Dynamic Global Illumination

Hey guys,

i’ve a scene that i build in 3DS Max and imported it into UE4. all materials are set and finished. Now i want to use GI to have a nice lighting which i see in many videos. i tryed the stuff out that the guys are telling but it dont works for me. Also the problem is that i have light everywhere. i all these videos there it’s all black until they add light. so i think i’ve some problems even at the beginning. I dont know if i need some occluder or stuff like this to keep light from outside away. so it would be cool to know what steps i need to take after importing my finished .fbx. What components i need? which settings i’ve to tweak? does i need any brushes as occluder ?

I hope you can help me because i tryed so many stuff right now and i really dont know whats right or wrong.

Cheers and thanks so far!

Have you read the documentation how Lighting in the UE4 works basically?

y i read it once but its always made with the brushes that the engines uses. in my case i’ve already walls created in max from planes. so i dont see how to combine it. maybe thats my biggest problem

You have 2 choices for walls, floors, ceilings, etc.

1- make them with thickness to avoid light passing tru or…

2- leave them as planes but add a brush behind to prevent light passing tru. Because in unreal engine, the backface (what’s not visible by the player) of a polygon is culled and won’t block light.

I suggest you the 1st solution.

After that it’s a matter of having good second uv mapping on your meshes, and tweaking the lightmass settings to have G.I that produce nice and soft shadows without artifacts.

When you say “GI” do you mean Lightmass Global Illumination?

Lightmass GI in UE4 is not “Dynamic Global Illumination”… The really super nice shadows and indirect lighting is baked (static or stationary lights), while dynamic objects use the Indirect Lighting Cache ( Indirect Lighting Cache in Unreal Engine | Unreal Engine 5.3 Documentation) …Then you have fully dynamic lights which do not have any global illumination.

My Lightmass Global Illumination Tests (Static and Stationary Lights):

My Fully Dynamic Global Illumination Tests (Light Propagation Volume):

Someone correct me if I’m wrong, I’m learning UE4, switching over from Unity 4/5.

Check out this guy’s 3DSMax to UE4 workflow: Some of my first architectural visualization screeshots in unreal engine 4 :) - Architecture - Epic Developer Community Forums