I have a project with static lights which seem to turn off after I build the lighting. My work around has been moving the lights, so they are not built. Unbuilt lights seem to look good in the scene. I packaged a version of my game and forgot to move the lights, and everything is dark in that scene as you can see in this video: Absolution: A Vampire Tale, playthrough and Postmortem - YouTube
I thought building lighting was supposed to make the lighting look better after being built. Anyone know why the light simply turn off in my scene in this project?
Check if allow static lighting is enabled in the prj settings
check if a level is set to being a scenario level and that this level is loaded.
Occasionally a light actor can get corrupted so try to place a new static light, build lighting without changes then save and package. See if that light worked.
Check your static meshes have light maps and they are enabled with the correct id in the mesh settings, not the mesh build settings.
Add reflection captures.
Building lighting isn’t a difficult thing. There must be something you’re doing in your level preventing light maps being saved.
Thank you for the reply. My static lighting is enabled in the project settings. I’m not quite sure what a scenario level is, could you explain that suggestion more? I create this level myself, if that answers that. I’ve deleted and added actors several times, it does not seem to make a difference. I can confirm that some of my light maps are messed up, and I’m working on that, but that should not affect meshes that have correct light maps, such as my characters, correct? The baked lights don’t shine light on anything, and I have to unbake them to get light. There are reflection captures in the scene, and that does not affect the lack of light.
Lighting scenarios store all lighting baked but it’s unlikely you have one.
I would suggest you create an empty test level with only one static light in it and a few of your meshes in a new project. Then bake lighting and see if it works.
You may have accidentally made some changes to settings. You could also try to rename your /config folder to reset all settings. If that fixes the problem then you know it’s one of the settings messing it up.
I ended up turning on Force No Precomputed Lighting in the World Settings. This seems to turn off all baking or something like that. It worked for the purposes of this project. I’m giving up on this one for now, since this was only for a game jam, which is now over. I’m sure I’ll run into this issue again in the future, but that’s future me’s problem.
I have the same problem here, PointLight goes dark when built. I have Lumen turned on in my PostProcessVolume. Light is set to static. Project Settings have static lighting enabled. Recreating the light seems to solve
Hello,
To my knowledge baked lights should be disabled when they are baked, if you want a hybrid solution, go for stationary. They can be baked while still affecting dynamic objects.
The whole idea behind baking lighting is to disable the light emitter and apply their effect to the textures, basically faking the look and moving the processing power from the gpu to the stored texture data.
Here is some more in depth info An In-Depth look at Real-Time Rendering | Course
Lumen doesn’t use static lighting. So your light needs to be movable to work with Lumen.
Lumen is a dynamic global illumination solution. It does not use baked lighting.
Static lights mean they do not change and their light will be baked into the texture. Movable meshes or a player pawn will still receive light from static lighting.
Dynamic/Movable lights are real time lights that can be changed in real time. They do not bake lighting and they will lit static and mobile assets.
Stationary lights are static and can be modified in place, not moved.
People always think that movable lights are for movable assets. That’s not the case. They are two different things with the same naming.
Here’s a super common source of confusion with static lights: They are only truly static after they are baked. To give you a preview of the baked lighting you are actually rendering Movable lights, which interact in ways that static lighting does not. This includes Lumen and specular highlights.
