UE4 Emissive lighting and materials tutorial - unreal engine for beginners

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Scene Download: gumroad.com/polygonacademy
UE4 Lighting Presets + Tutorial: • UNREAL ENGINE 4 LIGHTI...
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Using emissive lighting in unreal engine 4 is a great way to quickly add nice soft global illumination to an environment and add a realistic glow from your light sources. A step by step tutorial on lighting a basic scene inspired by Control's amazing lighting and environments. I cover emissive material setup and post process settings such as bloom to control how the materials glow.
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About me: I am an Senior Lighting/Environment who has been working in the game industry for 12+ years at studios such as Ubisoft, EA, Relic, Capcom and United Front. I have worked on games like FarCry 4, Watch Dogs 2, Splinter Cell, Sleeping Dogs and Spacemarine.

[@JohnSmith-rn3vl]

5:03 - World settings disable/enable "Force no precomputed lighting" 6:12 - Create emissive master material instance 12:40 - Enable emissive for static lighting 15:33 - Optimise baking for speed 20:05 - Volumetric fog

[@PolygonAcademy]

Thanks!

[@JohnSmith-rn3vl]

@@PolygonAcademy No no no ... thank you ! :D

[@erickh555]

man this channel is my new favorite discover in youtube. the quality of the tutorial is excelent, i saw that your last upload is from 2 months ago, please keep on with this videos, they are so informative!

[@PolygonAcademy]

Yea! More to come, just been slacking for the holidays hahah. Thanks for watching!

[@arrw]

Just letting you know, I would absolutely pay for this level of quality content. You have built an amazingly helpful free channel, now make something I can pay you for! I feel like I owe you!

[@hugom.delgadom.9146]

Great tutorial, thanks for sharing man! I downloaded and started using UE4 just since ten days ago... but this was so straightforward and so neat I could keep the pace... joining to your channel right away!

[@phyconet]

Finally got around to watching this, killing it lately. This is some good concise content. Looking forward to the next one.

[@PolygonAcademy]

cheers! thanks for watching :D

[@vjrook8974]

This is my new favorite UE channel, you are a great instructor.

[@PolygonAcademy]

cheers! happy to hear that, thanks for watching :)

[@DrPepperDependent]

been trying to learn a lot of environmental art techniques and tools this year and your videos have really helped. many thanks!

[@PolygonAcademy]

you're very welcome :D happy to hear that

[@danielsvids7325]

I absolutely love your channel! Thanks for taking the time to show us everything!

[@PolygonAcademy]

you're welcome :)

[@CinematographyDatabase]

Scene looks great 🔥

[@PolygonAcademy]

Thanks!

[@outtoplay]

I really enjoy your work. I'm a instructor at the School of Visual Arts in NYC, and you have all the qualities of a great instructor/communicator. If you're ever in the neighborhood, hit me up, burgers and beers on me!

[@PolygonAcademy]

cheers! will do :D

[@lightwell_tv]

This just helped me solve a lighting problem I was having on a TV set design. Great tutorial, well presented. Thank you!!!

[@PolygonAcademy]

cheers, glad it helped!

[@ohno4266]

Excellent video. I've just discovered your videos from your artstation challenge vlogs, I gotta say, I've learnt more from them than my university teacher, so thanks.

[@PolygonAcademy]

Thanks :) stoked to hear that!

[@danialsoozani]

Thanks a lot! i was using material as "light function" just tweaking to get the result and after build they were gone. (they should be movable i realized) i was tired and found this beautiful video you made! thanks man you made my day!

[@zaneflynt01]

Thank you SO MUCH for the help! It made the map for the game Im working on look really good!

[@BeavPlays]

I absolutely LOVE your content man! Hoping to see much, MUCH more of it!

[@PolygonAcademy]

Thanks so much :) plenty more to come in future! At the moment it hinges on my spare time but maybe one day i will have the ability to do this full time ;)

[@BeavPlays]

@@PolygonAcademy wish you all the best!

