Lumen Explained - IMPORTANT Tips for UE5

Probably the most important tutorial I've made for Unreal Engine 5.
The first 1,000 people to use this link will get a 1 month free trial of Skillshare: skl.sh/williamfaucher12211
This video contains a whole bunch of important information that WILL AFFECT how you create content for UE5 using Lumen. I cannot stress enough how necessary the information here is. I know this video may seem a bit dry but it WILL improve your lighting quality. For the record, the contents of this video apply to Unreal Engine 5 EARLY ACCESS. And things will likely change in future builds, once 5.0 is officially released.
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Timestamps:
00:00 - Intro
01:15 - Skillshare
02:24 - Project Settings
03:07 - What Lumen Can Do
04:33 - How Lumen Works
05:35 - Surface Cache (SUPER IMPORTANT)
07:21 - Lumen Scene (ALSO IMPORTANT)
08:16 - Limitations & Things to Know
11:18 - Raytraced Reflections
12:29 - Best Practices
--------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 and B&H 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!
My Streaming / Recording Setup (How this Video was Recorded)
Nikon Z6II : geni.us/OPxBG
Sigma 35mm f/1.4 Art : geni.us/ByMa
Deity S-Mic 2 Shotgun Microphone: geni.us/ed6pyO
Aputure MC Pocket LED: geni.us/uVZNl
Godox LEDP 260c LED Panel: geni.us/OgidwX
Godox Parabolic Softbox : geni.us/oHZ2b9
Godox SL-60W Studio Light: geni.us/68wx

[@WilliamFaucher]

The first 1,000 people to use this link will get a 1 month free trial of Skillshare: skl.sh/williamfaucher12211

[@WilliamFaucher]

@@drumjod Really? You’re going to make fun of a deaf guy ? Pretty sad buddy.

[@WilliamFaucher]

@@drumjod If someone has a lisp, it’s a handicap . Making fun of that is like making fun of someone in a wheelchair. I accept your apology , but I hope this makes you more conscious of other’s struggles.

[@WilliamFaucher]

@@drumjod One would think someone who struggled with a lisp would be a bit more understanding towards others, then. As someone who literally cannot hear the right or wrong sounds I make, it’s not exactly something I can just fix. I too have had speech therapy, and while it did help, I’ll never be able to have flawless speech. Look, I appreciate you taking the time to apologize, thanks for that, and I’m glad you you were able to fix your lisp. :)

[@AmIBovverredG]

Thank you William, I'm gonna embark on a UE5 beginners course on Skillshare. I've been gaming for 36 years and I'm getting tired of a lot of new games. I finally decided I want to learn how to make the types of games I would want to play and hopefully provide enjoyment for others. I haven't achieved much in this life but would love to put that right. I'll also be checking out this channel regularly.

[@memegazer]

seems broken...does not work

[@ianwatson5767]

Man, I've been a 3D archviz artist for close to 10 years, and after hearing about UE5 and Lumen, I've started experimenting and wow... I believe when UE5 comes out with all the bells and whistles, offline renderers like Vray/Corona/Arnold etc are going to be shaking in their boots. In addition to UE5 being free, they have these amazing free Megascan assets that you'd have to spend 20 dollars for a group of rocks previously, you can now get for free. I feel like traditional 3D artists will start to flock to UE5 in the coming years, I know I am. :) Thanks for the videos, they really clear things up, and your content is amazing. Keep it up!

[@TriInfinity]

They will shake, as a dev that started with game engines first before using renderer software, I never really understood why they exist in the first place.

[@krzysztofbogdanowicz4543]

I am " 3dsmax Corona man". After showing to customers some interiors made in Unreal play mode I see there is no step back to static renderings.

[@ianwatson5767]

@@krzysztofbogdanowicz4543 Exactly, I am in the same position! For Archviz I've seen clients commenting, "Wow, I really feel this interior coming alive being able to move around in it!" And this is running in real time, not even rendered in the movie render queue and modified in post... the quality of the images are basically exactly the same ( to the client, anyway ) as the offline renderers. Not to mention UE4 and 5 have some absolutely outstanding cinematic additions so you can essentially do most of the same things as Corona/Vray.. plus.. ITS FREE! No more paying 2000+ dollars per year for 3ds Max and vray licenses. It's kind of a no brainer at this point. haha

[@TriInfinity]

@@sacebi7831 thanks for the explanation! Looking into Blender 3.0 currently and it's also amazing.

