Cross-platform GPU lightmap baker built on Unity Compute Shaders. Path-traced GI, NLM denoiser, IES, portals, SSS. AMD/NVIDIA/Intel — no CUDA, no native plugins. Optional inline DXR.NovaBake — Cross-Platform GPU Lightmap BakerBake production-quality lightmaps on ANY GPU — AMD, NVIDIA, or Intel.Pure Unity Compute Shaders. No CUDA, no OptiX, no external executables,no native plugins. Optional inline DXR hardware ray tracing on Unity2023.2+ with silent software fallback.=== CORE PATH TRACER ===• BVH-accelerated GPU path tracing on Unity Compute Shaders (SAH-basedbuild with 32-bin binning, stack-based traversal, Möller–Trumboreintersection).• Multi-bounce global illumination (1–8 bounces, Russian Roulette,next-event estimation with MIS).• Direct lighting for Directional, Point, Spot, Rectangle, and DiskArea lights with stratified jittered sampling.• Sun disc soft shadows for directional lights.• Emissive mesh lights with NEE.• HDRI / skybox importance sampling.• Light portals (NovaBakeLightPortal) for interior apertures withbalance-heuristic MIS against sky importance sampling.• IES photometric profiles (LM-63 1991 / 1995 / 2002 with TILT).• Subsurface scattering / translucency approximation (NovaBakeSSS).• Hemisphere ambient occlusion with configurable radius and intensity.• Light linking (atlas-granularity rendering-layer mask).=== LIGHTMAP OUTPUT ===• Shadow Mask (up to 4 Mixed lights per texel) for Unity's Shadowmaskmode.• Light Probes (SH L2) baked from LightProbeGroup positions.• Directional Lightmap (SH L1) for normal-map-aware bounce response.• Reflection Probe baking with Auto-detect / On / Off mode.• Output formats: RGBM PNG, HDR EXR, TGA.• Per-atlas assignment via Unity LightmapSettings.• Prefab-friendly persistence via NovaBakeLightmapInfo.=== QUALITY AND DENOISING ===• NLM (Non-Local Means with feature buffers) — industry-standard offlinepath-traced denoiser, default for the High preset. The same algorithmCycles, Arnold, and RenderMan ship as their reference non-ML option.• A-Trous wavelet denoiser (default for Low / Medium presets, availableon every preset).• SVGF variance-guided denoiser.• OIDN external hook (IDenoiserBackend) — third-party integrations canregister an OIDN backend; the binary is not bundled.• Cycles-grade firefly suppression: per-light direct clamp, per-bounceindirect clamp, neighbourhood firefly filter, soft final-pixel cap.• Variance-based adaptive sampling (texel-targeted refinement).• Texel dilation for seam-free lightmaps.• Deterministic bake seed for reproducible CI bakes.=== GPU PERFORMANCE ===• Hardware ray tracing via inline DXR RayQuery (Unity 2023.2+ with aDXR-capable GPU). Direct shadow rays, indirect closest-hit + shadowrays, and AO traversal all run on the GPU's RT cores. Up to ~1.5×faster than the software BVH on outdoor scenes. On by default; silentsoftware fallback when unavailable.• AMD-tuned Wave64 BVH traversal variant for RDNA hardware.• Wavefront / stream path tracer (experimental) for heavy GI workloads.• Vendor detection with adaptive thread-group sizing.• Async-readback path for atlas export.=== EDITOR WORKFLOW ===• First-Run Wizard.• Quality presets: Low / Medium / High / Custom.• Preset JSON import / export.• Three programmatic demo scenes (NovaBake → Generate Demo Scenes →Interior / Outdoor / Showcase).• Scene density and UV chart overlays.• Scene-view baked lightmap overlay.• Before / After slider.• "Why is this dark?" diagnostics tool.• One-click Repair Current Scene + Fix Project Settings.• Progress bar with phase name + ETA.• Incremental rebake (dirty-object hashing).• Prefab Stage baking (Ctrl+Alt+P).• Batch-mode CLI for CI pipelines (NovaBakeCLI).• Distributed baking across LAN workers (deterministic packing manifest;plain-text TCP, trusted networks only).• Per-renderer scene gizmos (AO radius sphere, GPU workload ETA).• Runtime bicubic (Catmull-Rom 5-tap) lightmap sampler HLSL include forcustom shaders.=== RENDER PIPELINES AND PLATFORMS ===• Built-in Render Pipeline (official).• Universal Render Pipeline (official, auto-detected).• HDRP — bakes run on the generic code path; HDRP-specific features arenot enabled. Built-in or URP recommended.• AMD, NVIDIA, Intel GPUs.• Windows, macOS, Linux Editors.=== REQUIREMENTS ===• Unity 2022.3 LTS or Unity 6 (6000.x).• Built-in or URP render pipeline.• Any GPU with Compute Shader 5.0 support.• Editor-only — zero runtime overhead.Hardware ray tracing additionally requires Unity 2023.2+ and a DXR-capableGPU (AMD RX 6000+, NVIDIA RTX 20-series+, or Intel Arc). NovaBake silentlyfalls back to the software BVH when these requirements are not met.Full source code included. No obfuscation, no binary blobs. Comprehensiveuser guide, feature reference, NLM denoiser deep-dive, and Bakerymigration guide.| Min Unity Version | 2022.3 LTS || Render Pipeline | Built-in, URP || Scripting Backend | Editor-only (irrelevant for runtime) || Platforms | Windows / macOS / Linux Editors || Architecture | x86_64 || Source | Full C# + HLSL included |This package was developed with significant assistance from Claude (Anthropic), used as a coding and shader development assistant throughout the production process.AI-generated content:Compute shaders / HLSL code: All shader code (path tracing kernels, denoising passes, BVH traversal, lightmap accumulation, etc.) was initially generated by Claude based on technical specifications and iteratively refined.C# editor and runtime scripts: Tooling code (editor windows, baking pipeline orchestration, settings UI, asset import/export logic) was drafted by Claude and then reviewed, edited, debugged, and integrated by the developer.Third-party algorithm integration: Implementation of standard image processing algorithms (Non-Local Means denoising and related filtering passes) was set up with Claude's assistance, based on publicly available algorithmic descriptions.Developer contributions:Architecture, feature scope, and product design decisionsManual code review, modification, and refactoring of all AI-generated outputPerformance profiling and optimization on real Unity scenes (AMD RDNA 4 / RX 9060 XT)All testing, debugging, QA, and Unity Editor integrationFinal UX, documentation, and packagingNo AI-generated art, audio, 3D models, or textures are included in this package. All marketing screenshots are captured directly from the Unity Editor showing real baking results produced by the tool.
