Don’t miss the new free Download the Lighting in Unreal Engine 5 guide for students and educators, released by Epic Games in .pdf format, ready for download!
This guide will give you all the tools you need to figure out what type of lighting to use in your 3D scenes, to start creating a beautifully realistic and immersive lighting experience in your next Unreal Engine 5 creation.
Don’t miss the free Lighting in Unreal Engine 5 guide!
In this guide, we’ll see how to take advantage of UE5’s lighting tools to create dynamic lighting that increases the visual impact of the scene, how to work with Lumen lights, Virtual Shadow Maps, and how to use the new GPU Lightmass updates.
Lighting in Unreal Engine 5 for Educators and Students’ guide
The potential of Unreal Engine 5 (UE5) is virtually endless. It’s a powerful game engine that allows developers to create realistic 3D visuals and animations. UE5 also enables educators and students to explore the world of real-time 3D graphics in ways that would have been impossible not too long ago.
When it comes to teaching the fundamentals of lighting, UE5 is an excellent tool. But with so many features and options, it can be difficult for educators and students alike to know where to start.
Lighting in Unreal Engine 5
Lighting in Unreal Engine 5 is a huge topic and one that we can’t possibly do justice to in a single blog post. However, we hope this guide will give educators and students a good starting point for understanding the basics of lighting in UE5.
The first thing to understand about lighting in UE5 is that there are two main types: dynamic lighting and static lighting. Dynamic lighting is constantly changing, based on the position of objects and characters in the scene. Static lighting, on the other hand, is pre-calculated and doesn’t change unless you explicitly tell it to.
Each type of lighting has its own advantages and disadvantages. Dynamic lighting is great for creating realistic, believable scenes, but it can be expensive to calculate and sometimes produces flickering artifacts. Static lighting is much faster to calculate, but it can’t react to changes in the scene (like a character moving).
In general, you’ll want to use a mix of both dynamic and static lighting in your UE5 projects.
Lumen’s dynamic global illumination
Lumen is Unreal Engine’s dynamic global illumination system. It allows for realistic lighting of scenes, taking into account the materials and geometry of objects in the scene. Lumen can be used to create both static and dynamic lighting environments.
Static lighting environments are those in which the lights do not move or change over time. This type of environment is typically used for architectural visualizations or renders where the focus is on accurate representation of light and shadow. Dynamic lighting environments are those in which the lights do move or change over time. This type of environment is typically used for games or other interactive applications where realism is not as important as performance.
Lumen supports both direct and indirect lighting. Direct lighting is the direct path of light from a light source to a surface. Indirect lighting is the diffuse reflection of light from surfaces in the scene. Lumen can calculate both types of lighting simultaneously, providing more accurate results than either method alone.
Lumen uses a physically-based rendering (PBR) workflow, meaning that it calculates light interaction with surfaces using real-world physics principles. This makes it possible to accurately simulate different types of materials, such as metal, glass, or fabric. The PBR workflow also allows for realistic HDR (high dynamic range) lighting, making it possible to capture both very bright and very dark areas in a single image without losing detail in either case.
To use Lumen, simply select it as the renderer in Unreal Engine’s settings
Hardware vs. software ray tracing
Computer graphics have come a long way since the first 3D games and movies. One of the biggest advances in recent years has been the introduction of ray tracing. Ray tracing is a rendering technique that can produce incredibly realistic images by simulating the way light behaves in the real world.
There are two main types of ray tracing: hardware ray tracing and software ray tracing. Hardware ray tracing uses special-purpose hardware to accelerate the ray tracing process. This hardware is typically found in high-end graphics cards or dedicated ray-tracing processors. Software ray tracing doesn’t require any special hardware, but it can be much slower than hardware ray tracing.
Both hardware and software ray tracing have their advantages and disadvantages. Hardware ray tracing is much faster, but it can be expensive and it’s not always available on all devices. Software ray tracing is slower, but it’s more affordable and it can be used on any device that supports it.
So, which one should you use? It depends on your needs and your budget. If you need the highest possible quality and you’re willing to pay for it, then hardware ray tracing is the way to go. If you’re looking for a more affordable solution, then software ray tracking might be a better option.
GPU Lightmass
GPU Lightmass is an Unreal Engine 4 plug-in designed to enable faster and more realistic lighting calculations using the processing power of a GPU. Enables real-time illumination, global illumination, and ambient occlusion. The plug-in also allows for indirect lighting and soft shadows, as well as the ability to render large-scale scenes with hundreds of lights.
In conclusion:
Lighting is a very important element for creating realistic and engaging content. Use lighting to bring out details, highlight areas of interest and create a pleasant atmosphere for your projects. Don’t forget that your lighting skills can make all the difference in your final project!
• Dynamic lighting is maturing more and more every year, it’s the direction many industries are moving towards.
• Less complex implementation means it’s easier than ever to get a beautiful scene. By learning these tools early, students can find niche spots quickly that will help them stay in demand.
• In the short term, using Lumen and GPU Lightmass are going to open up some exciting creative opportunities.
• In the long term, VSMs and advances in mobile and VR rendering will change the way we light 3D worlds. Supplementing learning traditional methods with new technologies, like mobile deferred rendering, will help students push the medium forward and help them be ready for new projects in the 5.1+ ecosystem.