[@ianwatson5767]

@@sacebi7831 I disagree in some ways. There are many big time Hollywood vfx studios that are moving to using unreal for their feature film length cinematics; The Mandalorian, Rogue One, Planet of the Apes to name a few films. All of these are BIG time CGI users for the films. I agree with you in the past game engines haven't been high quality enough to achieve perfect ray tracing like offline renderers, and perhaps are still on top for the moment, but who knows in a few years, or especially if UE5 knocks it out of the park. I also disagree with it being faster and more efficient, because if you don't have a really amazing set of computers, rendering a single image in Vray can take 3 hours, if you're trying to make an animation, you absolutely need a render farm ( like Disney does ) to do it efficiently. In unreal engine you pop an RTX 3090 in one computer and you can render out high resolution images in seconds, make short films that are pretty high quality in much less time compared to offline renderers. They all have their upsides and downsides, but a lot of clients can't even tell the difference, nor do they care. They just want a finished product that is up to their standard, which is generally not that absurdly crazy high. I feel UE5 even in it's early access satisfies a good portion of people looking for archviz renders.

[@JesseTheGameDev]

You should really make this video again with Unreal Engine 5.2. They have fixed/updated a ton of the things you address in this video.

[@ianburke5867]

You're very good at this William, finding all the information and presenting it in a clear and understandable way. Thank you for saving me so much valuable time.

[@cosma.]

A new video from 'The Fauche'? I'm here for this...

[@WilliamFaucher]

Hahha thank you!

[@m1sterv1sual]

William Explained - IMPORTANT guy for UE5

[@WilliamFaucher]

hahah thank you!

[@LouiseForsMeToBeNice]

Thank you for this video! I enjoyed it a lot. I'm new to Unreal Engine, so it was great that you explained small stuff that regular users might know. Like the surfaces never being fully at 1, and that I can check the material if the asset turns black. Seeing all the Unreal Engine 5 stuff made me want to learn to use it, and your video and explanation of Lumen was easy to follow and at a pace I liked.

[@paunddeveloper97]

You explain incredibly, even if I’m not English, I can understand you even without subtitles, and in a clear and concise way. Thank you for your contribution to this community!

[@3kroot1]

Amazing video as usual William, you have greatly improved my work over the past year. Thank you so much for the time you put into these vidoes.

[@jaikumargurubaran2153]

Really great video you did here explaining key aspects to consider when using Lumen for real-time! Great job! 👍

[@mihaiwilson]

Thank you for staying on top of this William, your videos are a godsend.

[@marianocvart]

Thank you William for all of this high quality information very clean and well presented. I enjoy all of your videos a lot.

[@WilliamFaucher]

Cheers thanks for watching!

[@LIAMODEARME01]

Thanks so much! Your reflections tutorial was exactly what I needed.

[@codem1lo2011]

Super awesome and insightful, love your quick tip breakdown vids man, just converted over my UE4 scene to try out in Preview 2 (Ue5) and this video explained A LOT of why my scene's looking terrible! Cheers

[@sibaprasadlenka1870]

Thank you for the much needed simplified video... Very helpful and informative

[@garmash.design476]

You are always. Always give us top level insight, great structured video on important topics. Thank you very very much. I can only imagine how many time, tests and knowledge you did put into this video. I will use all practices you mentioned here, will add them to my notebook of useful hints, settings and commands. I really love that UE5 becoming a really simple tool where you need to know less and less unusual things to get great results faster. The hybrid Lumen + Raytracing thing is really a future. I struggled a bit with UE5 before because sometimes you just meet with the thing and you spend hours trying to solve things which are not in Epic Docs. I think this all will much help.

[@codeFriendlyART]

Thanks for taking the time to produce this direct-to-the-point synthesis guide for us artists as you do call it - it is amazing! I gotta' love your final expression on the video man, do I feel exactly identify with you, I totally HATE fraking baking lighting! Lumen GI feels amazing in turn and thanks for the hints about the emissive as well 👊 Super useful info. I even paused a few times on the vide just to be able to make notes..

[@WilliamFaucher]

Thank you! Just keep in mind a few things have changed in 5.0 as this video was made last year!

[@_20TWO]

Another great video! Your videos are so easy to watch, thanks for providing such great content William, have a good day buddy!

