How To Improve Your Lighting w/ RTXGI

The first 1,000 people to use this link will get a 1 month free trial of Skillshare: skl.sh/williamfaucher10211
In this tutorial we talk about Nvidia's RTXGI plugin. This is a relatively new lighting method that completely leapfrogs the default Raytraced Global Illumination options in UE4 / Unreal Engine 4. While Unreal Engine 5 has Lumen, RTXGI is a worthy competitor. In this video we cover how to set up the plugin, how to use RTXGI, how it works, as well as a few other quality of life settings that are really good to know about.
You DON'T need an RTX gpu for this to work. But it should go without saying that you need to enable raytracing in your project settings for this to work.
Console Commands for RTXGI:
r.GlobalIllumination.ExperimentalPlugin 1
r.RTXGI.DDGI 1
Nvidia Documentation on RTXGI Playlist:
• Nvidia RTXGI Documenta...
ICVFX Production Test Scene:
www.unrealengine.com/marketpl...
#unrealengine
#RTXGI
#nvidia
---------------
Timestamps:
00:00 - Intro
01:01 - Skillshare
02:10 - How RTXGI Works
03:23 - Pros & Cons
05:33 - How To Install RTXGI
07:00 - How To Use RTXGI
09:07 - Nvidia's Documentation
12:18 - Using RTXGI in Large Environments/Worlds
14:32 - Fixing odd Lighting Artifacts
15:22 - Using RTXGI in Detailed Scenes
20:59 - Outro & Thanks
--------Cameras and Gear Used To Film This Video ------
DISCLAIMER: This video/description contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a small commission. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. This helps support the channel and allows us to continue to make videos like this. Thank you for the support!
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[@WilliamFaucher]

The first 1,000 people to use this link will get a 1 month free trial of Skillshare: skl.sh/williamfaucher10211

[@questtechnologies4330]

Going through your previous video I have found you never ever develop your own project and only selectively pick topics for discussion that you know and even those you apply on some projects that are not your own developed once.

[@questtechnologies4330]

And yes you always point out that you are not taking credit for those projects but, I have found out that if you develop those projects on your own, then you might have more knowledge and your audience will grow faster

[@WilliamFaucher]

@@questtechnologies4330 I'm looking forward to watching your next UE4 tutorial since you seem informed on the topic!

[@3dchick]

I'm so glad you're getting sponsorships! It makes me happy to know you're getting some well-deserved recognition and the support you need to keep going. :-)

[@jamesgoodman2931]

Had no idea this was now available. Brilliantly concise as always!!

[@Tobe1Kanobee]

Always look forward to your tutorials. You set the bar.

[@iplaygames1999]

Love the way you explain things in depth but not over complicate it. Thanks for another great video!

[@WilliamFaucher]

Thanks so much for watching :)

[@garyerance]

Great video once again William, thank you for taking the time out to explain this for us all.

[@gborgesw]

Incredible content, man! Thanks for the guide!!

[@andrey.003]

thank you. i didint even know about this plugin. going to try it right now

[@conbuch9758]

I've never found a youtube channel where EVERY SINGLE VIDEO is not only extremely helpful, directly useful, but also SO GOOD! William you are a genius man, thanks for sharing the knowledge.

[@WilliamFaucher]

Thanks so much Connor! Really appreciate it!

[@Ferodra]

Your channel helped me out SO much with Unreal, it's.. unreal! I even had to mention/link your videos in my study project documentations, as this content was nowhere to be seen during any of our lessons

[@WilliamFaucher]

Thanks so much! You’re too kind!

[@jukai4091]

ty mate, great work as always, luv it to watch u!

[@TheGabmeisterX]

Amazing tutorials! Hoping to see more of these.

[@hubin1067]

No words! Thanks,Sir.

[@lubruz7164]

I have not idea about this, I was sitting and waiting for Lumen in UE5. Very nice to know.

[@calvinromeyn]

Thanks William! I love your videos, you've helped me out a ton!!

