This is absolutely correct! Static objects that use volumetric lightmaps will get lit by them and also bake themselves into it but they cant affect other static geo that is using lightmaps! Again, this shines mostly with vegetation or fine detail stuff like wire trash piles for example XD (lol…very specific example^^) but it might not be the smartest idea to set the walls of a house to that mode. However, it could potentially be very efficient to set all the dishes etc. in the kitchen to that mode. Or books on a shelf, cables on the floor or yeah…you know…just everything that is hard and inefficient to lightmap and if you dont notice in context that it doesnt bounce off to the static shelf then why bother 
To everyone concerned that the VLM for static objects might not be in 4.19 cause there was no mention in the change notes…check this 
https://forums.unrealengine.com/deve…-static-shadow
Also, you will still be able to bake soft indirect shadows from those object onto other objects! Its ■■■■■■■ AMAZING!! 
Cheers!
@ Thank you so much for these videos! they are incredibly informative and greatly appreciated. I have a question for you, Im following along with your archviz workflow and I’m running into some issues. When I lower the level scale to .1 and increase the quality to 10 I get strange artifacts. I get blocky artifacts in the shadow/AO areas and I get black and white lines up in the corners where the walls and floors and ceilings meet up. Any advice on how to remove these artifacts?
Thanks in advanced.
Thank you so much ! Always good to hear that it helps people 
I can see half a pixel cut in your lightmap at the bottom, so try snapping your lightmaps to the pixels. Also, do your walls have thickness? Or do you have a light blocker around your geometry? Those can all help to get better results. Lemme know how it goes Also, a lot of these issues actually come from the fact that Unreal is using photonmapping. I have never seen issues like that with raytracing. Apparently, Epic is reworking Lightmass to support raytracing so they can have a progressive light mapper too. So until then we have to deal with issues like that 
Cheers!
@ Can you snap the lightmap UVs to pixel grid in UE4 or do you have to do that externally? Also where did you hear that Lightmass was getting reworked? That’s an exciting rumour, a progressive lightmapper would be awesome.
First of all - my respect for anyone who worked on DICE Star Wars visuals. For me, it is like - there is nowhere to go to be better looking game as that. And second - just personal curiousity. I loved, and I still respect, first “Yager” game. So, you say - that was Unreal technology too, even back then? Just curious. I am in big love with Sci-Fi Aerial Combat games (and there are not a lot of them, but right now it is shifting). Thanks!
Might it be this he is thinking of:
Did they add the feature you were talking about in the 4.19 preview they showed?
Unreal will snap the uvs to the pixel grid for the top and left sides but the right and bottoms are left to chance as far as my tests have gone. You will have to snap the other sides in your 3d package of choice unfortunately.
thank you so much man! The first yager game, yager, was actually build with their own “yager” engine^^ later, the studio switched to Unreal for Spec Ops: The Line
@Kurt Iam not talking about LPVs Iam talking about raytracer progressive lightmapping inside the viewport
Cheers,
Daedalus
PS: new lighting academy episode will be out in a few hours!
Few hours!!! OMG!!! YYEEEAAAAHHHH!!!
ARGH…I was too eager! Video rendering ■■■■■■ up over the night and now I am at work for the rest of the day. So I will have to render again tonight T_T
Still can’t wait So I think I can ask a question then
You said that all Assassins Creed games using prob lighting when you explained how it will work in UE4. So after that I began to play AC Origins and look for lighting. So what I see, AMAZING light bouncing on walls and etc and maaan, this looks just beautiful. Can’t stop myself to stay in one point and watch how light interacts with objects, at least 10 minute every time when I play AC origins. But, question is, if UE4 is going to use same technics, and it will not require lightmap for baking(but still will be static), does this mean, this can evolve to dynamic prob lighting system with GI? Because what I understand, AC Origins, even Watch Dogs 2 is using same technics. Or may be all of Ubisoft’s open world games. Because, I can see light bouncing on everywhere in their games
Well…I mean I cant talk for Unreal…so I don’t know if this will ever evolve into anything more! Also, it’s not as simple. I actually think AC: Origins looks pretty bad and I can see almost no color bleeding. Having the right indirect color vs. actually having precise color bouncing/bleeding is quite a huge difference and the AC games don’t have a high enough probe rez to really have nice color bouncing. At least from what I know. A big exception was AC Unity…that had the most advanced tech…but it ran like **** which is why all AC games that came after Unity actually don’t look as good as Unity, but they run better though
Also, to have a time of day, Ubisoft bake several stages during the day and then interpolates between them, which causes MASSIVE datasets and gigabytes of probe lighting data. Another reason for these types of games being so incredibly big, filesize-wise.
The Division has one of the most advanced versions atm…at least from what I know, but their tech is also far away from flawless and their setup needs tons of manual work. But you can do stuff like that if you throw 800 people on it
Cheers!
Oh, wow. That is why I am not a light artist at DICE, but still I happy that I can enjoy that lighting and can’t see most of the problems. About Unity yeah. I agree with you. Unity has superb Iighting. Even without day and night cycle, AC unity’s baked GI was too demanding. Can’t imagine what that would be if, it was not baked. Anyway. Thank you for taking time and answering. You are awesome
@ I tried following your advice on snapping lightmap UVs to pixel grid, however I’ve run into an issue where after baking, the lightmap UVs shift causing half-pixel splits. Someone else made a thread about this issue and included screenshots, however no-one has answered with a solution: Lightmap UV's Shifting After Bake - Rendering - Epic Developer Community Forums
Is this an issue you’ve ever run into?
This is an old old old topic Take a look at this. Reddit - Dive into anything
And short answer is this Imgur: The magic of the Internet
Alright guys…its out!
Enjoy!
I appreciate the tip however it’s still not perfect. I’m getting better results in some cases but still getting shifting and dark patches where there shouldn’t be. All the UVs in this view are snapped to a grid of 1/62 and each UV shell has 2 grid points between them.
Lighting quality was set to high, lightmass settings attached.
Any ideas?
Def worth a pledge! I do have a question. Do you have a book list on technical aspects like lights, color etc that is worth getting?