Outside Light Source method

[syrom]

Whats the known standard for best outside natural light for interior? I noticed the bounce card method plane with spot light aimed to it and glow goes through the window]. Then a few people do the direct spot light with the cone set to max 80. Whats the most natural solution in your opinions? Also… if you do the direct spot light method, are shadows turned off or are they left ON but with Area light checked on?

[drpsyko]

Skylight (HDRI) with multi-bounce Lightmass.exe work best for me.

[syrom]

@drpsyko;740600

Skylight (HDRI) with multi-bounce Lightmass.exe work best for me.

Multi Bounce Lightmass.exe? WHat is that?

[ZacD]

Generally, the bounce card method is considered dated and not needed since 4.11 when they added light portals, but Epic did use bounce cards for the hub area of Robo Recall (you can download the mod editor to see this). But they might have used them more for the blinds.

For the Multibounce lightmass, there’s a thread and and exe for it. Lightmass: multi-bounced sky lighting - Rendering - Unreal Engine Forums

The short descriptiom is skylights in UE4 only bounce lights once. And generally for an interior with nice lighting, you’ll want about 3 or 4 bounces for a normal room, more if it has a lot of dark corners and hallways with little light. You’ll probably want to only use 10 bounces at most, because they really add to the render time when using the modified exe.

HDRI images make great skylights with little work, there’s plenty of free HDR images out there, and you can easily switch between a few to get different lighting situations (different times of day, overcast, sunny, etc).

So try the multi bounce lightmass, HDRI skylight, 1 directional light for the sun, and portals in the windows. You should get great results pretty quickly. The sun should generally be about 4 times brighter than the skylight, post processing will make a big difference as well. You could copy Koola’s from his content example scene, he uses a LUT and tweaks some settings to get a nice Arch Viz look.

[syrom]

@ZacD;740628

Generally, the bounce card method is considered dated and not needed since 4.11 when they added light portals, but Epic did use bounce cards for the hub area of Robo Recall (you can download the mod editor to see this). But they might have used them more for the blinds.

For the Multibounce lightmass, there’s a thread and and exe for it. Lightmass: multi-bounced sky lighting - Rendering - Epic Developer Community Forums

The short descriptiom is skylights in UE4 only bounce lights once. And generally for an interior with nice lighting, you’ll want about 3 or 4 bounces for a normal room, more if it has a lot of dark corners and hallways with little light. You’ll probably want to only use 10 bounces at most, because they really add to the render time when using the modified exe.

HDRI images make great skylights with little work, there’s plenty of free HDR images out there, and you can easily switch between a few to get different lighting situations (different times of day, overcast, sunny, etc).

So try the multi bounce lightmass, HDRI skylight, 1 directional light for the sun, and portals in the windows. You should get great results pretty quickly. The sun should generally be about 4 times brighter than the skylight, post processing will make a big difference as well. You could copy Koola’s from his content example scene, he uses and LUT and tweaks some settings to get a nice Arch Viz look.

Ohhh ok. Thxs for the link. I will read on it. WOW! Nice tweak! I will give this skylight bounce mod a shot! From what everyone is saying, it should be very helpful for interiors.