[@Delli88Burn1]

You're channel is now my go to for a recap btw projects. Such awesome work on yr artstation too. Thank you so much!!! A suggestion for a future topic. Lighting from a photographer's point of view(an exploration using physically accurate values of candela, lux). And when only to use post process or camera to bump up the exposure, min and max EV and indirect GI. Tonemapping to avoid highlight burns, and adding enough lights, if a single direct light source isn't enough.

[@mjspad]

Im so glad I found your channel! thanks for all the great info. I am a digital artist, new to Unreal. I was wondering if you had any turorials on how to simply create an overcast day in Unreal Engine 5. All the tutorials I see everywhere have very direct lighting. I am looking to create a dark, gloomy icy landscape.

[@varunverma95]

Awesome tutorial ! 🙌🏻

[@teot3847]

Hi William, so glad that I've run into your channel. Really appreciate that your tutorial are so in depth, from start to finish, especially where to locate the plugins and tips and caution that we need to consider. There's a tutorial that I've been searching for a while but could not find, I just wonder if you would be interested to do. That is making a stereoscopic movie using render queue. I could not find any tutorial for it. I'm not sure if VR and stereoscopic are any difference, and if no, how to output it as images for a movie or short film. Will appreciate it very much if you could do a tutorial on how to create stereoscopic in Unreal 4.27, to output it as images for production. Thanks in advance! Keep up the good work! And thanks for your contribution.

[@nikolay-tsys]

Thank you William! This is insanely good stuff here! And fantastic presentation!

[@WilliamFaucher]

Thank you!

[@cookieClarke]

Thanks so much William. Excellent tut. The way you explain the process is very easy to follow. Cheers mate

[@WilliamFaucher]

Thank you!

[@SilvsFX3D]

*I love your tutorials, thank you so much, greetings from Brazil.*

[@Xodroc]

Have to say your channel is one of the best of the best, you do better at teaching than the official live streams more often than not. One thing I'd love to see you tackle is getting the best lighting for large open world VR, including day/night.. Lumen and Nanite(maybe later) don't support VR, so sadly can't put those to use yet. Thinking in terms of PC Desktop VR only, and not being limited by Android/Mobile. I figure hardware will reach the point where we might be able to do PCVR with deferred rendering as well in the future.

[@JohnB-ws4ge]

i like your overall presentation, it was very well done.

[@WilliamFaucher]

Thanks for the kind words!

[@mjaegerj]

Great video! remember seeing this demo a while back.. forgot about it. and now its here! :D Awesome video and content as always! Thanks for sharing.

[@WilliamFaucher]

I feel you, it's one of those things that slips under the radar easily! Thanks for watching!

[@greaver5470]

Clean, precise and appreciated. Thank you.

[@WilliamFaucher]

Thanks for watching!

[@edemyankah5290]

Thank you William. Truly appreciate your videos.

[@WilliamFaucher]

The pleasure is mine! Thanks for watching!

[@Starlingstudio]

love your vids william thank you so much

[@robsonfrancomaciel3716]

You are the best, man! Thank you!!

[@TanzeelAmjad]

I love the way how you explain things. Amazing!

[@WilliamFaucher]

Thank you!

[@eliascgi]

Cool tutorial, thank you!

[@potter1511]

Fantastic walkthrough of RTXGI, one thing I think you also want to mention is that some probes got black and a red outline. That means they went to sleep and note contribute to the GI overall, according to NVIDIA, it doesn't affect the performance, but those dark probes occupy memory.

[@sebastientoccupe5704]

Love the end of your vid! Thank you for helping us out.

[@WilliamFaucher]

The pleasure is mine! Thanks for watching!

[@ZeeroCool1979]

Another amazing video! Thanks a lot!

[@horiamoldovean6074]

Holy smokes this looks so GOOD!

[@TheCrimsonSeven]

Great video! Very compact.

[@uwekreuzahler3976]

Thanks William. Again a super good tutorial. You are a rockstar!!!!!

[@WilliamFaucher]

Thanks so much! The pleasure is mine!

[@Adrian-zb2lu]

Good video, I would like to see a video analysing the differences between Raytracing and Lumen.

[@UndiniTuts]

You're covering the kinds of subjects that I would have loved to have had when I started learning Unreal. Of course realtimeGI wasn't a thing then (except in misleading tech demoes). Great work.

