This week, looked into dynamic lighting in UE, exploring how intentional and informed use of lighting techniques can enhance a scene and even contribute to storytelling. The seminar had me experimenting with these techniques firsthand and gave me a newfound appreciation for how light, materials, and atmosphere interact in a 3d environment.
The Lumen system is pretty interesting, though getting it to work right was a bit of trial and error. Had some annoying issues with noise in my renders at first, but figured out it was because I was pushing the global illumination settings too far. Once I dialed those back, things started looking much cleaner.
The different light types were fun to mess around with. Directional lights for sun stuff felt pretty straightforward, but I got really into experimenting with spotlights and point lights for more specific effects. Those rectangular lights were cool for soft lighting, and can help fill in a scene when you dont want to have to decrease the shadow constrast.
Material interaction with lighting turned out to be crucial. Adjusting the albedo before adding lights helped optimize the global illumination. Post-processing volumes let you control effects either globally or in specific areas. Adding IES profiles to spotlights made them behave more realistically. Reflections required careful consideration. Using skylight and different reflection types (box and sphere) improved material realism, especially for metals and glass. I found those IES profiles for spotlights interesting – it gives a realistic look that I really like. Had to keep an eye on performance though, especially with ray tracing and high-res reflections.
Post-processing was another thing we touched on, that I found intruiging. Experimenting with color grading through Look-Up Tables (LUTs) showed me how much impact these adjustments can have on the overall mood of a scene. The ability to maintain consistent cinematic tones across different shots feels like a powerful tool for storytelling.
I had a bit of a revelation with post-processing volumes – they’re actually really useful for tweaking specific areas without changing up the whole scene. I’ve been thinking about using them sparingly but purposefully in my project in order to utilise colour theory to my advantage, I’m going to look into being able to change settings mid-gameplay so that I can have it react dynamically.
The most useful thing I learned was probably how to balance different lighting approaches. Sometimes you need that real-time dynamic lighting for specific effects, but other times you can get away with baked lighting and save some performance. Thankfully, I have a decent PC, but if I want to be able to produce experiences that most people can enjoy – I should become acquainted with ways to manage performance.