Real time light editing not always working

[Bantis]

Moving around and editing lights in the editor seems to get whonky sometimes. Sometimes it works fine and I can adjust and move them with no problem and the light updates in real-time and so I can see what I am doing as I go without having to rebuild the lighting. However sometimes it seems to get "stuck" and whenever I edit any light properties or even move one the whole scene lights up real bright and I have to rebuild the lights to get things back to normal. So this results in rebuilding the lighting every time I edit light properties. So when this happens it is kinda a **** shoot as to what is going to be the result of my edits.

When everything goes bright like this is there a way to get it back under "control"? Like I said it usually doesn't seem to do this but when it does I can't seem to get the real-time editing back. I've tried hiding lights, changing different types of lights properties, and even restarting the editor but nothing seems to get it back to normal.

Hope that makes sense.

Thanks.

[Spoondog]

When you edit any light it's never really "real time" i.e. you'll always have to rebuild to see the real result, but sometimes you can get a good idea without rebuilding. If you edit a large radius light, basically the entire radius will go "bright" like you mention. There is no solution really, but you can save time by using the "Build only changed lighting" and "Build only selected actors" flags in the lighting options.

It's a bit of a pain really and I long for an option to turn off lightmap compression, seeing that takes the longest (just for testing purposes obv).

[Odedge]

There is no solution really, but you can save time by using the "Build only changed lighting" and "Build only selected actors" flags in the lighting options.

When you do these, the editor doesn't build the rest of the other lights??? Which makes sense, but if those other lights interact with the lights you are building, to me, it doesn't make much sense.

I have found that if you move static meshes, the lighting tends to freak out. While it doesn't really get bright, you get the "lag" in the editor.

On my current map, I have created prefabs for each of my lights. I have about 13 of them depending on what mesh and light color they use. I placed them around the map, built the lighting, made changes and so on. Though I am using individual lights to help fill in the darker spots.

[Spoondog]

I really only use "build selected actors only" if i'm switching between lightmap resolution values. "Build changed lighting only" works well enough though - basically any surface or mesh that has changed or that is within the radius of a changed light gets built... but I'm obsessive so I usually do a full rebuild just in case.

[ambershee]

I tend to work on lighting and pathing separately, so I usually only build one or the other instead of a full rebuild. No point rebuilding everything if one or the other hasn't changed - unless it's your final build before cooking, of course

[Bantis]

Thanks guys. I will try the suggestions.

I did notice as I was playing around with it that if you don't move an existing light but add a new one it won't go all bright. Course I don't usually want to add a new light as I already have one there but it is just something I noticed.

Thanks.

[Spoondog]

Actually that reminds me - another trick is to cut and paste the light before you move it - then you don't get the mega slow down