can we use and store different lightmap sets for different usage? for day and night for example. or do i have to create different levels for them? and if i have to create different levels, each additional level not adding additional megabytes to me project since im using same meshes etc right? maybe stupid question but i just never tried it yet lol…
Possible duplicate question: What are best practices for day/night lightmaps? - Rendering - Epic Developer Community Forums
answer is about dynamic lighting. i dont want to use dynamic. i want know whatis best way to do that with two lightmaps setup, dont need a CYCLE.
Off the top of my head, there are 4 possible ways to go about it.
1 - Dynamic lights for the sun/moon, swapping between them when you want to transition and baking everything else. This will be the way most people would approach the problem and it’ll save some disk space on lightmaps. It’s also the easiest to iterate on, since you won’t need to worry about baking the entire scene multiple times or managing multiple instances of the same level.
2 - Stationary lights for the sun, moon, and skylight, switching between the sun/moon when you can’t see anything outside while using the tint function on the skylight or loading a new cubemap, and of course using baked lighting for everything else. This will give you the most flexibility of the options.
3 - Making a single stationary directional light and changing the intensity/color to swap between sun/moon without actually changing the position. Could be hard to notice something like this if you balance the colors right, but some players may pick up on the fact that the sun is in the exact same spot as the moon. Of course, stationary skylight would be able to tint its color to reflect the time of day change.
4 - Two entirely separate maps that you stream in through level streaming during a transitionary period/room that you won’t see somehow, probably indoors or underground.
i need baked quality. sorry i didnt mention it’s not a game. it’s only purpose is visual art, archviz like stuff. so i really dont need dynamic light but i need top notch quality with static light. only foliage have to be dynamic i guess right? so if i understood you right, for me, best choice is creating two different levels and loading them with a button in interface with input from the player?
For a situation specifically like this, if you think you can eat a second or two load time between them, then yeah just make a button with blueprint that switches between the two maps when you push it, maybe through level streaming so you can keep the player’s position.