I’m using UE4 to create entire indoor scenes dynamically, which means baked lighting isn’t an option. So far my attempts at getting decent lighting have resulted in rather ugly, flat lighting.
Here are my project parameters:
- This is for VR, just updated to UE 4.15
- All machines running this will have a GTX 1080 or equivalent (professional environment where this is a known quantity)
- Many of the scenes don’t have ANY windows. I desperately need a way to fake light being bounced around a room
- The scenes are relatively simple (<1,000 objects in the entire scene, most have simple geometry)
- The majority of lights are spot lights, but I could also use point lights if that helped
The best results I’ve found were pretty hacky and it feels like the engine is capable of doing something better:
- A single directional light is facing downward (exactly at -90 degrees). It casts shadows, and all ceilings are set to not cast shadows.
- Auto-exposure disabled
- SSAO enabled
- HDRI ambient cubemap with an intensity around 0.4
This approach gives me shadows that aren’t too harsh and fills the bulk of the space with light. The SSAO gives some dimension to the walls, but overall it feels bland. I even tried messing with LPVs, but spot and point lights don’t seem to have any effect on those.
Any ideas/suggestions on what I could do to get better dynamic, indoor lighting? Thanks in advance!