Glowing light that follows me

[Great ATuin]

Hello there,


I’m working on a large landscape map and there is a ring of light that follows the camera. It seems to be related to some quality setting as certain features only show up in the ring. I’ve tried disabling and swapping out each light and volume but with no effect. All lights are set to movable. I’ve been trying to understand what’s causing it and google searches are failing me.



Help me internet, you are my only hope.

[MostHost LA]

Is this following the in-editor camera?
does this happen when you hit the play button or Simulate as well?

it could be -
1) a light inside the character BP.
2) specific behaoivor of terrain material. Put a box at the edge and see if the ring of light affects the box too or not.
3) a post process you messed with that's bound to camera settings.

[MostHost LA]

Another possible thing is also ExponentialHeightFog. I'm currently trying to soften the hard edge it creates as well.

[neighborlee]

Hello there,


I’m working on a large landscape map and there is a ring of light that follows the camera. It seems to be related to some quality setting as certain features only show up in the ring. I’ve tried disabling and swapping out each light and volume but with no effect. All lights are set to movable. I’ve been trying to understand what’s causing it and google searches are failing me.



Help me internet, you are my only hope.

EDIT: I take that back sorry( it was happening) then I got rid of exponential fog -- never helped lighting much but then how all this WORKS , is a bit beyond me at this juncture

THIS, I have shadows folllowing me, all this tiime I thought it was normal...is it part of light/shadow engine design ?

[MostHost LA]

No, but it's a result of the distance setting in the exponentialheightfog

Basically you can consider the height fog a postprocess effect with a sphere mask. Setting the radius far out works, but there is no direct control for the falloff as you would have in the postprocess effect, so it creates that sphere like shape around you.
since you cannot manipulate the material itself but just parameters you are then stuck to manually moving the location Z and adjusting the height falloff while keeping the radius within the numbers the blueprint limits you to to prevent the hard edge.

As far as benefits go, it does other things with light and world composition/level design.
for instance you can drive the parameters via level blueprint to create a dynamic fog system.

not sure if creating a postprocess on your own could be cheaper and/or how implementing the heightfog provides other benefits that a postprocess would not. Its however a pain to adjust and get just right. Been tweaking since I wrote the post and I'm still unhappy with it.

[neighborlee]

ya, my world is large,and its only 2x2 atm,and ya its HARD to 'light' areas I want and see proper shadows elsewhere. Having a hard time getting realistic ,darker shadows,soft preferable -
I'm yes new at lighting, basically bc until now I've had to concentrate on terrain sculpting,,I wanted to do something unique but excellent.

I suspect short of success in pockets, that wc designs will necessitate tracing and GI.( large worlds like mine anyway-and COMPLEX it is ) - I'll get back later if I can get anywhere but I doubt it,,I get beautiful results here, then its screwed up elsewhere

Not bored. o_0 ,and ya around sphere its not pretty,,OR I have ( if I didn't say btw using all dynamic lit directionals) something wrong...o_0 Solo is a challenge at times but love project so..
Btw not using BP's for any of this , is that a mistake ( have one MMO lighting tut yet to go) ?

Thx so much for being part of conversation.

[Great ATuin]

Was able to figure it out, it was in the shader. Haven't dug down in to figure out exactly where it is, but can edit in the material instance for now. Thanks for the help everybody!