I have some bushes in an outdoor level placed with the foliage tool. And I have some small rocks in a cave also placed with the foliage tool. I have separate sky lights and directional lights on separate lighting channels for the static meshes in each level. But the foliage seems stuck on the static lighting channel. Is there a way to customize which channels affect foliage?
And if that’s not possible, is there a way to convert placed foliage into static meshes, so that I can change the lighting channels on the static meshes without placing them all by hand?
I think you can select the foliage in the editor and export it as a fbx.Than merge in another software and reimport.But than it will be a static mesh and I’m not sure how will you go with the lightmap.(unless you attach one bone to all of the exported combined foliage and make it a skeletal mesh as those don’t need the light map channel.)
exporting the foliage as fbx would be a very bad idea 
each mesh wouldn’t be a mesh by itself, but one big mesh. so huge memory impact and no occlusion/frustum culling
to convert foliage into meshes you could try running code in the editor (https://forums.unrealengine.com/lega…rved-in-editor) to access the foliage instance data (https://forums.unrealengine.com/lega…ol-performance) and use that to spawn actors. I’m not sure if the instance data has all the info you need and I don’t know if you can actually spawn stuff. worth a try
or maybe accessing the instance data via code allows setting lighting channels
Thanks very much for the information and advice both of you.
I’ll see what info I can get from the foliage instance in the editor. I knew I needed to learn that brush trick ever since I first heard you mention it. Maybe now I’ll force myself to go do it.