Lighmaps UV

This expression keeps popping up from time to time, had to investigate.

So lighmapping is a way of baking light effect in objects. It only works for static objects and static lights. As is is baked it is not calculated in realtime. In reality a new texture incorporating the effect of lighning replaces the material's native texture and the light can be eliminated (or at least we don't need to calculate it's effect on that object in real time). Great video here.

Wikipedia page

Light in general in Unity

Lighmaps in Unity (starting point)

Now another question that I didnt understand is this UV mapping, though I think I have an idea that this is similar to the way FLAC2D from Itasca works, with local coordinates.

So this answer is great.

UV are the local coordinates of a flat surface with U and V going from 0 to 1. This video explains well what and how a UV map is built, but it really is the "skin" of the object taken out, cut in strategic places and stretched out and mapped in the coordinates.