[@JonathanWinbush]

Thanks for the tutorial really helps me for what I'm working on next. BTW awesome you worked on Far Cry 4 lived both that and the sequal to it dope work my man 🤙🏿

[@PolygonAcademy]

You’re welcome :)

[@Mrmarkusd007]

Thank you for the tips in all your videos! It's really helping me with my journey into the world of 3d art 🙏🏻🍻

[@PolygonAcademy]

You’re welcome, thanks for taking the time to watch, i appreciate it! Glad you enjoy the content 🍻

[@DonEsteban3D]

Man. You are great, thx for the stuff on the channel :)

[@scottyknapp19]

This is rad dude. Great breakdown.

[@ryansenger408]

Thank Tim, that shaved 4 milliseconds off my scene

[@PolygonAcademy]

nice!

[@SolarTara]

Wicked tutorial! I was cheating this effect for a while but this is much easier, thanks!

[@PolygonAcademy]

Cheers! You’re welcome :)

[@amalbubble7812]

Thanks Tim for the tutorial. Learnt a lot about Lighting. Its Diwali this weekend (festival of lights) in India, Happy Diwali 🎊

[@PolygonAcademy]

happy Diwali :D I love the departures episode where they go to India during the festival, looks super fun!

[@MountainGoat11]

Well. I pressed the Like Button immediately, When i saw the Headline, Now i need to Watch the Video. its, because i Super Belive in Your quality of content. :D

[@PolygonAcademy]

you're the best! I appreciate it :D

[@morfius354]

Awesome! Thank you for explaining this technique

[@PolygonAcademy]

you're welcome, glad you enjoyed it! thanks for watching

[@furlerer]

I reckon this will be getting a decent bump in views with the EXP and DiNusty Cyberpunk Art challenge at the moment!😅 Awesome tute as always Tim!

[@PolygonAcademy]

cheers! haha yea i can see how this one would be relevant :)

[@The9PointStar]

I didn´t know the emmisive boost option, thank you!

[@PolygonAcademy]

You’re welcome!

[@AdlinLing]

Excellent video. Very helpful. Thank you very much.

[@PolygonAcademy]

no problem :) thanks for watching

[@happybiton]

DUUDDDEEE! you deserve more subs than the actual UE channel. great stuff as usual! thank you! Is there a chance you going to do something like "environment review series" for you subs?

[@PolygonAcademy]

thanks so much :) I really appreciate the support! Might do a folio review series in future if I have the time ;)

[@fuzzypanda1684]

Nice, well explained video, thank you!

[@PolygonAcademy]

you're welcome, thanks for watching!

[@fuzzypanda1684]

@@PolygonAcademy Absolutely, I was doing many of the things you talked about, making new materials for everything, having to select all the lights and change them. I didn't know you could change the emissive properties of the mesh, that's cool and streamlines the whole process quite a bit! Plus it looks cool.

[@wirrexx]

Great as Usual! GUYS WATCH THIS!!!

[@PolygonAcademy]

Cheers! Appreciate the support 💪

[@judewilson927]

This is great. Dynamic lights kill games framerate. I work on Oculus Quest with a small team and this is so helpful. Thanks, fella!

[@PolygonAcademy]

no worries! yea dynamic lights.....great for working iteration speed but bad for performance hahah.

[@Poly_Knight]

You're Amazing!

[@PolygonAcademy]

Cheers!

[@rickysargulesh1053]

I haven't watched the video yet but I just had issues with emissive lights not working or affecting my scene. So looking forward to this :)

[@PolygonAcademy]

cheers! there are 1 or 2 settings that are easy to miss, but the process is super easy, enjoy!

[@rickysargulesh1053]

@@PolygonAcademy I followed the tutorial from the Unreal Engine documentation. I think it must be a project setting I missed.

[@ogarga666]

amazing, thank you so much!

[@PolygonAcademy]

You’re welcome :)

[@JMTBFLOW]

Nice one, Dude.

[@PolygonAcademy]

Thanks james :)

[@marcthornton2900]

"The probes are gettin' lit"

[@PolygonAcademy]

Hahahh 😂

[@The_Eno]

Great tutorial! I love learning about lighting from actual skilled lighting artists: they always give lots of insight into settings. Any chance you could do a tutorial on post process volumes? I feel like post process volumes are one of those things you have to figure out via trial and error but it would be nice to get your overview and advice on using them, like how to blend and get optimal settings for a specific type of scene. -cheers

[@PolygonAcademy]

good call, will probably touch on that when I cover color grading in future

[@The_Eno]

@@PolygonAcademy Legend! Can't wait for that one

[@najormp2667]

Really helpfull. Thanks!

