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.

Jeremy Vicker Tutorial 4,5 and 6

Today I am going to look at the next three tutorial videos by Jeremy Vicker and once again explain what he is talking about in his tutorials and then start thinking about how I could apply this into a map in UE4.

In the fourth video Jeremy Vickers talks about how to create shadow effects, he explains that directional lights will cast a dark, sharp shadow where as the sky light creates a soft shadow as its light is bounced of an object or material.

In the fifth video he talks about the use of colour and hue and saturation.  Basically colours will need to gradually fade to black to create the shadow effect, think of it like starting of white which gradually turns grey then darker shades of grey and eventually black.

The sixth video is based on how a surface will respond to light.  

Lighting Available in Unreal Engine 4

To begin with I will be having a look at the various light types that Unreal Engine 4 offers and I will be explaining what they do, how they can be edited and how I could use them in my own environment.  There are four variations of light in UE4 and they are directional light, point light, spot light and sky light.

I will now go through each of them, explain what they are, how they're used and how I could implement them into a map in UE4.

Point Light
A point light is a light that emits light in all directions in UE4, it works very similar to a light bulb in that it transmits light in all directions, here is a simple scene I created in UE4 with just a floor and a sphere with all light sources removed

Now here is the exact same scene with a point light added into the scene

As you can see the point light has emitted light in all directions shining light on the sphere, on the floor and casts a shadow from the sphere.

You can also adjust the intensity and colour of the light as you can see here.

Spot Light

A spot light emits light it one direction similar to that of an actual spotlight, here you can an example of how the spotlight works in UE4.

Here you can see the spotlight emitting light in one direction and also casts a shadow beneath the sphere.

Again you can also adjust the intensity and the colour of the spot light.

Directional Light

Directional light is the main source of light within the map and basically acts like the sun/moon.  Again you can adjust the intensity and colour of the light however you can also change the angle of the light source.

Unreal Engine 4 Examples

I am now going to have a look at some of the example maps provided by Epic Games and I will be having a look at how these maps are lighted.  Hopefully these maps will give me a much better understanding of how lighting works in UE4 and I will be able to use some of the lighting methods and techniques in these maps and maybe even be able to apply them to my own project.

I started of by looking at the realistic rendering map.

As you can see this map is very realistic, everything about it is extremely well detailed including the lighting.  The main source of light in this scene is the light coming in from the patio doors, there are however three small spotlights on the roof that emit light.  The light coming from the patio door cast a very sharp shadow however the much dimmer spotlights cast a much more softer shadow.  Due to the smooth wooden floor in this scene the light coming from the patio doors would be bounced all over the room except for whenever it hits the carpet of the sofa in which case some of the light would be absorbed.

Next I looked at the reflections map.

Again another very well detailed map, as you can see in this map there is not a lot of natural lighting in this scene, the only places that there are natural lighting are from behind the the cage doors which is bounced of the tiles and floor and is bounced into the middle of the stage.  There is also some artificial light coming from the lights in the ceiling and from the sparks coming from one of the broken lights.

And finally I looked at the Sifi Bunk map.

In this map there is absolutely no natural light and all of the light here is artificial, due to this there are a very lot of soft shadows in this scene.  This lighting defiantly does enhance the effect that the player is in a bumper.

Jeremy Vicker Tutorial 1,2 and 3

Today I was introduced to a series of videos and the implementation of lighting in video games, the videos are made by Jeremy Vicker and he will explain how lighting works through out his tutorial videos.

In the first video he begins by explaining that he has had a lot of experience with lighting via his job therefore I know that he is a credible source.  I wasn't really that familiar with the processes that he explained that we would be going through through out his tutorials so I look forward to learning about them and applying them to the lighting on my level.

In the second video he explained about the lighting effects on the various types of effects that lighting would have on various materials and whether that light would be absorbed, reflected or refracted.  He then explain light absorption and how black objects and materials will absorb light where as coloured materials will absorb all spectrum's  of light except from the colour of the material, instead this light is bounced off the material.  He then went on to explain how light is reflected off various objects, objects that have a smooth surface will reflect light very sharp and clearly due the light being perfectly reflected and bounced from the smooth surface.  However whenever light his an un-smooth surface it will be not be reflected perfectly and will instead be bounced in all different directions.

In the third video Jeremy explained how the materials in a level should affect the lighting of the level based on weather the material is reflective, specular or diffuse.  He then talked about various light types that can be used, when explaining about directional lights he explained that it is used as the main light source which I am familiar with from previous units.  He explained that the light coming from a point and/or spotlight would be reflected the same as a directional light but just on a smaller scale.

Lighting in Unreal Engine 4

For this unit I will be using Unreal Engine 4 to light my map, almost all video game engines allow you to create and edit lighting in your map however I have choose to go with UE4.  I have done these for a number of reasons with the most obvious being that it is free, as a student with bills to pay my budget for buying video game developing engines is basically non existent and because UE4 is free this suits me perfectly.  As well as this I have been using UE4 for 6 months now on various projects and I must say that I find it very reliable, I am yet to encounter any major problems and any problems I have encountered I found very easy to resolve as UE4 is a software that is very easily learnt.

Introduction

For this unit I will be improving my skills on lighting and rendering in Unreal Engine 4.  To do this I will be looking at the lighting tool set and light types available in UE4 and light set ups for outdoor and indoor lighting.  I will then be practising with these lights and tools within environments that I have created for previous units.  I will also be looking at various rendering techniques for the lighting in my environment and the various method required in order to do so.  I will also blog the entire process and development of my work through out this unit and I will also be keeping track of my time management through out this unit in my blog for unit 3.  And I will finally take part in a peer review of my work though out this unit and evaluate my work and possibly make some changes to it based on the peer reviews that I get.