Creating Natural Lighting in Unreal Engine: A Step-by-Step Guide

[@bartosz_weber]

I love that you show there is no secret tool, no checkbox that makes it all work. Just a clever use of the basic tools, taste and practice. Very useful tutorial, even if just to compare approaches to lighting in UE :)

[@lynkoLight]

Thank you, simple is always better

[@NeilDonkin]

Thank you very much for dropping this 26 minute knowledge bomb. My lighting skills have now improved 1,000%.

[@lynkoLight]

i'm glad to hear that thanks

[@BaazarStudios]

For those of you struggling with extreme overexposure when following along it's because there are actually a number of incorrect values he's displaying in the video. Don't get me wrong, his methodology is incredible and his end result is some of the best lighting I seen but I think there were some setup problems that were missed in the beginning and compensation for incorrect values in post process when everything could have been cleaner. Setting a skylight at 600 is extreme, and setting your exposure min max values anything other than 1 is just setting yourself up for confusion later. 1) Make sure that you remove all previous lighting and post process volumes that come built into the scene including the clouds, skysphere and skylight. 2) You don't need to set the intensity of your HDRI to such extreme high values. Setting it beyond 10 in Unreal is really unnecessary. Leaving HDRI intensity and 1, and Skylight Intensity at 1 is perfectly fine, because the real magic is all in the exposure settings. 3) In exposure set the min and max to 1. You should usually default to this setup: Autoexposure at 1, Min Max at 1, or manual with apply physical camera exposure turned off. This sets everything to be flat and balanced so you can focus on lights that make all the changes. 4) The HDRI he used imported overexposed, so on the texture asset itself I pulled it down to .1 on the brightness After that I was at the same exposure and similar look to 3:50. 5) From there I would continue to chop his light intensity values down by a factor of 100. He's setting them so high because his min max is forcing these scene exposure values to be very dark so all other lights must compensate for that. 6) For the light blocker cube at 17:00 you need to leave it opaque and turn on Hidden shadow and hidden in game in the object details. Otherwise it doesn't really work as a masked object

[@PolygonAcademy]

the reason his exposure is set to higher values than 1 is he is using real world physical units, which makes things a lot easier to work with when figuring out lighting values for local light sources as everything can be measured and input with real world values, such as a fluorescent tube light at 1500 lumens, and other light sources you can find real world values for and use. this makes lighting a scene a lot simpler than having to eyeball everything and then your lighting relationships are all just made up values when using a low exposure setting of 1, which in reality is used for night time scenes or even negative EV values for night. overcast lighting like this would be EV 8-13 depending on sky brightness/time of day, cloud coverage etc. The HDRI appears overexposed at an EV of 1 because the brightness of the HDR captures the actual brightness of the sky and when you adjust to the proper exposure range, you can see the details of the sky. This way, if you have an interior like the houses you can go into, you can set a separate post process for the interior with a real world exposure setting of ~5-7 depending how much light is in there and when you transition, it will appear realistic and correct, with the exterior out the windows being more blown out, just like how a real world camera works. if the goal is super realistic lighting, working with real world values for light intensities and measuring them with the HDR eye adaptation view mode where you can see the measured LUX or EV of a surface or light allows you to get correct exposure and light relationships that work properly with each other, like how you cant see a street light in daytime even if it is on, but at night when the sun is down/moonlight they appear much brighter relative to the ambient lighting. The hardest part of using physical lighting units is wrapping your head around EV100 and camera exposure values, it took me a while to have it click, but once i did, I always favor using physical units and ev100 exposure properly when I can :) A lot of modern games have transitioned to this workflow, it was followed pretty strictly on the last few COD games, especially for the cinematic campaigns. it is also really useful when developing games that support HDR screens as your brightness values will have a lot more punch to them as there is much more dynamic range from various light sources and the sky etc.

[@BaazarStudios]

@@PolygonAcademy While I appreciate those insights and using real world EV values, that's definitely not what's happening in this video. Setting a skylight at 600 intensity isn't emulating any real world light nor are the sunlight values. Since this is a Wild West outdoor scene there are no tube lights or softboxes or emulated LED lights so he's just modelling natural light using arbitrary values and then cancelling them out again using the exposure min max. Since he's not using manual mode or a cinecam modeling ISO and light gain it's really just eyeballing what looks good. Regardless of your methodology you want to use the Post process to neutralize any effect it has on scene exposure because you want your lights in the world to the actual work.