[@PolygonAcademy]

You’re welcome :)

[@drancerd]

Awesome!

[@PizzaOMC]

people seem to hate on baked shadows but if the object is static then there isn't need to add more of a performance hit due to dynamic lighting

[@PolygonAcademy]

exactly :)

[@PizzaOMC]

​@@PolygonAcademy​ last question. are you going to make a video at the end of blocktober showing how you went around making them? something like your artstation challenge would be awsome

[@francoislarrieu1296]

Like Always, again a great tutorial ! :). Would be very nice if u can do a tutorial on water puddle like in this scene, I don't arrive to achieve good result :(

[@bipow7835]

thank you!!

[@juanmilanese]

You can use the "V" Key + Click to get a Vector3 Parameter and "S" + Click to get a Scalar Param inside the material editor... and you save yourself...... 2 clicks per param :P (probably 3 minutes in a lifetime) Also... kinda minimal too, you can set the material to Unlit if you don't need the roughness/Spec/Normal of a standard Lit Material. In this case in particular (emissive material applied directly to geometry) could have some impact on very low end (mobile) hardware I think. The Bloom thing you explained here was very useful to understand what those values mean. Makes a lot of sense now :D Also, I'm always interested in how you are using the auto-exposure controls in the postprocess volume or camera... those make very little sense to me. Thanks again for this tuts.

[@PolygonAcademy]

Awesome thanks for the heads up :) glad the bloom stuff helped!

[@charlesalexanderable]

22:30 You can also try setting specular scale to 0 for removing the light from reflections

[@PolygonAcademy]

Yea totally, that is actually the better way to do it unless you want a super subtle diffuse reflection. Especially for fill lights, its best to remove all the spec from them all together

[@metafuel]

I really enjoyed this and learnt a lot thank you. Does this still apply with lumen? i.e. setting emissive as static on the mesh to save on overheads? Thanks for the information. Subscribed.

[@PolygonAcademy]

With lumen now it picked up emissive automatically so you dont need those extra settings like in this video, the most important thing to focus on with lumen is your emissive intensity value, if you are using real life lighting units and exposure it will have to be way higher than you think (like 2500) to be physically correct, but thats a bit more advanced. Just play with the intensity until you see the effect :)

[@lgabr]

Thanks for all the tips man! I've been watching your videos and it has been really helping me a lot. I wanted to ask you something a little unrelated to the video if possible lol. Do you think it's viable to use houdini as main modeling software for an environment artist in a production environment? I've been playing around with it and I really liked the parametric/non-destructive/procedural workflow, and having some experience with programming I think it's a very powerful tool with tons of possibilities.

[@PolygonAcademy]

I dont think its super common, however: people woith houdini skills tend to be in demand, especially once you get more technical with it. So i would not discourage learning it ;) but day to day env work is mostly done in max/maya in studios

[@lgabr]

@@PolygonAcademy I'll definitely keep learning! I'm currently working on a "procedural ancient pagoda/building generator" with lots of customization options haha 😂 Thanks again man!

[@linezgames3893]

For an entire game the setup is already wrong if you were to have a lot more functions. ue4 online sessions really do help a lot.

[@NiteshKumar-qf2nt]

Cool :)

[@PolygonAcademy]

thanks!

[@yanhu]

Thanks for the great tutorial. May I ask if my emissive object is a moveable mesh or a blueprint object, I can't use Emissive material for static lighting, right?

[@PolygonAcademy]

yea exactly. emissive lighitng is baked from static objects with it on, the light can effect dynamic objects via the volumetric lightmap contribution, but dynamic objects with emissive shouldnt/wont effect the bake as it would look weird if they move and the lighting doesnt update.

