I am quite new to UE4 and am trying to figure out a way to light my levels.
At the moment I am trying to use Koolas Setup with the white planes and spotlights hitting them and thereby indirectly illuminating my scene. But because I have a setup that is both interior and exterior I have to find a compromise…
For that I have a question:
Is it possible to (like in C4D or Maya) exclude objects from a light source or restrict a light to just hitting one object? Is there a light functions that restricts a spotlights intensity to only a certain object for example?
In particular, could I restrict a spotlight to only directly hit a white plane but not what is behind it ? Making the light cast shadows and have the plane “Cast Shadows” restricts the spotlight but also the sun light that should illuminate the garden behind the plane for example…
That’s a feature called “Light channels” that existed in UE3 but hasn’t been added to UE4.
Specifically in this case - you could set up a spotlight that has an attenuation radius that just barely reaches the card but not beyond it. This way you can avoid having weird cast shadows and such on the wall behind it. This is only a very very very specific case that will break in most situations.
Yes - the lack of control can be kind of annoying (especially if you’re more of a “paint with light” artist rather than a photorealistic lighter). Hopefully we get those features in the future. Best of luck.
I have a scene set in an interior room, with overhead office lighting. Outside the buildings need to be seen through the windows with natural sun lighting, so in essence I have two lighting setups in the same scene.
Where do I start with this without the ability to restrict objects to certain lights?
Lighting channels were possible with UE3/UDK since that was forward rendering and you could specify if you only wanted the light to affect certain objects. Lighting channels is not possible with a deferred rendering path like what UE4 uses.
