In the process of re-lighting the Sun Temple as a second Natural Light study - gave myself the theme of "cold winter sun" and I'm playing with the new Rect Lights to simulate "spilling" light whenever I have transitional corridors:
Two areas - one with warm tones and lots of indirect light (I like to light fires/torches, as well as fixtures with a diffuser, in a soft but far-attenuating way) and one more spacious with more shadowed areas - I placed rectangle lights at the start of the two little corridor-y parts so I can control the look of the warm-tone light spilling out of the entranceways. This way I don't have to endlessly iterate to get this kind of result from Lightmass, and it gives a specular highlight (and it's even the right shape, unlike if you do this with a Spot light).
Here's a little collection of reference for mood/colours/cinematography tricks I'm using:
So, I'm happy enough with progress I've made towards the goal of learning how to effectively light an enviro that's supposed to just be natural light or only medieval fixtures, etc.
Now, on to something a little different. Basically, I'm sick to death of seeing this nonsense in peoples' WIPs:
So I'm working on a series of UE4 Blueprints that are all (in my opinion) how various light fixtures should behave, and should be set up - using mostly Static lighting where I can (yay optimization), sometimes using 4.20's Rectangle Lights (although no falloff control), and trying to balance the no. of exposed controls in the BP with the unique properties of each fixture (e.g. the super-soft falloff of the Normal Exit Sign).
First up, the ever-present Exit Sign:
1. Broken version (both versions are in the same BP) switched off, Normal version switched on
2. Broken version switched on, Normal version switched off
Next up, a Victorian style wall-mounted orb light Blueprint:
1x soft "Fill" point light - no shadows, low falloff exponent, high indirect intensity, it gets primary intensity from a Variable (Light Brightness) that is divided by 15, range variable
2x spot lights - shadows toggleable, low indirect intensity, brightness variable, range variable, soft shadows if enabled, LightFunctions to simulate accurate shadows from the mold of the diffuser/occlusion from the metal base
On/Off toggle control for all lights inside
Diffuser w/ SSS and Emissive, changed colour based on the light colour, emissive intensity tied to light brightness variable
Small update to the wallmounted orb - I've added an exposed multiplier to the range of the Fill Light, so in case this fixture needs to artificially fill a larger than expected space, it's not really a problem.
Some shots of some On and Off Blueprints near each other, and then Light Complexity view:
It seems like compression is spoiling your work, feels like it affects a lot your gradients area!
At this point it's expected behaviour, I'm not worried my testing level has almost-default Lightmass settings, the cube room has a low lightmap res, and I'm baking lights at Medium quality
It'll look lovely when it's time to put the final results up
Happy with these results from the setup, as well as the quick-but-effective texturing job, so that's the second BP done The multiplier control for the Fill Point really sells it, I'm a big fan of getting lights w/ diffusers as soft as this - which is much easier in more recent UE versions
& here's the Stationary light from the Broken Exit Sign showing off the Transmission of the Orb diffusers, plus how the soft falloff of the Intact Sign ended up:
Ceiling Light (which I've learned is a Schoolhouse-style Pendant Light) setup (and quick art pass) done:
Variable Brightness affects all Lights, and the Diffuser Material. Brightness is doubled for the Downward Spot, and divided by 10 for the Static Fill Point Light
Attenuation is variable, halved for the Upward Spot (LightFunction, no Shadows), and multiplied by another variable for the Fill Point
Outer Cone Angle for the Downward Spot is variable but clamped to 10-90 approx
Upward-facing Static Rectangle Light for lighting the inside of the inset, and providing Indirect Fill (Attenuation Radius can be Multiplied)
Downard-facing Stationary Rectangle Light for the main light
Toggleable Shadows, since it's easy to get unrealistic shadows from faking it like this (example in my image)
I think this would work best if you wanted somewhere like a museum gallery or governmental building lit in a bright but ambient way, instead of just having global skylight & harsh/strong direction light coming in and casting sharp shadows
No real shadows anywhere, this type of fixture I imagine is often just above doorways or something, it's more important to get the LightFunction and the potential for contributing to the GI as much as desired
Working on some more complex/interesting Fixtures Blueprints, first up from this set is a Projector-based light with a local transform control locked to one axis (for tilting the head):
Got the BP Setup done to a point where I'm 90% happy with it, and everything has materials. It's made in a pretty expensive way for what it is, but the effect is nice:
Reflector Normal and AO textures (pitted/bumpy metal) can be shared among all sorts of fixtures, Vertex Alpha controls emissive contribution
Glass is currently using constants - can be changed to share small tiling textures, Vertex Alpha controls emissive contribution
Working on replicating a hexagonal kitchen ceiling lamp I saw recently - this is how the BPs look before all the LightFunctions are in and all the controls are hooked up properly:
Just wanted to say I love these breakdowns of how you are handling you light fixture setups. They are super useful, and you are getting great results!
