Lumenot UE ArchVIz - Deep dive into light baking
Having used Unity extensively for baked lighting for standalone VR and mobile games, I wanted to push Unreal light baking further for AEC / VR use but for PC specs. Goal was also to get as much clean result as possible without 10 hour wait and within 2-4 lightmaps.
(Bake times 45mins - 1 hour) All lights are set to Static.
Using 4k TD per 1M, Quixel surfaces and Unreal ArchViz scene assets. MidJourneyAI for picture frames. I also optimized these assets and hand authored lightmap UVs, for curved surfaces you have to straighten out the UV as much as possible to avoid bake artifacts. I also used Physical lighting values (lumen, lux), colour temperature and camera settings (ISO, Shutter Speed and F-Stop). Post Process was done entirely in Unreal but very subtle as I wanted my key, fill and sky light HDR to do most work.
Scene composition I kept very basic however I made sure both hard and curved surfaces are present to get good light coverage. Foliage, I duplicated the faces, offset them and flipped the normals for good bake quality. Lastly I setup lighting scenarios and world settings for each. Overall it was a fun exercise and learned few new things that I will surely use in future projects.