I’ve got most of the mechanics worked out for the game i’m going to build but before I start designing the level I want to ask this forum’s opinions on how to best avoid light bleed.
In the past, when I’ve worked on level creation I’ve often gotten light from other rooms bleeding into the room on the other side of walls. I’ve tried scaling the thickness of the walls up, putting them a little below the floor (to make sure it wasn’t bleeding under), and nothing seemed to work.
So before I start, what would be the best practice to use before I start going all out on my next level.
Also, something else that i’d like to avoid that’s been a bit of a problem lately, it that the lighting will be very dark in some areas (even when i have lights set up and the intensity turned up.) It has to something wrong with my camera settings. Here’s a link to a video.
[video][/video]
Note: I’m using 4.10 and I’m trying my best to use only object in UE4 or in the marketplace. I’d prefer not to have to deal with Blender but will if it calls for it. Thank you!
Well when it comes to lighting I would say that there is no such things as best practice as there are too many options available based on the design intention.
Are you going for archvis quality or a more stylized effect common in most video games?
In most levels being designed for a video game don’t generally worry about lighting solutions that is real world accurate but rather more visually pleasing so using a light element or emitter becomes more like blending paint to achieve a pleasant looking result.
The base theory is called Painting With Lights and since static lighting is cheap is a technique that has been used way back when.
Applied theory.
What is super cool though is that UE4 does use a real time physics based rendering engine so since physics is a law that can’t be broken then any kind of lighting theory can be applied based on generally known behavior.
For example select a point light and turn off Use Inverse Square under Light.
Totally different lighting behavior that is “not” unique to UE4 but at least I can tell you is a function included in 3ds Max (although turned off by default)
Sooooooo
My best practice is to think of a volume of space as a 2d image that one can change the perspective at any time in real time and paint with lights and I usually start by using a post process with an HDRI cube map just to get a working ambient lighting solution.
P.S. I would recommend if one does not know what inverse square does to turn it off. It’s a lighting behavior that can get rather fussy and has been known to cause light bleeding.