I started to build a cave system in my map and I wanted to add some lights in there. For some strange reason when I add either a point light or a spot light they literally don’t affect the scene at all. I even tried pushing the intensity and radius to the max and pushing the color value beyond 1 (5,0,0 for example) and nothing.
Finally I also tried adding a second lightmass importance volume around the cave area as the one I have in the level currently is really small just to help lighting build faster but this didn’t make a difference either aside from making the light build take 3x as long.
So I deleted the Intermediate folder as someone suggested as a way to solve a similar issue and now the light shows up in the editor and when I build but I got this error message:
Is this a combined lightmap resolution as I’m just using the defaults that came with the speed tree models that I purchased. Also when I click on the Landscape Foliage actor 0 it zooms way out as if its selecting all of the foliage at once but nothing is actually highlighted in the scene.
Check this box to override the default settings for the default speed tree mesh you are using. Let me know if this was your solution, or if you need further assistance.
Thanks Andrew… actually I went into the lightmap settings for every speedtree mesh and manually set their LMR to 8 and the static mesh LMR to 32 on a hunch that those low numbers might work better. Didn’t get a chance to build the scene yesterday. Will try today. Will adjusting the LMR on a per mesh basis give the same results I wonder? I’ll let you know how it goes.
If you are using the ‘Foliage’ tool and not overriding the LMR of the Static Mesh you are painting within, then the minimum LMR will be used from the Static Meshes build settings. Sounds good, let me know what you discover.
Thanks Andrew. It seems that this has fixed my issues with the foliage. I’m still having some really strange effects with the other lights in the scene though. I disabled eye adaptation by turning it off in the pawn’s camera as well as setting the exposure settings under Lit to 0 and this seems to kill the affect radius of any lights. I’ve got a point light in the scene set to the maximum intensity and a really high attenuation radius and its barely affecting the scene. Also, my cave system is completely bright even though the static meshes should be blocking the light being cast from the Dominant directional light. Maybe its lightmap issues? I’ll try redoing the light map coords for the meshes.
When you change the Auto-Exposure bias setting within the viewport, you are seeing a preview of what your game would look like at those settings. I have found a good lighting set up for outdoor scenes when configuring ‘Auto-Exposure’ within your post process volume. Use the image below as reference for your own set up.
Be sure to set the ‘Exposure’ setting in your viewport to the default in game setting.
As for the light that is not bright enough there is a setting on your light actors called ‘Use Inverse Squared Falloff’ which will change the way your light functions and illuminates your scene.
Have a look over the documentation for a bit more information on the differences between the two lighting falloffs.
Inversed Squared Falloff
For the other issue, would you mind posting a new AnswerHub question, pertaining to the lighting in your cave area. I might have a few resolutions for you, but for tracking purposes I am going to close this question as the original issue was resolved.
Sure I can start another post.
I notice that you’re using a Global Post Process Volume in the scene. Is this something that you have to add manually or is it in the World Settings somewhere as I can’t find it.
By default, the Global Post Process should be in your scene, but if you do not have one, you can simply add this by going to the ‘Modes’ tab and type ‘Post process’ to find the volume actor. Drag it into your scene and be sure it is set to ‘Unbound.’
The exposure bias essentially gives you the range in which the light will brighten or darken depending on what you are looking at in your scene.
Since you min and max brightness are the same values, setting your exposure bias to something like 0.5 will increase the overall brightness of your scene. I would suggest, unless you want some type of Auto-Exposure, to set it to the values I presented. You can always experiment to find what suits your project best.
Thanks a lot this fixed all of my issues. Also got the cave lighting issue sorted out. The Light Importance volume wasn’t covering the entire playable area and I didn’t realize it was needed to for bounce lighting to happen. I thought it simply reduced the number of bounces.