[@luismartins3785]

Hey buddy we worked together on WD2, great tutorial and KZbin chanel : )

[@PolygonAcademy]

cheers bud! yea wd2 was a fun production :)

[@HMQOLAYRAofthegoldenseas]

Hello dear nice to see yah

[@blackswan6386]

hey Mate very epic tutorial. is it possible you show how to make the wet floor with dripping water, its really cool to see.thanks sharing your stuff, its really epic ! jus speechless, thank you ! stay Gold Mate

[@PolygonAcademy]

thanks! the floor material is actually just taken from the reflections demo provided by epic, same for some of the pipe assets. Just needed to quickly assemble a scene to show the emissive lighting in.

[@Extrone]

Some tricks/tips Hold V and click for vector parameter. Hold S and click for scalar parameter

[@PolygonAcademy]

Oh awesome thanks!

[@Extrone]

Polygon Academy 😄, forgot to say thanks for the tutorial😅, you just inspired me to make a cyberpunk game

[@PolygonAcademy]

Arjun hahah hell yea!

[@megahurtz30]

great tutorial man !! Just one thing, shouldn't one make the material have a 0 specular? like connecting a 3 vector with 0,0,0 to the specular input of the material

[@PolygonAcademy]

thanks :) doesn't really matter as the values it is displaying with the emissive are above 1 which basically overpowers/kills any specular. you could plug that in if you need to for a specific result but I have never needed to.

[@megahurtz30]

@@PolygonAcademy I see. To be honest i was trying it with a open daylight scene, i guess it would be irrelevant in a dark environment

[@ZephrusPrime]

Baked lighting will go away when UV unwrapping and retopology go away...probably never.

[@PolygonAcademy]

pretty much! still lots of good things about it, looks way better than most open world dynamic only lighting in most cases too.

[@xotocnemo9997]

@@PolygonAcademy And then came Unreal Engine 5...

[@tanayparab4980]

This was an interesting tutorial. I was curious as to how it'll work if the emissive shader is dynamic, as in changes colours real-time. Theoretically, it won't work but I tried it anyways and haha it doesn't work xD. It just stays dark.

[@PolygonAcademy]

Haha yea its only good for static setups, maybe in the next gen it will be realtime!

[@AadilSharifDotNetDeveloper]

Hi Tim, Thanks for another tutorial. Can you tell me if I can use it to light my scene in ue4??? I asked the question because you lighted an indoor scene with these techniques, but I am building a full environment, which may have severals lights. What do you suggest??

[@PolygonAcademy]

if it is a larger environment you can use this technique on your acual lamp/light models to add extra GI to the scene in addition to the more standard unreal lights like skylight, directional, spotlight etc. if you are baking lighting this should work in most environments. I wouldnt light exclusively with emissive if I didnt have to, so use actual lights, this is just an extreme example haha.

[@Wanted_Ghost]

Hey Tim, love the tutorial, trying to recreate my own version but i can't find the Unreal Engine logo were did you get it from?

[@PolygonAcademy]

I made it in 3ds max haha. Its in the example files download or you can make your own, i just traced the logo on with a spline and extruded it. Took 5 mins :)

[@Wanted_Ghost]

@@PolygonAcademy Thanks man. Hahahaha was looking for it in all the files going crazy!

[@razipour]

That was helpful, Thanks Tim, Is it possible to control the color and intensity in runtime?

[@PolygonAcademy]

if it is baked you cant change it easily unfortunately, with a stationary light you can but changing the emissive contribution to the lighting at realtime is not really possible. you can have emissive materials that change intensity and color during runtme but the bounce light wont update

[@razipour]

@@PolygonAcademy Thanks!

[@taunado]

I have LED DMX light strips that I'd like to add tubes to surround them (tube lights). Will the LEDs shine through a Cylinder with emissive lighting?

[@WraithDesignz]

Curious, great video btw, but what are those other icons you have in the scene? like some look like some POW symbols lol from batman, with green arrows facing towards the UE emissive symbol from above, and then you got the circle like symbols near the sides of the walls(are those the drip decals?). What are they and what do they do? :) thanks ahead of time! P.S. this really has a Blade Runner 2049 feel to it!

[@PolygonAcademy]

Hahah the pow symbols are particle emitters, there is a water drip fx from the pipes and the circle ones are decals like you guessed :) haha yea the yellow i totally stole from bladerunner

[@WraithDesignz]

@@PolygonAcademy :P i had to use the batman references! and yeah i love that lighting and feel. Really want to see somebody make a sort of blade runner game based on 2049, could easily be done especially with the lighting, atmosphere, etc. Yeah we got cyberpunk 2077 coming, but Blade Runner is were it all began. Thanks for the help and videos man! helps a lot.

