I redid the blade and spike to bevel the top and bottom edges and changed the smoothing angle to 50 degrees. I also remarked the seems in better places. Without sharp edges marked, they didn’t have the right reflections, looking rounded and blunt instead of like blades. Even the sharp edge of the axe blade that didn’t have any bevel looked rounded by the reflections. I had to mark the outer edges of the blade and spike as sharp to make it look right. When I baked them out, they still had the same problem with dark areas. I’m guessing that it’s due to mostly being processed like flat faces instead of smooth ones, even though they are marked as smooth, and the faces that make them are numerous and not parallel. Basically, I think the engine is confused by it, especially considering that this only happened on the metal of this axe head. On my sword, everything rendered out great. Also, I didn’t like the dark coloring that static lighting gave to all of my metals. Fortunately, I don’t need to make this axe static, so it won’t be a problem. I’m just learning and thought this was odd. My current view is that Unreal’s static lighting has issues with metals that are complex. I’ll just have to make any non-moving objects that are metal as stationary instead of static. Strangely, they’ll be nice and bright instead of dark, anyway.
Here is a picture with a lightmap resolution of 1024. There is nothing weird on the sides of the blade and spike. They’re just smoothed faces like any others. Odd.