For more information, refer to Scene color preferences.

Shadow Cascades

A wooden village scene in Shadow Cascades mode. The closest geometry is purple to represent the first shadow cascade. Geometry that's further away, for example the rear of a house, is green. The furthest geometry, for example a hill behind the houses, is yellow.

The Shadow Cascades mode displays a different color for each shadow cascade. The colors match the shadow cascade colors in the Shadows section of the Quality Settings window.
You can use this mode to help you adjust the shadow distance, cascade count and cascade shadow splits.
This mode uses the Scene view far plane instead of the shadow distance. You might need to reduce the shadow distance if you want to match the in-game behavior of a camera with a small far plane distance.

Global Illumination

The following modes are enabled when you use Enlighten Realtime Global Illumination or Baked Global Illumination.

Indirect (Realtime Global Illumination only)

A wooden village scene in Indirect mode. Each GameObject displays a checkerboard pattern representing lightmap texels.

The Indirect mode displays the realtime lightmaps generated by Enlighten Realtime Global Illumination.

Directionality

A wooden village scene in Directionality mode. Each GameObject displays a similar checkerboard pattern to Indirect mode, using a different color depending on the direction the geometry faces.

The Directionality mode displays the dominant light direction as a color. Refer to Directional Mode for more information.

Albedo

A wooden village scene in Albedo mode. Each GameObject displays a similar checkerboard pattern to Indirect mode, using the albedo color of the material.

The Albedo mode displays the albedo color of materials.

Emissive

A wooden village scene in Emissive mode. Each GameObject displays a similar checkerboard pattern to Indirect mode, using a dark color where there's no emission.

The Emissive mode displays the emissive color of emissive materials.

UV Charts

A wooden village scene in UV Charts mode. Each GameObject displays a similar checkerboard pattern to Indirect mode, using a different color for each UV chart.

The UV Charts mode displays a different color for each UV chart.
You can use this mode to check how lightmaps scale onto geometry. Change the scale using settings such as Resolution in the Lightmap Parameters Asset, or the Scale in Lightmap property of individual renderers.

Systems (Realtime Global Illumination only)

A wooden village scene in Systems mode. Each GameObject displays a similar checkerboard pattern to Indirect mode, using a different color for each group of GameObjects.

The Systems mode displays a different color for each group of clusters (systems) that Enlighten Realtime Global Illumination creates to generate realtime lightmaps.
Refer to How Enlighten Realtime Global Illumination works for more information.

Clustering (Realtime Global Illumination only)

A wooden village scene in Clustering mode. Each GameObject displays a bright multicolored patchwork pattern that represents lightmap clusters.

The Clustering mode displays a different color for each cluster Enlighten Realtime Global Illumination creates to generate realtime lightmaps.
Large scenes might generate more clusters than Unity can store in memory. To reduce the number of clusters, use the Cluster Resolution setting in the Lightmap Parameters Asset to adjust the ratio of clusters to geometry.
Refer to How Enlighten Realtime Global Illumination works for more information.

Lit Clustering (Realtime Global Illumination only)

A wooden village scene in Lit Clustering mode. Each GameObject displays a similar patchwork pattern to Clustering mode, using more muted colors that represent both different clusters and lightmap color.

The Lit Clustering mode displays a different color for each cluster Enlighten Realtime Global Illumination creates to generate realtime lightmaps, and applies color from the realtime lightmaps.

Texel Validity (Baked Global Illumination only)

A wooden village scene in Texel Validity mode. Most of the scene is green to represent valid texels, but some of the edges of walls and GameObjects are red to represent invalid texels.

The Texel Validity mode displays red on a surface if the baked lightmap texel is invalid. Unity marks a texel as invalid when the lightmapping process emits rays from the surface and hits mostly backfaces. Unity tries to interpolate a color for an invalid texel by looking at neighboring valid texels.
To adjust the threshold for marking texels as invalid, use the Backface Tolerance setting in the Lightmap Parameters Asset.

UV Overlap (Baked Global Illumination only)

A wooden village scene in UV Overlap mode. Small red areas on the edges of a small building highlight UV overlaps.

The UV Overlap mode displays red if a baked lightmap texel is too close to a texel in another lightmap chart, which might cause aliasing, pixelation and other issues. Refer to Fixing lightmap UV overlap for more information.

Lightmap indices (Baked Global Illumination only)

A wooden village scene in Lightmap Indices mode. Different GameObjects are different pastel colors, to represent different lightmaps.

The Lightmap indices mode displays a different color for each baked lightmap.

Light Overlap (Baked Global Illumination only)

A wooden village scene in Light Overlap mode. Five light sources are visible. Four are white and contribute to the shadow mask textures. The fifth is red and displays a light cone, and doesn't contribute.

If you use the Shadowmask Lighting Mode, the Light Overlap mode displays a light volume as red if the light doesn't contribute to the baked shadow mask textures. This means there are more than 4 light volumes that overlap, so the highlighted light has to fall back to fully baked. Refer to Light Mode: Shadowmask for more information.

Baked Lightmap (Baked Global Illumination only)

A wooden village scene in Baked Lightmap mode. All the GameObjects have a dense checkerboard pattern to represent lightmap texels.

The Baked Lightmap mode displays the lightmaps generated by Baked Global Illumination.

Shadowmask (Baked Global Illumination only)

A wooden village scene in Shadowmask mode. All the GameObjects display the same dense checkerboard pattern as Baked Lightmap mode, but are now red to represent the shadow mask texture.

If you use the Shadowmask Lighting Mode, the
Shadowmask

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mode displays the baked shadow mask textures. Refer to Light Mode: Shadowmask for more information.

Lighting Visualization overlay reference

The properties in the Lighting Visualization overlay depend on the Debug Draw Mode you select.

Property

Description

Lighting DataSelect whether Unity uses the current baked lightmaps in the Debug Draw Mode, or temporary lightmaps that Unity rebakes when you update the scene. Refer to Preview lightmapping for more information. The options are:
  • Baked: Use the current baked lightmaps.
  • Preview: Use temporary lightmaps that Unity rebakes when you update the scene.
Show Lightmap ResolutionUse a checkerboard pattern to display the resolution of lightmaps. Each check is one pixel in a lightmap.
Highlight Back-Facing GeometryDisplay back-facing geometry. The default color is purple.
Adjust Lightmap ExposureRaise or lower the brightness of the lightmap colors, to help make the range of colors more visible. The default value is 0.

Color preferences

You can customize the colors that the Contributors / Receivers debug draw mode and the Highlight Back-Facing Geometry option use. For more information, refer to Scene color preferences.

Additional resources