[@PoukTheGame]

I would actually like to see some tut with the puddles. That could be very helpful.

[@PolygonAcademy]

yea thats a material i just stole from the reflections scene by epic, you can open it up to reverse engineer it, but a tutorial on puddles is a good idea :)

[@srosenow98]

Excellent tutorial! Would this work on UE5? I am working on recreating a historic art-deco ferry that served Washington State from 1935 until 1967, and lighting has been the bane of my existence for the project.

[@PolygonAcademy]

Yup this would actually work/look better in ue5 probably, check out my lumen tutorial where i talk about lighting with emissive in realtime :)

[@srosenow98]

@@PolygonAcademy I will definitely check that out. When I try to set it as an emissive with the directions given here, I can't get it to light the scene like it would be in reality.

[@joesaad2166]

Hello thank you for the video.any possible way to connect them by dmx

[@perrykappetein9685]

Hi, Since i don't see a way to ask a different question elsewhere, I am doing it here. I went trough the lights videos, but I do not see (or missed it) how do to a light for a TL-lamp (those long rec. ones) I found a rectangle light, but could not get it to work. and 2nd If I use a spot light for a hanging lamp, how do you make it so you can see the light ray.beam coming from such light(s). Thank you for your time

[@erickh555]

hi again, i saw your video of the modular parts for the japanese temple, im making an indie game and i would really appreciate an in depth video about the criteria used to make modules, do you have a source of good documentation on the subjet? please let me know so i can learn more about it, i cant find any good source about that topic, best of luck!

[@PolygonAcademy]

I would say the biggest advice would be to keep your modular pieces as large but re-useable as possible. that way if you have to move a level layout around, you only have to select a handful of meshes instead of thousands of miro modular meshes. Like go for large/long wall pieces for hallways, big sections of floor etc. too many people get too grainular with their stuff and are afraid it wont be crazy versatile but in most cases it really doesnt matter if your hallway is 10m long or 15, its when you try and make things weird sizes like 11.5 or 13m long halls/pieces you run into headaches. this is a really useful tutorial: www.artstation.com/artwork/YaV23b

[@erickh555]

@@PolygonAcademy thanks you so much, really helpfull!

[@leonecartelremastered3020]

I am not sure if that's the place to ask, but I guess it's worth a shot anyways. I find your videos really interesting and helpful so I was hoping that you'd be able to help me this time. As a game design student, I often find myself having sort of a "creative block" when it comes to implementing new ideas into the games that my partners and I make, and that often leads to me getting more and more discouraged. What would you suggest that I do, in order to boost my spirits and not give up so easily and also what can I do in order to expand my knowledge horizons and be able to come up with new and original concepts and ideas ?

[@PolygonAcademy]

Ohhh thats a tough one. Look up james altucher and his 10 ideas a day creative exercise, could help!

[@leonecartelremastered3020]

@@PolygonAcademy Thank you, anything I can use as a starting point is greatly appreciated

[@ZacDonald]

At 2:10 Did you try using direct capsule shadows for the character instead? They could be softer and look more realistic.

[@PolygonAcademy]

Nope, just have it for capsule indirect, ill try it with the direct too, thanks!

[@CyberpunkV2077]

Wow, I saw you wrote in your description that you have worked on Splintercell. May I ask which one and what part did you work on? Thanks, and great work by the way

[@PolygonAcademy]

Cheers! I worked on blacklist on the spies vs mercs multiplayer as an environment artist for a couple maps

[@CyberpunkV2077]

Polygon Academy many thanks for your quick reply. The earlier Splintercell games are still my all time favourite game till this day and to know that you have had some involvement with the later Splintercell game development is pretty awesome. I wanted to ask you if you have created your own Splintercell styled game within unreal engine at all? Thanks

[@PolygonAcademy]

@@CyberpunkV2077 yea I was a big splinter cell fan back in the day as well :) haha unfortunatley I just do the art side of things, I have zero experience with programming so creating my own game is way out of my personal scope haha.

