Anybody here can help me with my project to get more realistic effect shadows and lightings ?
i tried alone but i don’t understand why the shadow and lighting are so bad
I builded on Production with this world settings :
I took the default project first person.
I added 2 post process volume, one for the inside and another for the outside.
the default textures are white Basic_Wall and slightly grey
Once the light is calculated, I have the following result:
As we can see the shadows are bad there are burrs on some wall, and in poorly lit rooms it makes horrible shadows.
more the walls appear Belgian instead of white
Well…
Static Lighting Level Scale: how detailed you want the light to be calculated! The lower you go, the more detail you get! (0.15 for archviz)
Bounce: above 10 you can get strange results
Quality: quality. Start with 4 and only for the final build go for 10 (maybe 8 is also enough) This is the setting that will raise building time the most!!
Smoothness: how much detail should be blurred out! 0.6 will keep the smaller shadow details too!
Environment intensity is why 0?
Compressed lightmaps will cause you “dirty” results!
I think the biggest problem with the scene is lightmap resolution!! …and also the way the scene was built… Overlapping faces will give you light/shadow bleeds!
Turn off or lower SSAO, that’s what is causing the “shadows” on the walls. I personally prefer to lower the Static Friction of SSAO when I bake lighting so I don’t get any over occlusion, since it happens naturally with baked lighting based on the number of bounces and relative albedo intensities. Don’t forget to place Lightmass Portals for all of your openings too.
To my project, what is the best solution for lighting my scene ? use only a skylight ?, static or movable ? use a directional light static or movable ?
thx you
No worries!
Looks better, you lost those bleeds! …and I guess it was faster too!
Well basically where you want (more) detail you raise the lightmap resolution! If it’s your floor: you set it higher, if it’s one of your walls… The top is 4096! So sometimes it’s better to break up long meshes (like floor) into separate ones to get higher lightmap resolution! Also to calculate many, lower resolution lightmaps is faster than calculate 1 huge one!!
If you have ambient occlusion turned on on your postprocess (as it was mentioned before) play with it to have the best result you want!
Lighting… I can’t tell you how your project should look like! If you want a sunny daytime: sure use a directional light + skylight (or just a good HDRI can do)!
Keep in mind that any light you set to Movable won’t cause any GI!!! So if you want GI from your sky or Sun you’ll have to set it to Static/Stationary!
The exposure gets compensated when you move the camera into the dark room. Like in the real world. But it might be a bit too much compensation. I usually tweak the min/max values so the rooms are more closely lit and then increase the ‘exposure compensation’
exposure compensation: 0.5
Min Brightness: 0.25
Max Brightness: 1.0
Well it’s also visible on the first screenshot too, the image is just brighter…
Are your walls edge snapped or their faces are snapped?
To me it still looks like low lightmap resolution /if you take a look at the floor’s shadow, you see it’s not a nice straight line/… also maybe not a proper lightmap uv…
No worries!
Ok so your walls are snapped at the CORNERS/EDGES or FACES snapped together? /are there overlapping polygons?/
Is the whole house one huge mesh with a single uv map as shown? You won’t be able to achieve a realistic result: the max ligthmap resolution you can set is 4096! Just create a 4096 res checker map, set it to your mesh and you will see the max texel /detail/ you can get with lighting! It will be a low res blurry something!
If you want realistic/very detailed lighting result: you will need to break up your mesh into smaller parts /per wall!/ to be able to set higher resolution lightmaps!
Everyone has his own way to do the building mesh. Mine is
separate the floor from the building mesh. Make the floor boxes and not just a plane or add a large box below the floor mesh. This will avoid light bleeding.
I keep all interior walls and the ceiling one mesh. If it gets too big you can separate it where there is a logical separation in the building. You don’t want separation in the middle of a wall. This will always cause problems. Best is separate at doorways where the frame covers the seam.
With multiple meshes make sure there are always vertexes at the same spot on both meshes where they join or otherwise light bleeding is almost guaranteed.
I use box mapping for the UVs of the meshes and then create the 2nd lightmap UV inside the editor. Once the mesh is complete and there are no more changes I create a 2nd UV for the walls and stitch the INNER corners together. The light on both sides of a inner corner will always be the same or very similar. Then I let unreal rearrange the 2nd UV islands. This is more reliable and better than in 3ds max. (Create a lightmap in unreal with the source being 1 and the target being 1)
I always have an exterior mesh separated from the interior mesh. The windows will cover up the seams. I always have wall polygons outside even if they are never visible. This will avoid light bleeding in most cases. - If it still bleeds I put a simple geometry inside the wall which often helps. Or place a very low light on the side where it should be dark but is lit from the other side of the wall.
My experience is that textures can cover up a lot of lighting problems. If you have everything white you need to be more careful and raise the resolutions. My experience is also that the end client often doesn’t care too much about small shadow problems or won’t notice them at all. Only some marketing people do.
Hello
thx for you help
Makigirl I followed your advice, i create the house with Sketchup and i created a mesh for all wall, the result is much better, but i have always little default on edge.
Now i have an other question about movable door.
if you look the picture you can see that the door is not affected in the same way by the light. the directional light and the skylight are set to Stationary.
Yeah, this is always a problem. Movable objects will always look different. They have no baked lighting and get only one bounce. You could use a slightly tweaked material to counter the difference. Make it a bit darker than the other doors and apply it only to the movable doors. - Also you always need a reflection capture actor. I can’t see one here.
