How to Make Unreal Engine 4 Render Lighting Faster! - UE4 GPU Lightmass Tutorial

In this free tutorial we will go over how to make your light bake renders 100x times faster thanks to the NEW GPU Lightmass. We can now bake global illumination on the GPU instead of the CPU and make full use of modern graphic cards drastically increasing our render time. Only works on 4.26.
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Timestamps
0:00 - Intro
0:52 - Activate GPU Lightmass
6:52 - Differences from CPU Lightmass
9:14 - Settings
11:18 - Outro
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[@UnrealSensei]

Channel Update: There will be no new videos for two months as we wait for the UE5 beta! Once the beta is released you can expect a barrage of tutorials.

[@DevilbringerGames]

ok sensei I will be one of your good disciple waiting hella for your tutorials

[@slycreature972]

THANK YOU sooooo much!

[@LucianoJacomeli]

do you think is better upgrade a pc to a ryzen 5000, rtx 3070, nvme faster to use UE5 or is best wait until ue5 beta?

[@aaronsupertramp]

Glad to know that! I'm excited about that new version! So, there is no other way, we need to wait patiently xd

[@simulify8726]

@mrigank sarkar Look. All you need to do is to create an Epic Games Account, then you have to sign in in Bridge with that Epic Games Account. Once it completes, you will have full access to the library of Mega scans. To start working with UE4. In Bridge, you need to download a plugin for UE4 and then enable the plugin on UE4, so it will automatically export with just a click of button

[@videohelper2299]

Yay you're back. Thanks for this another great, straight to the point and helpful tutorial. Looking forward to more of your future tutorials.

[@aashay]

Glad to have you back Sensei :) Show us the way

[@samuelmoser92]

Thanks for the great Tutorials you make. I am really interested in Unreal Engine. Especially when I am making landscapes. So keep up with it.

[@dracarys3341]

Finally he is back💪

[@danielastrom8368]

Exactly what i was looking for, great video!

[@brandonjacksoon]

Please more videos )) Liked and subscribed! You are really cool professional and teacher! Thank you! Your level design tutorials AMAZING!!!

[@navidumardaraz7163]

So happy you have covered this!

[@fallenhoenix1255]

Well... This changes things for me a good bit... Thank you! Great tut! You have a new sub!

[@user-cw3nb8rc9e]

Great to see you back from hibernation :) Where have you been? We've been missing your wonderful, super made tutorials. Please make tutorial on VR - how to make menu, interact with your controllers on virtual buttons, how to browse files on disk etc :) Generally some VR project with virtual menu.

[@UnrealSensei]

Thanks! Right now we are waiting for the release of UE5 beta since any tutorials made now we be out of date when it does. Expect tutorials every week then

[@CinematographyDatabase]

BIG Dave2D vibes! You love to see it 🍻

[@UnrealSensei]

Thanks! Big fan of your channel love your work on Epic Game's XR stage

[@milosavpavlovic7548]

Keep it up I love you! Gave me a sense of direction with UE.

[@noalterna77]

seriously the best ue4 channel on youtube.

[@dcosta7120]

Yep, seen many tutorial, you’re the best

[@rkanu.a]

pls make a detailed video on file management system as its very confusing to locate and find things....always have to struggle to find something and on material too...thanks and great video....loved it

[@KingKong19100]

Sensei!!! Love your tutorials! I'm planning on a Blender to Unreal Engine workflow, and I really need help with the following: - After animating a scene in Blender (Meshes with Armatures and Shape Keys that are animated, camera shakes and zooms, maybe even cell-fractured surfaces), how can I export this whole scene to Unreal Engine 4 in order to render it out in realtime with even better graphics? This is undoubtedly my biggest thing I need help with. Nobody has made a video about this kind of workflow, and it would be a *HUGE* help to many people if you did! It could also complete your Blender/Unreal Engine 4 series since you've covered LEARNING Unreal Engine 4 for Blender users, but not a workflow for exporting Blender animations to UE4! There is an Unreal Tools plug-in for Blender which can really be useful! - Playing transparent videos on planes like in Blender. This is something I struggle with finding anything about, especially considering how UE4 is a game engine, I thought it would be easier to find these things. I have a lot of ActionVFX footage I would like to use by just dropping it into the actual scene. -Rendering an animation. This is one that is hard. I would personally love to render my stuff out in 4K-5K, which should be no problem in UE4 right? That and in-game color-grading would be awesome! These are all of the stuff I *REALLY* need help with! Please give me a heads-up if you plan on making another video including this stuff, or even just have an answer you can leave in a comment! Thanks so much Sensei, love you and take care!

