5 lighting tricks I use to fake global illumination in a procedural city (Unreal Engine 5)

[@acleverroos]

This whole project is such a vibe. I can't wait to see what you do next! Thanks for taking us along for the ride 🥲

[@mooooooooooooove]

This is very impressive. I love the vibe of the city, it actually looks like you've done city-wide scale in a realistic way.

[@dmangamesSTUDIO]

I've done some work in VR in UE and I've only used some small tricks like sprites for shadows and fresnel for fake dynamic lighting. I really like the tricks you did with extending the fake shadows to be fake lights as well.

[@George-tk2hj]

This project is very cool. I'd be interested to hear more about the difficulty around having non-AABB structures. Could you perhaps generate less homogenous structures using some other method to the cubic buildings, and then stamp it in the world on a AABB footprint? For example a cylindrical building (or something like Apple's Mothership) placed inside a square lot of land. I think it could also be possible to keep your AABB partitioning while having non-perpendicular streets (if you haven't already!). I like the eerie feel that the project has at the moment with this pristine but lifeless city. Thank you for sharing and I'm looking forward to seeing more :)

[@Orange_Pear]

This is very clever! I can't wait to see more additions to the city :)

[@robertgoldbornatyout]

This looks so good! congrats with this amazing project! This whole project is such a good vibe. This project looks incredible!I can't wait to see what you do next! Thanks for taking us along for the ride.

[@thabomthembu6281]

I love your work! It's also cool how you take us through your work. Which gives people a better understanding of the amount of work put in this project.

[@mjesensky2760]

This is so gorgeous looking, good luck with the project! Do you already have an idea what kind of game this will be? A procedurally generated gorgeous city could be a setting to so many different great games.. Cannot wait for it to be finished, I'd love to explore that city. :)

[@JoeTheis]

This is amazing. You should be blowing up any day now. Really awesome project you have here. Good luck, from a fellow gamedev!

[@kahton]

Thanks for sharing your knowledge, and good luck on your game. I can't way to see it out.

[@aprivatechannel1152]

Woah! What an amazing project. However I was wondering with the amount of assets you have, I assume you are doing as much work on a thread as possible. Did you manage to spawn / transform UInstancedStaticMeshComponent async, or are you doing that on the game thread

[@VuntraCity]

I am doing it on the game thread, but it is asynchronous, and there's a limit to how many spawns or destructions take place in one frame.

[@ZenWisdomToday777]

it all looks really impressive, im in love with this project

[@corsto]

it's so cool how you did all of this stuff! it's very technically impressive!

[@bananaonfire7473]

Interesting trick! Looking forward to seeing your game complete

[@stepkefreak]

Amazing work! Very inspirational! I look forward for this to be finished and shipped! Good luck to you u

[@VuntraCity]

Thank you!

[@dnm.design]

This looks so good! congrats with this amazing project!

[@AltamishM]

Wonderfully work! This project is coming together very nicely. Keep it up 🙌

[@rranft]

Pretty slick, and it all looks pretty good. Excellent work!

[@LiquidMark]

Looks AMAZING!

[@projectdusan]

Can't wait for the next dev log ❤

[@TheFunDimension]

I’m also experimenting in order to make my own VR game in UE. But everything is so new, there is barely documentation to all the new features, and some of them are simply too expensive to use, or it is still not fully supported in VR. But everything looks so promising, I’m looking forward when the hardware become much better, so that lumen, nanite, and substrate can become standard in VR. I mean, it was just recently that we can use high maps in UE5.

[@VuntraCity]

Yeah the documentation is sorely lacking, so sometime you gotta read the source code to learn how things work.

[@ChexQuest]

This project looks incredible!

[@EFX612]

looks amazing!

[@IstyManame]

Wait how did you do the infinite mirror effect on a floor? This whole project is insane btw i adore your creativity

[@VuntraCity]

The infinite mirror is done the same way as I described the distant windows - an interior cube shader.

[@shakourafa]

WOW 😮 Really really wonderful 💖🎆👌💯

[@mindped]

very cool... im doing something similar with decals... using custom primitive data to switch out the texture with a texture array. Then i can put them all on the same instance. Not deferred decals, but placing them as planes is just as good. All on a texture array keeps them on the same texture sample.

[@VuntraCity]

I do use texture arrays for distant billboards for some objects.

