Hey, guys. I’m following Ryann Manning’s interior lighting series and so far everything works as expected except directional light. Light that hits the ground is muddled and not bright even when i crank up intensity by a lot. I do have lightmass portals in my windows similar to him. What am i missing here?
I’ve tried removing a window completely and it stayed the same so it’s not a glass material issue i guess.
What does the lightmap density view look like?
are you building lighting at production quality?
The original post picture was preview but i’ve tried switching to production and it still doesn’t look right to me. Yeah, less artifacts but still very soft. Apart from intensity and indirect intensity it’s a default directional, shouldn’t be like that i think.
Adjust the exposure and/or tweak the color grading. If it’s not too much work you should consider boosting the base color of your materials, which will allow them to bounce more light. If you haven’t already, consider setting your light bounces to 10 in the lightmass settings.
Otherwise, aside from the fact that the lighting is very muted, this already looks better than your reference image.
Also make sure you have reflection captures inside the room. Looks like you probably do already, but it is worth mentioning.
By the way, what exactly is the sunlight intensity set to? You said you “cranked it up a lot” but that could mean bassically anything
With exposure and color-grading i can adjust brightness but not the softness of the shadow edge, right?
What do you mean by color boosting? Sorry, first time hearing this term. Is it like increasing saturation / brightness or something?
Light bounces are at 10 already indeed.
Yep, i have reflection captures.
I just find it weird that light edge is so soft. I don’t get the reason. It’s not the windows. It’s not bounce because it’s a direct hit. Can’t be direct light settings. If it’s not some global / world setting i don’t think there is anything between directional light and that floor that can affect it.
It’s at 70 lux rn and i upped it to 600 without it getting any sharper.
Your reference image is light directly by the sun beaming through huge windows, it has cast shadows.
Your scene is lit almost entirely by bounce lighting and indirect light from the sky, it has indirect shadows. Indirect shadows are inherently going to be soft. If you want nice crisp shadows then simply orient your light so that it is beaming straight into the room.
If that fails, I can only guess maybe the source radius is set too high for your light…
But this is a direct light on this part of the floor, no? This is how it looks before baking. I just rotated it and the shadows were similarly soft.
Ahh yes, that is indeed directly lit. Did you check the source radius of your light?
Also I assume you do have a lightmass importance volume around the scene?
I googled it but i can’t figure out how do i tweak it. Is there such parameter for directional light or maybe it’s just a rect / spot light thing?
Yep. Not a good one i guess but i have one, hah.
Sorry yes, it’s called source angle on directional lights.
Can you post your lightmass settings?
Any chance your floor is set to movable? Or it’s lightmap type is “Force Volumetric”?
Static and default.
Honestly running out of ideas here; My suggestion would be to make a brand new level and see if you can reproduce the issue just using the default cube. At least that would narrow it down to the level and not something about the editor/project.
Out of curiosity i’ve tried baking a cube on a plane outside of the room and it still looks too soft to me. So it’s not room problem, it’s something global.
Yeah, surely too soft compared to yours.