[@MrKennykyle1]

that's actually insane thanks!

[@drterrynguyen4057]

These are incredible tutorials, thank you for your time and effort. I have a question. I just watched indie filmmaking in unreal engine 2hour course. Would you incorporate this lightmass in making films ? The course didn't advise global illumination so that it didn't mess with the workflow - this tutorial seems to be a workaround? I'm trying to understand between static and dynamic lighting - whether to start with dynamic movebale lighting then baking later. Hoping for some advice. Thanks Zach!

[@lwd4032]

Excellent tutorials. So good.

[@slavazarkeov4600]

thanks @Unreal Sensei for this amazing how to! I suppose this only works under Unreal 4.26 and Windows 10?

[@elmagico05]

Hello Sensei, would u make an introduction tutorial for a AR-handheld project? Thanks for the amazing tutorials.

[@abdullahsohail5395]

Thanks God you are back

[@kadirsugar7894]

Finally you are back 😎😎😎

[@dcosta7120]

U’re super good at explaining. Sub!

[@gokupiske5965]

I am your loyal fan from Taiwan. You are my hero. Help a lot!

[@ModernARQ]

Great video!

[@udithaabeykoon9418]

thanks for the tutorial. its grate.

[@burakaydn2314]

Ty for the content! Can you please make a smilar video for UE 5.1 for slower PC's.

[@momomadi2]

thanks Sensei !!

[@johnsajiv]

U r Aweeesome.....Subscribed!

[@oxygencube]

So so useful!!!

[@santhosh8013]

Amazing class, and your name Sir!

[@durtdittie]

Awesome video

[@kalpeshjangid]

its really useful for me ............Thanks

[@aliayubabbasi]

Hi Zack.... can you please make a video on how to make realistic living room like the one you have made here?... thanks

[@alejandrorostro4183]

Great tutorial as always. Thx! Do you guys know if it is possible to use gpu lightmass for multiple lighting scenarios? I have tried it with a scene and have not been able to get it to work

[@MrToroburn]

Dude this is black magic f*#%%ry. Thanks so much!

[@YASIR.K]

Thank You

[@quickquad677]

Where are you sensei? We need you! Have been waiting on your videos' forever!!!! If you can give us an animation in-depth tutorial that would be great!!!!! Like (IK, blendtrees, how to approach combo system in montage, etc) //I know that's a lot of ask :( But i will not fail you sensei!!!!

[@adamplechaty]

GPU lightmass works on Radeon cards as well. 6800 XT owner here.

[@SunnyAshveen]

Yeah.... he's back

[@vfxforge]

dont forget to adjust the lightmap resolution from the default 54 to something higher

[@TheBoxyBear]

I would love to see raytracing imlemented for real-time preview. Maybe make it a render option on the top left and reduce the number of rays to keep a good framerate while editing the level.

[@sc0rpi0n0]

Unless your GPU has a lot of RAM, you can't do GPU baking and raytracing at the same time.

[@TheBoxyBear]

@@sc0rpi0n0 Wouldn'y be baking, just doing raytracing in real-time for preview purposes, with less rays to keep the editor usable. Would only bake when you select the option as usual.

[@ananthandoo5008]

I am a huge fan of ur work. Do u also teach professional. I am a professional interior designer and would love to learn from you.

[@musikalniyfanboichik]

chad is back

[@mousekeyboard781]

Can you make a video how you made this interior.How you migrated objects and material..

[@slothsarecool]

Would people use this for exteriors as well? Or typically just interiors?

[@xMrDog]

Great video, can you go faster with GPU Lightmass but without ray tracing too?

[@kazioo2]

All lightmap baking uses raytracing, even CPU one. This was also true 20 years ago in Hammer editor for Half-Life 2.

[@dimonmomon981]

Спасибо, братишка. Офигенная фича, очень помог)

[@kanvasp]

shake and bake, baby!

[@spectator59]

My GTX 970 doesn't support ray tracing, but I tried enabling these settings anyway, with the thought that things would either just run slow, or that UE4 would tell me if I was trying to use some hardware feature that wasn't available. No luck! Project wouldn't open. Had to hand-edit the .ini file for the project, but now World Composition is broken. Word of warning: if you try this, make a backup of your project first.

