I have this static mesh that represents a cave. It works fine with stationary lights. It also appears ok while in “preview mode” with static lights, like the imave below:
Both light and mesh are configured with static mobility:
I saw a lot of similar issues around the internet, but was not able to find an answer. I have no idea what is going on and how to fix it. Any help will be appreciated.
Well, like always happens after I post something here, I figured out the issue a few minutes later.
The ambient occlusion of my material was bad configured and it became 100% black. I still not sure why it only affects the static lighting, but it also explains why, in other situations, my scenes always became a bit more darker after the light build.
Then why would having a bad configuration of AO in the material cause it to be black? I think it would quite probably overwhelm or cover over the direct light, or perhaps mix with it if it was getting diffused everywhere in the scene. But in a cavern, there’s a different type of light bouncing happening, so it could be something other than the AO was doing it too.
Most likely they had a 0 plugged into their material’s AO channel or a black texture map
This is true for stationary and dynamic lights, but static lights will use the material AO input. I assume the lightmap contains no information about static lights type or orientation so it just treats it all as indirect.