[@CyberpunkV2077]

Polygon Academy cool. Thanks for your reply. Do you think you may consider doing something someday with unreal engine and making a game within the program? Thanks

[@miroslav513]

Could you do a tutorial on how to do puddles? I can never get them to look good..

[@PolygonAcademy]

in this case it is literally the material from the unreal engine reflections demo you can download in the launcher, I would look at their material setup for that :)

[@miroslav513]

@@PolygonAcademy Many thanks!

[@IndyStry]

Thanks for the tutorial! The statement at 17:56 did not age well lol

[@louis-philippedesjardins459]

I'm getting huge dark seams between the modules when starting a scene from scratch. is anybody else having this issue?

[@unvaryinggaming]

Hello Tim. I was wondering if you knew of any good beginner lighting tutorials (beside the ones on the UE4 Website)? I see you have the lighting presets videos but I am looking for a hands-on tutorial that goes step-by-step. I really want to get into level design as a side hobby but I continuously doubt myself since I do not know how to light properly, I feel like it would be a waste of time to practice level design just to have awful lighting. Thanks for reading.

[@PolygonAcademy]

Unvarying Gaming look for the unreal lighting academy series, its from a badass lighting artist at DICE, he talks a lot about workflow and relights ppls environments. Super good watch!

[@chemistchemist228]

@Polygon Academy - Can you please do tutorial about how you did so nice animated PUDDLES in this scene?

[@PolygonAcademy]

I didnt actually make those they are the floor material from the reflections demo that epic put out, you can open up that scene and reverse engineer the material pretty easily though. maybe I will try and re-create it for a tutorial in future though :)

[@djjuanito3863]

Hello, is this the same procedure used to light up a city skyline building at night? I can't seem to find a tutorial ANYWHERE to show me how to build and light up a city at night! I would appreciate your help or direction! Thank you

[@PolygonAcademy]

yes you can use emissives on windows etc to add to the light bake, but chances are you will have to still hand place a lot of larger static lights to add fill/bounce light and give the city shape. on gotham knights we had all the emissives baking in to the GI but still had to place streelights and stuff to add the main light sources and the bounce from them reflected up onto the buildings which added a lot and helped with the distance city looking lit as there is no realtime lights after a certain distance from the camera.

[@MrMeanor]

Hey tim, i followed the "use emissive for static lighting" steps, but i can't get my model to glow? does it not work for actual models, because it only seems to work on unreal's basic shapes menu. my question is, is this possible to do for made models, because i have a chandelier with emissive maps i made in substance painter, does "use emissive for static lighting" not work for custom models? EDIT: for anyone else who encountered this error...MAKE SURE your model is a static mesh, and not a stationary/moveable mesh

[@PolygonAcademy]

Yea it only works for static meshes, but can be a custom mesh for sure.

[@eathansx]

Lol in starcitizen by grim hex u can see an orb like that in the reflection of the wet floor ..i think you should teach CIG a few things.

[@PolygonAcademy]

hahah yea some engines can't blur the light reflections and it's a headache lighting artists have to try and hide. CIG is using a variant of cryengine I believe, no idea if you can do that in there :)

[@SamongArtsTutorials]

I can't open the file. the following modules are missing or built with a different engine version SubstanceCore SubstanceEditor SubstanceSource SubstanceLiveLink

[@PolygonAcademy]

You need to be using unreal 4.23 and have the substance ue4 plugin installed i think. That should fix it

[@kirilzangagolev3401]

What happened to the way more in-depth than the artstation challenge environment art series that would cover all the essential techniques - vertex painting, tiling textures and trims?

[@PolygonAcademy]

still coming eventually, im going to do a video on tiling textures, one on vertex painting and then a super in depth premium course that is more focused on building environments, just gotta find the time to produce is all, this is just my side hustle at the moment :)

[@muaddib9433]

Hey, where have you gone? We miss your tuts maaan :D

[@PolygonAcademy]

Haha been super busy, will try to get more out soon, i miss making vids too!

[@brandongrey9240]

I already know how to do this but I watched the whole video anyway...

