Static vs Stationary point light

ackehallgren · Jul 2015

Hi UDK-people!
I'm setting up a scene in UE4 and am trying to make sense of something that maybe someone can explain in simple terms for me. I've added a point light in a scene and with one setting (static) I get correct shadows, however with the other (stationary) I get blurry shadows but a much nicer reflection when having baked the light.

Can someone help me make sense of this? I've tried to understand through googling but it easily gets very technical. The only difference on the picture is that very setting:

Hope you are all having a great weekend!

LMP · Jul 2015

Static is 100% baked Lighting, Stationary is a Semi-Baked Semi-dynamic light.

ackehallgren · Jul 2015

Thanks for your reply LMP.
Does that mean that one cannot get crisp shadows with Stationary lights? Or is there a setting I am missing here?

What would be the best kind of basic light setup for this kind of scene?

Elrinion · Jul 2015

Your answer is in the cascaded shadow maps. You must disable it in the light settings.

ackehallgren · Aug 2015

I can only find this in the directional light - will it affect the point light?

Obscura · Aug 2015

Basically you can't get crystal sharp shadows with baked lighting, cause of the limits of the lightmap resolution. You can live together with that, or you can switch to an another solution. Lightmaps are used for storing the "rough" lighting, including GI, and directional lighting. That can come from various light sources. The only real difference between stationary lights, and sfully static lights are that, the fully static ones can be used for fully statlic lighting (no any condition change). The stationary ones can be used for semi static conditions. Lets say you have a flickering light light function... Probably the stationary light is good for that. Or a shootable light, again the stationary is what you are looking for. They can change intensity or color, cause of how they built in the shader. There is a limit for the amount of them in the scene, but you can probably extend this by manual hlsl coding. Stationary light does not built for making nice shadows. Rather they can give you nice reflection environment, or solution for breaking up fully static lighting for doors, light functions, etc... Pretty much the same as the light enviro earlier.

leleuxart · Aug 2015

You can get sharper shadows with Static/Stationary lighting by increasing your lightmap resolution. Cascaded shadows really don't do too well up close, unless you're in the first range. Their strengths, in my opinion, are with maintaining longer view distances for dynamic shadows, not really high quality shadows up close. I would stick with the baked shadows, which the stationary should do. Did you, by any chance, change the min roughness or any other settings of the lights?

Joopson · Aug 2015

I've thought it was a weird choice for awhile, but static lights don't contribute to specular highlights in UE4.

JedTheKrampus · Aug 2015

Actually in the newest version static light shapes get baked into the reflection captures. So if you're using the reflection environment they will now show up.

Joopson · Aug 2015

Ooooh, really?! Somehow I missed that. I'll have to check it out.

Static vs Stationary point light

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