Thank you It's been a fun learning process (I had no idea Blueprints were so easy to use once you start), and hopefully I can encourage people to stop just shoving a shadow-casting point light underneath every emissive prop they place :P
Aren't light function heavy to compute? Why not using IES profiles instead?
Both are expensive, with Light Functions coming out a little more costly, but it's also dependent on what exactly the material is doing. One benefit over IES is the fade out distance, allowing you to reduce the impact. IES lights can't fade out the IES texture, unfortunately.
Nice to see what other people do with lighting. I set up something similar for my last project. I had to ditch Stationary lights in the BPs just because of the thin walls in between rooms/floors, causing a ton of overlapping issues.
Not sure if you've done it, but if you have a lot of BPs, it might be worth setting up a BP Function or Class to speed up your BP creation. That way all of your BPs will have the same parameters made for you.
Aren't light function heavy to compute? Why not using IES profiles instead?
Both are expensive, with Light Functions coming out a little more costly, but it's also dependent on what exactly the material is doing. One benefit over IES is the fade out distance, allowing you to reduce the impact. IES lights can't fade out the IES texture, unfortunately.
Nice to see what other people do with lighting. I set up something similar for my last project. I had to ditch Stationary lights in the BPs just because of the thin walls in between rooms/floors, causing a ton of overlapping issues.
Not sure if you've done it, but if you have a lot of BPs, it might be worth setting up a BP Function or Class to speed up your BP creation. That way all of your BPs will have the same parameters made for you.
Hopefully soon(tm) I'll try out some more complex/unusual fixtures. Maybe some sci-fi as opposed to contemporary ones? Although it seems weirdly difficult to find good ref for that kind of thing.
I haven't done that yet - tbh I haven't yet gone very deep with BPs at all :P the above is the extent of my knowledge. But if I can speed up the initial setup of each one, that would be pretty great
Love the Fincher and Penny Dreadful style light compositions at the start of your thread. I tend to take reference from real world references as well while doing lighting in Unreal and have often received feedback on the lines of using more reflection or shininess for game environments to exaggerate the overall look. I was wondering, what are your thoughts on this?
I'm currently torn between following real world reference and cinematic shots from movies versus going for scenes with exaggerated reflections and shine.
Love the Fincher and Penny Dreadful style light compositions at the start of your thread. I tend to take reference from real world references as well while doing lighting in Unreal and have often received feedback on the lines of using more reflection or shininess for game environments to exaggerate the overall look. I was wondering, what are your thoughts on this?
I'm currently torn between following real world reference and cinematic shots from movies versus going for scenes with exaggerated reflections and shine.
IMO a bit of exaggeration is perfectly fine and expected, just like it is in cinematography. Those scenes in Bond films where people sit talking around a table with a lamp? There are additional top and side lights to make the talent look their best (especially the hair). That ref shot of the underground tunnel lights from the Glass trailer? There are additional low-temp lights highlighting McAvoy's traps/shoulders for emphasis. All those hallways and corridors in Resi 7? Pretty clearly more shiny than they would be in photorealistic reality, so the specular highlights from the household light fixtures look way more interesting
Also worth noting that contrast is better than a global increase in shiny stuff. If there's a noticeable distinction between some non-reflective fabric (that still has good cloth material properties, e.g. fuzz) and some nearby glossy marble or something, generally that's gonna look good.
So, I have some time off work, and every now and then I thought why not chip away at something a bit more complex. So, naturally, I figured "Hey, a Jumbotron is a type of light fixture that would make an interesting Blueprint, right?"
Plan currently is:
Emissive-based Static Lighting w/ emissive contribution scale control
Toggleable "Boost" rectangle lights for each main screen
Spot w/ octagonal ring LF for the angled monitors near the top
I'm changing it a little by having 3x fixtures as one mesh with one LF Spot, then just duplicating this combo inside the BP - then I can toggle on/off each group of 3. Having them all acting as 1 with 1 giant LF Spot was OK, but at certain distances from surfaces the fakery was really easy to detect. Plus, this way I won't need such giant Outer Cone angles.
