So i want a small lava river to light up a room. What i did was put some point lights around the lava to make it seem like the material was lighting the scene. If there is a better way to do this please point it out. The problem is that even with a high resolution lightmap and many tries the results look really weird. Please help.
This are the weird shadows in game mode.
This are all the point lights used
This is the point light setup
And this is the lightmap density
Hi!
I think you should achieve the effect in a different way:
You can set the emissive strength in your material! It will work as a light in your scene so you won’t have to use those spotlights!
Problem with emmisive materials is that they have a very hard decay in illumination.
So those are very practical for very close distance lights; but the decay of illumination is very fast. Many times you would not be able to light your room using this kind of materials unless you use huge numbers that will burn the objects that are close to the emmiter.
You can also use spotlights that have a radius and a length (like 3d properties), that will make the emmiter to have a different shape than a point.
Finally you can also use an interesting trick: You add a white plane thar “refracts” the light, as a photographer would do. (just by pointing a spot on that plane that floats over your lava). After you bake the scene illumination, you just make that plane not to be renderable in it’s properties. For some extra control, you can set the plane to cast shadows or not cast shadows over the lava underneeth, it’s up to you how it works better.
That would build up a smooth scattered area light from the refraction of the plane. Very usefull trick to fake area lights, and make great architectural ullumination.
Simulating Area Lights in UE4 - Unreal Engine here you can find a tutorial on this issue.
You should use less static lights, instead create glow material - it can be animated too (material glow). Best result in yur case will be with combination static lights and glowing material. Static lights in this case should have bigger radius, you should play also with length. And best result will be with additional light function - you can read about it all in docs. And check different shadows settings.
Thanks a lot, i have used this with a spot light and it looks great!
Thank you! You saved my life!