[@neo-giu]

Great stuff as usual! Can't wait to see what the full release of UE5 will bring

[@Actionsen]

Thanks a lot man! You've just fixed my reflection issues at all!!!

[@unfgames]

Love your channel William! lots of good stuff here, always come here for advice!

[@mikhailbo8540]

Thanks a lot. Official Unreal videos are too long often. I don't have 2 or 3 hours to watch them. Your "short" videos are really useful.

[@frankerzed973]

Great video! Btw, Lumen Scene is now located under Lit > Lumen > Lumen Scene

[@chidi21]

As always thanks for the valuable information Mr. Faucher!

[@loacherfilms]

My man has a quantum pc for a brain 🤯 So much helpful information!

[@WilliamFaucher]

You're too kind man

[@chiefarchitectheadofproduc1552]

It's like 3 legged powerful horse.

[@apetrukovich]

Thanks, William for digging the information out!

[@nicholashunter8545]

Thanks a ton for this information. Your channel is a key resource which I point students towards often.

[@KeepMaxing]

Thank you William, This is the best KZbin channel I've ever seen. I wish you luck, success, and happiness.

[@nemysisretrogaming3771]

There's one other thing I noticed with lumen and UE5 from a modelling perspective. If you're going to use geometry that has external and internal lighting make sure that the geometry is closed. Back in UE4 you can just force the geometry as 2 sided. For example a wall that is only meant to be seen from the inside but catches light from the outside must have two opposing faces if it is part of a larger section. Ideally you want a wall that has closed faces on all six sides. You can get away with open geometry for example using a rock or piece of landscape on the ground.

[@sonario6489]

TLDR I think: Your models will actually be lit like how light actually works in real life, so you don't need to make 2 separate faces

[@nemysisretrogaming3771]

@@sonario6489 Your reply leads me to believe that you haven't actually created any scenes with single sided geometry in either UE4 or UE5 preview or you would have understood my comment. PS I haven't tried out the full release version so things may have changed in 3 months.

[@sonario6489]

@@nemysisretrogaming3771 Correct, I can't even really use either UE4 or 5. I thought I understand your comment well enough because I did some lighting tests in Blender and found that the inside of my house wasn't lit with the sun lamp as expected, but I don't know how UE treats things differently compared to Blender

[@nemysisretrogaming3771]

@@sonario6489 In UE4 if you use a single faced model and have it lit from both sides then the light goes straight through from the side with no face creating strange effects. But there is a setting in options to force UE4 to treat it as if it was 2 sided even though it isn't. UE5 early access ignored the 2 sided option. I don't know how blender treats its lighting, but in 3DS Max you need 2 sided models for lighting to work correctly, especially for interior scenes lit from the outside. You can't really cheat your geometry like you could in UE4.

[@scottcourtney8878]

@@nemysisretrogaming3771 I'm looking for a way around this also. Single-sided meshes for structures (etc.) make editing the interior much easier, from a top-down view, and although the backfaces are trivially culled at runtime, even "trivial" culling overhead is not *zero*. I'm sure there must be an option to have two-sided shadow calculations on one-sided visual meshes, perhaps in the material, but I haven't found it yet.

[@samgielen]

Another amazing video, William. You continue to give and give to the community and it is so much appreciated! This video as well as the CaptureReality video really make me curious to learn more about Subsurface Scattering and Subsurface profile and how to use them with the megascans assets. Maybe an idea for a future video? ;)

[@paulturalski]

love ur stuff! Keep it up William!

[@robertprescott9577]

Wow, great update. I learned so much, thank you

[@sym9266]

Thank you for the advice. Valuable information and very digestible

[@amrsalari]

Hey William, as always your videos are great and so so helpful, THANK YOU

[@nfarquhar]

Another fantastic and informative video, thanks and keep them coming.

[@opti12]

Thanks for all the useful information! My go to for Lumen

[@MR3DDev]

My man bringing some super important tips right before I start blocking out the environment, thanks for reading my mind and happy holidays

[@JavierGonzalez-qg5el]

My guy laying the smack down with life saving info. Thanks man

[@ManOfTrades]

Your videos are the best! Love the energy

[@hveguitar]

Wow that's just fantastic information, thanks for that !

[@CGVLAB]

Awesome keep the good work, thanks for the info, you made want to try again this great engine!

[@narutosaske6535]

so helpful, really i'm glad to u william

[@advaitchougule242]

Your KZbin channel the most important for the Unreal Engine learning

[@seanconner5224]

thank you, your videos are insanely helpful!

