Training Livestream - Lighting Techniques and Guides 2: Dynamic Light - April 4 - Live from Epic HQ

[eoghang]

Would really appreciate if you could cover the new contact shadows feature. When to use, how to balance with other shadowing methods & how to control the grain/artefacts.
Looking forward to the talk

[iniside]

I would be interesting in seeing how to setup most realistic fully dynamic lighting, using as few lights as possible (no filler lights for example). So it can work with day/night cycle.

[anonymous_user_759e5c3a]

Hey, sorry about the stream not happening. The machines all decided to stop function properly at once. We’ve postponed this to next Tuesday! Thanks for your patience with us.

[Xodroc]

@;687189

Hey, sorry about the stream not happening. The machines all decided to stop function properly at once. We’ve postponed this to next Tuesday! Thanks for your patience with us.

Hmm, was it a performance issue with dynamic shadows by ? Could it be related to this issue? Unreal Engine Issues and Bug Tracker (UE-43093)

[Luos (Luos_83)]

@;687189

Hey, sorry about the stream not happening. The machines all decided to stop function properly at once. We’ve postponed this to next Tuesday! Thanks for your patience with us.

Well… at least there where some particles being created

[Max974]

That’s okay, it can happen
I’m flad that you guys didn’t let the community alone, the particle practicing was cool!

About the next stream, on thursday, will it take place? And what will it be?

I’m looking forward to the next live class

[RealVis-Studios]

Mayebe you can give some tipps for a more Specilized usecase like Productpresentation/konfiguration, were we have alot of meshes in the view with millions of poligons and we need a couple of dynamic shadow casting lights, what could be done to improve preformance here ?

[anonymous_user_759e5c3a]

@Xodroc;687271

Hmm, was it a performance issue with dynamic shadows by ? Could it be related to this issue? Unreal Engine Issues and Bug Tracker (UE-43093)

We don’t have any landscapes in that map, so I don’t think that’s it. The issues were a sudden unscheduled windows update claiming my laptop and the CPU throttling on the stream machine while trying to load some assets. We’re narrowing it down and trying to figure out why it works on 's machine, but not the stream one.

[acatalept]

I don’t know if you do “Community Spotlight” mentions on these training streams, but this would be a great stream to drop a quick mention to check out @Daedalus51’s Lighting Academy video series:

Unreal 4 Lighting Academy....or something like that ;) - Community Content, Tools and Tutorials - Unreal Engine Forums)

This may have already been mentioned in a previous stream, but he uses specific case studies (submitted by users!) to go way in depth on a lot of “what actually works” in the base engine and gotchas/workarounds, particularly with dynamic lighting.

Looking forward to checking out this stream, thanks!

[Tim_Hobson]

@acatalept;687630

I don’t know if you do “Community Spotlight” mentions on these training streams, but this would be a great stream to drop a quick mention to check out @Daedalus51’s Lighting Academy video series:

Unreal 4 Lighting Academy....or something like that ;) - World Creation - Epic Developer Community Forums)

This may have already been mentioned in a previous stream, but he uses specific case studies (submitted by users!) to go way in depth on a lot of “what actually works” in the base engine and gotchas/workarounds, particularly with dynamic lighting.

Looking forward to checking out this stream, thanks!

It’s been mentioned a couple of times but it’s always worth a mention. His videos are amazing! I definitely planned on mentioning it at the start of the training stream because while always asks “what’s the best lighting for Day/Night, or how do I get realistic lighting” those can be very subjective topics since is not designing the same game and may have different artistic choices to make for their style. The idea behind these streams was not to teach you how to be a lighting artist, but instead to show you some things you may not be aware of that you can do, show some simple tricks to work with outdoor to indoor lighting, or particularly how to get optimized good looking results with specific lighting features.

Daedalus51’s stream fills in the gap for those seeking lighting artist techniques and you see him go through how to properly light a scene for composition and the artistic choice along with some good tips on optimization considerations as well!

We’ll have some cool stuff to show next Tuesday, though!

[Philcrifo]

@;686679

This is definitely a good question, especially since it comes up often for those just starting out with the editor or with lighting in general. I’ll touch on this during the end Q&A part of the stream with why this is.

In general though, I think a lot new people with lighting are told “Use baked static lighting, it’s best,” and then someone tries to use it on a large open world or even just a densely packed one and immediately run into hardware limitations (RAM mostly) for building the lighting or hitching issues where it’s trying to stream these lightmaps in/out. There are some good reasons to avoid static lighting for open worlds that would be good to repeat in this stream.

Thanks for asking, I hadn’t really thought to cover that specifically since I was more focused on some of the features of dynamic lighting and optimization really.

Reasons why you shouldn’t use baked lighting for open worlds would be great, but tips on how (and why) to use dynamic lighting specifically for open worlds would be really awesome!

