I know that static lighting is not at all meant for moving objects, but I’m wondering if it’s at all possible to get Lightmass to render static shadows on a mesh and then have that mesh be movable afterwords (keeping the shadows that were cast on it, even if the shadows would stay in place).
It’s a pretty strange request, I know, but I’m trying an outdoor scene with a lot of large moving objects and was wondering if I could get better performance by having static shadows that don’t look entirely accurate rather than dynamic ones.
This is possible. You can do this by going into the details panel for the mesh you would like to have this property.
Under the Lighting tab you can select the option “Light as if Static.” This will allow a lightmap to be baked onto a movable object the way you are trying to do.
Don’t worry about it being a strange request! Someone has needed it before and thus it’s in the engine!
I’m using version 4.19 and this setting has moved to a drop-down option called Lightmap type. Change Default to Force Surface, this will give you static lighting on a movable static mesh.
