Is there a way to control shadows with dynamic lighting (Lumen). For example, the character appears to be too bright in certain places due to getting hit by direct lighting and want to limit how bright it gets. Or when in the shadows getting indirect lighting, the character appears to be too dark. Is the issue with material? If so, what can I do to the material to limit the darkness and brightness to a certain amount. Not sure where to start on this issue, any help would be appreciated.
I also checked out a lot of how to fake lighting but it doesn’t seem to be what I’m looking.
If you’re using reasonable values for lights and textures, it’s most likely the post processing and skylight you’ll want to play with, Local Exposure and general exposure settings can help a lot.
One of the things the lumen people mentioned on one of their original tech talks was the fact that they often had to increase the albedo of surfaces in order to get good-looking bounce lighting, and in general watch your albedo term bc if it gets nonphysical you will have strange lighting problems.
Assuming your content isn’t the issue though, @ZacD is right in that the post processing stack is basically the place to go. That said, it is possible to place invisible emissive lights and blockers in the lumen scene to achieve a desired look, but that can be both complex and very nonphysical.