Update on the spotlight setup & LightFunction for the rig light clusters:
Obviously doing it this way means only the middle fixture has the Volumetric beam, but since the outer cone angle is fairly wide, I think the overall "look" of it will be good enough
Trying to be smart about this and using nested BPs for the rig lights, but exposing control of each Child BP seems to be more difficult than expected.. Either way, added the Cast Shadows toggle I forgot, and here's how it will look with all Rig Lights on:
Great. Upon trying to accomplish this myself, then later resorting to looking up all sorts of help threads on the UE4 forums, it looks like making a BP for my spot light clusters, then having 4 copies of that inside another BP, and being able to toggle each one in the Construction Script, is impossible. Even though this should be goddamn trivial in any engine. Fan-fucking-tastic.
EDIT: and now Emissive Static Lighting doesn't seem to want to work. I have no clue why.
--
At least I like how the 3x Spotlight cluster turned out - even with shitty VFX that looks even more compressed in this shot:
Removed the Particle as I can't get it to look right. I'm definitely no FX artist :P But as far as the Rig Lights go as a standalone BP, I'm pretty happy with they work. Expensive-ish in terms of frustrum and LF, but better than having 3 actual lights to accomplish the same result.
Back at it with re-lighting some UE Marketplace scenes. This time, something sci-fi flavoured.
Some plans painted over the original scene setup:
Plans included re-distributing some of the lighting props - and I ended up switching off the uplights on the floor - as well as area/rectangle lights for large-scale stuff, some LF Spot Lights for short-range "hotspots" to simulate light spilling from small fixtures.
Reference gathered was mostly a mix of Star Citizen and Alien Covenant:
So after lots of reference-gathering, I'm combining my blueprint-making with my blockout lighting studies - making super-quick whitebox environments and also turning the light fixtures into blueprints so I can iterate this stuff faster:
Example of a BP of electrical switchgear with green illuminated buttons as a "practical", with two rect lights:
After a bit of work, placing a mix of Blueprints and hand-placed Light actors (no GI, needs baking):
After lots of fiddling trying to get Convolution Bloom to produce good results in the 1st lighting scenario, I gave up. With the emergency lighting, it's working perfectly right off the bat:
Getting back into fixture blueprints, got some new ideas about how to make 'em interesting and useful - so I'm thinking of doing some in a post-apocalyptic theme.
I'm thinking that the caution tape is going to be a thin trim texture set on UV1, then if I was placing the Rect Light inside the lightbox I'd use Transmission, but for this I'll use Emissive on UV2 instead.
Replies
Two areas - one with warm tones and lots of indirect light (I like to light fires/torches, as well as fixtures with a diffuser, in a soft but far-attenuating way) and one more spacious with more shadowed areas - I placed rectangle lights at the start of the two little corridor-y parts so I can control the look of the warm-tone light spilling out of the entranceways. This way I don't have to endlessly iterate to get this kind of result from Lightmass, and it gives a specular highlight (and it's even the right shape, unlike if you do this with a Spot light).
Here's a little collection of reference for mood/colours/cinematography tricks I'm using:
ArtStation
Now, on to something a little different. Basically, I'm sick to death of seeing this nonsense in peoples' WIPs:
So I'm working on a series of UE4 Blueprints that are all (in my opinion) how various light fixtures should behave, and should be set up - using mostly Static lighting where I can (yay optimization), sometimes using 4.20's Rectangle Lights (although no falloff control), and trying to balance the no. of exposed controls in the BP with the unique properties of each fixture (e.g. the super-soft falloff of the Normal Exit Sign).