[@PolygonAcademy]

@ he sets those values because he has probably tested it before and knows the brightness values to input to get the sky properly exposed for overcast exposure ranges. For your point about how he is cranking up the lighting and then compensating with the exposure, yes, and that is a correct workflow for consistency. In the real world when you go outside to take a photo or its bright and sunny, do you compensate for the brightness by adjusting camera settings, or do you decrease the intensity of the sun itself? This workflow mimicks how things work in reality. In the exposure he sets it to EV 11 which is the exposure for a late afternoon overcast photo, its locking the exposure at that ev range, another way of doing it besides using manual exposure and dialing camera values in, its simpler rather than having to adjust aperture, iso and shutter speed, but you could set those as well to get the result of ev 11, its just faster and easier to plug in EV settings. the sunlight value he uses is physically accurate for overcast sunlight, 1k-2k lux. And there are other local lights in the scene, torches and lanterns which could also be properly set to real world values for consistent use over multiple levels and work well in interiors with a ev of 4-6 for interior exterior transitions. One thing i do agree with is its weird cranking up the skylight beyond 1, but this is because hdri backdrop separates the sky brightness intensity from skylight intensity/capture and seems a bit broken. I would actually prefer to put the sky material on a seperate dome with an emissive multiplierin the material , and then crank it up while measuring with the hdr eye adaptation modes luminance meter to reach ev 11 and then recapture with standalone skylight actor and leave the value of 1 intensity so it outputs directly from the sky captures brightness and is properly linked, the hdri backdrop is a bit broken with how it doesnt seem to work properly in this instance, but the end results are the same even with arbitrary numbers, as the overall scene exposure matches ev11, as the sky is properly exposed and it looks visually correct. Its just achieving it by multiplying whatever brightness the hdr was captured at by 600 to achieve a luminance of around 10k lux if i was to guess which is about what overcast sky outputs. i agree its a bit of a janky method but thats more on the way hdri backdrop works in this example rather than his knowledge of physical lighting and camera exposure, which is solid for sure. Setting exposure to 1/1 and dialling everything down will technically work and look ok on sdr screens but will also lead to having to randomly pick values for your torch lights and other light sources, which unless you can really nail that value relationship will look off if photorealism is the goal, and also using that low intensity of lights will not work nearly as well on HDR displays as there isnt as an larger range of Nits brightness to take advantage off and it will look very flat overall for a game. if you were to take other levels and lighting setups like high noon into account (100k-120k sun lux) as part of the content of a game which should have a pipeline that supports a wide range of lighting scenarios that work consistently

[@BaazarStudios]

@@PolygonAcademy I think you are probably correct. I need to do more research. But thank you for your insights.

[@PolygonAcademy]

@@BaazarStudios no worries, I wasnt trying to be agrumentative at all, whatever workflow gets the results your project needs is great, just trying to push more people to dive into physical units as its really becoming industry standard and once you start working that way its really hard to go back as everything just works as it does in reality and makes things easier, just a lot to learn in the beginning. Pasquale Scionti has a great tutorial where he also uses physical units and shows his process for lighting it about 1/3rd of the way through this tutorial(6:35): kzbin.info/www/bejne/q3KsipyOf5uomtksi=eBguLe9ef0iGUOZp and here is another great talk on high level lighting from another principal lighting artist that has a ton of great info in it if you are interested: kzbin.info/www/bejne/in2tY3mabtl1pLM finally if you want to go a bit deeper, here is a tutorial from the former lighting director at DICE/EA who worked on battlefront 2 explaining physical lighting if you want to go deeper, its in ue4 but the same principals apply to ue5 and all the issues he encountered have been fixed since then: kzbin.info/www/bejne/aHTPl5mEfrB8gck I checked out your channel, your work is dope man, love the batman project :)

[@Adamos-s1w]

It’s super easy indeed, a lot of knowledge, the way you tweak out the setup explaining a way how it works and final effects we can reach, priceless! Thank you very much for this tutorial, I can’t wait to use all the tips you showed! 🎉

[@nadiryoussef3035]

I have been waiting for this tutorial for YEARS , Bro thank you So Much Mr karim Baraka Allahu Fik

[@lynkoLight]

You're very welcome

[@Koen134]

Thanks so much for these guides, they are incredibly helpful. Would love to see more of these with different lighting scenarios. Keep it up!

