Movable objects' materials become weird

Hey folks,

I’m having somewhat of a problem with movable objects.

This is how I want my movable objects to look.

However, after setting them to movable this is how they look.

This is how the scene is lit so far.

And this is my lightmass settings.

I’ve tried most solutions online but yet nothing helps. Disabling static shadows, enabling Distance Field Indirect Shadow, upping the lightmap resolution, lowering the Volumetric Lightmap Cell Detail Size…
nothing helped.

Notice it’s set to Volumetric Lightmap? That’s why the little squares don’t show up.

After changing from Volumetric Lightmap to Sparse Volume Lighting Samples it kinda worked? But now the bed (and the little squares are kinda brown-yellow?

I did put a Lightmap Density Volume inside my rooms, but still it changes color for some reason. And now the dots are not concentrated as they should be.

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Not only that but the whole scene looks darker and with that yellow-brown tint.

I really don’t know how to fix this.
I’m not an expert on Lighting so I require kind of a more detailed explanation.

My Skylight and LightSource are both Stationary.

Thanks

Hi,
When you set an object to be movable your also telling all the light around it to treat it as dynamic, so if you had baked shadows before then you make an object movable it treats it as a dynamically lite object.

You could try using dynamic lighting in your environment or you can use light channels to custom light only the object you want to have custom lighting.

Hope this helps
Katuta

So a Skylight by itself doesn’t really effect lighting of your environment. it can update reflections and over ambient light and brightness of the scene but it doesn’t act like a normal light when like casting shadows. That is what the directional light (sunlight) is for. do you have that set on movable stationary or static?

Katuta

I already did every step, but I want to light my scene just with the sunlight and Skylight.

The skylight will be the main source of light and it’s using an HDRi for that.

Directional light is set to stationary.

If I light the scene only with the sunlight (Light Source) the scene becomes too yellow and way darker.

Is there a way to resolve my issue without removing the SkyLight?

you can change the color of your light but there should be no reason you cant use both. do you need to move the bed in play? is that why you want it set to movable?

I really want the sun/directional light to be yellow-ish and the sky to be sort of a blue-ish white, which is the setup that I’ve got.

Yes the bed will move like in this test project of mine - YouTube

It did work on 4.18 (I think that was the version) but now I just can’t get it to work properly.

i would say the best thing for you is either to set your lights to movable and relight your scene accordingly or put the objects on diffrentl light channels so you can light them very exactly

To anyone reading this: sometimes it’s better to just start a new level.
I picked up a new HDRi, a new scene, and things just clicked.

UE4’s lighting is almost realistic by default, but you need a few changes to get these results:

The bed and the nightstand are both movable.

The first thing you’re gonna do is start a new level. Trust me, this can (somehow) change things for good.
Then, you will change these settings in ‘World Settings’ → ‘Lightmass’: https://i.imgur.com/1zHIulo.png
It is vital to change the Volumetric Lightmap Detail Cell Size to around 25 otherwise your movable objects will get super bright.


Now on to the SkyLight: https://i.imgur.com/o4XCBQL.png

First, pick and HDRi that DOES NOT have a visible sun on it. Like the one I’m using: https://hdrihaven.com/hdri/?h=autumn_hockey

Why no sun? Because if one exists on the HDRi then UE4 will NOT cast a nice sun like how Blender does and you’ll have half of your scene in the dark and half super lit. This is why you have a Directional Light to work with.

Do NOT blow it’s intensity too much. If you have to, you’re doing something wrong. Remember, even if the scene is too dark we can adjust the exposure later - this is what your eyes do, when you’re inside it opens your “eye-hole” so that more light enters, and the reverse for when you’re outside.


Now, for the PP filter: https://i.imgur.com/HcpAeTd.png
You can work with the Minimum and Maximum Brightness values depending on the scene you have.


This is all the actors I had on the scene, initially. https://i.imgur.com/DsP6aU9.png

The really important ones are:

  • Lightmass Portal covering every opening;
  • Lightmass Importance Volume covering all your meshes
  • Post Process Filter set to Unbound

(This after creating the new level and removing ONLY the default floor).

Hope this helps someone!