UE5.7 – How do you prevent a flashlight hotspot from blowing out at very close range?

Development Programming & Scripting Blueprint
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Hi everyone,

I’m working on a third-person survival horror project in Unreal Engine 5.7 and I’m trying to solve a flashlight issue that I’ve seen discussed in several older threads, but I still haven’t found a solution that gives me the result I’m after.

The problem is this:

When the player gets very close to a wall or another object, the center of the flashlight becomes heavily blown out / almost completely white, and surface detail is lost.

At medium distance the flashlight looks acceptable, but at very close range the hotspot becomes too strong.

My current setup is:

  • SpotLightComponent
  • Intensity Units: Candela
  • Current test intensity: around 125 cd
  • Use Inverse Squared Falloff = True
  • Inverse Exposure Blend = 0
  • Inner Cone Angle = 0°
  • Outer Cone Angle = 35°
  • Light Function Material for the flashlight mask / gobo
  • Dynamic close-wall intensity attenuation based on hit distance
  • Bounce light disabled during these tests
  • Test room intentionally very dark to isolate the flashlight

I have already tested several of the common suggestions from older forum threads:

  • lowering the flashlight intensity
  • reducing Specular Scale down to 0.1
  • disabling the Light Function completely
  • disabling Use Inverse Squared Falloff
  • manual exposure / exposure compensation tests
  • very aggressive close-wall intensity reduction
  • moving the actual optical origin of the Spot Light backward

The optical-origin offset was useful: moving the Spot Light origin about 20 cm backward solved the problem of the beam shrinking/collapsing when very close to a wall.

However, it did not solve the blown-out center.

I also tested the flashlight on actual objects and materials rather than only on a wall. Reducing the main intensity from around 350 cd to 125 cd improved the result a lot, but very bright or close surfaces can still lose too much detail.

What I’m trying to achieve is closer to the flashlight behavior in games such as The Last of Us or Resident Evil 4:

  • nearby surfaces can be strongly illuminated
  • the beam remains readable
  • material/texture detail is preserved
  • the hotspot does not turn into a flat white disk
  • the flashlight works as a visibility enhancer inside an already lit / low-light environment, rather than being the only light source in complete darkness

I found older threads suggesting mainly:

  • Eye Adaptation / Exposure
  • disabling Inverse Squared Falloff
  • custom falloff
  • lowering intensity

but I have already tested those approaches without fully solving the issue.

Has anyone solved this in a more modern UE5 setup, especially with Lumen?

I would be particularly interested in solutions involving:

  • custom attenuation/falloff

  • local exposure or tonemapping

  • material response

  • physically plausible intensity ranges

  • Spot Light placement / optic

    Screenshot 2026-08-23 082318
    Screenshot 2026-08-23 0823181460×1137 38.4 KB

    al origin tricks

  • IES profiles

  • Light Function shaping

  • any other third-person flashlight technique used in production

Any Blueprint, lighting, or material examples would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!