[@KUBE.archvis]

Lovely recap! Thanks.

[@anestakos83]

Thank so much for sharing the knowledge! :D

[@michaelperrigo]

I have so much respect for you for using video chapters to let me skip the sponsor!

[@BookmansBlues]

Great video as always, I have actually been staying away from Lumen because of its limitations, and why I have just kept in UE 4.27 for the Path Tracer. The results have been pretty good overall, even with the denoiser on, though the texture impact is an issue, my tests have been mostly visually stable, and would be able to be very stable if it had multi-GPU support, so I could render the scenes with more samples.

[@darmelli954]

hey William, Just noticed your now on the official Unreal training portal doing what you do best on the render Que! Congradulations Hope to see more of you there too! and maybe even hired for Webinars in the future! Coming from an automotive Visualization background, you nailed alot of the concerns i had about the upcoming UE5.

[@WilliamFaucher]

I am indeed! I'm glad to hear it could be of use to you, thanks for the kind words!

[@rinzehofstee]

Amazing tips! Thank you so much!

[@JonathanWinbush]

Very informative thanks my man 🤙🏿

[@victorblanchard7774]

William thank you for your amazing content!

[@TheSSector5]

Amazing work William!

[@WilliamFaucher]

Thank you!

[@oxygencube]

Thanks man! Great tips again!

[@fawadfarooq]

Thanks for the great Useful info dear . Best of the best of the best info in short span of time.

[@lion_towers3d]

Super helpful! Thanks!

[@jakubjodlowski2768]

Appreciate it William 💪

[@literallyjeff]

Really glad i found this channel. Wealth of information, thank you.

[@WilliamFaucher]

Thank you! And welcome to the community :)

[@MrOneTwoThree]

Thanks, man, great video. Used your skillshare link!

[@WilliamFaucher]

Cheers man! Enjoy it!

[@3DWithLairdWT]

Absolutely love your content. You do an excellent job explaining the dense topics in a concise way. I was wondering if you have any videos on AO and DFAO in Lumen? It's something I've been having trouble with

[@WilliamFaucher]

AO/DFAO isn't really a thing anymore thanks to Global Illumination :)

[@3DWithLairdWT]

@@WilliamFaucher welp, I think that is an explanation in and of itself, haha. I see you have a skill share link, do you have in depth courses there or somewhere else?

[@WilliamFaucher]

@@3DWithLairdWT Not yet ;)

[@Stonefieldmedia]

Thank you so much for this.

[@JayHPatel]

Always look forward to your videos William!

[@WilliamFaucher]

Thanks Jay!

[@OutcastDevSchool]

Once again, another fantastic video!

[@Mukhtar_SH]

Thanks William for this great informations

[@wusamurai631]

Thanks yout!Really helps me a lot.

[@MerriemWeebster]

Just what I needed today, another banger

[@henridillard3502]

great video as usual ! thanks a lot to explain us :)

[@martinkingdon6699]

Thanks for the explanation

[@YASIR.K]

many thanks, William.

[@Isnero_A]

I can't express how much I appreciate your videos. I have a masters in film (nothing to brag about) and I come to you for lighting. I specialize in directing and writing. I taught myself Unreal during the pandemic and have come so far because of your words of wisdom. Again thanks so much.

[@salarycat]

Wow, thanks William. I was wondering why my test scene behaved in a screen-space GI fashion, most likely did it because landscape or other assets weren't supported.

[@juanmolano5727]

Thank you as always for this William.

[@WilliamFaucher]

Thanks for watching!

[@Rikitangoable]

Thank you for your wisdom Unreal wizard

[@3ehllll]

thank you for this video !!

[@BigfootU]

You're a rockstar William! You are my UE5 guru.

[@kyanhudson6831]

Another brand new video soon to be a classic, thanks for all the tips.

[@WilliamFaucher]

Thank you!

[@MrKwizzles]

thanks for great content!

[@Displant]

Always amazing info

[@WilliamFaucher]

Thank you!

[@berkokten4444]

great video, thanks for all the info!

[@WilliamFaucher]

Thanks for watching!

[@Delenfer]

Hey, William, thank you for another great video! Can you suggest console commands for movie render q in UE5? Which one from UE4 to use, which are useless (i suppose all that for raytracing?), which new to add for a better picture? Thank you once again for your tips and all that work you do for the ue-community!