[@RedzwanulHuq]

Lovee your way of explaining. Been using UE for many years but never found such comprehensive lighting tips. Not even from paid courses. Really wish you could make a video showcasing archviz scene lighting.

[@lynkoLight]

Thank you, Happy to help ❤️

[@Gabe79999]

Thanks for such a generous and succinct rundown of environment lighting in UE. It took me many months to learn comparable methods in C4D without this kind of guidance.

[@HomAxz]

For your light block a small tip: you dont have to put masked material on it, you can check in details "actor hidden in game" + "hidden shadow", you can see in editor where u place it but it won't be visible in render or game!

[@火龙果王]

谢谢你解决我的问题

[@chelo111]

broddy has amazing knowledge with lighting the community fucks with you broddy....

[@lynkoLight]

thanks

[@Phillefx]

Thank you very much, we had lighting classes with exactly this map, but you streamlined the process so good. Thanks for that :)

[@lynkoLight]

Glad to hear that, thanks

[@PolygonAcademy]

great tutorial dude, happy to see more people sharing info on using physical lighting units and exposure!

[@Mausensei]

hands down the best raw knowledge on lighting i have ever seen, may you be blessed brother

[@nelsondw]

the lighting in that old western scene is sick

[@VengeanceVishwas]

This Is Some Industry Level Stuff 🛐 Thankyou ❤

[@curiousity271]

Super glad to have this tutorial on natural lighting❤❤❤

[@sameirbaloch]

I have never seen the basic and very useful way to lighting in Unreal Engine, Much much appreciated 👍👍

[@MrSoulast]

What a timing. I was up to start working on environment that has this kind of mood. You are the legend!

[@metedev]

Hey Karim, it is a pretty good job! Love your work :)

[@lynkoLight]

Thank you

[@4klife7]

This is amazing. Please keep sharing your knowledge with community. Thank you..

[@BATCH3]

Omg, impressive! The tutor I was looking for! Thank you and congratulations for your work!

[@spacetimeanimation]

sincerely it is an amazing lighting tutorial, thank you so much

[@yusufa5429]

Whenever I do lighting I wish to see the Albedo of the overall scene and fix the brightness and saturation level for everything before hand. This allows lights to bounce correctly. I wish Mr. Kareem would also show us the albedo.

[@Pocky059]

this is so clearly stated and super inspiring! Very useful tutorial, love this !

[@thebutterflyking]

Thank you this is extremely helpful! I was wondering how to master lighting, I'm glad you put together this tutorial to help everyone.

[@reev3417]

Wow, thankyou so much for sharing this. As a new artist I really appreciate it when experienced artists share there knowledge with the world. Thankyou!

[@Georgeluisnunes]

Thank you very much for this tutorial! I've never seen a tutorial as good and as well explained as this one. Great job!

[@jacekb4057]

It is the best and most inspiring tutorial i recently watched. You are full of passion but humble. Thans for sharing your knowledge ❤

[@HomAxz]

your videos are really great. rapidly increasing my lighting skills. thank you!

[@faheemrana1281]

@1:18 what is that yellow 1st light which was already there just before placing HDRI ?

[@ovaisparacha2068]

Aaamazing bro, keep it up the fantastic work :)

[@RenderRite]

This was the top up I needed! Thank you for this tutorial! 💯

[@slumsnake1303]

This video is a real gem! I watched a bunch of tutorials, but could not achieve the result I needed. But this video finally allowed me to set up some decent lighting! But What about particle Effects? Most of them are practically black, even those that are supposed to glow!

[@blackfangwolf]

Hey Karim great tutorial as always. One thing I wanna add is changing film (toe and shoulder) will also add more to the filmic look to the scene.

[@MarcoKalantari]

Brilliant as always. Thank you for this really valuable insight, Karim.

