UE4 Neutral Lighting Scene Setup

[@leleuxart]

The idea behind the magic pi number for the Directional Light and a 18% gray rough material(mid-gray in linear is actually ((128/255)^2.2), so about 0.22) is that it makes the gray surface at the direction of the light exactly middle gray, thus creating an "ideal" exposure. The 3.14 rule assumes the surface in question is only receiving direct light, so if you have any source of indirect lighting, you have to compensate by lowering one or the other until the final result of the 18% material(119 sRGB) reads as 128 sRGB.

[@roshanghatkar3760]

Thanks for explaining necessary points with detail information. Really great video tutorial. Thanks Ryan.

[@MaryIam13]

this tutorial is really helpful! I'm working on a project where I have to light the scene to showcase clothing but making this neutral scene setup, I realized that I tried to compensate the colors on my clothes through shaders and colorful lighting xD Anyways now I realize the jeans in my final scene is too dark and the jacket way too light, so this really helps with checking asset colors and shaders first!^^

[@dimitardimitrov7950]

Thank you fir the tutorial very useful. PS: i found handy short key Pres \ near the enter up on the right shift for my keyboard is \ in the scene view it gives you Color Calibrator. Usually follows the mouse cursor around :D.Thank you again have nice day.

[@shaiy9480]

Is it possible to download the assets used in this tutorial?

[@PolygonAcademy]

really nice overview, thanks for sharing :)

[@Braytonks3D]

Great info and presented very well! Is there a reason why you shouldnt just use a desaturated HDRI map for your neutral light setup so that you can ensure that there is no color spill at all?

[@Drawgonian]

Thank you for making this. its super helpful

[@virtualrealitysystems9801]

Excellent video. Really helps when adding materials on objects in level, rather than having to jump in and out of static meshes etc.,

[@GregoryYepes]

Such a great video and concepts to get out there, thanks Ryan!

[@PashaDefragzor]

Yeah, when I was a beginner I came to this. Is a faster way to understand everything from a basic grid

[@RR-kn1tg]

wow this tutorial save me tons!!

[@jonusiak5123]

I was recommended to come to your Channel to get a boost on some lighting techniques, and I must say all your content is amazing! Thank you! I wanted to ask, when it comes to the SkyLight cube map, and the SkySphere color, what will be used to calculate reflections? Both? I was trying to wrap my head around how this is handled. Thanks!

[@doop00]

Thanks for sharing this is exactly what I need right now.

[@devankpimparkar7595]

Thanks, Ryan for this and other helpful tutorials. Can you able to make a tutorial on the grid texture flow you created and a series of similar tutorials on nodes

[@ThatRyanManning]

Which grid texture are you referring to? The one that's used for the environment floor?

[@devankpimparkar7595]

Yes..

[@Sknueppel85]

Hey there, A bit late to the Party heheh... Your Video is super helpful and I recreate it for my Car Materials. Sadly there seems to be a "Bug" regarding Refraction and Skylights Behind the Glass (that has Raqytrace refraction turned on) everything is a lot lighter and it seems to miss shadows. Do you know a way to recreate this scene without the skylight? All the best

[@AndyTanguay]

Oh yeah, good stuff here. Any reason you're not using your HDR as your skymap too?

[@ManeeshKushwaha-h2t]

I need to know about hole UE4 Production Pipeline how it's work. I know only lighting so that's why i'm curious about it please make a video on it. Your tutorial very helpful to understand UE4 software. Appreciate your work and experience well done keep it up. :)

[@dragon95os]

Exactly what i needed .. thanks for sharing the knowledge

[@MElsadig]

Great tutorial, Thank u

[@jso19801980]

great tutorial thankyou for clear easy commentary

[@scutum_]

I just started learning Unreal recently and your tutorial really helps me a lot. Thanks for sharing these concepts. But I have a question about this workflow. Since there are new GI and reflection options in Unreal, should I apply the same setting in Post Process Volume? If not, then what should I keep aware of when changing those settings?

[@decorix]

Hello Ryan, Thanks for all the info/tutorials on youtube. Great Stuff. I have question about the Neutral-light setup tutorial. I'm wondering whats the purpose of this. If I understand correctly is this to view your asset/model with correct material/textures in realworld ligthing conditions?such as Metal,wood,Concreet,etc. so you can check if it looks correct? before putting in your ownscene/setup. Especially when working in team as you' mention so you have same lighting conditions. Correct? Secondly in your MasterMaterial which I got working now. Thanks btw helping out. I have question if you have HDRI in you Skylight, shouldn't this HDRI be the same in the (Material MeshEditor/ PreviewSceneSettings? and also when you are in the MaterialEditor and looking at your Material shouldn't this be the same HDRI? In your tutorials I havent noticed that you change the HDRI when you are creating the materials (PreviewSceneSettings). Hope you can give some info on this. Thanks you in advanced.