[@gaming4K]

Good thing i watced the part where he says it's only nvidia cards especially RTX so i didn't even try with my little Rx570 xD

[@JustSomeBricks]

Lumen in UE5 really is a time saver

[@exhilex]

Could you please mention the PC specs that you use? I am very curious!

[@zdddddd]

lets gooooooooo

[@user-zh9rd2of6b]

Спасибо

[@comradejames7813]

I have that sofa irl from that scene haha

[@Artem-go5xf]

Hi! Can this technology only be used in indoor levels (apartment)? Can I use this technology on open levels (forest, mountains)? I already tried to bake the light in this way in my small test project (forest) and the light looked the same after baking as before baking, nothing has changed.

[@aeroljohn8803]

Is there a quality difference between gpu vs cpu lightmass baking? Even just a slight difference, I still want to know which one has better quality.

[@PretendCoding]

It's a shame this only works for RTX cards considering CryEngine has had ray tracing on non-TRX cards for a while. Good video though, nice explanation.

[@ExpertTechHD]

I WANT USE Lightmass Unreal Engine 4.26 Must get RTX 2060 or GTX 10650TI enough

[@RhapsodyWarrior]

I have a AMD RX 5600XT... what pain... And U5 Lumen is too haavy for now :/

[@fedeyoshizato2830]

Excellent tutorial! I have a question though, i am trying a simple scene. I place a directional light and when i click bake after it has finished all the scene dims down in exposure. Has anyone else had this issue?

[@gothicanimeangel96]

are you using a post-process volume to regulate auto-exposure?

[@omgwat]

you need to set your post process volume to manual exposure and adjust the lighting settings

[@Thaneway]

I am new to unreal how do you use surfaces with bridge.

[@user-nm4gt9zx7k]

'Enable Virtual Lightmaps' should be also turned on. You had it already enabled, but by default if is disabled (in my case).

[@UnrealSensei]

Yeah I think I mentioned you want them on if you want to see it being updated Realtime with bars, still works without VT

[@mr77]

Hi Zach! Bender is about 50 percent faster on Linux. What about Unreal, maybe you know..?

[@arqueus120]

Hey bro, i have a question for u, how do i chose the GPU in the UE4? when i bake with GPU Lightmass, him chose the CPU like a graphic card pls, my bakes taken like a 1 hour even with the GPU Lightmass

[@edwardholappa8410]

Hello is it possible to make a clock that runs at the right time in Unreal Engine? If you walk around in a house that has a clock on the wall, and it should follow the right time Reads time from the viewer's computer.

[@FatProgrammer]

We need long videos like your first video 🙂

[@UnrealSensei]

Yeah will remake those videos soon when UE5 beta drops

[@FatProgrammer]

@@UnrealSensei when will it release bro? Can u guess the month? or will it release on 2022

[@jabiraidan]

Yea....so took me a while to find out my shiny new AMD can't do it...least you've confirmed its a "yet" so at least I can learn the methods and apply them when its my turn to shine.

[@RewZes]

Quite late but does the GPU light mass works solely with Ray tracing or its not necesary to turn it on?

[@ExpertTechHD]

hi I WANT USE Lightmass Unreal Engine 4.26 Must get RTX 2060 or GTX 1660TI enough

[@fleshwere]

I never had this problem, why did I watch it all

[@dandee1197]

Because you're in love with his tutorial quality

[@Pierraxl]

I did everything you did in the video but i can't see any progress bars....

[@findyhutasoit5015]

Hi there, thank you for this tutorial. I am just a beginner learning Unreal Engine. I followed exactly your tutorial but the lighting built time is 5x longer than using the regular BUILT settings. Any idea what might cause this? My computer specs: QHD IPS 165hz i7-10875H RTX3070P 512GB SSD 64GB thank you for your support much appreciated!!!!

[@hheboi2567]

How?

[@santhosh8013]

Amazing class, and your name!?

[@fracturedfantasy]

From your description "We can now bake global illumination on the GPU instead of the CPU and make full use of modern graphic cards drastically INCREASING our render time"... I sure hope not ;)

[@mikeyben-chetrit4303]

For those of us with not so nice comps. So I'm running a gtx 1060 and the gpu lightmass "works". Extremely slow in slow mode. Upon turning off Realtime it will crash the editor and force shut down with a D3D error.

[@anthonyschilling7132]

Same here

[@JunniVlogs]

bro make more video .

[@spritegaming471]

With UE5, Lumen removes the need for baking at all I believe. Also, is there a way to use GPU Lightmass or something to reduce bake time for screen space global illumination?

