Non expensive lighting for iOS ?

Development Rendering
1

Building for iOS so need least or non expensive lighting. I prefer the global illumination look.

Any suggestions ?

2

Baked lighting is your best option

3

Thanks for the reply … I want to try and get GI look like final gather, what’s the best lighting for this ? I assume any type of lighting can be baked.

4

You can bake all static lights into lightmaps (on static objects). The dynamic objects (characters, movable meshes) will then receive light from points put (by default) on all walkable surfaces. This will give you GI look I guess after you bake the lightning. You can manually place additional samples using the character details volume. There is also an option to visualize those points and see the lightning information. This should be fast enough for mobiles (dynamic shadows are a kill here).

5

UE4 uses a renderer called Lightmass for baking lighting, it’s a full GI system that will allow you to have high quality baked lighting. If you need some dynamic/movable stuff then that’s a different matter.

6

I think I’ve messed thing up too much.

Basically I’m trying to get soft shadows not traced, like a gi sphere. It’s mainly an outdoor environment. Using the SkyLight which wants a distant color and does give the shadow type I’m looking for used with the SkySphere but finding it hard to tweak, I either get too dark or too much glow. Also keeping in mind the baking.

Example of what style I’m looking for …

7

If you’re going for that look then you don’t need baked lighting at all, you just need ambient occlusion (AO) or skylight effect

8

How can I do that, in the material ?

9

That’s not a material feature, you would do it as a post process effect. (it COULD be a material feature, but I wouldn’t do it that way)

10

Thanks, shall have a play around with the post process.

If I were to do it that way (this raises another question), and have a plain under my building for the surface AO as a png or something, I can’t figure out how not to intersect with the floor geometry. For example a building with a car-park or anything else that has a flat poly along the ground. I guess this should be a separate post.

Also … I was messing around with the environment world settings and have come to the same problem. Problem is having a pure white material, because it’s either grey and too dark or glowing with white, even with AO on the AO is not dark enough. Just want a flat / dull matt material with no shine / glow. I’m sure there are options I might wan to turn off.

11

Says post AO is not supported … Post Process Effects on Mobile Platforms | Unreal Engine Documentation