[@moduloniko]

wo , really nice tuto ! thanks you

[@vrai_]

KZbin: "He's back." Me: Make a coffee.

[@WilliamFaucher]

Ahahah best comment

[@mathieumechaussier6026]

Hi! I wish to add some feedbacks from my own experimentations with RTXGI! -First of all, the RTXGI is not working with mesh with light channel other than light channel 0, whenever a mesh with light channel 1 or 2 activated enters the viewport, the RTXGI disappears! -When creating it, i'll advice to don't go over 15000 probes (or 25x25x25) or it might crash! Besides that, once set, it's pretty steady! -When you got meshes with translucency crossing other meshes (ex: Godrays, others FX with translucency, etc...), it can create some issues with the GI -Even if RTXGI update dynamically, it doesn't seems to support LightFunctions -The RTXGI can be hard to setup in exiguous places (leaks & shadow problems) If you got some solutions for any of these problems, i will be happy to hear it!^^ BYE

[@WilliamFaucher]

Feedback and thoughts are always welcome! I also noticed issues with lighting channels, those don't seem to work. Same thing with too many probes, it is easier to have one large volume with low probe count, and several other small volumes to get more accurate lighting in specific areas. It is definitely very finicky to set up in some areas, as it can look pretty buggy. But over all, it looks so great!

[@lubruz7164]

Thanks a lot for the info.

[@VoxelVagrant]

that sponsorship endorsement was elegantly introduced - and good to see you getting the support!

[@WilliamFaucher]

Thanks so much! I'm always a bit concerned they feel forced or over the top

[@VoxelVagrant]

@@WilliamFaucher I know the concern! No it was really well done :)

[@Zoran_Zivic]

As always great video. Big thanks for taking the time to make this tutorials, they were very helpful for me. I have dilemma that I hope you will be kind enough to help me with. I’m currently working on a project (interior of a disco club), it is a closed space and it will be lit with planes/polygons with video animations playing on them, and simple objects (cubes, cones and spheres) with emissive materials. No skylight, backdrop HDRIs or directional light. I’m supposed to make video animation for presentation, so frame rate is not that important for me. Until I watched this video I was sure this disco club will be my first complete ground up UE5 ArchViz project. Now I’m having second toughs about that, since you mentioned potential UE5 instability. I do not own RTX card, but GTX 1070Ti. Knowing that would you suggest me going with UE5 + Lumen, or UE4 + Nvidia RTXGI Plugin? Tnx.

[@pawekikta3909]

Yes!! Will, you are amazing.

[@WilliamFaucher]

Thank you!

[@VRDivision]

amazing my man!!

[@WilliamFaucher]

Thanks Yahiya!

[@user-ky7bz5qz2y]

You are best~!Thank you very much~!

[@elvismorellidigitalvisuala6211]

This channel is PURE GOLD

[@WilliamFaucher]

Thank you so mcuh!

[@jamesfield8023]

Great video on a really useful topic. Was a shame I had to endure 10 un-skippable ads throughout the duration, but it was worth it.

[@WilliamFaucher]

Whoa what, 10 unskippable ones? That's not normal at all. Ads are a necessary evil but that is certainly more than you're supposed to get.

[@jhonsonmartinez7473]

Hey thanks for the video and for the spanish subtitles

[@AICineVerseStudios]

You are the best, every video is the best of yours. With each video, I just feel that I further get elevated pro for my work. Millions thanks to you and God bless you always!

[@bowserlm]

Comes at the absolute perfect time.

[@JavierGonzalez-qg5el]

Can we change your name from Faucher to lifesaver?! Thanks for your helpful videos my guy. Great stuff.

[@WilliamFaucher]

Hahah thanks so much! I'm just glad it helps :)

[@mathajar9563]

whoaw thats was really cool

[@semiastyfx]

That was grate tutorial pal. I do enjoy your way of teaching as its being clear and simple even with advanced topics. I would like to know if You got any courses from scratch to advanced level when it comes to UE ? i need something big, with loads of lessons and such. I know i could just watch your tutorials but i realy need to have one big video or course based on videos where i can learn ALL aspects of UE

[@Danteaa2]

great ! thanks for your insights

[@WilliamFaucher]

Cheers!

