UE5 – Light Studies

Env. Light Mixer – Create lighting from scratch:

Other elements to add to create realistic sky/world/lighting:

• Volumetric Cloud: Uses a material-driven method to create lifelike clouds, offering versatility in cloud types and enhancing the sky’s realism.
• Exponential Height Fog: Adds atmospheric fog that varies in density with altitude, providing a smooth transition and allowing for two different fog colors for environmental tuning.
• HDRI Map: Uses an environmental texture to provide accurate background scenery, natural reflections, and contributes to the overall illumination of the scene.

Things to keep in mind when dealing with indirect lighting:

• Base/albedo color: the material or color of your objects matter as they reflect light bouncing off them. If lighting in your scene seems too dark/light, considering tweaking color of your material.
• In real world nothing is 100% black or white. Most black: 0.04, most white: 0.9, middle ground: 0.18
• Use chrome ball to visualize lighting & reflection

To turn off Auto Exposure:

• Add PostProcessVolume to scene
• Infinite Extent (Unbound) ✅
• Metering Mode: Manual
• Apply Physical Camera Exposure ✅
• Exposure Compensation: USE THIS to control light (without having to manipulate light in your scene)

After several attempts in creating beautiful skies and environment lighting in UE5, I started to get a hang of how to work with Lumen. There are still a lot of settings which confuses me sometimes, yet I believe lighting is such an essential aspect responsible in deciding the quality and mood of your scene.