The Gallery - Virtual Art | "Better Light Than Never" Contest Entry - UE5 + Lumen

Project Title: The Gallery - Virtual Art
Engine version: 5.0.2
Student Submission: No

Link to Video:
The Gallery - Virtual Art | UE5 + Lumen

Welcome to my project! The Gallery - Virtual Art is a series of interconnected art galleries that use a variety of different lighting techniques to display my own artwork. Before self-educating myself in Unreal Engine, I had several years experience in product photography for my own online business. My fascination with lighting environments drew me to 3D visualization, and I was beyond excited for the opportunity to share my work in this contest.

For the first gallery, I wanted to recreate a lighting technique called “wall washing”. Based on the use of strong diffused lighting, this technique is often used in contemporary galleries and focuses attention on color rather than texture.

The second gallery features a dark, moody interior dependent on limited ambient light and ceiling mounted accent lights. This high contrast effect uses warmer spotlights with IES textures placed at 30-degree angles to the sketches.

For a series of digital photographs, the final gallery was designed with track lights that illuminate the gallery from various adjustable angles. A neutral color palate, combined with a balance between contrast and ambient light, contributed to the clean, modern aesthetic.

Credits to sourced content:

Quixel Megascans

Quixel Megscans: Definitive Interior Plaster Vol.2

Megascans - Pristine Granite

Epic Games Starter Content

All the art featured in these galleries are my own works. The acrylic paintings and hummingbird sketches were scanned on a home printer, while the digital photographs were imported into Unreal as texture files. I designed and made all the furniture, light fixtures, and architecture.

I truly enjoyed building three different ambiances whose individual identities rely heavily on lighting. The Lumen lighting system and the creative freedom offered by Unreal Engine gives us the immediate opportunity to illuminate ideas, designs, and art that may take decades to form physically. The unlimited potential of The new Lumen lighting system illustrates what can really be… better light, than never.

In Editor Screenshot:

Special thanks to Epic Games for providing artists like myself the opportunity to display our work, and for providing self-taught artists like myself with these amazing technologies for free! This truly was, an Unreal experience.

Thank you so much for viewing my work!

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