Hi, I was recently trying out volumetric lightmaps and it’s beautiful.
I want to have a cad model be lit using only volumetric lightmaps but at the same time cast static shadow on static environment.
I mean static/baked shadow not from dynamic lights.
The reason I want to do this is that I have complex cad model which due to patch layout cannot have seamless uv map and static lighting creates artifacts on top of being slow if I use a lot of these objects. Volume lightmaps give me good enough results even if no self-shadowing is present. However I still want them to bake indirect shadows onto static geometry. Is this possible?
You would need to set your model to Movable and then what I’d try is go to the properties and set the option “Light as if Static” in the lighting properties. That will allow it to receive static lighting and cast static lighting, I would reduce the lightmap resolution on that stuff to very low so that it doesn’t waste much time on rendering lighting on it since you only care about the shadows it casts. After that, uncheck the “Light as if Static” option and see what happens. It might be OK or it might invalidate lighting on all the other objects because you changed that one object, or it might give a warning about needing to rebuild lighting.
If you can afford to wait, 4.19 lets you use volumetric lightmaps even on static objects. If not, you could set your mesh to movable, and make a copy of it that is static and not visible. This should get you volumetric lightmaps on the visible mesh, with static shadows from the invisible mesh.
Why haven’t I thought about that… Thanks.
I guess making it have lowres lightmap and invisible then replace with movable and volume lightmap is best way to make it “fit” almost perfectly with only gi self-shadow missing (which should be ok for small-medium sized furniture that is cad/nurbs converted geo).
Thanks.