Experimental Feature: De-Lighting Tool

Photogrammetry is becoming more and more popular in the CG industry. Being able to use a regular camera as a powerful 3D scanner opens an appealing way of creating realistic 3D assets. However, raw textures generated using this technique contain a lot of lighting information that should be removed. The Unity De-Lighting Tool has been developed to solve this complex problem.

The De-Lighting process requires an environment map that exactly matches the lighting conditions of the captured object. Typically, an environment map should be captured during asset acquisition.

Because the De-Lighting Tool extracts environment lighting directly from the original lit texture, there is no need to capture any extra data for de-lighting.

In addition to the original lit textures, the tool requires the following data (provided in texture maps):

• Ambient occlusion map
• Normal map
• Bent Normal map

These texture maps can be baked in Knald, xNormal, Substance Designer or any other baking tool.

Once lighting is removed, the texture can be used as an Albedo map in a standard PBR material. The resulting asset can be correctly shaded.

The De-Lighting Tool project and documentation can be downloaded from:

Unity Github

News, feedback and support are available on this thread:

De-Lighting Tool thread