[@ThatRyanManning]

"I'm wondering whats the purpose of this... Especially when working in team as you' mention so you have same lighting conditions." Exactly. It ensures you're viewing the assets in-engine UE4 (as opposed to say Marmoset Toolbag) and the lighting is neutral (no color information or post-processing fxs). It's a standardized scene that should be used on all assets before they're applied in you level. Thus if your post-processing fxs or lighting changes in your final level, all your assets with match. "shouldn't this HDRI be the same in the (Material MeshEditor/ PreviewSceneSettings?" If you want. I find adding the HDRI in the PreviewSceneSettings to be a bit of a pain and unnecessary since you're adding the assets to your neutral scene anyways. IMO, not necessary to add it here.

[@decorix]

@@ThatRyanManning Thanks for the detailed info. Glad I understood it correctly. Look forward to more tut.

[@tonymarch8611]

I modelled a similar chamfered cube for a backdrop, specified vertex colour red to the vertical 'walls' to the mesh in 3dsMax, exported an fbx and set up the material you shared. I can see the vertex colour data in the mesh editor, but I have zero idea why the vertex color lerp isn't working for me in my graph. Disappointed in such basics in UE4 not working for me. Good channel by the way, very helpful.

[@eggZ663]

Well vertex color works in ue4, so you must have done something wrong

[@rafaelaraujo3275]

Great video, thanks for share!!

[@Grumbledookvid]

how can the lighting be 'neutral' when you use a HDRI with colour in it?

[@TheNerd]

i cant copy the shader since i dont know how to ge the "red material expression" thing in the middle. i dont know what that is called (i'm new to all fo this). i did the "Main Spec" etc things with constants which is hopefully the correct data type edit: i recreated the scene step by tep (except the material for the bottom i used a 50% grey) and for some reason my scene is WAAAAY brighter especially if i enable game mode. in game mode my scene is WAY to bright and with game mode disabled its still a lot brighter any aidea why that is?

[@Dhieen]

Im working on ue5, is there anything that changes? besides ambient occlusion and screen space reflections I tested this tutorial on my scene, a large environment, a church in ruin with a statue in the middle I have alooot of textures and different assets, i think it will help me alot to have more consistency between each textures, because some are very bright and some are very dark On my main scene the lighting is very complex to manage, i have a strong sun, that hit my statue and some other parts of the interior of the church, a strong volumetric fog to have god rays, but the rest of the scene is very dark, because some walls are not very good looking, in term of modeling or texturing

[@ethanwasme4307]

Could you go over "correct" lighting values based on real world data? I was told that 3.14 is *clear sky mid day*, is this true? If we are trying to create a realistic enviroment at that time of day and conditions, will this lighting calibration be ok?

[@ThatRyanManning]

3.14 is close to a "clear sky - mid day". There are several things to keep in mind for light values (ex: Post Processing Volumes, Exposure, etc) that may not directly reflect real world values. However, these are the values (as I understand them): 1-2: Moonlight 3.14: Sky Mid-day 6-6.5: Bright sunlight 9-10: Blazing Desert Sun 10+: You have other issues going on

[@ethanwasme4307]

@@ThatRyanManning been trying to give these new physical lights a chance, a bit of a cobweb for a newbie like me... How would that translate to this normalized scene? Or just keep to the old style

[@TomMooneyUE4]

Skatepark HDR in this video = hdrihaven.com/hdri/?c=urban&h=skate_park

[@legice]

very well explained, but something puzzles me. I setup the basic texture to 0.18 grey, yet mine looks a lot darker than yours, but much closer to what I would imagine 50% grey to look like. probably has something to do with the engine being updated or some features somewhere somehow, but the rest works =)

[@ThatRyanManning]

Most likely you have sRGB enabled on the UE4 texture asset. 0.18 applies to linear colorspace. Just uncheck RGB and see if that solves the problem.

[@eggZ663]

Hey Ryan, do you ever use the pixel inspector for checking the values inside the editor?

[@ThatRyanManning]

Why yes...yes I do! kzbin.info/www/bejne/lZbNk4mYeLKfjbM

[@megahugepancake]

Hey thanks a lot for this tutorial. I was wondering, when you color pick the white square on the colorcube, what value is it supposed to be exactly? I'm not too sure what is wrong or good, pure white seems to be cliped and wrong but its the whitest white no?

