Create a material that emits light

[Garling]

I have a sphere that I want to create a material that emits light, kinda like a light bulb. How do I do this?

[vistazifta]

I have a sphere that I want to create a material that emits light, kinda like a light bulb. How do I do this?

to glow like phosphorous? or like a light fixture? to make it just glow phosphorous u just change the rgb to a number way above the actual color like 10 instead of 1

[Garling]

vistazifta, yes that worked, thanks.

What is the best way to handle creating a light, I have a Point Light but when I place it inside the sphere it blocks out the light.

[Garling]

I have it working as needed.

[tippy1000]

Garling, when you find a working solution, please post your answer. I mean no disrespect, but say I had the same issue that you had, but couldn't find the answer. You could have held the key to it. Simply stating "I have it working" doesn't help us newbies. But posting, I did this (whatever it is) and it works, and a thanks would help everyone else out.
I appreciate all that these forums have to offer.

[Digitalfiend]

^ Agreed. It's frustrating when someone asks for help on a forum, receives guidance, then comes up with a solution and has time to post "got it working" but not provide any more information; that's not really giving back to the community. So what was the solution?

[N0M4D]

Yeah because I need the answer too.

[Spectronaut]

With the mesh selected, in the details tab, find the property called Cast Shadows, and check it off.

[FrankieV]

There is a material in the Reflections Subway example that has just that quality.

M_Lightbulb gives the object the materiel density of the glass
Emissive makes the object illuminate as the light.

Beats haveing to explain how the material is built but the short cut is Emissive Color as part of the main texture is where you can plug in a color parameter and what ever object you drag and drop it on will glow based on what multiplier you attach to it.

[charliewhiskey]

This might help:
https://forums.unrealengine.com/show...hp?1072-On-hit

[Bookman]

I tried getting emmissive lighting to work with lightmass last night, and had no luck. I've been through every setting I can think of. in UDK it was a simple matter of setting the static mesh to contribute to the emissive to static lighting, and there seem to be a switch in the material now that implies that there is, and that it's handled through the material now rather than the object properties. However despite having a very bright emissive material (+5) I never saw any contribution to lightmass from my emissive's. I'm trying to light a tunnel like level and because you can no longer have overlapping light volumes getting all my emmissive materials working with the light bake is critical to the look of what I am trying to do.

[kalrua]

I tried getting emmissive lighting to work with lightmass last night, and had no luck. I've been through every setting I can think of. in UDK it was a simple matter of setting the static mesh to contribute to the emissive to static lighting, and there seem to be a switch in the material now that implies that there is, and that it's handled through the material now rather than the object properties. However despite having a very bright emissive material (+5) I never saw any contribution to lightmass from my emissive's. I'm trying to light a tunnel like level and because you can no longer have overlapping light volumes getting all my emmissive materials working with the light bake is critical to the look of what I am trying to do.

In fact:
https://answers.unrealengine.com/que...-lighting.html

Sorry, this feature has been removed. We had several problems with it and couldn't make it work with the rest of the lighting features to a satisfactory level.Emissive lights through lightmass are always baked into the lightmap and therefore don't integrate at all with characters / dynamic objects. They are not very controllable and don't have any previewing at all. They are often hidden in complex levels as you can't find them like a normal light where you would just search the scene outliner (stealth lights). They can explode lighting build times, depending on the polycount of the mesh that's emitting. That said, they were pretty cool in small test levels so it's a shame we couldn't find a way to make them work.

[olivierJT]

This is also critical for me as the only light source I had in UDk were emissive materials.
I cannot get photons to fire up with lightmaps or even in dynamic lights.

My whole lighting pipeline was based on material lighting, I am very very annoyed by that. I must find a solution to that.
I looked at every example provided. Read all the post on the subject too, cannot find any equivalent.
I became on expert on that on UDK.

Neon in subway map, but it doesn't light up the scene ("light only" shows no influence)

It look like UE4 became a realistic architecture lighting software. I want fantasy, and SyFy, not "welcome to Autocad"

I'll comeback here reporting when I find a solution...


Edit : Yes I saw that post. But "feature removed" without an equivalent is a mistake... (for content creation variety type)

[odd_enough]

I was somewhat annoyed with this at first too, until I realized that there is very little need for emissive materials affecting world lighting UNTIL we have full realtime GI. There really is no reason for it. The difference between faking it with point/spot lights and using an emissive material for baked static lighting is visually negligible. Not only that, but baking emissive light had a drastic negative effect on the light build times. Ideally, most of your lighting in a level *should* be done with placed light actors and post processing.

So again, really the best solution you could hope to ask for that would make the most sense without compromising efficiency is a realtime radiosity solution (like Enlighten or SVOGI).

[olivierJT]

Hey ^_^
@odd_enough
I absolutely disagree ^_^

The difference between faking it with point/spot lights and using an emissive material for baked static lighting is visually negligible. Not only that, but baking emissive light had a drastic negative effect on the light build times.

It depends of the look you are try to achieve.
In term of building times, well I render at night, and the time to add 10000 of lights just to have the same visual (and the difference is visible) is absolutely not negligible either. ( IN MY CASE ) ^_^
My UDK pipeline is to a point where adding lights was just assigning a shader.
Then render lightmaps.

No I am trying to get the same look and feel, but point lights are making rounds spots event with attenuation radius and source radius tweaked.
Such a nightmare in my case.
I hope my failing is due to my inexperience in UE4... because i really need to get where i want (visually)
EU4 light seems to me (to this day) made for generic realistic "human" environments. Which is a shame.

But you know all in good faith, for now I believe i am the cause of "not being able to get where I want" ^_^