Submit your questions directly to expert members on our team – ask about feature insights, overarching development guidance, career advice, industry questions, and of course, what you’re wondering specifically about Lighting in UEFN!
Make sure to check out the awesome backgrounds and expertise of our special Epic developer guests featured below.
Do you have a question for us? Ask away by replying to this post!
Carlos Cristerna / Senior Product Specialist. With 20 years of experience in computer graphics, Carlos Cristerna joined Epic Games in 2021 as a Senior Product Specialist for Unreal Engine’s product team. Recently Carlos acted as the lead art director of the recently released UE5 Architecture Sample Scene “Hillside”. Now working with the rendering team, he contributes to the evolution of Unreal Engine in order to address the needs of the AEC and Games industries.
Florian Dirmhirn / Technical Operations Manager. Florian Dirmhirn serves as Technical Operations Manager. In his role he coaches external teams of highly skilled technicians, helping service partners deliver outstanding results on their path into real-time rendering, the Epic Ecosystem, and the metaverse. Florian has over 15 years of experience in various industries and a passion for games.
Lonnie Li / Senior Tools Programmer. Lonnie has been working on the modeling tools and more recently Fortnite’s new Sequencer based time of day manager systems for Chapter 4 and UEFN. His current focus is on expanding both of these toolsets for both Fortnite and UEFN. Creative Tools Designer.
Jonathan Litt / Senior Technical Product Manager. Unreal Engine Senior Technical Product Manager with a focus on rendering, lighting, and materials. In this role, he works closely with customers and engineers to help guide the development and usability of engine features. He has been an enthusiastic Unreal user since the early days of UE4 when he started using it for VR, AR, and other interactive applications, eventually joining Epic in 2020.
Jon Lauf / Lead Technical Artist Jon joined Epic 2 years ago and has over 20 years of experience in games. He is currently leading the tech art department for Fortnite cosmetics. He was previously a lead on Fortnite events and also involved with the new time of day system and lighting for Chapter 4.
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Is there a way we can have different exposure settings for differeng graphics levels (low, high, etc.), specifically with the Post Processing Volume? And if not, then instead different options for lumen vs non-lumen?
I’ve been looking into adding animated effects and such to the light actors in my projects, but I’m having a hard time finding material tutorials for that. Do you know the best place to look for guides on flickering, spectrum, etc. etc. effects for lights?
What are the best lighting practices generally you recommend for good perfomance across platforms in UEFN?
Really appreciate all of these, thank you for your time😁
Are there any plans in terms of updating the Day Sequence device to hold events/functions (ie. sending off events at certain times of day, setting/fast forwarding time of day, etc)?
Will we ever be able to differentiate between lumen and non-lumen settings on lighting actors?
Currently, it’s hard to make an experience that has consistent lighting between all graphics settings. The fact that performance mode has NO lighting, too, makes it even more difficult - and making a fair experience using fog and lighting when performance mode has neither is also difficult.
How do Day Sequence Devices interact with each other if there are multiple Day Sequence Devices on the map? The first one is without Trigger Volume and the others are with Trigger Volume.
If Sunlight is enabled on the main Day Sequence Device and Sunlight is not enabled on the second device with Trigger Volume , does the second device take over the Sunlight settings from the first (main) device?
I need to reduce the Skylight intensity in locations. So I create a second Day Sequence device and just check Trigger Volume + Skylight on it and change the intensity. Is this correct?
Any plans to add more items with lighting? There’s items like the flashlight, flashlight pistol, and the torch that illuminate, but I think more items that illuminate will be very helpful with expanding maps a little bit more. Some examples that came to my head are a flashlight assault rifle, an item to throw down those glow torches to light a path, and a glowstick sword.
Are there plans to add ‘User Options - Functions’ such as Enable, Turn On, Turn Off, Dim Light, etc. to the built in UEFN lights the same way that the Customizable Light Device has?
I would include the Day Sequence Device in that list as well. It would be really helpful to have event access to those lights especially for those that are not using Verse yet.
Thank you for taking the time to participate in this AMA!
Will we ever be able to use the skydome device in 2.0 islands? The day sequence device is much more limited, as you must use 1 set of settings for the entire day, rather than having different colored skies at different times, for example. The skydome device was also connected to channels/events, whereas the new one isn’t.
Will there be ways to make lighting visible in Performance Mode graphics? This would really help me out because I use Performance Mode while making games
P.S. I don’t know how to view the AEA livestream. Is it on YouTube or something else? Is it even a livestream or do the hosts directly reply?
Hey guys, hope I am not late. Here are my questions:
Bit of an old one, but are there any plans to support volumetric lighting with FN’s TODM? Currently, it shows correctly in UEFN, but not in game. This is a TODM thing, as building custom lighting will allow it to work. However, when a user wants to use the features of FN’s TODM and volumetric lighting, they can’t, even though volumetric shadows does work.