[@PolygonAcademy]

Haha thanks i appreciate it :)

[@ashjen]

I know that you mentioned that emissive lightning can't cast shadows but I saw an article on Unreal that shows an emissive material casts shadow. Could you please explain that? i'm really confused

[@PolygonAcademy]

Sorry i was unclear, it will cast baked static shadows, but not a crisp dynamic shadow from moveable objects like characters etc.

[@TheDudiest3Dude]

trying to do this myself on a custom material that emissive elements - but the checkbox for'use emissive for static light' is blanked out. why would this be?

[@PolygonAcademy]

you need to set it on the static mesh in the level not the material itself, if it is blanked out on the mesh, make sure the mesh is set to static, not stationary or moveable. hope this helps!

[@geno2kgeno]

I never tried it yet but aren't IES profiles meant to define the shape of lights? So the cone shape of spotlights are just the standard shape, I guess. Anyway, great tutorial. :-)

[@PolygonAcademy]

yea you can use IES profiles but most of them still tend to have that cone shaped falloff vs a clean even strip of light emission

[@32bart10]

i have an imported model and the use emissive as static lighting option isnt visible. is there an extra step we need to do to see that?

[@PolygonAcademy]

Are you trying to toggle it on the mesh itself from the content browser? I think you need to place the mesh in your scene and turn it on in the details panel of that instance of the mesh in the world.

[@Tree3D]

Is having that many decals taxing on the framerate? Seems like a lot, but I'm not sure

[@PolygonAcademy]

Not really, they are nor super overlapping or super massive so its ok. You can get away with quite a lot of decals if they are small and not stacked ontop of each other like crazy

[@pryan520]

hi , may I ask how can you hide the reflection ball but still remain the election effect on the scene? thanks

[@PolygonAcademy]

if you press G it should hide the icons for all actors and display exactly as it would in game. you can then select the actor by name in the scene outliner window and you can move it around if you want/edit it etc.

[@perrykappetein9685]

Dumb question, on 10:55 and other places.. what are those circles ? thought they we're lights, but it's noone of the 5 that are in Unreal.. or is it something else? trying to figure out what the heck they are, and what it does.. Thank you :)

[@PolygonAcademy]

The light grey circles with the peeling corner are decal actors, so projecting cracks and leaks on the walls, and the silver ball actors are reflection captures for cubemaps.

[@perrykappetein9685]

@@PolygonAcademy Thank you :)

[@adityathosar2026]

My emissive material do not glow... When I increase glow intensity it becomes white !! can you help me? I'm trying to using emissive material on 3d text

[@PolygonAcademy]

The brighter you go the closer to white it becomes, you could lower the intensity but in post process settings increase the bloom and that will make it “glow” a bit more :) play with the bloom threshold and intensity so only emissive or really bright spots bloom and everything else remains clear. Try that!

[@lryhicdush1889]

Weird question, but how do I decided what to model? I always struggle with finding concept art that I like enough to model and it's quite annoying haha

[@PolygonAcademy]

haha I get the feeling. I usually just brows artstation or pinterest until something that looks like a fun but manageable project catches my eye and then commit to it :)

[@dimeolas777]

You can als google or pinterest for sifi architecture, fantasy architecture or even arch theory and use as a basis. I find it helps to create a bit of a story for the arch/scene. www.home-designing.com/wishing-all-home-designing-readers-happy-christmas-and-holidays?Feed%3A+home-designing+%28Home+Design+Ideas%29 plus any of the architectural magazines. take the mundane and turn it into the fantastic. have fun

[@danyarfan5384]

great Video! what happened to the giveaway ?

[@PolygonAcademy]

Choosing the winners today, will be in the top pinned comment in the original video :)

[@Mrabet_Houssem]

what about raytrace rtx tutorial ?

[@PolygonAcademy]

Yea probably in future :)

[@benveasey7474]

Do you need to change any other settings to use this Emissive Material with raytracing?

[@PolygonAcademy]

raycasting? like with RTX raytracing features? I havent really dived into learning rtx yet, its not super commonly used at the moment, but will in future :D

[@benveasey7474]

@@PolygonAcademy Sorry, I meant raytracing :)

[@granul555]

Where can you get puddle material like this?

