emissive static lighting

[JGreen389]

this is a scene im nearly finishing up but i have some questions regarding lighting that is being done through an emissive texture.

the light in question is marked in yellow and its area of influence is outlines in red.

my first question is why does the area marked with yellow dashes receive light from this static mesh. its as if the building isnt blocking any of the light.

i was also wondering if there was a way to get the railing to shadow and this is marked in blue. i was able to get a shadow when i was using an actual spot light in the exact same position, but the lighting as a whole seems to be more realistic this way, only as i have said, the shadow is now gone.

[redbox]

emissive from static is very difficult feature. and sometimes it provides various color errors in lightmaps.
I recommend use this only for "plane" lights, and with big values in exponent, for creating very smooth falloff. see examples in udk maps(DM-Deck).
in your situation use simple point light.

[redbox]

also, for night scenes, if there is no any directional dominants(like moon), use multiple small dominants(points and spots). try to divide your level into few small scenes, where in each scene you will have 1 small dominant. and remember that few dominants can't lit 1 object, because you will have an error.