I just opened one of my environments (one that I’m pretty sure I’ve already seen in a previous packaged build before) and to my surprise – the environment is completely bright. It’s not like the project is too bright but still functions, but rather it just seems completely void of light. Every area is equally bright, almost like I turned it to “unlit.” The map looks the same in editor and in a “standalone” game but looks different in a packaged build.
I have no idea what’s going on here. Never seen this before and I’m 60-70% sure that I’ve seen the map packaged normally before. Any help is greatly appreciated. Pictures are attached.
Update: I created a new project with just that environment and the issue was not present there. So, there must have been a setting change or something else that caused the issue.
Hey there @Cy4n! Welcome to the community! The first thoughts come to mind are possibly checking your project settings and your post processing for auto exposure. If not, we may have to dig a bit!
Auto exposure is off in the project. Exposure settings in the map’s post process volumes were present initially, but I already tried disabling them to no avail. I noticed that messing with the exposure did change the final product but didn’t actually make the lighting come back. If I made exposure extremely dark, the final packaged game would just be darker but still completely stale with the lighting the same almost everywhere.
Interesting! Let’s do some digging. Are you using Static or Dynamic lighting or a mixture? Could I see the lighting setup?
In editor you usually see a preview of the lighting but it’s mostly an approximate to speed up working conditions. Changing from preview lighting to your platform of choice might show some changes, take a look:
Hey, picking up on this thread (similar issue; in-editor preview, Play in editor (PIE) exposure is different than in packaged build)
Using a dynamic lighting setup.
I am frustrated by the difference between packaged and in-editor previews. I would like to use auto exposure. Are there any settings we can change to make sure whatever we see in the editor is what packaged builds will see in terms of lighting?
Update for anybody searching this in the future:
It looks like in packaged scalability settings are higher than my engine settings (between medium and high, GIQuality 1 and 2. Specifically the Global Illumination. Setting them to be the same lines the lighting up.
Below are the default GI scalability changes in BaseScalability.ini, I would recommend updating this if you want to force a certain GI.
[GlobalIlluminationQuality@0]
r.DistanceFieldAO=0
r.Lumen.DiffuseIndirect.Allow=0
[GlobalIlluminationQuality@1]
; Enable DFAO when Lumen is off
r.DistanceFieldAO=1
r.AOQuality=1
r.Lumen.DiffuseIndirect.Allow=0
;Between Medium and High the GI dramatically changes
[GlobalIlluminationQuality@2]
r.DistanceFieldAO=1
r.AOQuality=1
r.Lumen.DiffuseIndirect.Allow=1
r.LumenScene.Radiosity.ProbeSpacing=8
r.LumenScene.Radiosity.HemisphereProbeResolution=3
r.Lumen.TraceMeshSDFs.Allow=0
r.Lumen.ScreenProbeGather.RadianceCache.ProbeResolution=16
r.Lumen.ScreenProbeGather.RadianceCache.NumProbesToTraceBudget=300
r.Lumen.ScreenProbeGather.DownsampleFactor=32
r.Lumen.ScreenProbeGather.TracingOctahedronResolution=8
r.Lumen.ScreenProbeGather.IrradianceFormat=1
r.Lumen.ScreenProbeGather.StochasticInterpolation=1
r.Lumen.ScreenProbeGather.FullResolutionJitterWidth=1
r.Lumen.ScreenProbeGather.TwoSidedFoliageBackfaceDiffuse=0
r.Lumen.ScreenProbeGather.ScreenTraces.HZBTraversal.FullResDepth=0
r.Lumen.TranslucencyVolume.GridPixelSize=64
r.Lumen.TranslucencyVolume.TraceFromVolume=0
r.Lumen.TranslucencyVolume.RadianceCache.ProbeResolution=8
r.Lumen.TranslucencyVolume.RadianceCache.NumProbesToTraceBudget=200
