As a level designer that doesn’t know too much about lighting it’s definitely the thing I hate the most when the time comes to do it. I feel like a really good environment can be ruined by bad lighting, I also feel like if I knew how to light a scene better I wouldn’t hate it as much and actually look forward to the step. The thing is that I’ve looked up every possible lighting video on Youtube and even on DigitalTutors and none of them are good, they just go over the basic stuff like how the light actors actually work but not where to place them in a scene or when to use certain light actors depending on the scene.
I would LOVE more videos where someone takes an unlit scene and lights it, different scenarios too like an outdoor scene both day and night, a boxed in building with no windows with the only light source being point lights and spot lights ect… and even maybe a house with a few windows just to show the different ways to light a scene depending on what you’re making. Maybe I’m just looking in the wrong place for these tutorials but I seriously can’t find them anywhere lol. Also stuff to do with lightmass and post process volume settings and the most optimal way to use those depending on the scene, I just feel like I’m lacking the most with these things and my life would be so much easier if I was more confident in my ability to use them correctly.
Any help on this subject would be greatly appreciated!
I wish I could help, but I’m also still very much figuring lights out myself. I apply the basic principles behind lighting in general. I’ve opened a lot of epic’s work but without proper context it’s tricky. Eventually you should be able to make out why it’s done a certain way, but I would also highly appreciate someone who actually has the proper experience and is past all this to help explain. It would speed up my own development and I’m sure a lot of others as well. There are a bunch of articles out there that explain different aspects, which is nice but I agree it would be so much more helpful to see someone light up a scene with no lighting in it and also the different scenarios.
I feel there is lack of actual advanced tutorials in general, not just about lighting.
There are hundreds (or thousands) of tutorials that cover the basics (and intermediate level) but very few advanced ones.
This is how it works with pretty much everything if you ask me, you learn the basics but then you have to practice and master the art yourself
The subject of lighting and shadowing and reflectioning (yes that deserves a category of its own :p) can get very complicated, not only there are many different kind of scenes and scenarios but there are many lighting systems in UE4 so you have to think about the different trade-offs as well… some may be suited for archviz (lightmass baked stuff) some for dynamic scenes and day-night cycles, some indoors, some outdoors etc. and there are always little tricks n hacks that you can use to either improve or fake lights and shadows.
There will never be a tutorial which is going to teach you everything that there is to know about lighting!
Someone with a lot of experience would have to make an entire series of tutorials (we are talking many hours of content) with practical examples etc. to even begin to cover a meaningful amount. -If someone does this, kudos!
And even then lighting is still an art form just like modeling or texturing (IMO anyway) which means you need to practice it.
Here is a list with just the lighting options we currently have at our disposal:
Lightmass GI - high quality baked lighting mostly for static scenes. Although there is Indirect Lighting Cache which can help with dynamic objects.
Skylights - uses HDR cubemaps either scene-captured or imported (image based lighting). Used for static and dynamic scenes.
For dynamic scenes you have the option to blend between multiple cubemaps overtime, for example using one cubemap for day and one for night.
Light Profiles and Light Functions - can be used with directional, spot and point lights to achieve various effects and styles.
Post Processing (Bloom, Ambient Cubemaps, Light Shafts) - PP can also greatly affect how a scene is lit.
Emissive materials - you can fake lights with these but they can also be used with Light Propagation Volumes (experimental WIP GI feature) or VXGI to actually cast light to the scene.
Shadowing solutions:
-Screen Space Ambient Occlusion (SSAO)
-Distance Field AO
-Ray Traced Distance Field Soft Shadows
-Capsule Shadows (coming in 4.11)
And then there are WIP GI solutions to think about:
-Light Propagation Volumes
-Distance Field GI
-RyanTorant’s AHR
-nVidia’s VXGI
-Enlighten (this one is pricey)
Anyways! the point is that there is a lot to learn about all these different lighting systems and methods which makes making tutorials difficult or at least time consuming
Take a look at the examples provided by Epic i.e. Elemental demo, ParticleEffects demo, and others. It is a good starting point to see examples of how to set point lights and add other actors into a scene that affect lighting.