First up, the ever-present Exit Sign:
1. Broken version (both versions are in the same BP) switched off, Normal version switched on
2. Broken version switched on, Normal version switched off
Some shots of some On and Off Blueprints near each other, and then Light Complexity view:
It'll look lovely when it's time to put the final results up
The multiplier control for the Fill Point really sells it, I'm a big fan of getting lights w/ diffusers as soft as this - which is much easier in more recent UE versions
& here's the Stationary light from the Broken Exit Sign showing off the Transmission of the Orb diffusers, plus how the soft falloff of the Intact Sign ended up:
I want to do a tasteful, inexpensive setup for a ceiling light, as well as some more architectural light setups, like fake-exterior skylights:
I should be able to nail this sort of look for the Ceiling Lamp using the same cheap Diffuser MM I used for the Orb Light:
I think this would work best if you wanted somewhere like a museum gallery or governmental building lit in a bright but ambient way, instead of just having global skylight & harsh/strong direction light coming in and casting sharp shadows
UPDATE:
Here's what I've ended up with, for at least the first round of BPs:
Complexity:
Example Blueprint:
& how the asset looks just on its own in Marmo:
Light Complexity view:
(even if I couldn't get the glass looking consistent in all the breakdown shots... at least it works as intended in-game)
Found some ref for roughly the look this kind of fixture should have from the Glass trailer:
It's been a fun learning process (I had no idea Blueprints were so easy to use once you start), and hopefully I can encourage people to stop just shoving a shadow-casting point light underneath every emissive prop they place :P
Aren't light function heavy to compute? Why not using IES profiles instead?
Both are expensive, with Light Functions coming out a little more costly, but it's also dependent on what exactly the material is doing. One benefit over IES is the fade out distance, allowing you to reduce the impact. IES lights can't fade out the IES texture, unfortunately.
Nice to see what other people do with lighting. I set up something similar for my last project. I had to ditch Stationary lights in the BPs just because of the thin walls in between rooms/floors, causing a ton of overlapping issues.
Not sure if you've done it, but if you have a lot of BPs, it might be worth setting up a BP Function or Class to speed up your BP creation. That way all of your BPs will have the same parameters made for you.
Although it seems weirdly difficult to find good ref for that kind of thing.
I haven't done that yet - tbh I haven't yet gone very deep with BPs at all :P the above is the extent of my knowledge. But if I can speed up the initial setup of each one, that would be pretty great
Those scenes in Bond films where people sit talking around a table with a lamp? There are additional top and side lights to make the talent look their best (especially the hair).
That ref shot of the underground tunnel lights from the Glass trailer? There are additional low-temp lights highlighting McAvoy's traps/shoulders for emphasis.
All those hallways and corridors in Resi 7? Pretty clearly more shiny than they would be in photorealistic reality, so the specular highlights from the household light fixtures look way more interesting
Also worth noting that contrast is better than a global increase in shiny stuff. If there's a noticeable distinction between some non-reflective fabric (that still has good cloth material properties, e.g. fuzz) and some nearby glossy marble or something, generally that's gonna look good.
So, naturally, I figured "Hey, a Jumbotron is a type of light fixture that would make an interesting Blueprint, right?"
Plan currently is:
I'm changing it a little by having 3x fixtures as one mesh with one LF Spot, then just duplicating this combo inside the BP - then I can toggle on/off each group of 3. Having them all acting as 1 with 1 giant LF Spot was OK, but at certain distances from surfaces the fakery was really easy to detect. Plus, this way I won't need such giant Outer Cone angles.
Obviously doing it this way means only the middle fixture has the Volumetric beam, but since the outer cone angle is fairly wide, I think the overall "look" of it will be good enough
Either way, added the Cast Shadows toggle I forgot, and here's how it will look with all Rig Lights on:
EDIT: and now Emissive Static Lighting doesn't seem to want to work. I have no clue why.
--
At least I like how the 3x Spotlight cluster turned out - even with shitty VFX that looks even more compressed in this shot:
But as far as the Rig Lights go as a standalone BP, I'm pretty happy with they work. Expensive-ish in terms of frustrum and LF, but better than having 3 actual lights to accomplish the same result.
Finally got around to a modern-but-fancy wall sconce:
ArtStation
Moodboard/ref/paintover:
ArtStation
Some plans painted over the original scene setup:
Plans included re-distributing some of the lighting props - and I ended up switching off the uplights on the floor - as well as area/rectangle lights for large-scale stuff, some LF Spot Lights for short-range "hotspots" to simulate light spilling from small fixtures.
Reference gathered was mostly a mix of Star Citizen and Alien Covenant:
Here's what I have so far:
Example of a BP of electrical switchgear with green illuminated buttons as a "practical", with two rect lights:
After a bit of work, placing a mix of Blueprints and hand-placed Light actors (no GI, needs baking):
The alternate scenario will be lit with emergency lights instead of the hanging fluorescents
With the emergency lighting, it's working perfectly right off the bat:
(DoF ended up way stronger in the HighResShot than in my Viewport for the first one)
I'm thinking if possibly going for a more "realistic" look for the fully-lit version and taking away some of the warm tinting.
ArtStation
Have some photobashed concept WIPs: