# Static Lights Dont Create Shadows **URL:** \ **Category:** Rendering\ **Tags:** unreal-engine, editor, question\ **Created:** [June 13, 2025, 8:10am UTC](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/static-lights-dont-create-shadows/2554592 "2025-06-13T08:10:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![LikeABoski](https://d3kjluh73b9h9o.cloudfront.net/original/4X/2/8/5/28502927f1d97ba1051b3b47ccfe17233bf41ef0.png) [@LikeABoski](https://forums.unrealengine.com/u/LikeABoski)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2025, 8:10am UTC](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/static-lights-dont-create-shadows/2554592/1 "2025-06-13T08:10:35Z")
I swear I have stumbled across the great conspiracy nobody will answer. Okay, brand new project 5.6. - Static lighting enabled - Lumen disabled. - Only static lights present - Lighting Quality production - Generated UV Lightmaps - Mesh set to static - Disable Dynamic Shadow on both light and mesh - Light Mass Important Volume Placed - Built Lighting - Increased Shadow Resolution on Mesh - Everything works normally once you set the light to Moveable but performance gets awful This would all work magically before Unreal 5 but the later versions have things I need. I have tried Every combination of options listed above and probably a lot more I forgot to include here. I don’t know why Static lighting is he who shall not be named in later engine versions. I just want shadows and FPS. ---
**Author:** ![WayAway](https://d3kjluh73b9h9o.cloudfront.net/original/4X/2/8/5/28502927f1d97ba1051b3b47ccfe17233bf41ef0.png) [@WayAway](https://forums.unrealengine.com/u/WayAway)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2025, 1:32pm UTC](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/static-lights-dont-create-shadows/2554592/2 "2025-06-13T13:32:25Z")
Do you use GPU Lightmass ? if so people say it’s broken with regular CSMs and only works with Virtual Shadow Maps. > **[The Unreal Engine Issues and Bug Tracker](https://issues.unrealengine.com/issue/UE-291212)** > > Welcome to the Unreal Engine Issue and Bug Tracker. You can check the status of an issue and search for existing bugs. See latest bug fixes too. ---
**Author:** ![LikeABoski](https://d3kjluh73b9h9o.cloudfront.net/original/4X/2/8/5/28502927f1d97ba1051b3b47ccfe17233bf41ef0.png) [@LikeABoski](https://forums.unrealengine.com/u/LikeABoski)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2025, 8:25am UTC](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/static-lights-dont-create-shadows/2554592/3 "2025-06-14T08:25:49Z")
No, my computer doesnt seem to like GPU lightmass for some reason. Just regular shadow maps and building lights as normal. Even switching to virtual doesn’t affect my static meshes. ---
**Author:** ![WayAway](https://d3kjluh73b9h9o.cloudfront.net/original/4X/2/8/5/28502927f1d97ba1051b3b47ccfe17233bf41ef0.png) [@WayAway](https://forums.unrealengine.com/u/WayAway)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2025, 8:44am UTC](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/static-lights-dont-create-shadows/2554592/4 "2025-06-14T08:44:41Z")
What’s your Unreal engine version? If 5.6 then CPU baking shoudn’t even start… becase Swarm is broken in 5.6. You said 5.6 in the original post, so i wonder why you didn’t get an error when trying to bake. > [@UE 5.6 has no swarm manager](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/ue-5-6-has-no-swarm-manager/2539483): > > In Unreal Engine 5.6 Preview was an issue with baking static lights because Swarm Manager wasn’t included in Binaries/DotNET. I thought it was a preview issue and expected release version to have swarm manager or remove static ligts support in favor for Lumen RTGI. But I am still able to select None for Global Illumination and still cannot bake lights: Failed to initialize Swarm. Check to make sure you have the right version of Swarm installed. Can anyone from Unreal team clarify what’s going… ---
**Author:** ![WayAway](https://d3kjluh73b9h9o.cloudfront.net/original/4X/2/8/5/28502927f1d97ba1051b3b47ccfe17233bf41ef0.png) [@WayAway](https://forums.unrealengine.com/u/WayAway)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2025, 9:30am UTC](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/static-lights-dont-create-shadows/2554592/5 "2025-06-14T09:30:39Z")
Do you use Epic games launcher version of the engine or did you build it yourself? What’s your operating system? If it’s Windows and you are using the launcher version (5.6) then i’m not sure how your CPU baking is working at all… you should be getting an error like everyone else. In any case, i would wait for 5.6.1 hotfix, CPU baking should be fixed in that version. ---
**Author:** ![LikeABoski](https://d3kjluh73b9h9o.cloudfront.net/original/4X/2/8/5/28502927f1d97ba1051b3b47ccfe17233bf41ef0.png) [@LikeABoski](https://forums.unrealengine.com/u/LikeABoski)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2025, 1:18am UTC](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/static-lights-dont-create-shadows/2554592/6 "2025-06-15T01:18:38Z")
I followed a video to copy Swarm from a previous version of Unreal which was 5.5. Taking it from the binaries and placing it into my 5.6. It doesn’t give and error and says its all competed, not having “Lighting needs to be rebuilt XX” but maybe it’s still not fully functional? Sucks because I like some of the things in Unreal 5.6 but just want to use Static lighting for the time being at least. ---
**Author:** ![WayAway](https://d3kjluh73b9h9o.cloudfront.net/original/4X/2/8/5/28502927f1d97ba1051b3b47ccfe17233bf41ef0.png) [@WayAway](https://forums.unrealengine.com/u/WayAway)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2025, 1:39pm UTC](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/static-lights-dont-create-shadows/2554592/7 "2025-06-15T13:39:54Z")
Are you sure ur settings are correct? Did you unchecked **Force No Precomputed Lighting** in the **World Settings** window? Do you have any lightmaps listed there? or it says 0 lightmaps? Sry i’m out of ideas at this point… If your map has “world partition” enabled, you can try to disable “world partition” in your world settings and see if it helps. ![ForceNoLM 2025-06-15 163359](https://d3kjluh73b9h9o.cloudfront.net/original/4X/f/1/1/f11ca21131227a85e2a1f9480cc689ce0b749729.png)