Mastering Lighting in Unreal Engine 5

This video is about lighting in Unreal Engine 5 for beginners, focusing on lumen and dynamic lighting.

The first step is to set up the project settings correctly, including enabling DirectX 12 and 11, and configuring the lumen settings.

The video explains the different types of lights available in Unreal Engine 5, such as directional lights and point lights, and how to adjust their settings.

🔦 Different types of lights in Unreal Engine 5: directional light, spotlight, and direct light.

💡 Direct light provides soft and diffused lighting, while point light creates hard shadows.

🌞 Understanding shadow penumbra and how larger light sources create softer shadows.

🔆 Adjusting the source angle of the directional light softens or sharpens the shadows.

🌑 Ray traced shadows provide better quality and realism compared to virtual shadow maps.

🌅 Controlling indirect lighting using lumen can be done by adjusting light intensity, indirect lighting intensity, and material base color.

🔆 Indirect lighting depends on the reflectivity of objects, so ensure materials are not too dark for better indirect lighting.

🌍 Shiny reflective materials require something to reflect, such as an HDRI backdrop or a skylight with a loaded HDRI cube map.

💡 Emissive materials can emit light and cast shadows, but should not be relied on exclusively for lighting the scene.

📐 Using nanite meshes in Unreal Engine 5 improves performance and frame rates.

💡 The Environment Light Mixer is an underrated tool that quickly creates a realistic atmosphere and lighting in the scene.

📷 Disabling auto exposure and manually controlling the exposure with a post process volume is important for achieving the desired lighting effects.

🔦 Adjusting the exposure compensation slider in the present volume can drastically change the look of a scene without affecting the brightness of other lights.

💡 Using lumen and the environment light mixer makes lighting much easier and can quickly improve the appearance of a scene.

🌫️ Turning on volumetric fog and adjusting the volumetric scattering intensity can add dramatic effects like god rays to a scene.

🌞 Setting up a quick and easy daylight system for a dreamy late afternoon feel.

🌧️ Creating a gloomy, dark overcast day feel by adjusting lighting and adding an HDRI backdrop.

⚡ Adding direct lighting and using raytraced shadows to enhance shadow detail.