Yeah, I’m also working in Archviz projects but I think this problem not only affects the Archviz community.
Is like Daedalus says in his video, UE4 offers a light system (vital for any visualization purpose, cause… you want to see things in a screen after all, and if you want to see things on a screen you will have to simulate lighting at some point or another) and one part of that system is broken or so badly documented that is unintelligible.
Then, everything falls apart, your super careful crafted and delighted photogrammetry assets, your super complex multilayered materials… what do they represent? what are they reflecting or reacting to?
I’m gonna be a PBR “purist” here, the system needs a previsible camera, a previsible Lightning and a previsible Material simulation to be called, well, a system, at all.
And what bothers me is that Epic was taking the right steps towards that unified simulated system (EVEN if was a simulation at the end of the day, EVEN if wasn’t 100% accurate, EVEN if it was an approximation)
But on the verge of settling the issue, they just… gave up? and left us with a (apparently) broken or unfinished one.
And I don’t want to get over the Fortnite conspiracy theories wagon but… fortnite doesn’t uses realistic lighting and it prints money so maybe is that, they just gave up.
I found very strange that they let pass a whole numbered update without doing any change or documenting this absolutely CORE (for the engine) issue.
Even “obscure” topics like Distance Fields are better documented than this.
Man, I kinda-maybe-almost understood what a Signed Distance Function is by reading unreal’s help files and a couple of pages on the topic! And I really really SUCK at math and everything related!
Putting a lamp in your level should be FAR easier and predictable than that. Putting a Sun, a Camera with an aperture that simulates real cameras, an aperture bracket for the auto exposure, a skylight, setting an HDRI should be… working out of the box stuff! at least, “go to the help files, read and learn you n00b” stuff!.. not a dig-in-the-forums-and-talk-with-a-guy-who-worked-for-the-star-wars-franchise stuff! that’s my point.
Is light man, is like… the base for everything you do inside the engine… is not 100% Physically accurate? no problem, but give us the numbers! I want to know what numbers I’m punching in. A random Multiply between, dunno, 0 and 1000? OK… but then why… call it Candelas and Lumens and Lux stuff??? at least I know that a random 950 is 950 times stronger than 1 in a arbitrary scale.
Anyways… I get a little angry with this issue as you can see… I don’t understand the topic so deeply as people who writes here and not knowing where else to look for makes me very upset… I love the engine, and I really wish I could use it, I’m stuck with 4.18. And 4.19-20 look amazing (The GPU acelerated bootleg thing for baking light specially)
gonna try the 4.20 preview today and test some stuff. Maybe they fixed something? Somebody said the exposure thing is even worse now, they removed options or somehting… dang man!