So, at my place of employment, we are working towards using UE4 as our rendering software. Most, if not all of the UE4 lighting tutorials that I have seen make GREAT use of exterior lighting such as the sun using a directional light in the scene, that is because they have a window or some sort of opening for sunlight to enter. In my case, there is no sunlight being exposed to these rooms we are making, just the lights(both colored and white) that are installed within the space. Does anyone have any knowledge or know where to look for this case as exteriors I find easier to manage due to the fact that the directional light takes care of 80% of lighting.
Interior lighting is the same as any other archviz lighting setups. UE4 even supports IES lights so the same lighting that you would do for something like Vray renders should apply.
Well you could use a post process volume and use a HDRI cube map and that will give you an even GI lighting solution.
I do use a PPV and LMIV. I am able to accomplish a close-to realistic appearance, but in all honesty, I think it could be much better from what I have seen on the web. Can you explain IES lights? I am sure I have heard of them but from the acronym I cant figure out what is stands for. Also, could you explain what/where and HDRI cube map is and what GI stands for?
Hi Yourself.
Don’t use cube maps / HDRI. It is a total hack approach.
Use a directional light for the sun, and a simple skylight for general sky light. Balance the two then search these forums for the best lightmass settings. BNy default they aren’t ready for production results.
I’ve looked into using Unreal for advanced lighting, and it isn’t quite ready yet. HDR’s in skylights don’t work… they make a general colour approximation, but make no directional shadows.
Lightmass also tends to ‘dumb down’ the GI product. Everything is smoothed out ALOT, and rays don’t bounce ‘correctly’ as they would in tracing engines, i.e. arnold/redshift Maya. This is a good thing for getting started… a bad thing for people that want realism.
good luck!
The problem is the rooms I am building are steam rooms and saunas which usually lie within a customers building/facility/house and therefore aren’t affected by sunlight. So “technically” I shouldn’t use a directional light/skylight since UE4 is physically based and essentially, that would be “cheating” as well, right?
IES lights are a lighting profile that matches to real-world lights. If you are doing an interior scene, then you just need to light it up as if it were a real space–you need light fixtures and then place lights to match them.