Hi’m I’m trying to work out how to light a dense forest. I have my directional light set to dynamic because I want to have a day/night cycle. I have a forest that is nice and dense. But I’m trying to work out the best way to light it. I’m testing having fire flies flying around using the Unreal butterfly from the FeaturesTour2014 assets. With a few it looks nice but still a little dark. Any idea’s on how to improve it. Plus this is for VR. I’m new at lighting, I want to give a sense beautiful but scary.
I would suggest using your directional light for some overhead moon light, unless the forest is so dense that no light is coming through the canopy. Emitting a little light from the directional light will cause shadows as well and will enhance the scary factor. You could cycle the directional light with cloud cover to make periods of complete darkness if you wanted. Think of it as a real forest, it is usually darker than an open field but there is still light coming from the moon unless it has clouds blocking it or the canopy is too dense.
You are going to want to add a dynamic skylight to that for some ambient lighting. Also atmospheric fog helps with ambience in forest environments and can brighten it up a bit. Give it a little bit of blue moonlight and some areas of orange light from torches, fireflies, w/e to make a nice contrast of warm and cold colors.
Good luck! 
It is dense and the light can’t get through the canopy. because this is a fantasy RPG type game for VR, I was toying with the idea of giving the player character being able to summon a source of light. Just a little concerned that a light might be annoying with VR. I was also thinking of adding a ground bug the emits a green light. then create a blueprint with those bug ai blueprints as a array and with in the volume box it will place bugs at random. And see how much light could be produced and also give the forest life. Its still trial and error.
I’m still doing testing, but I’m surprised that I have gotten solid frame rate in VR with a foliage this dense.
I’ve just made a blueprint with random placement of the 2 blueprint for the bugs. 1 flying yellow light. and a ground bug with a green light. To get performance I had to turn the lights cast shadows off. Tell me what you think.
Looks pretty good, do the green lights flash? Might try smaller radius on the bugs and maybe a few more.
Love spooky forests! I remember back in the late 90’s I was playing EQ1 and there was some forest that spooked the **** out of me. Forgot the name of course, and I am sure the graphics were HORRIBLE compared to the above… Keep up the good work!
teak