Configuración de Lightmass

How to add realistic lighting in Unreal Engine?

Unreal Engine offers us multiple tools to enrich the visual quality of our scenes. Now that we have lights and volumetric fog in our scene, it is time to learn about the light baking process and the advanced lighting settings that allow us to handle light sources and shadows with great detail.

What is a lightmap and how to optimize it?

Lightmaps are maps that store the light and shadow information of objects in a scene. Optimizing them is key to give realism without sacrificing engine efficiency.

• Static lights: Control the irradiance of each light point. Increasing their radius may increase compilation times, but improves overall lighting.

• Indirect light balance: Increasing light bounce can enrich realism. One hundred is an extreme value; for most cases, ten may be sufficient in order to maintain the balance between quality and performance.

How to set the sky light?

The light coming from the sky, or skylight, plays a crucial role in the ambience. Increasing its bounce can emphasize color and light interaction on scene materials.

• Indirect light quality: Increasing this option causes light bounces to be rendered more times, averaging the information for a more natural effect, although it involves more processing time.

What settings to avoid to maintain realism in Unreal Engine?

Some settings could result in less realistic scenes if not handled carefully:

• Environment Color: Modifying this setting can overwrite the natural color of the scene, resulting in unrealistic and unattractive colors.

• Ambient Occlusion: Creating your own shadows from light improves texture and detail without excessive texturing.

• Volumetric control: Allows you to adjust the influence of fog or smoke in the scene, giving a deeper ambience.

What are "build" and "bake" in Unreal Engine?

Before experimenting further, it is important to understand the concepts of build and bake. These processes are essential not only in Unreal Engine, but in any development engine and are responsible for compiling the final rendering of our scene, integrating all the elements of lighting and materials.

I invite you to play with these options and observe the results on the scene. Experimenting is the best way to understand how each setting affects the final result, and thus continue to create stunning visuals.