Raytracing & Baking?

Development Architectural and Design Visualization
1

I am using the new Raytracing Feature for GI, Reflections, AO & Translucency.

I am a bit confused… when I use Raytracing, do I still have to Build Lightmaps?
Do I still have to consider Lightmass?
Do I still have to “bake”?

Or does Raytracing just replace that?

Thanks for any little help,
appreciate that!

2

Raytracing is all real-time so you don’t have to bake anything. If you aren’t satisfied with the results that raytracing provides or you want to run it on a computer that doesn’t have a raytracing card then you would need to use baked lighting with Lightmass. Eventually baked lighting will be accelerated by raytracing cores.

3

**This is great. Thank you so much for your help! **

Ok, but what I don’t understand is why the Unreal Engine still tells me that I have so many objects in my scene and they have to be re-build?

For example, I am testing a simple lamp:
1 x Stationary Light
4 x Static Lights

please see attached images with the BEFORE vs. AFTER “Build”. :eek:

I am using Raytracing in the PostProcess Volume for GI, AO, Reflection & Translucency.
Raytracing is also activated in the project settings.

But even so, the Unreal Engine tells me that I need to “BUILD” the scene.
On the geometry it says: “PREVIEW”.:rolleyes:

Questions:

  • So if I don’t need to Build anything when I fully Raytrace the scene… how the heck do I get rid of the “Preview” text on the geometry?
  • And when using Raytracing, does it matter if the light source is static, stationary or movable?
  • And if I just use Raytracing, I don’t need to consider the Lightmass Resolution at all?

thank you so much for your help - that is awesome!:slight_smile:
I really do appreciate that! :smiley:

4

I’m not really an expert, but I think when you are going to use ray tracing features you need to make sure that all of your lights are movable if you want them to be featured in ray tracing. Static lights need to be baked and stationary ones are half static half movable so they need to be baked as well.