[@ThatRyanManning]

One of the easiest ways to test what the pure color value is, is to activate Unlit mode, screenshot and sample: i.imgur.com/6a2n1RG.png In short, the brightest point on the SM_ColorChecker cube is about 96% brightness. So, ideally, for a neutrally lit scene you don't want the white color swatch clipping too close to pure white and you don't want the top of the cube (underneath the test spheres) clipping too close to pure black.

[@megahugepancake]

@@ThatRyanManning Thanks a lot for the quick reply concerning the brightness on the ColorChecker, I think I got the result that I needed! :)

[@edudias2]

great tut, tks!

[@olivierleroy7592]

Can someone confirm this please ? : The unit for the directional light is 3,14 unitless on Ryan screen. I can"t change unit on my directionnal light. Is 3,14Lux equal? thanks for the answer

[@ThatRyanManning]

3.14 Lux is good. Similar and will work for the same setup.

[@mustafadheyab6513]

Thank you so much 😊

[@vivekanandb6697]

The exposure settings from 4.25 has changed significantly, Setting the min and max brightness values to 1 seems to overexpose the scene.

[@ThatRyanManning]

Correct. 0 is the new default

[@vivekanandb6697]

@@ThatRyanManning min and max to 0 turns the scene to complete white lol , do you mean exposure compensation to 0?

[@ThatRyanManning]

@@vivekanandb6697 insert "I didn't read well" here. Yes... Set to 1 & 1. Exposure Compensation should be at 0.

[@mae2309]

Did you had to unwrap your infinity wall for you to apply material inside unreal?. Great video. Cheers!

[@ThatRyanManning]

Yup! Exactly like any other 3D asset.

[@뭄무무뭄]

it's nice tutorial!

[@Kiyamlol]

hi mate any where we can download these assetts? Cheers

[@victortomassanchezcarnero9329]

Where can I found the sm cycroom?

[@antonynifosi4024]

Perfect

[@mdz9430]

I couldn't put in the HDRI into the SkyLight(Changed into Cube Mode) What should i do? Need Help

[@ethanwasme4307]

It might not be an HDRI format

[@MathieuMorasse]

Someone can explain why we use 0.18 for grays. Because when I do 0.5 * 0.454 (srgb to linear correction), the result is 0.227. I'm pretty sure I missed something but I do not know what's!

[@ThatRyanManning]

18% Grey (commonly used as 50% grey for balancing photography in CIELAB lightness) actually equates to 48.45% sRGB brightness or 124,124,124 in RGB values....so really close to 50% Grey (128,128,128). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_gray

[@kallesbaksatt]

Why is it bad to be near clip value? In lightroom tutorials for photography, you want to be near white and black clip values

[@IlyaGagarin]

very helpful

[@staughost]

So why is there a black reflection in chrome ball at the end of the video and at the start of the video it's gray?

[@ThatRyanManning]

The "SM_ColorChecker" is just rotated 90 degrees. All 4 reference spheres are there and in the same place.

[@vladimirturcan876]

@@ThatRyanManning I am talking about material sphere in the middle of the screen and the presence of black reflection on it that cannot obviously be influenced by sm_color checker mesh on the left.

[@ThatRyanManning]

@@vladimirturcan876 More than likely that's just the reflection capture in the scene set to "captured scene" vs a specific cube map. If I recall, there's no sky in this setup, so the surrounding "sky" is black...hence the black reflection.If I had, for example, a BP_SkySphere in the scene, that would be reflected instead of the black you see on the chrome sphere.

[@Gamer-sv2mz]

hi friend. your work help me a lot . thanks for your kindness . can you help me tyo have a realistic lighting to reach some photorealism with my renders please ?

[@Bluuuee]

Has anyone found the reason why they cant drop in SM_Sky into the cubemap slot of the skylight? Oh wait nvmnd lol I was doing it wrong lol

[@AlphaChino1925]

good tutorial... but where to download the skatepark background?? lel

[@ThatRyanManning]

Try downloading it from hdrihaven.com/

[@camelCased]

Here it is, in case if someone else needs it : hdrihaven.com/hdri/?c=outdoor&h=skate_park

[@AlphaChino1925]

@@camelCased thank you

[@diegox7767]

He's talking about this lecture: kzbin.info/www/bejne/n5nKZaifp7KWm8U

[@benmoqbel9516]

you are messing one things global contrast should be 075

[@cgihuang2237]

π

[@workflowinmind]

This is great but not physically correct. You'll have to use much brighter values if you are trying to replicate a sun