Level Design Static Light with NO shadows?

[GrayveRose]

Is there a way, no matter how far fetched or out of the box that I could use a static light, but not have it cast shadows. I have one set to shadow already, this other one is mainly just used as a filler to help reach areas as if it was all one big body of light, I just dont want there to be 2 shadows coming off every object, making it obvious Im using 2 lights. A dynamic light of this radius cuts back at least 30 frames, which is terrible considering I really am only using it cause it doesnt shadow cast.

 

[Murphy]

I'm pretty sure that's not possible.

Just use the lights you need, maybe use two or three ambient lights instead of one so you can have each on a lower brightness and in different places so they all cast less noticeable shadows than one big ambient light would and then let it be. Players are going to notice the extra shadows a LOT less than you and, well, it's an old engine. It's expected.

EDIT: This is for the lego map, right? Pretty sure the reason dynamic lights hurt your framerate so much is because of your ridiculously complex lego StaticMesh formations! Use bSpecialLit to exclude those from being lit by these lights and you should be good to go!

 

[GrayveRose]

I found a work around using the dynamic light with my specific situation, but it would be nice to find a static that doesnt cast shadows, maybe one can be made custom pretty easy as it would be better than what I ended up doing.

Yes sir, this is a correct assumption. I was goin the special lit route, but its so binary, some of my objects would either have to be getting light from the room lights that have that set to true, or get no light unless i made duplications of the lights to light the special meshes, but simply because it is a large dynamic light it would be the same issue either way. What I did end up doing was setting all the lego pieces to bAcceptDynamicLights to False, and then using a little ambient glow to compensate for now becoming a little darker lol. Saved like 30-40 frames ha

 

[TheMutant]

You can turn off shadows from static meshes directly (Display->bShadowCast=false). For BSP there is not such a solution, the only way that comes to my mind right now is recreating the map as static mesh with hardcoded lighting.