Ahhh! It was a missing floor on another room that was causing the darkness. forget my question.
In case it confuses you. In unreal uv channel 0 is channel 1 in 3ds max, and channel 1 in unreal is channel 2 in 3ds max. You should have the first channel there even if you haven done any manual unwrapping. But seeing your other message you might have figured all this out by now 
Also, try to set the light map resolution higher to get better lightmap bakes if you got some weird shading or similiar things going on. Also, go back to the lightmass/lightmass documentation and re-read that a few times so you understand when you can do the automatic unwrapping for channel 2 (which is usually 9 out of 10 times), and when you need to do some manual work on your unwrap.
You find the resolution for the lightmaps in the details panel when you double click your mesh in unreal. Test with power of 2 values: 16-128-256-512 etc.
Hey Kurt. Yup … figured out lots! Thxs for the info. And yeah, I am aware about the uv 0 and 1 being different on max vs unreal. Luckily I found out why the bleeding with the direct light. Turned out it was my mesh. I deleted the outside polygons on my model and now I have zero bleeding with the direct light on. Some light bounce leaking was happening. Makes sense. Its beginning to click for me. 
I would post a screenshot of the room . no leaks. working on lighting now… but the forum gives me a error when I try to upload a pic.
Quick question guys… what do i d if a imported mesh is not importing to the right location even though i have reseted its co ordinates in 3ds to zero?
Collapse the stack completely to an editable poly and do a “Reset xForm” in Max. If the location of the mesh is different from its pivot point, then Unreal will read the pivot point and transform the location of the mesh relative to that pivot point. E.g., if I have a scene where a chair is located at -100,0,0 and my pivot point is 0,0,0; then the chair upon import to Unreal (assuming I do not simply import the mesh into the content browser but rather directly into the scene itself) will appear at coordinate -100,0,0 instead of 0,0,0. If I want the chair at 0,0,0 then the mesh must be located there and the pivot point located there. Reset xForm erases the transformation history of the mesh so that Unreal doesn’t try to read that whole history in the FBX (and therefore screw it up).
Ahhhh good to know! Thxs! Its clicking to me very well now.
Hey guys, still learning. One complaint I have is the material workflow. Seems very complicated but not impossible. I am used to Vray, Maxwell, corona and the rest of the bunch. This seems more complex really. Anyone else feel the same?
Probably the opposite. Look up Master materials and material instances. Super easy
thxs. This is a area I have not seen. Will study it.
Got some good progress. Let me know if I am reaching realism. At this point… after 10 days of trying to grasp this engine I am blind. 
If you look carefully, I have some light leak at the lower wall trims. Any pointers? I am thinking its uvw related. BUt they are fully flat and unwrapped good.
Hey guys, still learning but looking good. Only way I was able to clear the light leaks almost fully s to give the walls a lot of thickness. That helped. I have another question for you all… Is there a way to hide some meshes temporary to test separate rooms for lighting conditions? If I click on the eye to make them invisible, the light still gets calculated.
Anyone? lol
You have to rebuild lighting… the light still there because its a baked map that is the process… rebuild your lighting and objects light and shadows will disappear…
Yeah… rebuild them already. Seems like the mesh still get calculated. Wonder if its a bug. Im using 14.16
Did u increase the static lightmass ?
Hey. Oh yeah… i havent updated this thread. But im moving along well. Main ligjt leaks were all low ligjtmap res amd not putting it in production qualitu.lol
Ok guys. Thanks a million for the help. Finally finished the first unreal project. I am used to vray, maxwell, fstorm,thea,iray and keyshot. So learning how to use unreal was a experience! Find the material creator to be too complicated compared to the rest of the renders but thats life. Will learn and learn some more. Again… thxs you all who helped me and everyone who posts [read lots of threads]! Here is a link to the video and bare in mind its my first UE4 render so I will take all constructive critisism with open arms! 
