So I’m gradually working my way through learning the content creation pipeline using blender, photoshop and of course UE4 and so far so good. I can build a mesh in blender, UV unwrap, import into UE and then set up materials. I’ve even managed to bake normal maps and whatnot from hipoly to lowpoly and get these working in UE. Overall I’m pretty stoked at how well this has been going. Tons of good tutorials and advice online. Got me up to speed in no time.
But then I tried to assemble a scene and light it 
So I’m aware there’s all kinds of different lights and some bounce and some don’t and there’s loads of info on the different types and how they work and that’s great but I’m struggling to get a handle on which ones I should be using in my scene and how many lights I should be using.
The story so far looks like this
Please don’t make fun of the meshes - they’re just some guff I knocked up in blender to test the process. Once I get everything sussed out I’ll do some proper ones, I promise
I’ve lit this using static spotlights. A big one coming from the 3 top lights on each side, hitting the floor around the middle, then two little ones pointing down from the little downlighters on the wall. The archways are where the problems started arising since tight spots made obvious circles shapes on the floor which I didn’t want and wider spots started overlapping all over the place. I found a tutorial online that suggested using small wide angle spots pointed at the light parts of my mesh and using the bounce from these to light the floor, which is what I’ve done here but it seems a really elaborate way of doing this. Maybe it’s fine and perfectly normal and how everyone does this? Maybe it’s completely mental?
The other part of my question is how many lights should there be in a scene like this? All in, I have between 20 and 30 right now (there’s another section of corridor just off camera) Is this excessive? About average? Maybe a scene like this would normally have a couple of hundred lights? Perhaps I’d be better using dynamic lights? In case it’s not obvious all the lights are done using emissive materials that don’t light up geometry. As I understand there’s an option to have emissives lighting up geometry. Would this be the way to go?
Any input would be much appreciated. I’m struggling to find a frame of reference here.
