Lighting and Shadow question

Development Rendering
1

Hi all,

I was using udk for my game project. But now I want to use UE4 on my project. As there is no free version of UE4 to try, I just wanna make sure a few things. Please answer them.

  1. Is it possible to do fully dynamic lighting with global illumination?

  2. Is the dynamic shadow quality good? (The dynamic shadow on UE3 was very very bad)

  3. Does UE4 require to build lighting after any update or change on the scene? It’s really very annoying to build lighting since 6 or 7 hours and then see that I have an object placed in wrong position.

  4. Is there any automatic time of day function like cryengine? (Doesn’t matter if it’s UE4 have it or not just want to know)

Thanks in advanced

2
  1. when you use static lightining, then yes, otherwise you dont have to build your light
  2. unfortunately no, but there are some good tutorials around that will explain you how it works :slight_smile:
3
  1. There is LPV which works with directional lights only. Other than that you can use dynamic lighting and sky light combination(no GI) but still have good results.
  2. Yes.
  3. What said + Lightmass is a lot faster and better than UDK.
  4. https://forums.unrealengine/showthread.php?1613-Tutorial-Quick-Time-of-Day-Setup
4

Thanks so much for the replies.

I would also like to ask that Is it easy to work with ue4? I was really so quick and had a nice expertise with UDK. Will UE4 be a bit easy to me? Or do I have to learn everything from the beginning?

I have read some posts about UE4 that it has new material editor, alternatives of Kismet and matinee (Blueprint) etc. But I want to know directly from an UE4 user, how much similar is ue4 with udk? I don’t need same ui. But working process/ toolset/ properties (world properties or post process variables or object properties)/actor classes etc. Are they some kind of similar to udk? or it is totally new that I have to learn?

5

There are similarities so your UDK experience will be useful. And all the differences are things that make it easier to work with. For instance, UE4 doesnt have packages, it creates Uassets for everything you bring into the engine so it is a lot easier to organize the content browser and share assets between projects.

6

When you already have experience with UDK it will be pretty easy for you to start with the UE4 -> I also had experience with UDK and it just took me some few hours to get into it :wink:

materials
particles
level design
sound

will be like in UDK, just with a better quality and more features

7

Nice to hear that.:smiley: So I will start with using UE4 soon. I will pack up UDK and get a license for UE4. Thank you guis!:cool:

8

Here is good link to start:

https://docs.unrealengine/latest/INT/ (everything is connected on that site -> answerhub, forum, documentation,…) :slight_smile: