movable light vs static for portfolio

roshankarel

I am creating a scene in ue4 for my portfolio since i  am learning all there is on internet i have few questions
1.For portfolio should i use static lighting or movable lighting.which one give  more realistic feeling?
2.I tried static lighting but my scene is getting dark with lightmap overlap error so do i have to create lightmap in 3d software or can i tweak it in ue4?

with static lights
with movable lights
3. please can someone clarify that should i be creating lightmap uvs when  creating assets in 3d software before i begin to bring it in ue4 and do other things so that later i dont have to go through issues like that

pls help i am very confused

Obscura

Generally, stationary light is the highest quality one, because it will have nice specular, unlike the static one. Its kinda like the best of both worlds. Its also the most used one in games made with ue4, at least on pc/console. Lower end devices may require fully baked lighting.

About the lightmap uvs: Unreal can usually auto generate working lightmap uvs, but it creates it from the first uv channel, so basically it just packs the uvs. This is acceptable in most cases, so I rarely bother making lightmap uv by hand these days. There might be some cases though, when its required to adjust lightmap uvs by hand in the modeling software.

roshankarel

Obscura said:

Generally, stationary light is the highest quality one, because it will have nice specular, unlike the static one. Its kinda like the best of both worlds. Its also the most used one in games made with ue4, at least on pc/console. Lower end devices may require fully baked lighting.

About the lightmap uvs: Unreal can usually auto generate working lightmap uvs, but it creates it from the first uv channel, so basically it just packs the uvs. This is acceptable in most cases, so I rarely bother making lightmap uv by hand these days. There might be some cases though, when its required to adjust lightmap uvs by hand in the modeling software.

i tried stationary also but the result is same dark scene. for wall its just a cube with planar mapping on one face can that might be causing error in lightmap overlapping?

Obscura

If I understand correctly, you just have a planar projection. In this case, the verts of the sides are merged on the uvs, so unreal can't generate proper lightmap uvs from it (like I mentioned above, it just re-packs the existing 1st channel). Either make a lightmap uv by hand, by using box projection instead of planar, and press pack uvs. Or change the first channel in a way that everything is laid out (they can overlap) and the verts of the sides are not merged, so unreal can auto generate a secondary uv channel.

roshankarel

Obscura said:

If I understand correctly, you just have a planar projection. In this case, the verts of the sides are merged on the uvs, so unreal can't generate proper lightmap uvs from it (like I mentioned above, it just re-packs the existing 1st channel). Either make a lightmap uv by hand, by using box projection instead of planar, and press pack uvs. Or change the first channel in a way that everything is laid out (they can overlap) and the verts of the sides are not merged, so unreal can auto generate a secondary uv channel.

thanks a lot separating uvs face solved the problem and is now baking fine.