[@mahmoudmohammed2132]

جميل ياكريم معلومات مفيدة جدا تسلم ايدك والله

[@periapsis413]

Thank you so much! Overcast lighting is so difficult to get right!

[@cloudjonny3d]

Thank for sharing! Sometimes I tend to overdo too much, but at the end to archive the best result is better to make it simple! You show me different methods of how to use some settings thanks ✌🏼

[@rubberdog]

Amazing tutorial, a real help for my new projects, simple to follow, great work and thanks for sharing your skills

[@sahyejrah8209]

i love you brother,you saved my life

[@Native_Creation]

A wonderful masterclass on natural lighting.

[@NPCLiam]

Amazing tutorial and results. Cheers!

[@vaudevillehorrorshow694]

Great video can’t wait to try results using this method.

[@gallystops]

I cant wait to check this out and follow step by step! Than kyou

[@Akireda]

Really, clever way, love it, thank you !

[@RobertVajda-art]

Dude , this video is gold. Thank you

[@RZR_Ghost]

you got my subscription only for the light blocking tips.. great... thanks...helping me to reach my AAA Studio Gaol.. thanks a lot

[@lynkoLight]

Thank you, happy to hear that

[@agoodkid1126]

Best lighting in ue video ever!🤝

[@Nj86743]

Very useful tips..makes a huge difference in the mood of the scene. thanks for sharing.

[@P4uly.B]

Habib, beautiful tutorial. Thank you for sharing your knowledge!

[@Boschie143]

Wow thank you so much, this information is golden🔥🔥

[@lynkoLight]

Thanks, glad to help

[@EMC3D]

Awesome Karim! Very inspiring.

[@RV-bc9yi]

Hello friend, thank you for this video ! I don't get the same result at all with HDR BackDrop if I follow the video to the letter. If I leave the skilight intensity at 600 it burns, I have to go down to 10 so that it matches your image at time 03:30 of the video. Is there a parameter to change in the project? In your opinion, is it possible to achieve a similar result using UDS ? Regards

[@HussinKhan]

Very helpful Karim, thank you!

[@lynkoLight]

anytime

[@PeterLeban]

Oh wow! Thanks for sharing!

[@darkcornernow]

Thanks Kareem 🙏 keep going ❤

[@lynkoLight]

you're welcome

[@patrickjesseman354]

Great stuff Karim!

[@dddharmesh]

loved what you did... Nice explanation..

[@GemboyTV]

amazing work. i want to do this also, what gpu you are using?

[@Maruk81]

Very nice bro super gooood

[@starscream2092]

Unreals real grey is not 0.5 of white but 0.18 - you can read docs about it.

[@lynkoLight]

You're right, I forgot the value amount

[@predragpesic5953]

Yup, I just watched the video, and wanted to chime in about the 50% gray thing. 🙂 Starscream is correct, and this thing happens because of the way gamma works in UE4 and UE5, compared to how it was in UE3, for example, before the PBR days. So just in case the brightness (Value) of 0.18 (767676FF hex) gives you 46% white, try using 0.21 (7F7F7FFF hex) to get the true 50% white. Again, this is because of the gamma correction/calibration, and it is a value that Epic has been tweaking for different versions of UE ever since 2014. It is a good idea to use the Unlit mode and sample your scene values and colors that way. And finally, it can be helpful to use hex values, because you can easily type those into Photoshop or Substance or Quixel Mixer and get the exact value across all programs that you may be using in your pipeline.

[@vidayperfumes7514]

Awesome you really deliver pro content , thank you.

[@adamplechaty]

Very cool, thanks for sharing your knowledge with us!

[@ElricTheFullMetal]

Thank you so much for this tutorial!

[@harrykurakula6390]

I can't believe what i am seeing. All these feel like Industry level secrets hidden from Unreal community.. Epic should officially use your videos as documentation.. Damn..