[@PolygonAcademy]

This was a material i pulled from the infiltrator demo scene from epic i believe. There are also some good unreal engine puddle tutorials on youtube that show how to create one :)

[@perrykappetein9685]

I tried this many times, and even watched other videos, but I cannot get it to glow at all during the setup. using the latest unreal. When I create the item, and use a value of 15 or higher, it's just a white circle.. there is no glow what so ever. if I set the value to 1 - 5 then i can see the circle having the original color, but no glow.. What am I doing wrong?

[@PolygonAcademy]

Did you enable bloom in your post process?

[@perrykappetein9685]

@@PolygonAcademy That's probably why. I am a complete newbie for Unreal.. Let me see if I can find it. Thank you for the fast response.

[@perrykappetein9685]

@@PolygonAcademy ok Found it :) you are the 1st one, with the answer.. thank you so much!!

[@PolygonAcademy]

@@perrykappetein9685 no worries :) I cover it in that tutorial a bit, hope that helps with the settings! cheers!

[@khayyamal9207]

Are you ok bro? Its been 3 months since your last video

[@PolygonAcademy]

haha yea, just started a new job as a lead lighting artist so I have been super busy lately. will get more content out soon I hope :)

[@viktorstopka6172]

Hi, may I ask what specification does your computer have? (RAM, Graphics card,...)

[@PolygonAcademy]

i7-9700k, 32 gb ram and rtx 2080, but you dont need that high specs to work in unreal or do this stuff, a 2060 and 16gb ram would still be ok

[@viktorstopka6172]

@@PolygonAcademy Thank you very much!

[@hirakbanerjee7188]

is there any forum or some site where i can post my work in progress and people can give me advice?

[@PolygonAcademy]

polycount.com/forum

[@joshuanelson4653]

I'd check Artstation's blog feature, but that requires a subscription. Really the best places I've found so far is facebook "Ten thousand hours," CGSociety, and various other facebook and Discord groups, but these are the only ones I can think of off the top of my head. ^.^

[@hirakbanerjee7188]

@@PolygonAcademy thank you :)

[@hirakbanerjee7188]

@@joshuanelson4653 is there any personal favorite discord server of yours you can suggest?

[@PolygonAcademy]

Dynusty empire and no more grid are both good discord servers :)

[@TheBlackbirdii]

are the environment meshes owned by epic ?

[@PolygonAcademy]

The pipes are from the unreal engine example content, which epic lets you use in your projects free of charge. The structural meshes i made in 3ds max

[@Arxontas10]

Hello Tim, i am struggling a bit with ue4 prefabs/blueprints, and i looked everywhere online and didnt find a thing...So i want to to have custom pivot points on my prefabs cause i want them to snap together seamlesly, I tried the V button in the editor but it doesnt seem to work there... What are my options? Thanks in advance!

[@PolygonAcademy]

I'm pretty sure the pivot of your blueprint is based on its local 0,0,0 so if you want the pivot of your wall piece to be at the corner of the mesh, place the mesh within the prefab editor so the mesh's corner is at the origin of the local grid within the blueprint editor. this is easier to do if the pivot of your mesh is already setup like that and you use it as your parent object when you put together your prefab. if you are selecting a bunch of meshes in the world and converting to a blueprint, it uses the first mesh you select's pivot as the origin. but you can always shift things around inside the blueprint editor viewport window.

[@Arxontas10]

@@PolygonAcademy Hey! Thank you for responding so quickly. I am beginning to understand what i am doing now, just need to re-arrange all my prefabs now! Thanks a LOT!

[@Akaikami]

@@PolygonAcademy Hey Tim, one other quick question regarding prefabs. When building an environment do you do all layout in-engine? (Say you're kitting out a library and placing assets where they should be) Or do you do layout/level/world building in your DCC application (Max/Maya) and if you do it in engine do you merge assets together at all to keep mesh draw calls under control?

[@PolygonAcademy]

@@Akaikami i do it all in engine, sometimes merge meshes if needed, or use HLODS/instances to get drawcalls down. i spend almost all my time in the engine these days

[@Akaikami]

@@PolygonAcademy Awesome thanks for answering man, I'm mainly a character artist but been getting deeper into environment art and it's definitely a different mindset than creating everything 1-off unique. Keep up the great content, I really appreciate it!