[@tony6795]

Thank you!!

[@ianfinquelstein9380]

Great video William!!

[@WilliamFaucher]

Thank you!

[@KhayalJalilov]

Huge thanks William for such an amazing video, really appreciate your time & effort and finally must say that ending totally made my day 😂

[@WilliamFaucher]

Haha happy to help as always! Thanks for watching!

[@edwarrojas7961]

Amazing video as always Will!! Thanks a lot for helping me to discover why my frame rate is getting worse by using lumen and megascan lol

[@carlosrivadulla8903]

Thnx William, I'm already waiting for the 3ºupdate to this video when finally UE5 releases (6.5months have past)

[@sams_3d_stuff]

Thank you again Sensei !

[@WilliamFaucher]

Thanks for watching!

[@KarelChytilArt]

Thanks Will

[@RonnieMirands]

Wow, great video. Finally discovered why my room didnt have the Lumen effect. I need rebuild it in parts!

[@WilliamFaucher]

Thanks! hope it helps your scene!

[@PIPOXO]

Love your videos, very helpful thank you. I would love if you could tackle how to better integrate niagra effects and particles with the movie render queque.

[@Willegus]

I know absolutely nothing about game-engines but you made this really interesting!

[@rohanmandke1920]

Great Information William, Thank you

[@WilliamFaucher]

Cheers! Thanks for watching!

[@rohanmandke1920]

@@WilliamFaucher Hey William !, Is there any way, or a Tutorial about rendering volume fog with Path tracer ...

[@WilliamFaucher]

@@rohanmandke1920 Fog isn’t supported by the pathtracer at the moment unfortunately

[@rohanmandke1920]

@@WilliamFaucher ohh, Ok.. Thanks a lot William for your quick reply.

[@aliasghar-or4iw]

Nice tutorial sir I like it

[@abinari]

thank u thank u. very informative.

[@WilliamFaucher]

Thanks for watching!

[@rachelthornton4161]

Excellent Videos,Thank you :)

[@WilliamFaucher]

Thanks for watching!

[@MrDavilawe]

Gracias William, como siempre ( thanks William like always)

[@WilliamFaucher]

De nada!

[@miurasrpnt_v2]

I had to do a lighting test for a big studio last week. It was an interior scene of +3M polygons, ALL MERGED in one single mesh. I could not do it in UE4 since it would have been impossible to generate Lightmap UVs, and didn't want to go back to Vray or Octane, so I gave UE5 a try. And actually it handled pretty nicely the single mesh of 3M polygons. The Lumen buffer was full black but still it gave me a decent Global Illumination. I had to add some old school ambient lights there and there to compensate the lack of GI, but overall it worked. Also one thing I wanted to say about emissive shaders. They work nicely BUT I don't know how the emitted light decays with the distance. On my lighting test, I've put some emissive boards at a relatively low intensity, but still they emitted a fair amount of light over 7 ~ 10 meters, which was really annoying in my case. Having said that, UE5 and Lumens are really impressive. It's definetely something I would use more and more in the upcoming months.

[@WilliamFaucher]

Oh for sure it can definitely work in many cases, like I've stated in the video, you CAN get good results. Splitting the meshes is simply what epic recommends. Emissive lighting doesn't extend very far, this has been stated in their livestream a few times, and it's why they don't recommend using them to replace actual lights. Lumen still needs some work but holy cow it's real good

[@mikeseto6827]

Another great video where you sifted for the 'gold' nuggets for us so we do not have to. I too loath light map building. Going apply the info you presented here to a few troublesome projects.

[@DREAM-NEY]

thank you so much bro

[@tondann]

I am not really working with UE5, I just clicked because I love your background

[@WilliamFaucher]

Thank you!

[@hpkruger01]

Maybe this is not the right place to mention it, but I find it great that you do these videos despite your speech handicap. I have a similar issue so I just wanted to show some respect. The content of your videos is great as well. Keep up the good work!

[@WilliamFaucher]

Anyplace is a good place to mention it! It's funny because, to me, I don't have a speech handicap, being very deaf, I can't hear it! So I just go about my business as usual. If you also have something like this, you do you! Make videos about topics you're passionate about. Don't let that stop you. There's lots of other deaf youtubers who have it worse than I do, MicBergsma for example! He's at over half a million subscribers right now. People like him are inspiring to me.