[@lynkoLight]

@@harrykurakula6390 thank you, I'm glad you like it

[@harrykurakula6390]

It hurts to see that your channel is still a small channel. You deserve more.. What I feel is you are not promoting yourself better. Only thing I can point out is lack of proper Thumbnails.. Don't get me wrong. I was searching for this exact topic & hence I clicked on your video.. Otherwise, I wouldn't guess that beautiful render image(current thumbnail) is an explainer video of UE5 lighting.. Now-a-days people are not reading Video titles.. I am sorry if anything I said felt wrong. I genuinely feel that you deserve even more..😃 Please concentrate on that part too atleast for the sake of UE5 filmmaking community

[@unrealhabitat]

This is amazing. Thank you so much for such a detailed and high quality tutorial. I really appriciate it

[@SuperMyckie]

Wow wow.. i so needed this.. thanks man

[@leon.3d]

this is awesome, thanks for sharing your knowledge!

[@abiambedkar]

very informative video karim, helps a lot and could you please make a video about night time lighting!

[@victorgama3d496]

amazing! thank you for posting

[@uimoos]

I love this guys tutorials,

[@3DModelDesignStudio]

Good Job!!!!!

[@lynkoLight]

Thanks

[@MomenElwan]

AWESOOOOOOME 🤯🤯❤️

[@surfexcelll]

That's amazing, Thanks for the tutorial

[@AhmedHasan91]

amazing work bro.. keep it up

[@RSill25]

Very nice and easy to understand!

[@dennisrajan8020]

Simple and Wonderful results.

[@narensoni3705]

Beautiful Work!!

[@miadoesvfx]

So awesome. Thank you

[@Imad_Hamouda]

شكرا كريم درس جميل كعادة

[@lynkoLight]

تسلم يا عماد

[@robertomachado7581]

Excellent! Thanks!

[@thefloydian1876]

awesome thanks brother :D liked and subbed, keep uploading new videos

[@panosdimi4713]

Thank you ❤ i learn many things

[@lynkoLight]

You're very welcome

[@ahmedseifel-nasr3672]

Very Informative tutorial thank you very much

[@TheDeathbyPurple]

Simply - Thank you.

[@IgorGolyuk]

I don't have that material at 19:55 m_composite_cloud_mask Where can I get it? Thanks

[@AWHMBMI]

OMG🔥🔥 God Rays process is the Best.I had never seen it before. Thank you So much brother..... Can you please make a special video about god rays? And Lighting is realistic...

[@lynkoLight]

sure will do

[@Hassan..Ali.]

Amazed by this no pre learned steps but rather doing it live along with us just awesome !!

[@borissolontsov8144]

7:57 ... yeah, what was wow =)

[@MADMOVIESINC]

Hello there! I have SkyAtmo in a scene. I dropped your presets into the level tab and am using it in another map. When I go to render in sequencer I get the following error. Would you know what needs to be edited to make this load in the scene using sequencer? MoviePipelinePIEExecutor: Warning: Sub-level '/Game/SkyAtmoPro/Maps/Mood' is set to blueprint streaming and will not be visible during a render unless a Sequencer Visibility Track controls its visibility or you have written other code to handle loading it.

[@MADMOVIESINC]

Ok, I figured this out by butting a level visibility track into my sequencer and adding the Mood level to it. Now my exposure in the render is not reflecting the viewport though. I keep changing my exposure settings on the Post Process Volume, but I see no change in the render.

[@ATUNAT.]

Perfect !

[@thesageofwisdom3763]

ملك 👑 thank you 🙏

[@LFPAnimations]

what is the reason behind increasing all the light values so much? Do they behave differently at different scales?

[@lynkoLight]

Because I'm using the min and max exposure like in real life

[@suvamondal6914]

Amazing👍👍

[@karmahmed1457]

انت قريبي ياكريم . ستي اسمها شوشه وكانو بيقولو لابويا ابو شوشه ❤

[@cgimadesimple]

I love this video!

[@oksemgo]

cool trick with light blocking! thanks

[@Nodia]

Very cool as always, thanks so much Karim! One quick question - why such extreme HDRi intensity values are used and then cut by Post Processing? I suppose it may reduce noise in the shadows, but I noticed, that such settings makes the brightness of SFX textures with luminocity look incredibly low (for example all of the niagara effect packs like e.g. fire, magic particles, etc).

[@abdulalgharbi8784]

Thank you Very useful tips

[@willreznicek4202]

sweet lordie this is helpful thank you til HDRI