# LOD and Light bake

**URL:** <https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/lod-and-light-bake/2523216>\
**Category:** Programming & Scripting\
**Tags:** light, baked-lighting, unreal-engine, Lightmap, question\
**Created:** [May 22, 2025, 4:17pm UTC](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/lod-and-light-bake/2523216 "2025-05-22T16:17:44Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Shunitzo](https://d1ap1mz92jnks1.cloudfront.net/user_avatar/forums.unrealengine.com/shunitzo/32/1194547_2.png) [@Shunitzo](https://forums.unrealengine.com/u/Shunitzo)\
**Post date:** [May 22, 2025, 4:17pm UTC](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/lod-and-light-bake/2523216/1 "2025-05-22T16:17:44Z")

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I have used UE for a few years, but I still can’t comprehend light baking…

For some reason LOD 1 to N won’t bake light normaly. LOD 0 looks fine.

 ![image](https://d3kjluh73b9h9o.cloudfront.net/original/4X/a/b/b/abbd474c14a436b81238723619fc1f3aa6ef6f3f.jpeg)  
 ![image](https://d3kjluh73b9h9o.cloudfront.net/original/4X/4/a/a/4aaf964c0f28868c39f58b61d3165a6723d3a6ed.jpeg)

I use GPU Lightmass, but normal bake gives same results.

Any ideas?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Shunitzo](https://d1ap1mz92jnks1.cloudfront.net/user_avatar/forums.unrealengine.com/shunitzo/32/1194547_2.png) [@Shunitzo](https://forums.unrealengine.com/u/Shunitzo)\
**Post date:** [May 24, 2025, 12:59pm UTC](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/lod-and-light-bake/2523216/2 "2025-05-24T12:59:11Z")

</div>

I feel stupid…

The problem wasn’t LOD or Light bake, the problem was InstancedStaticMesh.

Static Mesh has lightmap for each LOD, but Instanced Static Mesh only uses LOD0 lightmap and applies it to each LOD down.

I had to re-make lightmaps for each LOD, so that they are layered on top of each other perfectly.