[@Orange_Pear]

Are the reflections in the windows of the skyscrapers' exteriors accurate or is it a preset image?

[@VuntraCity]

The reflections are pre-rendered, but they do change depending on time of day and weather. Unfortunately not even Lumen can do raytraced reflections on translucency at the moment :(

[@MaceWindoo77]

Your work is just craaaaazy !

[@kitsunegamedev4526]

Very clever. Illumination is usually a pain 🤣🤣🤣 tricks must be used everywhere.

[@Olaxan4]

Very nice! Thank you for sharing your experience -- dynamic lighting is tricky to be sure. Creating a huge city like this must be a tremendous challenge! Our game is smaller, but it's centered around the player's ability to turn all lights off and on at will, so we can't bake. My biggest tips for anyone reading is constructing your light blueprints from multiple spotlights instead of one large point light, as it allows you to focus the shadow casting on the floor, where it actually matters. And of course light functions to fake shadows for the non-shadowcasting lights (even though LF:s are expensive in their own right...). I also tend to rely heavily on point lights with Squared Distance Falloff turned off, a falloff exponent of 1, and an intensity of 0.5 or 1.0 unitless; to provide a very weak appearance of bounce light on walls.

[@hannesRSA]

Cool.. so what about Lumen? Could one use only that? I'm just getting started again.. stopped 3D dev pretty much 25y ago. Always liked the idea of creating a virtual world with NPCs which are guided by something like simulated cognition, maybe a bit more rigid than just slapping ML on.

[@VuntraCity]

I've tried Lumen, but it is too slow for VR for now.

[@hannesRSA]

@@VuntraCity thanks, I just don't even know what it is so asked. But impressive work and the knowledge you're building is invaluable I'm sure. Maybe I'll get somewhere and catch up in a year.

[@Astral-Beast-Dev]

This is a really cool project

[@jb5488]

cool project.

[@vintar7398]

Cool city, the optimization level is awesome, and how to use a square shadow for rectangular objects? Or can it be stretched to a rectangle without creating the 2 texture Objact? its very cool optimization, Impressive work, visible the level of skill. And can you add a co-op game? And cool idea with lighting on the walls, can you add their locations on tall buildings on the upper floors and on uneven surfaces? and how to add parallax paintings? and add the cells of the parks?

[@VuntraCity]

I do actually have a square version of the shadow for rectangular objects :)

[@vintar7398]

@@VuntraCity 🤔 ок

[@couragefox]

Great vid. Are you going to use unreal MassEntity system for pedestrians?

[@VuntraCity]

I'm not sure it'll work for my project, but I'll give it a try.

[@LimbosGhost]

Keep it up

[@biglittledude496]

Did you ever consider using light probes? Doing some temporal accumulation or anything like that?

[@VuntraCity]

I think Lumen uses something like that, but it's still too slow for VR.

[@ZenWisdomToday777]

this is an awesome project! do u have any plans to make it vr?

[@ZenWisdomToday777]

oh u said it right after i wrote it hahahaha, cannot wait! :D

[@VuntraCity]

Yes it's going to be VR first, that's why I started it in the first place :)

[@ZenWisdomToday777]

@@VuntraCity 🤩🤩🤩

[@Crazyzooka]

What is the gameplay loop?

[@VuntraCity]

I don't want to talk about the gameplay yet. I have a pretty good plan for it, but it still might change drastically. I will reveal it when I have something to show

[@elijahfrickingourd]

can you PLEASE make a PC version as well?

[@VuntraCity]

That's the plan!

[@Orange_Pear]

@@VuntraCity Might a PC version be able to use Lumen?

[@xGOKOPx]

@@Orange_Pear You may be misunderstanding each other. I think that what she means by "that's the plan" is that this is going to be a PCVR game (so not PSVR or standalone like the Quest) whereas you're asking for a non-VR version

[@jimiginis]

I love your work! I'm working on procedural cities too. I added some videos of them just now, please take a look! I'd like to collaborate with you as well if you're looking for that

[@bcgames92]

looks horrible

[@VuntraCity]

What exactly? It would help if you could elaborate so I can improve.

[@mimicray]

:D

[@synthwavesoundscape1893]

Since i know nothing about game development... but are there any plans for when the project is releasing full versions for a standerd desktop 2d option on boot? For people with a steam deck, for example.

[@VuntraCity]

I plan to release for VR first, and then for desktop, so I'm trying to keep the game compatible with both.