Texel Density and Resolution Control

Texel density is one of the fastest ways to improve or destroy a Bakery bake. In VRChat world production, it directly affects lightmap quality, atlas count, runtime memory, and how believable the world looks at player height.

Bakery calls the main control Texels Per Unit. This is the approximate number of lightmap texels per world unit, and it affects both the amount and resolution of generated lightmaps. The Bakery manual assumes the scene is roughly scaled so that 1 Unity unit = 1 meter.

Common first mistakes

• Raising global Texels Per Unit too early
• Ignoring atlas count while chasing sharper bakes
• Spending too much resolution on distant roofs, backsides, or filler geometry

The Main Controls

Global Texels Per Unit

This is the base resolution target for the whole bake. Higher values increase detail, but also push up atlas count, lightmap size, and VRAM use.

Bakery's manual gives these example starting ranges:

• Large outdoor area: 1 to 5
• Medium outdoor area: 10 to 20
• High quality interior: 100

For VRChat, treat those as starting references, not hard rules. The right choice depends on how much of the world players actually inspect at close range, how many surfaces are player-facing, and how aggressive your memory budget needs to be.

Unity Scale in Lightmap

Scale in Lightmap on the renderer adjusts an object's contribution relative to the global texel target.

This is one of the most important tools for VRChat optimization because it lets you spend resolution where players actually look without globally inflating the whole world.

Bakery also notes an important behavior: if Scale in Lightmap = 0, the object is not baked, but it still casts shadows and affects GI.

Scale per Map Type

Bakery can scale the resolution of color, shadowmask, and direction maps differently. This is useful when one part of the baked data deserves more detail than another.

This setting changes the final texture scale after rendering, so it is mainly a runtime and storage tradeoff tool, not a bake-time shortcut.

Max Resolution

Max resolution sets the upper lightmap size limit. If objects cannot fit in one map at the current texel density, Bakery allocates additional lightmaps.

For VRChat, this means texel density and atlas count must be judged together. A bake can look sharp but still be a bad fit if it explodes into too many atlases.

How VRChat Creators Should Think About Texel Density

World-scale surfaces can eat memory very quickly. In a VRChat world, player-facing surfaces deserve density first.

Prioritize these before distant or low-value surfaces:

• floors players stand on
• eye-level walls
• counters, bars, tables, and hand-height fixtures
• props near mirrors
• signage and important emissive features
• social focal points like stages, booths, lounges, and club floors

Lower priority surfaces often include:

• distant rooftops
• inaccessible backsides of buildings
• high-up trim no one inspects
• broad low-detail filler geometry

Atlas count is often the better warning signal than raw texel ambition alone. If your chosen texel density creates too many atlases, the problem is already visible before you even evaluate final beauty.

Practical VRChat Starting Tendencies

Scenario	Global TPU Tendency	Mesh-Level Adjustment Strategy
Large outdoor world	Low	Raise only key paths, signs, entrances, and player-facing landmarks
Medium neighborhood, alley, or street world	Moderate	Keep broad surfaces modest, then push social areas and close-range props
Small high-quality interior or club room	High	Start higher globally, then trim ceilings, hidden backsides, and low-value filler
Mixed world with one hero zone	Low to moderate	Keep the world conservative and push only the hero zone with per-object scale or a manual group

How to Tune Without Blowing Up Memory

1. Start from a reasonable global Texels Per Unit value.
2. Turn on Checker preview to see lightmap texel size before baking.
3. Use Atlas preview to inspect how many atlases the scene is about to create.
4. Raise density only where players actually inspect surfaces.
5. Lower Scale in Lightmap on low-value meshes before raising global density.
6. Re-check close-range materials, avatar lighting, and scene readability in the VRChat client.

Bakery's checker preview is especially useful here because it shows both texel size and how objects are split into different future lightmaps. The manual also notes one caveat: terrain texel sizes are not shown correctly in checker preview, so terrains need extra scrutiny.

tip

Use checker preview and atlas preview before committing to a rebake. They are one of the fastest ways to catch an over-ambitious density setup early.

Best Practices for VRChat Worlds

• Prefer local per-object tuning over globally raising density.
• Treat texel density as a visibility budget, not a prestige number.
• Match density to gameplay and social use, not just screenshot composition.
• Re-check avatar lighting and close-range materials after big density changes.
• Watch atlas count as closely as you watch visual sharpness.
• Be especially careful with terrains and very large meshes.

Common Symptoms

Symptom	Likely Cause	Better Fix
Too many lightmap atlases	Global TPU is too high	Lower TPU first, then restore detail with local scale
One room looks soft but the rest is fine	Local surfaces are under-scaled	Raise Scale in Lightmap only for that room's important meshes
Distant roofs are consuming too much space	Large low-value meshes are scaled too high	Reduce per-object scale on low-priority geometry
Bake quality improved but VRAM became unreasonable	Density was raised globally instead of locally	Rebalance with per-object scale and atlas review
Terrain still feels unclear in preview	Checker preview is misleading for terrain	Inspect terrain settings separately and validate after baking
Avatar area looks disconnected from nearby detail	Close-range surfaces got more density but avatar lighting workflow did not keep up	Re-check probes, nearby materials, and in-client presentation

When to Use Texel Tuning vs Lightmap Groups

If the problem is surface detail, start with texel density and per-object scale.

If the problem is zone-level control, predictable atlases, directional separation, or rebake scope, use Lightmap Groups.

In practice, most VRChat worlds need both:

• texel tuning to allocate detail
• manual groups only where workflow or memory boundaries justify them

warning

Raising global Texels Per Unit is usually the fastest way to overspend VRAM in a VRChat world.