[Tim_Hobson]

@Philcrifo;687803

Reasons why you shouldn’t use baked lighting for open worlds would be great, but tips on how (and why) to use dynamic lighting specifically for open worlds would be really awesome!

I plan to cover that as well, at least in talking points. Realistically setting up an example for this, I don’t believe is necessary. Also, for something like this, it can be pointless to just tell someone why they shouldn’t use it without offering the counter points for why you should use the other instead.

[Xodroc]

@;687602

We don’t have any landscapes in that map, so I don’t think that’s it. The issues were a sudden unscheduled windows update claiming my laptop and the CPU throttling on the stream machine while trying to load some assets. We’re narrowing it down and trying to figure out why it works on 's machine, but not the stream one.

Sounds like Windows 10. If so there’s a way to disable automatic updates/automatic rebooting using the Group Policy Editor. I got sick of Windows 10 highjacking my computer for updates(especially when it was failing an update and would try again automatically a couple hours after rebooting with no option to defer), still get a nag screen though.

[DamirH]

Hey guys,

Thanks a lot for the informative stream. I just want to double check on one thing. I got a bunch of non-shadowcasting point lights in my scene, and they cost me a ton. Here’s what I’m getting:

Did I miss a setting?

[Yura_s]

Thanks for the stream, guys, it was very informative! I want to refine my question I was asking during stream. Is there any way to control (or disable) self shadows for capsule shadows? Example below (standard Owen model from Content examples, Shadow Physics Asset=Owen_Physics, Skylight only). I want to avoid dark zones on character, but shadows on environment should remain. There is r.CapsuleIndirectShadowSelfShadowIntensity console variable, but it doesn’t do what is expected from its name. It controls shadows on environment, but not on the character.

[Tim_Hobson]

@DamirH;690650

Hey guys,

Thanks a lot for the informative stream. I just want to double check on one thing. I got a bunch of non-shadowcasting point lights in my scene, and they cost me a ton. Here’s what I’m getting:

Did I miss a setting?

I think this may have been a bug with the refactor that was reported in UE-35747. The last bit on says its no longer reproduced in 4.16. That may be the issue you’re seeing here since they shouldn’t cost that much when not casting shadows.

[Tim_Hobson]

@Yura_s;690651

Thanks for the stream, guys, it was very informative! I want to refine my question I was asking during stream. Is there any way to control (or disable) self shadows for capsule shadows. Example below (standard Owen model from Content examples, Shadow Physics Asset=Owen_Physics, Skylight only). I want to avoid dark zones on character, but shadows on environment should remain. There is r.CapsuleIndirectShadowSelfShadowIntensity console variable, but it doesn’t do what is expected from its name. It controls shadows on environment, but not on the character.

Use the Capsule Min Visibility setting to adjust how much its shadowing. You may just need to adjust the Capsule Shadows Physics Asset as well to get better results. I would really start by adjusting the capsules first since self shadowing artifacts are more likely to happen here by having overly large capsules or ones that are not setup correctly. I misspoke on the stream and my how-to pages for Capsule Shadows haven’t gone live yet. They are still in the review process and should happen at some point soonish. Sorry I don’t have a specific ETA.

[Yura_s]

@;690666

Use the Capsule Min Visibility setting to adjust how much its shadowing. You may just need to adjust the Capsule Shadows Physics Asset as well to get better results. I would really start by adjusting the capsules first since self shadowing artifacts are more likely to happen here by having overly large capsules or ones that are not setup correctly. I misspoke on the stream and my how-to pages for Capsule Shadows haven’t gone live yet. They are still in the review process and should happen at some point soonish. Sorry I don’t have a specific ETA.

Thanks, ! Capsule Min Visibility (controls total capsule shadows intensity) + r.CapsuleIndirectShadowSelfShadowIntensity (controls environment capsule shadows intensity) did the trick. Even for the rough Shadow Physics Asset. Though, I’m not sure that CapsuleIndirectShadowSelfShadowIntensity is suitable name for variable with its functionality)

[DamirH]

@;690654

I think this may have been a bug with the refactor that was reported in UE-35747. The last bit on says its no longer reproduced in 4.16. That may be the issue you’re seeing here since they shouldn’t cost that much when not casting shadows.

Hey , thanks for letting me know. I’ve found that reducing the radius of the lights helps a lot (Radius of ~1500 has them at 9.5ms, ~1000 has it at ~2.9), which is an acceptable workaround.

[Sadaleus]

[MENTION=8] [/MENTION] Can we get access to project used on stream via Asset Sharing sub-forum? It would be very useful to make some experiments, personally play with these examples and check out that cave and ui panel with options prepared by [MENTION=4894][/MENTION]