Hello,
I am trying to figure out light types and their mobility features like static, stationary, and movable.
I was trying to make a test with these three types of light
I expected static light would not create shadows for movable objects ( I pushed a cube in the game and expected no movable shadows ) But static light created movable shadows? How is it possible?
After that, I built the lights and tried again, that time my static light turned off.
After I moved it in the editor, it turned on back.
I searched about mobility features of light types in Unreal Engine but I can’t find a decent difference. What is exactly “Baked light” and why do we use it after Lumen?
Can I use stationary lights in all of my levels?
Yeah, in Unreal we have these 3 types of lights, right? Statics, which are lights that will “Bake” the light (Creating what we know as “Lightmap”) Stationary, which are the half between Statics and Movable. It will bake lights, but for movable objects it will generate dynamic shadows. Movable, wich are the lights that are not baked, they are constantly calculating the position of all the objects on the map, and therefore, they are the heaviest in terms of resources.
What you are appreciating at your level, and why it looks different once you bake lights, is because, for purposes of seeing what you are doing, if you move a Static Light it will convert in a Movable Light until you bake lights again.
Because Static Lights, when you bake light, stop to generate light, it will bake it in a texture, so if this didn’t happen and you moved the light, you wouldn’t see how it illuminates.
The process of Baking Light is, in short, to make another texture in every object and paint the light so that Unreal does not have to calculate the direction of the lights and shadows at each frame.
Statics lights are amazing for iluminate the scene objects, but it will not generate dynamic shadows so surely need another light, Stationary or Movable, for generating shadows.
You can use Stationary lights in all your levels without much problem!
I’ll give you the link of the documentation of type of lights, so you can learn more about it:
Hello,
Thanks for your attention but I still have same confusing
Let me explain to you,
I created another light test there.
First I placed 2 props in the scene and a “static” point light
Technically not. Stationary lights also bake the lighting, the difference is that it will make dynamic shadows, but the light itself is baked the same as the Stationary. So it will generate dynamic shadows, but it will not illuminate at all.
