Ok, I REALLY need help understanding this (lighting)

Development Rendering
1

Im new to UE4, im watching all tutos reading a lot of posts…
Maybe im “that slow guy” or its because my english is bad… but i cant understand the following…

I cant understand the lighting system. Could you please explain or point me to a tutorial that clearly explains it? an overall explanation…

I know there are 3 types; static, movable and dynamic.

Static: these lights cant move (a sun for example, that would not move). These bake the light (in lightmaps?)and has the better quality?
Movable: a mixture between static and dynamic. The sun could not move… but could change color and such.
Dynamic: Lights can move (a sun with day/night cycle) , but have less quality. Dont know if they use lightmaps or what.

Well, thats my basic understanding after a lot of reading…
i dont know if im wrong or what.

So if i have a boat in the sea, and a char in the boat. If im using static lighting and the boat or the chars moves… it would be wrong? Because they are movable…
O should i combine different lights methods…?

I cant fully understand how its working. Not how to position lights and such, there are many tutos on that.
Just how it is working, i cant get the overall thing. Like… you have these options and this one uses this, the other that… and such.

For example, whatever i do, my char looks pretty when i edit it (and has as a background with buildings some cars and trees in the edit window)… and i cant recreate that in play mode. It always looks worse…

Anyone can point me in the good direction please?
Explanations, links or whatever will be well received! :smiley:

Thank you in advance!!

2

Hey tukor!

This should point you in the right direction regarding the 3 different lighting types. =)

3

Static lightning is using lightmaps (which are UVs that are on the second map channel) and this means that when you build light the light/shadow information will be baked as a texture and then the texture will be applied to all the objects that are static (walls, floor etc). The best use case for static lightning is for example if you have a scifi tunnel and you will not have some interactivity like turning on and off the lights so you use static lightning because its static. Performance wise the static light is the best because it uses only textures as lightning.

Stationary lightning is using lightmaps too, with the difference that the light is going to be semi-baked to the texture. Performance impact is 50/50 (it could be bad or not but its better than the movable lights). Best use case of stationary lights is when you want to change the intensity and the color of the light. There is one limitation to the stationary lights, you can use only 4 total lights if they are overlapping each other.

Movable lightning is not using lightmaps, its completely dynamic light (the light renders at runtime). Performance impact is big. Best use case scenario is outdoor environments.