I want to make an interior scene and I want to know if it will be better to use dynamic or static lights? I will have some animations and movable characters but also a lot of static elements. Thanks in advance.
Static lights, interior needs a lot of indirect lighting which dynamic lighting can’t provide. Unless the environment is moving then you can do just fine with static lights. If you have animated objects in the scene then you need to use Stationary lights which can create static lighting along with dynamic lighting for dynamic objects.
Another thing to keep in mind is that Static Lights while being the cheapest, rely heavily on Lightmap quality and don’t cast any analytical Specular(although you can get some Specular bounce from cubemaps picking up the specular orb at the light’s position). Stationary lights do have true Specular contribution and the Distance-Field Shadowmaps for baked lighting don’t rely as much on Lightmap resolution. It’s still a factor, but it’s much more forgiving.
Looks like that my best option is to use stationary lights because I need to provide some dynamic shadows for animated elements. Thanks for replies.
With static lights it bakes specular on static objects, but it doesn’t affect specular on dynamic objects.
Can you show me a comparison? I’ve never seen baked Specular. The only Specular I’ve seen from a static light is the specular orb at the light actor’s position in the cubemap reflection. The orb can be controlled by the Source Radius and Min Roughness, although the Min Roughness seems to only be on or off, no in between to reduce the contribution.