Question from @FHsupport on Discord:
Are there any plans to add a shadow setting to UEFN Island settings, where you can disable all shadows at once?
Will it be possible to control the Day Sequencer Device using Verse code in the future, to manually change for instance time of day during a game?
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is epic planning to add a feature to the lighting to change the intensity seperatly. lumen and non lumen. so we can make the lightning look the same both on dx11 and dx12.
thanks
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Hello,
- Could you add the Melee Designer Device on UEFN please?
- Also fix the Storm Device, this one ignore settings for example when you set a phase storm with a minimal move setting to 10meters and max 50, it goes to 180meters for no reason.
Yes, there are many. Lumen is probably the biggest. It is supported on next gen consoles and PC with Global Illumination on High and above. Additonal features such as volumetrics are also only supported on higher end hardware. Some lower end hardware such as certain mobile devices and Perf PC mode only support a single directional light and no other local lights.
The object you are looking for is called “Lumen Exposure Manager”.
You can search for this Blueprint in the content browser, more specifically in the “Fortnite” folder.
The “Lumen Exposure Manager” has two post process components attached, that allow you to drive different settings depending on if the application runs on a Lumen or Non-Lumen device.
They are called “LumenPostProcess” and “NonLumenPostProcess”. It can work on top of the “Fortnite Time of Day Manager” and “Day Sequence Device”. The “Environment Light Rig” does have this functionality built in, too. So I would not recommend mixing the “Environment Light Rig” and the “Lumen Exposure Manager” to avoid confusion.
If your intention is to use the “Fortnite Time of Day Manager” and not build your own lighting, this logic is automatically integrated.
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Only a single directional light and sky light are supported in performance mode. This probably will not change any time soon.
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No, at the moment we can only access functions that devices give us directly through verse. The customizable light device can only be turned on/off or un/dimmed.
You can however trigger a Level Sequence through Verse or devices like triggers/buttons. This level sequence can drive your light color dynamically.
Just drag the light from your outliner into a new Level Sequence.
From there you manipulate the Light color.
In the same way you can key and influence all other attributes your light.
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In order to support Lumen in Fortnite and UEFN, we needed a more extensible artist-driven time of day manager. We developed the Day Sequence time of day manager to meet that need. Unfortunately the Skydome device is deeply coupled to the old time of day manager, so we created the Day Sequence device to fill that same purpose in the Day Sequence system.
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The “Environment Light Rig” you mention in your question 2 is keyable.
You can drag the whole object from your outliner into a new Level Sequence.
From there you can add the desired component that you want to influence, like the Directional Light, and add a track for it’s rotation.
In the same way you can key and influence all other attributes of the “Environment Light Rig”.
You can trigger those Level Sequences through verse or other devices, like triggers or buttons.
Volumetric lighting is active on Fortnite's Time of Day system, but only on higher scalability settings on PC and next gen consoles. If you are seeing it in editor and not in game then perhaps your settings are different between the two.
My guess is you are talking about having both scenarios in one map.
So the “dark cave” and an outdoor scenario.
The easiest ways is to use the built in Time of Day manager. Another simpler solution is to use the built in day sequencer with a day sequence device volume around the cave and lower the sky light intensity.
Obviously what you are asking for is a pretty hard task for a lighting artist so you want a lot of control.
Personally I like to use the “Environment Light Rig” because it allows me to control many more settings and change them to my linking.
The built in “Lumen Exposure” and “NonLumen Exposure” help you with the different platforms.
Additionally you can please additional Post Process Volumes on top of that, for example locally restricted in the cave, to boost your Exposure for this occasion.
This will also allow you to do localized colour corrections or even post process materials etc.
A personal tip from my side is to work from the start, even in Lumen scenarios, with an HDRI in the Skylight.
Depending on your skylight leaking settings, the HDRI will not interfere too much with you Lumen lighting.
But if you accomplish to choose an HDRI that has the same lighting colours as the colours you intend for your scene, you can achieve a strikingly close result with non Lumen platforms.
This is actively being discussed, but we don’t have any plans to share at the moment.
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Lighting Channels allow dynamic lights to only affect objects when their lighting channels overlap. This is primarily intended for cinematic use to give users powerful control over how Actors are lit. At the moment, Unreal Engine supports up to 3 lighting channels.
This means, if your Light is set to channel 0, which is the default, but your mesh is set to channel 1 only, it will not get any direct light contribution from that specific light.
Lights and meshes must be in the same lighting channel to influence each other.
It is particularely usefull if you want to have some extra light for your character, highlight for important objects or specific pieces of your environment.
It is an artistic tool however, which breaks the physical correctness.
You can do this now with a skylight set to specified cubemap. You just need to import a cubemap that has the colors you like and bump up the intensity.
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The Day Sequence device has a property on it called Priority. A higher priority will take precedence over a lower priority. Equal priority will blend evenly together. So let’s take your example where we have two Day Sequence devices one with a trigger volume and one without:
Day Sequence Device A
Trigger Volume = Off
Sunlight = On
Sunlight Color = Red
Day Sequence Device B
Trigger Volume = On
Sunlight = On
Sunlight Color = Blue
If both A & B have the same priority of 2000, then when you are outside of B’s volume, you will see a red sun. When you are inside, it will be purple.
If A.Priority == 2000 and B.Priority == 3000, then when you are outside of B’s volume, you will see a red sun and when you are inside, it will be blue.
If A.Priority == 3000 and B.Priority == 2000, then the sun will always be red and B’s volume will never have an effect.
This priority logic only applies when there is overlap in the active properties on the devices. So if A affected only Fog and B affected only Sunlight, they would both apply their effects as expected.
A good way to think of it is that Day Sequence devices apply overrides on the base time of day manager look. Day Sequence devices that have a trigger volume only apply their overrides when the player is inside the volume and those without trigger volumes are always applied.
So in your case of sunlight enabled on a global Day Sequence device A and a trigger volume Day Sequence Device B, the sunlight effect of A will remain active when the player is inside B’s volume. If B is also driving Sunlight, then it would follow the priority logic in your Q1.
Yes, but if you also have a global DaySequenceDevice, you may need to consider the priority levels of your trigger volume devices so that they properly override the Skylight intensity of the global device.
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I think you probably want to modify exposure instead of modifying the skylight. I would recommend using the Lumen Exposure Manager so that you can control it on hardware that supports Lumen and hardware that does not individually.
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Currently the only way to change the current time in the time of day manager is via the Day Sequence Device, but we are actively discussing how to present options to control time in UEFN.
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This is more of a material question. Typically we do caustics in a post process volume material or on the surface's material. The post process method is typically easier but if the caustics need to be viewed when the camera is outside water then it won't work. If your environment is all underwater you can also try a light function.
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