I’m new to Unreal and am experimenting with lighting and level creation. I’m using the cube grid tool to construct a windowless ‘house’ (really just a hollowed-out box), but I haven’t been able to figure out how to light the interior of that box with a directional light. I can add multiple smaller light sources (point light, etc.), but this doesn’t seem like the best way to go for a large, enclosed space.
Is the directional light approach not working in the cube grid because of some property of the model it creates, or am I missing something else? Does anyone have any straightforward recommendations on how, in general, one would light a large, interior level that is receiving no or minimal illumination from the sun?
What I usually suggest is making a blueprint actor that you can duplicate, if you’re just looking to fill a space with light. Think about how many lights you would normally see. For something like an underground bunker, you could make a rect light (short for rectangular light) that is surrounded by a frame. Then just duplicate that and place it accordingly!
You can mark the light, or the ceiling, as “don’t cast shadows.”
You could even set up three separate, weak, lights, from top-lighting, back-ligthing, and under-lighting, with different color/strength, to establish “basic lighting” and then add atmosphere with spotlights / pointlights that do cast shadows.
However, in general, the eye will notice that this doesn’t look quite right, so if you’re barreling down the “realism” route, you’ll want to actually light with lots of little lights, and perhaps let Lumen do its magic As long as most lights don’t have influence too far away – each general object is only in the cone of a few lights – then performance will be fine even with dynamic shadows. (For modern definitions of “fine” on modern systems – no intel built in graphics laptops …)
