Change lighting/sky for different areas in an open world game

Development Rendering
, , , ,
1

I’m working on a small open world game (think Dark Souls in scale), and I need different zones to have different lighting and skybox setups. This is very common in MMORPGs, where you reach a different area and you see the skybox, lighting and such lerping to new values.

This is obviously not trying to replicate super realistic environments, but that’s fine as it’s supposed to blend between drastically different zones close to one another (a purple magical forest connecting into a dark foggy mountain, for example). You can even see this effect in games like Elden Ring, where you have different areas with very different vibes. But all information I see on UE5 is more aimed towards open world games with “realistic” skies and lighting without any variation based on where you are in the world.

Unfortunately, I don’t see an easy way to handle this. It would be perfect to be able to control this with something similar to the post-process volume, but I can’t find any information on this subject online. I don’t even know if baked lighting would be possible in this case, or how to properly bake it in that case.

Any help would be highly appreciated. I’m trying to make the switch from Unity to UE5, and this problem is making me very concerned.

Thanks a lot in advance! Cheers.

2

You’ll have to set up trigger volumes that change the properties of the skylight/directional light/fog/etc when the player walks in/out of them.

You can see this trigger happen really easily in Elden Ring when you enter a catacomb/cave style dungeon.

Generally developers try to hide the transition by building an S-shaped bend in a hallway before you enter the area so that you can’t see the entire lighting/atmosphere change suddenly, this only really works well in games like Elden Ring or Dark Souls where the entrances/exits to areas are limited and tightly controlled.

3 Likes
3

Thanks a lot, that seems great to me! Cheers.