Static lighting is dark and bad looking compared to stationary or dynamic

Static lighting is dark and bad looking compared to stationary or dynamic. I am doing a vr project and I was told static lighting is best for performance. But the dynamic models in the level look like crap lighting wise when static lighting is used. Why?? And how do i fix this? They are often way to dark to the point that they dont look like they even belong in the scene. The attached screenshot is the exact same lights… 1 as stationary after build and the other as static after build… clear difference on the dynamic models…

Other info… the scene already has a character lightmass indirect volume as well as lightmass importance volume

Found that increasing the volume light sample placement scale in world settings makes htis better but then i run into other problems with both hair lighting as well as seems on characters heads and bodys as 2 seperate meshes…

That problem can be seen here… I hope someone can help…

Hi Kurylo,

This documentation covers part/all of that. Indirect Lighting Cache in Unreal Engine | Unreal Engine 5.1 Documentation

When you only have static lighting in a level the indirect lighting cache (visualize by going to viewport > show > Visualize > Volume Lighting Samples) captures the indirect lighting for the scene. These are used to interpolate the lighting for the character as it moves through the environment to make it blend in with indirectly lit areas better. So since a static light doesn’t actually produce a dynamic light for the character the indirect lighting cache (volume samples) are used to blend the character.

The stationary light does the same thing except that for movable actors it will cast a direct light for them to shadow correctly in a statically lit area. If the area is only receiving indirect lighting then the movable actor will still look like it’s floating on the ground or not blending properly. You can use Capsule Shadows for skeletal meshes to help with this so that you get nice soft shadowing in these areas.

Let me know if that helps.

Tim