How to Fix Objects Not Receiving Light Because of Wrong Light Layers

Light layers are a feature for making a light affect only chosen objects. If a mesh is mysteriously dark next to a bright light, their layer masks do not overlap. Aligning the masks lets the light reach it.

How to fix it

1. Check the light's rendering layer mask

Inspect the light's Rendering Layers / Light Channels. If it is restricted to a custom layer, any object not on that layer is intentionally excluded and renders dark.

2. Match the object's layer

Set the mesh renderer's Rendering Layer Mask to include the same layer as the light. Both sides must share at least one layer for the light to apply.

3. Reset to default if unintended

If you never meant to use selective lighting, set both the light and the renderers back to Everything/default so all lights affect all objects.

4. Enable the feature flag

Confirm Light Layers / Rendering Layers is enabled in the pipeline asset; if the feature is off, the masks are ignored and the symptom may be something else.

Catching the ones you can't reproduce

The hardest version of this to fix is the one you can't reproduce — it only happens on a player's hardware, OS, driver, or save state, under conditions that simply aren't present on your machine. A report that says “it crashed” or “it froze” gives you nothing to act on, so the bug survives release after release while quietly costing you players.

Automatic error capture closes that gap. Each failure arrives with its full stack trace, the device and OS, the build number, and a breadcrumb trail of what the player did right before it broke, so even a failure you have never seen becomes a specific, reproducible issue. Fold identical failures into one signature ranked by how many players each hits, and your worklist sorts itself worst-first instead of arriving as a stream of vague complaints.

This is where a tool like Bugnet earns its place. Its SDK captures every error automatically with the full stack trace plus device, OS, memory, build, and game-state context, folds duplicates into one grouped issue with an occurrence count, and ties each to the build it first appeared on — so you fix the problem that hurts the most players first and confirm it is gone when its signature disappears from the next release.