How can I improve my lighting?

I have a simple scene that im working on, but I want to improve my lighting. I added a few lights around here and there but its difficult to get the look i want.

Here is what im aiming for…

And here is what my current scene looks like…

what can i do ?

Hi!

I think you don’t have to fake anything with extra lights to achieve this look!
I would go only with a slightly directional HDRI to light up the whole scene!
…there is no directional light in the photo… no sharp shadows…
The rest is post processing!

I see, what kind of things can i expect to add in post processing?

Exposure, contrast/brightness, color correction, maybe gamma and glow…

I think first you have to scope your project, are you using baked lighting or dynamic lighting?
Then from there, you will use different lighting strategy. Just a glimpse on your world outliner, seems like your setup is more towards baked lighting. I would suggest to look into the concept of lightmaps and how to improve the definition of your shadow. Three major components you can investigate on light and shadow

  1. Directional LIght (Stationary)
  2. Lightmass Baking (GI)
  3. Sky Dome (Static)

And then your indirect light bounce, static lighting level scale and indirect lighting smoothness in the world setting.
Some Unreal webinar to get a better understanding of what’s affecting your scene:


Also, you might want to consider lightmass protals to give better raycasting in your interior scene. Hope this helps.

Thankyou, i will look into it. Just one question though, every object has static, station and movable option. Which one do I chose?

Thank you for visiting here: https://www.surveyarts.com/