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.