Conclusion

Overall I would say that I worked fairly well in this unit, I fell ill a couple of times during class time and had a doctors appointment however other that missing one on one tutorials I was still able to complete my work as I have UE4 at home.  I defiantly have gained a better understanding of how lighting works in general in this unit and I can now apply that to my work when creating levels in UE4.

Final Results

Here you can see my final results in before and after shots

Changes

I am now going to go through the various changes that I made to my level.  My first change didn't really have that much to do the the actual lighting however it did help make my level feel like it was taking place at sunset, I removed the sky sphere and replaced it with a new one that looked more realistic, I also added clouds to it which also didn't make it look as blank as the old one.  When doing this I used this picture I look at Liverpool Albert Docks at sunset for real life inspiration.

Next I worked on the directional lighting, when looking at the ground on my map I realised that it was not smooth but rather rough bumpy rocks, therefore there would be light bouncing everywhere.  To resolve this I put a total of four directional lights in my scene going in four different angles, I had the intensity of the light coming from the sun the highest, the lights coming in from the right and left not so high and the light coming toward the sun very low.

In my original map I put point lights in front of the gold/bronze doors to make the glow and make them more visible to the player however with my new directional lights I no longer need these so I removed them which made my level look a little darker.

Next I removed the point lights in the ceiling lights in the jails and bars and replaced them with point lights, I coloured them gold and bronze to reflect the metal of the ceiling lights.  I also changed the colour of the wall lights to reflect the wall lights.

Finally I removed the point lights I placed in the secret labs as they are underground and there would be that muck light, I did however place point lights inside the green pillars to emmit a green glow.

Peer Review

Today I wrote a peer review on my current level which I will be asking Chloe to answer.  I asked her 3 questions:

1. Whenever I done a peer review of this level one of my peers pointed out that it looked a little bit like an alien planed rather that a sunset sky.  How do think I could make this look more earth like?
2. Personally I think my level was a bit too bright especially considering that it was supposed to take place at sunset, do you agree and if so what do you think I could do to fix this?
3. Do you think the lighting inside my buildings are bright, do you think I should go for darker more shadowy lighting or do you think that my lighting inside my buildings works fine?

Chloe Responded:

1. Maybe just make your sky look a little more realistic and adjust your lighting in your level to make it a little less bright.
2. Yes, I do think it was a bit too bright, again I think you should just work on your lighting.
3. Yes I would go with a darker tone inside your buildings

I agree with everything that Chloe has said here, I will now work at making these changes to my current level.

My New Lighting Idea

In a previous unit I created a steampunk western themed level which I intended to taker place at sunset, however in one of my peer review sessions one of my peers pointed out to me that my level looked like it was set on a distant planet.  I think that with some tweaks to my current lighting in that level I could fix this problem and make it look muck more realistic.  I will be using the lighting in UE4 that I touched on earlier and also will be going back to Jeremy Vickers tutorials for guidance.

Jeremy Vicker Tutorial 7 and 8

In Jeremy Vickers seventh video he talks about we can perceive light when it is effected by depth and how the light can can start to fade and get darker as it starts to fade of into the distance.

In his final video he surprisingly used old artists as a bases for showing us how light works.  He explained the different methods that the artists used through out a couple of examples and explains that this is how the artists wanted us to see their paintings.

By taking a look at this painting I can now see the methods that the artist used to make this painting look realistic, you can tell the the main source of light in this painting is coming in from the right due the the little bits of white glare visible on the right side of his face, he then gradually darkened the colour of his face on the left side of his face and painted in some soft shadows to represent the absence of light.

Unreal Engine 4 Lighting Tutorials

Now that I have a understanding of how lighting works in UE4 I am going to go onto UE4's online resource on lighting environments and see if there anything else that I could learn about lighting in UE4.  Under essentials there was lighting basics, types of lights, shadow casting and a lighting quick start guide.  I have already learned how to do this and have both applied these tutorials in previous levels that I have made and I have also shown them in a previous blog post when I was showing the lighting available in UE4.  There was however one tutorial that I was not really familiar with which was light mobility.  The tutorial on light mobility explained to me that there are three light mobility types, static, stationary and moveable.  A static light is a light which cannot be changed in game, a stationary light is a light which can change its colour and brightness intensity in game however it cannot be moved or rotated and a movable light is a light that can both change its colour and brightness intensity in game and be moved or rotated.