I saw the same question here in some other posts with variations. Basically you place a static object, have a static point light, bake the light and it is af if the light did not exist.
I didn’t use static lights before but could use them now here and there. So my question is why don’t they work? If you can’t light a static object with a static light, what good are they?
Do your objects have Lightmap UV sets?
You can either make them in your 3D package when the asset is created, or failing that, create them in the UE4 Editor. Open up you Static Mesh in UE4 and in the Details Panel scroll down to Build Settings in LOD0. You will see a check box for Generate Lightmap UVs; tick and click Apply. Then scroll further down to General Settings and change the Light Map Coordinate Index to the new UV set, usually 1 (but this depends on how many UV are already on the asset). You can view all the UV sets by clicking on the UV button in the top set of buttons.
Now rebake.
Cheers,
Matt.
Yep it’s all correctly set. I checked it, most assets are from the marketplace. Stationary works, the same assets get baked light from them, just when I turn on static it’s totally black.
There are other posts here where people are basically asking the same question and so far nobody has been able to give an answer.
It seems to me like static lights simply won’t work
Do you get any warnings in the Lighting Results panel that pops up after baking? overlapping UVs etc. I was having a few issues with 4.24.1 and 4.24.2 due to an engine bug that was preventing switching which UV set was used for LMs. This was fixed in 4.24.3. That said, they still weren’t black, just corrupted due to overlapping UV islands.
Static lights DO work, don’t worry!
If a static mesh turns black after building lights it’s 99% missing lightmap Uvs’… There can be more than 1 uv map per object so be sure to select the one for the lighting…
Other things can be lack of reflection (and the object is set as highly reflective…)
You are correct. I updated to 4.24.3 two days ago and haven’t tried static since it failed in my 4.22 setup a month ago or so. I just placed one in the scene and tested it and it seems to work now. I don’t know if this is due to overlapping UVs because I usually have very few of those due to only using marketplace assets. Plus when I have those warnings and rebuild the lightmaps, I get the exact same warnings so I don’t really put too much stock in those warnings.
There are still some meshes who don’t receive lights although the lightmap looks OK. I increased the Min Lightmap Resolution and rebuild the lightmap and this has fixed it. Strangely the UV1 lightmap looks prtty much the same as before which makes me think there must be something else wrong under the hood.
But right now it looks like the update to 4.24.3 has fixed it
Those warnings are correct i’m afraid. UE4 constructs the Lightmap UV based on an existing UV set so if there is anything ‘funky’ in there you’re doomed (rebuilding LM UVs won’t help). I’ve had a few marketplace assets i’ve had to export out into a 3D package and tweak. that said 9 times out of 10 a low % overlap is not noticeable and i let it go. Foliage seems to be a big offender for me.
Glad you seem to have got it sorted.
Here’s a tip of foliage: Get the procedural foliage spawner from the marketplace. With a little preparation work that thing allows you to create foliage procedurally and the good thing is it creates multiple HSIMs per spawner BP so you never go over the lightmap size.
I was never able to use the UE foliage painter without getting the “Lightmap size exceeded” warning. UE’s procedural spawning system works the same and is still experimental.
Another advantage is that the HSIMs are actual actors in the world outliner and you can move them around to different levels, unlike the UE foliage painter actor which can not be selected.
Seriously, that spawning system is way more sophisticated than anyithing UE offers out of the box and they should pay the guy big money and buy it up