Mesh Appears Pitch Black During Animation Despite Being in Light Range

[mighty tendon]

I'm using the Built-in Render Pipeline. I have a large scale model that I want to be brought into range of an area light. The mesh lights up properly when brought into range in it's T-pose, but now that I have it in a prone animation, it is pitch black unless brought really close to the area light. I've tried playing around with a good deal of settings on the light, light settings, project settings, and mesh renderer to no avail. Does anybody know how I might fix this?

[silk bone]

Area lights don't light up dynamic meshes at all by themselves

[silk bone]

So the light you are seeing is not from the area light

[mighty tendon]

Hmm, that's unfortunate. I really liked the visual dropoff effect it gives. Might you be aware of any alternatives?

[silk bone]

All baked lights including area lights can light up dynamic meshes using light probes, which you should have if you need any static lighting to non-lightmapped meshes

(and reflection probes too)

With large meshes receiving lighting from probes, the light probe proxy volume component is designed to let them get locally varied lighting when they're likely to be in the presence of many probes at once

[mighty tendon]

I tried playing around with light probes but couldn't see any apparent effects. I'll do some research and play around with it further. Any tips or suggestions? No worries if not.

[silk bone]

They need to be baked together with all baked lights to have any effects

The effect should be profound
Not receiving and lighting or only receiving scene's global ambient probe's lighting vs the light captred from the nearest probes' positions

[timber vale]

Light probes capture baked light data at points in 3d space that realtime objects can use.
This is why without any realtime objects are black for you (if you only have baked light around there)
https://docs.unity3d.com/6000.2/Documentation/Manual/LightProbes.html