Well, the topic is a bit misleading. It's not about animated lighting. What it is about, however, is lighting on animating models; our main character that walks around under player control moves through the various level lighting conditions just fine, shading his body smoothly as he goes place to place.

Then, there is the problem: Our NPCs that are running simple idle frames (sitting around at a bar talking, for example) respond to lighting in MUCH less desirable ways; the lighting appears to "snap" and update conditions every 2-3 seconds! This looks absoultely horrible, to say the least, and is forcing us to keep characters in the shadows for our demo.

Does anyone know how to get around this problem? Even unlit'ing the models and setting an ambient light continues the problem, as it is from a engine-set light source (and even if this worked, would be a less than perfect solution.)

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

If the entities are seated then can't you just set a constant light on them. The reason is probably because it takes the light from the surface directly below it so it could be getting it from the wrong position on the entity (e.g at the feet). I dont know whether it would work but could you not set the entities light to a short distance so that it effectivly lights itself?

I don't know whether that would work but then there seems to be no other answers so far

Under normal circumstance I'd think that'd work just fine, but it doesn't seem to assist here - lighting the entities isn't a problem at all. Nor having them look very nicely shaded and good - it's when they go to animate. If they have their hand in a dark area and they move it to a lighter area, it won't steadily shade the hand while it moves - just suddenly it changes lighting conditions in an instant after it moves - that's the problem we're having. As a result the lighting appears to change very violently, and it looks real bad.

Only the walking-player seems truely immune to this effect..