Any plans for supporting a toggle/control for the shadow that is created by inverted planes and normals (in FN TODM)? Sometimes I use this feature a lot to make various effects, other times I don’t want it at all, would love to be able to have a slider on the amount of shadow that is generated (only affects epic settings, use a snow pile FN prop to repro)
Currently, its very hard to control the lighting “under darkness” with the default settings and day sequence device. Any plans on simplifying the process for new users? (What happens now is that the slider to turn up the ambient shadows has a weird name that give away its functionality, and sometimes it can also create “washed out” environments if overused).
Any plans for supporting lighting that doesnt rely on a source and having an option to make that easy for beginners? Goes in hand with the previous question tbh, with a little bit more focus on stylized colorful environments where they dont have a lightsource but everything is lit up equally.
Would love to get some post process materials added in UEFN with various customizable and professional-looking PP effects, like outlines, scanlines, nightvision, recorder cam, pixelated, vivid colors, degraded, 1930s cartoon, etc. This would really benefit beginner creators that want to prototype unique artstyles for their content. Similar to how the existing filters of Creative exist as PP volumes, but with more settings that allow more unique themes.
Would love to know what is the best way to do water caustics in UEFN. I ve tried multiple times and I couldn’t get the optimal result with the textures blending together rather than an overlay of different textures, because only materials are able to do that, at least from what I tried.
Atm TOD in UEFN is not showing the in game TOD but has a preview slider intead. Would love if there was a toggle button there to show the island setting TOD instead of the preview, especially for cases when its random or it moves.
Any plans for exposing the TOD as a variable that verse can see and control? Like if its 15:00 that would be something that verse can see, so we can do events etc. Also the ability to control the TOD through verse (if that’s a thing already lmk, I haven’t dug too much to it so idk)
Is there an accurate way to see what lighting looks like in Nintendo Switch? So far there is no setting combination or preview that shows exactly how it looks like and its hard when making atmospheric settings when one platform sees nothing (some auto exposure settings cause Switch to be super dark)
Any plans on supporting Lighting scalability managers with PP volumes, VFX creators, VFX spawners, Niagara particles and day sequence devices? I found that to be impossible with the current tools (and provided utilities, current lighting scalability manager doesnt disable/enable PP volumes, only toggles actor visibility on meshes, very limited functionality). VFX Creator effects create glitches on Nintendo switch and I tried using it to prevent them, but it didnt work the way I wanted it.
Could you explain how fog works in day sequence device? I could never figure out the settings and how to make controllable fog based on height or distance, I usually just experiment until it works on a couple platforms.
Any plans on having a consistent look for fog settings and PP effects on all platforms supported by FN? Or to allow us to control how the game looks on various platforms (see question 10).
Any plans on enabling the stencil buffer so we can bring PP effect to the next level? I know a lot of creators have been asking for that feature (and if there is a toggle setting to enable that on the player too, from island settings, that would be perfect).
Bit of a random sidenote, I absolutely LOVE that you can change the light settings on existing FN props, it helped me so so much with my projects. Would love when copying a prop in live edit, that has customized light from UEFN, to keep the custom light settings and not default to its original version.
Is it possible to create my own time of day system using sequencers? If so, could I switch them in-game to give the illusion of being on different planets/worlds?
In the Environment Light Rig, could we have more customisation of volumetric clouds such as changing the height of them or placing/painting our own clouds?
What tips would you give for lighting different areas of the world like a dark cave for example and making them look similar between platforms/graphic settings
I saw a video about UE5’s color correct regions and I thought they were cool, could they be added to UEFN at some point?
Can lighting be used in any way with Niagara?
What are lighting channels and what could I do with them?
maybe not the right place to ask, but I used to create creative map renders/thumbnails using Blender and I’m working to transition my workflow to UE5, while also learning more about lighting itself. What’s your best advice/tips on lighting a scene/character?
Most of my questions were already asked, but here’s another one, what are these blotches in the ambient shadows when running the map in medium scalability settings? (without lumen) They seem to be related to the skylight. Also noticed in normal Unreal 5.2 maps when turning off lumen.
At Imerza we create digital twins of real-estate and industrial applications. Adding a lighting control feature for inside a condo unit while closing the window shades is on our roadmap. We would include dimming as well as a selection of different color temperatures. While doing this in a general and high-level way is achievable, I’d like to learn more about best practices to create extremely accurate visualizations of existing lighting products.
IES: Unreal allows for IES file imports but you have to match it with one of the limited form factors such as a point light or omnidirectional. How would a tape light or linear fixture IES file be accurately applied to one of the existing profiles or is there another way?
Lighting designers and architects rely on lighting calculations to trust that simulations are accurate. The industry standard has been AGI32 for years. Are there plans to be able to perform lighting calculations in Unreal?