[@kmeson]

Nice presentation. 1. Limit number of rays per frame to improve performance 2. Consider enabling a higher density scrolling DDGI volumes around player | camera 3. Consider multi-level DDGI volumes to improve fidelity over large areas, and areas of interest 4. Not much work to enable on current gen consoles

[@aweramu7107]

Nice tut

[@QtittbChannel]

There's a way to inject sky atmosphere and clouds to RTXGI through a material. The HDRI dome you have there needs to have a material with Raytracing switch to masked, so, if raytraced =1, if normal = 0, so it's invisible in viewport, then in emissive you plug in SkyAtmosphereIrradiance. This way you put Sky Atmosphere colors to material's emissive channel. Plus, for large worlds, you calso can attach DDGI volume to your character and make the probes either stay in place or follow the volume. So the volume can follow the player generating new probes and removing old when player moves. Really handy. Good video.

[@AhmedHasan91]

Awesome thank you

[@pigydog123]

you deserve way more views dude

[@WilliamFaucher]

Thank you! We’ll get there :)

[@GiorgiBekurashvili]

You are the best vlogger of Unreal Engine!!!!

[@WilliamFaucher]

Haha thanks so much!

[@mansourahmednegadi6884]

Thanks for this video that was really helpful. I only have question about reflexions gi, how can we add this ?

[@AwakenIdiotic]

Thank you very much

[@warpenguinstudios]

Great tutorial If one was to have an open word level with interiors. Would this work/be efficient to use standard dynamic lighting with the usual sky light. atmosphere, DFAO for exteriors and set up RTXGI on interiors? Or would it be best to just wait for the atmosphere fix to use it across the full level

[@burnplaysgames]

Hey there, Lovely video. But I was wondering whether you could make a comparison between Lumen and RTXGI to see which is more feasible now

[@MrYoungAndrew]

Any chance you could do a walkthrough of that intro cave environment how you put it together or a link to the file !? Looks amazing!

[@peterbikki8963]

Hey William, Fantastic Tutorial! In terms of Skyatmosphere: you could try create a SkyAtmo Material mapped onto an inverse sphere, this trick worked for me on Mobile/VR-Quest where you also "couldn't have" Skyatmosphere the official way... Superb Content, Superb Work!

[@WilliamFaucher]

Oh clever solution you got there! Thanks for sharing!

[@peterbikki8963]

Also AFAIK that's going to be treated by DDGI as "Emissive", so you have like a separate intensity slider for Skylight

[@Suthriel]

Do you mean, using the whole Skyathmosphere system in a normal material for meshes? That is possible? o.O

[@peterbikki8963]

@@Suthriel for sure, it's described in the official showcasing demo here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/iZaxfmywd7V_eaM

[@Suthriel]

@@peterbikki8963 Oh my god, that really works :) only thing is, to make the pathtracer react to it, the "isSky" has to be disabled. Only with that off the pathtracer recognizes it, otherwise you can see it, but the pathtracer completey ignores your skysphere. And to let the sun shine through and cast shadows, the Skysphere itself shall not cast shadows (turn off the "cast shadows" on the sphere mesh).

[@karlehagen]

Great video!! Just out of curiousity, in the beginning footage, any idea what's happening with the flickering vegetation at the foot of the stone pillar?

[@WilliamFaucher]

Not enough samples in my render :)

[@MR3DDev]

You convinced me to switch back to UE4.

[@dasari_malleshbadra1822]

Good one

[@pablocodeglia]

OH man this is great! Too bad I don´t have a RTX ca... JUST KIDDING! Great info as usual William, thank you thank you!

[@7_of_1]

Thanks William, have installed but not tried it yet. Those console commands at the beginning, are the required in the MRQ to render or just activate in the scene first?

[@dunne54321]

Hey William, thank you so much, there's one thing that's puzzling me, how do I know I'm working with RTXGI and not the standard gi from Unreal? I did all the steps over a project that had unreal rtx and I have no idea if this worked or not

[@lilsquirt9889]

I wanna give you a kiss for this one!!!

