Lightmaps

Yerus

Hi,
So, I'm gathering info on Unreal workflow and one question that remains is about lightmaps.
When we use lights in UE plus lightmaps, does the lights we add override or overbright the influence of the lightmaps?
Does it look weird adding lights to an already light baked texture?
Thx.

icegodofhungary

If you bake lighting information into textures in other programs and then try to bake lighting again within unreal, yes it could look weird. Depends totally on what your project is though as stylized stuff uses lighting info in textures and still bakes lighting in engine.

I'm not sure what the "unreal workflow" is you're referring to. Do you mean just using unreal? Because you don't need to bake lightmaps yourself using unreal. It does it for you. You just add lights, and change their settings to do what you want it to.

Yerus

No, what I was saying is about adding a light source to an area with already baked lighting.. Does it conflict with the lightmap? Does it look uggly?

icegodofhungary

The lights are accounted for in the baked lighting. If you add a light to an area with baked lighting, you would rebake the lighting.  If you want to use static lighting, you must rebake when you add lights or it will look odd. You can add a dynamic light, which won't be accounted for in the lightmaps. Dynamic lights are used for shadowing things that move like characters or physics objects.