Daylight Exterior

Render Mode: Full Lighting
Directional Mode: Dominant Direction or MonoSH
Light Probe Mode: L1 or L2 depending on dynamic-object quality needs
Bounces: 2 to 4
GI Samples: 32 draft, 48 to 64 final
Skylight Samples: 16 to 32
AO: subtle
Indirect Boost: 1
Emissive Boost: 1
Reflection Probes: bake after final lighting and sky setup

Daylight exteriors in VRChat usually do not need SH unless the scene has unusual colored-light complexity. Dominant Direction or MonoSH is often enough.

Prioritize clean shadow shapes, readable sun direction, and stable broad-surface gradients. Outdoor VRChat maps can waste large amounts of memory if terrain, roofs, walls, and distant structures all receive overly aggressive lightmap scale.

tip

For broad outdoor scenes, reduce atlas pressure before upgrading directional mode. Better lightmap grouping is often more valuable than richer directionality on distant geometry.

Use Texel Density and Resolution Control to keep broad outdoor surfaces under control, and use Lightmap Groups only when one area needs special atlas or lighting isolation.