[@user-en9zl7pz8f]

Thank you very much for this tutorial. I have no problem using the RTX test file, but it fails after I create a new project. I am sure to enable the plug-in and enter 2 commands. I don’t know where the problem is

[@hivestudiosinternational]

Hi William. Thanks for this. Please note it won't show up if you have Raytrace Global Illumination switched on in a post process volume.

[@yesterday.7509]

Hello sir, can you please upload more stuff about ue5 and thanks for all the informations

[@WilliamFaucher]

I will once UE5 is fully released, at the moment it is currently only in beta/early access.

[@WanerRodrigues]

Would be cool a tutorial with a mix of baked light (Luoshuang GPU Lightmass) + RTXGI + reflections. Like a interactive area and just a background area

[@christophermathieu9696]

You can tell the sphere probes from the DDGI volume to stay static and if you do a build, it will run on any hardware including Radeon cards. You just need the RTX card to work in Unreal.

[@tomasgiu8194]

Maybe for Archviz it can be good. Cause you can use GPU Lightmass to the Architecture, and RTXGI to the environment. But if you use it both of them in a evironment, I think that its not necessary because they have the same purpose.

[@WanerRodrigues]

​@@tomasgiu8194 But I think if you build a giant warehouse with 100 lights, but just 20 lights are in a interactive place, why make all the ambient with "real time lights"? You can save a lot of performance dividing it in a less demanding way

[@tomasgiu8194]

@@WanerRodrigues Yes yes, but you can do it with Lumen and Nanite, which is compatible with all type of hardware.

[@WanerRodrigues]

​@@tomasgiu8194 I agree, but if you want to stay in 4.6/4.7 can be a good way to work

[@CinematographyDatabase]

Smooth

[@WilliamFaucher]

Thanks!

[@Jonsnovv]

I have worked with Unreal (3/4/5) for many years, like 15+. Worked with lights in proprietary engines like Snowdrop, Cathode (Alien Isolation) and some other engines. I really like your videos. They always show me, what I do not know and there are still things I can learn. Absolutely loving the style, not overacting and staying serious. Please continue with this. Cheers!

[@WilliamFaucher]

Thanks so much for the kind words, Roman! Much appreciated! There's always more to learn for sure, I've been using Unreal since the UE3 and UDK days, even now I still learn new things all the time.

[@chasan6978]

Hello, master, I have been studying your UE tutorial and I like it very much. I have a question. Do you have any good suggestions about the translucent effect of clothes similar to silk veil? I am using the MASK method, and the TAA is jittered, and the screen accuracy is not up to the requirement. I hope you can reply. thanks

[@WilliamFaucher]

For translucent clothes I'd try Subsurface Scattering :)

[@chasan6978]

@@WilliamFaucher Thank you for your suggestion! I still need to try the performance of translucent tulle clothes. This is a problem that cannot be avoided. I will find a way to try again. Thanks for your advice! Good luck!

[@xLuciii3]

is the graphics put into unreal engine gonna happen for other games too?

[@MsDevilMaria]

Thank you for the amazing tech guide as usual! In addition, If anyone dumb like me followed this amazing video and still get noisy result, make sure that you turnned off RTGI solution in your post process volume haha XD

[@WilliamFaucher]

Cheers Maria! Hahah that's a good point! I probably should have clarified that in the video! Thanks for the heads up!

[@williamminnaar6311]

Good day to you - A question, When I render my sequence in .exr format - the shadows are so black in DaVinici Resolve 18 - But not in Photoshop - Do you know why? Thanks so much :)

[@WilliamFaucher]

Hi! It has to do with how each software handles linear footage. It’s a colorspace thing. You need to apply the correct colorspace conversion in Resolve, from linear sRGB to rec709 or ACES. I made a video about colorgrading in resolve, so you can see the process there.

[@williamminnaar6311]

@@WilliamFaucher Thank you :)

[@h.ar.2937]

Amazing stuf

[@amirhamzepourshafi8322]

quality tuts. do you think it's good for archviz too?

[@WilliamFaucher]

Yeah absolutely!

