How do I get a "fake retro" washed-out look in UE5.7 with fully dynamic lighting, without it looking photorealistic?

Development Rendering
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I’m making a multiplayer game in UE 5.7 and I’m fighting the default look. Everything screams “UE5” right away: realistic lighting, sharp shadows, cinematic colors. I’m going for a fake retro style. No pixelation, no low-res tricks, just that slightly washed-out early-2000s game feel that reads as a game and not as footage of real life.

The catch is that I need a full day/night cycle, lights that toggle at runtime, and characters that cast visible dynamic shadows, so baking is out. Everything has to stay dynamic, but it still can’t look photorealistic.

Every guide I find just says “write a custom shader” without explaining what that means in practice. I’m guessing a post process material with lifted blacks, reduced saturation, a slight tint and maybe a LUT, but I’m not sure that’s enough or even the right approach.

Is it possible to keep Lumen and push it toward a flatter look, or is turning it off the only real option? If I drop it, how do you fake GI and fill light in a dynamic scene? And how much of this look comes from materials (high roughness, low specular, flatter textures) versus post process?
Has anyone pulled off something like this in UE5? Settings, examples or breakdowns would help a lot.

Thanks!

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Yes, a post-process material is the right place, and you do not need a full custom shader to get a washed-out early-2000s look. I would keep Lumen and the dynamic shadows as they are, and only flatten the picture.

What actually sells that look is tone mapping and bloom, not a different lighting solver:

- Scene color: lift the black point a little so blacks are dark gray instead of pure black, compress the highlights, and drop saturation slightly. In a post-process material that is SceneColor into a contrast curve and a saturation multiply, then back out to SceneColor.

- A slight cool or warm tint is fine, but keep it subtle. A full color shift starts to look like a filter pack.

- Bloom: lower Bloom Scale. Cinematic bloom is usually the biggest “this is a modern UE shot” tell.

- Shadows: if they still look too sharp, soften the shadow filter a bit. Do not turn off cast shadows.

- Optional: a low-contrast 1D LUT mixed with the unprocessed scene color. A LUT alone is often not enough; the black lift and bloom change do more of the work.

Things that usually do not help: disabling Lumen, or forcing a custom lighting model. I would also avoid pixelation and low-res tricks if you want it to read as a game rather than footage, while the picture stays sharp.

A practical starting point: post-process material, blendable, volume unbound so it covers the whole view. Saturation around 0.75, black lift of about 0.03-0.06, bloom scale reduced from the default, then tweak from screenshots. I am not sure a single LUT will be enoug

h by itself.