I am having some issues with my lightmapping. I do have a very complex game area with many many houses, it has been generating 72 lightmaps. It was a long process before (took 4 or 5 hours) but just now, even though the model hasnt changed much, it took 2 days, and then Unit crashed.

There were a few errors alng the way (notmal ones about the UV not being in 0,1 space) which I normally correct by reimporting the thing with generate UVs of lightmapping.

But what are some general rules?

Firstly should ALL my objects be set to Static? Or only ones that I want to RECEIVE shadows, like buildings and terrain. What of objects, that you want to CAST shadows in the lightmap, like lamp-posts or street props. Maybe they dont need to RECEIVE shadows, but you want them to cast...

How can I reduce my lightmapping time (avoiding crashes) without sacrificing shadow quality?

Oh.. and what are Light Probes? (using free version here, is it a Pro Thing?)

And how do people go about handling a VERY big scene, its not an MMO exactly as its a small area, a city-scape, but its dense, with many buildings (maybe 100 havent counted) most are VERY low poly and about 10 are quite high poly as they are interacted with in the game (you can go in doors) Interior rooms are handled in new scenes however.

Basically the game is a multi-player world, but where you go into single player instances for the quests.

Any general advice for this kind of game?

Regards

Mark