Lighting stylized environment gives washed out colors & very dark corners

Development Rendering
1

Hello everybody,

I am currently trying to get a scene lit in the style of Overwatch, but I am running into some issues.
As you can see in the screenshot below the colors of the walls look very washed out and some corners are really dark.

1936×1262 261 KB

1936×1262 167 KB

My lighting setup is

  • Atmospheric Fog at Default Settings
  • Directional Light as follows:

https://i.imgur.com/fab7W9X.png
https://i.imgur.com/qIPEerR.png

  • Sky Light as follows:

https://i.imgur.com/K3nsuKk.png

  • Post Process Volume as follows:

https://i.imgur.com/e7lkavR.png
https://i.imgur.com/PQ7y30j.png
https://i.imgur.com/eSxgrVO.png

Any suggestions on how to get a better look?

Sincerely,
.

2

The skylight lighting looks too dark for what you see on the screen. One common problem is that the skybox is too close so the skylight is clipping it out. Anything closer than ‘Sky Distance Threshold’ will not be included in the sky capture. You can just reduce the threshold to something smaller and see if that affects your sky lighting.

Alternatively you can just place a cube scene capture, save the render target as a texture cube, then provide that to the skylight as the Specified Cubemap.

The bounce lighting of the directional light might be too dark too, hard for me to tell. Dark diffuse colors can cause that.

3

I tried to reduce the threshold to 5000 and used a cube scene capture, but I get the same results as before.
I also tried to increse the Num Sky Lighting Bounces, but that didn’t help either.

> The bounce lighting of the directional light might be too dark too, hard for me to tell. Dark diffuse colors can cause that.

Could the material cause that? Models use a very simple one as seen here:

1471×763 184 KB

Sincerely,
.

4

Hi!

Could you attach your Lightmass setting please?
Do you have a Lightmass Importance Volume around areas where you’re trying to get better lighting quality?

Good luck!

5

Hello,

Here are my settings: https://i.imgur.com/JE4tsIO.png
And yes, I use a Lightmass Importance Volume.

6

Hi!

I think your settings are good!
And I think is right: you should try to set the skylight higher (6?) and lower your directional light (3?)! You would get more indirect lighting from the skylight (with 1.3 you won’t get much).

Good luck!

7

Looks a lot better now! Also adjusted the Color of the Sky light to match the directional light.

1936×1262 233 KB

But getting closer to some buildings the colors look very washed out now, any solutions to that?
1575×1105 177 KB

8

WOW!! Looks really cool!! :))

Well 2 thing in my opinion:
I think your shadows are washed out too /I don’t know exactly what look you’re after! ;)/ so I would set the direction light a bit higher to get stronger shadows.
…and POSTPROCESS!! :wink:

I attach (try! :wink: your 2 pics after 3 mins of post process!

I really like your scene! :slight_smile:

Good luck!