Unreal Material Setup - Six point vs normal map lighting

Hey all,

This should probably be a super quick question to answer. But I realised there are was a gap in my knowledge (which is pretty damn fundamental!) which is about setting up lighting within my material.

In terms of smokes/explosions, what is the preference between sixpoint vs using a standard normal map? I know materials using sixpoint lighting do not actually use the normal input but are there scenarios were one should be used over the other?

Thanks for the input as always!

depends what your setup is and what you’re shading, but generally if you have more overlapping details and you use normal maps theres a bunch of self shadowing that should be going on that you won’t get usually. 6 point gives you proper self shadowing, as well as any other fancy little details you want to bake in to your texture like subsurface scattering, and proper back lighting, but again, depends on your setup you are using that’ll determine how flat your normal map comes across.