[@ldiems]

baking is still higher quality and use WAYYYY less performance

[@spritegaming471]

@@ldiems u can’t move objects around tho freely.

[@ldiems]

@@spritegaming471 no you can 💀 Also dynamic light+ static light exist bruh

[@OriginRow]

Does baked lighting from GPU Lighhtmass works for mobile devices ?

[@FoleyX90]

Does this require an RTX card? I only have GTX

[@efeozturk5253]

I'm working on a project that has 9million p.count, both interior /exterior and day/night sublevels and grass and water and dynamic objects and sounds and..... GG my 6 years old old pc. gpu render did the trick but why stop here? ASUS Strix G513QR do you think I can work just fine with this pc?

[@EthanFilms]

Crossing my fingers that I can use this on my GTX 1080... Will report back with results!

[@mikeyben-chetrit4303]

Let us know!

[@UnrealSensei]

Yes I think you can although It wont be as fast

[@EthanFilms]

@@UnrealSensei update: I tried it and now Unreal will not open my project... I tried starting it three times now, I may have lost my project. Any ideas?

[@EthanFilms]

@@mikeyben-chetrit4303 don't do it yet: I tried it and now Everytime I try to open my project, unreal crashes on loading. DO NOT DO THIS ON A PROJECT YOU DONT WANT TO RISK LOSING!

[@mikeyben-chetrit4303]

@EthanFilms Thankfully I created a copy of my project before trying this because I expierenced the exact same thing. I reqlly hope you did not lose your project.

[@Spidygroove]

Sensei...can I use it with GTX750 card?

[@scpk2246]

guys, is GTX 1660 supported? when I bake using GPU lightmass, the output is weird - light is too bright, why is that? can someone please explain to me. thanks

[@federiconarducci34]

is UE just a step ahead of other rendering softwares like lumion, vray etc or is the next gen GPUs that change everything?

[@UnrealSensei]

Unreal Engine is up there for "real-time" and it is quickly approaching VRay. I would say it is better than lumion but it still can't compete VRay since VRay can take hours for a frame and Unreal only has miliseconds

[@ShadowTheLight]

wow that went from like 10min on my R5 5600 to like 5 seconds on my RTX 3060 Ti

[@archcast5550]

Unity already has GPU lightmass with optix support for old cards and runs on Linux vulkan... Makes me sad Unreal engine took the microsoft path and discontinued vulkan support.

[@vrai_]

RTX only... Should be powerful if any gpu can support it

[@tylerscott3192]

Do you have to use Ray Tracing to use GPU lightmass?

[@ronb.9850]

I used these settings. Shit, positive comment first, lol. Your tutorials are great! However, after restart, my project won't open. I get directx 12 not supported message. dxdiag tells me I do have 12. How can I reset the default's so I can get back in to try the other settings without directx 12?

[@nemsix4185]

Hello, did you find a solution for it ? i'm facing the same issue. ty

[@MalikRockie00]

I suppose this won't work using my GTX780 huh? or will it ? just curious but don't want to risk killing my card lol

[@frozenabyss6572]

This doesnt work for me! I got error messages poped up! Whenever I turn GPU lightmass or Dx12 or even Ray tracing! I have been doing reinstall the UE 4 for 5 times!

[@jasonkyleavancena506]

I followed all the instructions after restarting, below the build lighting says. "Gpu lightmass requires ray tracing support which is disabled." Anyone know what the problem is?

[@charliemarsh2957]

You started your project with ray tracing off im pretty sure.

[@mujbrah]

you missed the step at 4.13

[@letsplaysomthing3799]

so i cant use this with out RTX??

[@deepakgiri.j1973]

is it work for gtx1660

[@OCanalDeVideoGames]

So you Will bé back again?

[@jbach]

Irradiance caching?

[@ravinsharma3556]

Sensei in her 4.24 no GPU lightmass in plugin if there how to get kindly help

[@dan323609]

Update engine

[@chvc]

only at 4.26 GPU Lightmass is native, others versions hava a plugin that you install, it's not official from Epic

[@makadi86]

can I do this with gtx 1050ti and get like slower results or it will never work at all?

[@hheboi2567]

How?

[@rogerg0120]

Tried this and Unreal got stuck at "45% - Compiling Shaders" while opening :/

[@iiTzMythic]

Can you do this without rtx cards that will be great

[@UnrealSensei]

Yes but only for late GEN GTX cards. A GTX 1080 should be able to run it