[@jamesgoodman2931]

If you have several animated cameras in a camera cut, is that where the problem lies that it jumps to the next camera in the sequence without warming up in between? Any ideas how to handle reflections with this method?! Thanks!

[@abdelazizelh546]

thank you for your great work and tutos i want to know about how i can prepare and launch the animation of objects by button by the web remote control of ue4.27 like in the tuto at the minute @ and @ ​@ thanks you

[@jinmick9998]

Thank you man ,I'm wondering are you Unreal product manger or not Otherwise why you alwalys knew how to make it better

[@WilliamFaucher]

Cheers! I'm not a product manager and Epic isn't paying me for these videos, I'm just passionate about what I do :)

[@bonoloseeco1345]

I love your channel.....

[@WilliamFaucher]

Thank you!

[@MrRuumi1]

Noice!

[@WilliamFaucher]

Thanks!

[@esrarchitecture4136]

Hi William. Can you do the lighting tutorials for GTX video cards? Not everyone has an RTX card

[@WilliamFaucher]

If you check out the pros and cons section of this video, you don’t need RTX for this ;)

[@esrarchitecture4136]

@@WilliamFaucher Thanks))

[@ShwanLoghmani]

good job bro ... my program has a problem ...my wind dot work for trees and grasses and dont moving i dont know why ???? thankyou so much if you give me information about that ...

[@AVISIONMUSICTV]

Quick question. Has Nvidia combined all of its optimization systems into The DLSS plugin? Reflex, RTXgi ect? for UE 5.1

[@burakmurtekin5041]

Hi, William. Firstly i'm thanking to you that you always encourage us and support with your good videos. I couldn't see if anyone had asked this question before in the comments sections. I wanted to use RTXGI in UE4 for my new Archviz project. I have completed all the preparations and am trying to get a rendering with MRQ. But I can't set the MRQ settings properly. Constantly MRQ ignores the RTXGI settings and creates a dark rendering. If there is no solution, it's ok. I can drop RTXGI plugin and do with Lightmass hole project again. Thanks in advance.

[@WilliamFaucher]

Hi! Thanks for the kind words! What happens if you press the play button in unreal? Do you still get a dark rendering? It sounds like some kind of exposure setting that is messing with your scene.

[@burakmurtekin5041]

@@WilliamFaucher Actually i entered the Exposure value manually. But as you said, when I press play, my scene gets dark. Is there a known solution to this?

[@mauriceshapero7200]

Brilliantly clear as ever William - thank you. The problem I have with unreal 5 is that glass doesn't work. I'm an architect and I design in 3d. Does this solve that? The beautiful Realtime GI with translucent, reflective glass?

[@WilliamFaucher]

Glass does work in UE5, you just need to disable Lumen :) This does solve that issue in UE4 somewhat though yes!

[@mauriceshapero7200]

@@WilliamFaucher Thanks William! Is there any work around for glass with Lumen on, or will we have to wait for unreal 5 to be updated?

[@WilliamFaucher]

@@mauriceshapero7200 Not that I know of. UE5 is still just an early access/beta, it isn't a full release so this may be resolved next year. Until then, you'll have to pick the lighting method that works best for you!

[@mauriceshapero7200]

@@WilliamFaucher I'm just downloading the Nvidia plug in!

[@mauriceshapero7200]

@@WilliamFaucher Sorry - one last question. Do you thing the nvidia GI will work with VR in 4.27? I've only got a 1080 so probably won't.

[@vertexdesign2809]

So if I created a real time scene for a client, would he have to have a RTX card to view it? Great video by the way.

[@skorp265]

Yes. I am awaiting the day in which we can bake raytraced lighting, to optimize performance & consistency, because raytracing is still very buggy.

[@vertexdesign2809]

@@skorp265 Thats what I thought :(..thanks for the confirmation. It will get there I'm sure, and probably not too far away.

[@veilight4444]

When using RTXGI, would this be instead of the RayTracing GI in the PPV?

[@niilokin7280]

Does the DDGI volume just override the default raytracing in the area it's placed? Only thing I've noticed is better performance after I place it so I guess it's working...