Major issue with lighting

Hi there
I’m building a large open area map that has caves…I recently has someone redo the lighting to get IBL lighting and now things have gotten wacky
I’m using a direction light and skylight for lighting, and need to block the light from affecting underground areas, especially the caves…as right now, the lights are coming right in and lighting up my caves like they are outside.

anyone know how i can fix this?

you can make shadow casting blocking objects. As simple as thin cubes that are above the caves. Or as actual modeled geo (with normals facing the outside not the cave) thats a quick fix.

you will laugh at me but…how do I do that? i’ve never done that before nor did i know it was possible LOL

right over the top of the cave, yet underground place a cube, just for shadow casting, stretch it so that it’s shadow will cover the whole cave. If the cave shape is too hard to cover you can use a few cubes or model a custom object to do the same. The point is that the terrain and caves are not properly casting shadows b/c it is all one object. Make other objects to help the engine know where to put things in shadow. Does that make sense? Just grab the generic cube from the unreal assets or make your own the point is a cube is easy for a light to know how to cast a shadow from and your caves will then be in shadow like you wanted them to be.

5a1835e522791e35c9f1f12f525f5441ff9a8dd0.jpeg

this is what it is currently doing. see how the lighting just ends./…so bizarre.
this didn’t happen until we got IBL lighting to work

LOL and now this is happening to my once blue ocean