I am trying to light this outdoor scene. I am having a heck of a time getting everything to light correctly. I have tried all dynamic but then I don’t get the benefits of light bouncing. I tried static but then the foliage isn’t lighting correctly. Could anybody (Fighter) help me out. Ideally, I would be able to use a stationary directional light and a stationary skylight to get my baked shadows/lighting for everything as I understand this will give me the best visual results. If not, that is fine I just want to lighting of everything to match. If I go all dynamic the foliage sticks out like a sore thumb. I am using the foliage shader / double sided.
Here is a shot of my current setup: Stationary directional and stationary skylight. The foliage is currently movable because it was not lighting correctly. From what I understand, the lighting cache should be what is sourced for dynamic objects but it doesn’t seem to work correctly. (see my other post)
This is driving me crazy and would appreciate any help.
Honestly, on that last screenshot, the foliage didn’t look out-of-place at all, so I didn’t initially see your problem. Looking back on the old thread, it appears the indirect lighting cache is giving you jip. Unfortunately you’re never going to get 100% consistent results because although the cache is a good approximation, it’s still just that.
The only way I can really see round the issues presented whilst using baked lighting would be to use a different set of foliage meshes which could be imported as static objects, that could therefore be included in the light bake. Alternately, you could use one of the Nvidia VXGI builds of the engine, but voxel lighting has its own inherent problems, plus the expected huge performance penalty.
EDIT: Just noticed as well that your cache samples are really sparse around the area of ground where the majority of your foliage is located. You might be able to mitigate things by placing a LightmassCharacterIndirectDetailVolume around here, which should, in theory, light your dynamic objects within it more accurately.
Thanks for taking the time to help me out. The foliage in the above photos is not light correctly. Look at how light it is in the ‘lighting only’ shot compared to the rest of the environment.
When I bake the foliage as static then I get a separate issue, the foliage that has it’s normal side unlit is showing up super dark… I could provide a ss if needed.
I’m not sure the density of the lighting samples is the issue… Take a look at this gif. This shows how the entire set of foliage is affected when I add some in a different area that references a different lighting sample. I think it is treating the entire set as a single object and lighting it as one… this doesn’t happen if I place meshes individually.