PSA from someone who has made more AAA cinematics than I can recall. If you're looking to work in the industry as a lighting artist, don't learn with lumen or GI. Most engines don't have GI and as such the process is an entirely different beast. Learn to simulate bounce light with other lights and learn to get the most out of as few lights as possible. Not only for your performance budget but you need to learn not to over-light scenes and characters which is incredibly tempting to do when you have to fake every bit of bounce. Sure you can still play GI but do leg work and really challenge yourself to only use direct lights and probes/cubemaps. Trust me it'll pay off in the long run and you'll have the artistic skill to work in any engine for any studio and then GI will be like gaining super powers.
Totally agree! To anyone looking to enter the games industry, Lumen is a great bonus but shouldn't be taken for granted. This workflow is great for "offline-rendered" cinematics or VFX work first and foremost.
@@michaellijr2895 The original poster is spot on. As for your question, I would say start off with Lumen (GI) enabled and create a simple scene, say a sunlight coming through a barn door or a window of a room. Then take a screenshot, disable Lumen (GI) and try to recreate that same scene by placing non-shadow casting bouncing lights. You won't be able to get a 100% replica, but you should get something that looks close enough.
Excellent breakdown. In case no one has covered it, there is no need to constantly hit that 'refresh' button on the Sky Light in order to update it. By default, Sky Light in UE4 and UE5 updates whenever one of it's properties has been changed. It can be any property. For example, I like to do it by changing the Light Intensity by a whisker. For example, if it was set to 1.5, I would change it to 1.6, hit Enter, and the Sky Light will update. Then I would set it back to 1.5, and it will update again. Hope this helps. 🙂
Really glad to see a person from the industry explaining proper stuff. Love your videos, they are very straightforward and helpful! You've got a new Unreal Engine follower :)
Hey Josh, a good way to make daytime to overcast is by increasing the Mie scattering a bit, that will diffuse the light in a more realistic kind of way. I really gotta give you Reverie for you to test :)
Could you explain further the workflow of your scenes for the same scenario (geometry) but different types of illumination? You mentioned it at 10.36 but I am not sure if you suggest having three duplicated levels and only work on different lighting. Isn't there a way where you can have different types of illumination (sunny day, overcast, night) in the same level ? Instead of having three levels/maps duplicated...
Hi, I would like to have the possibility to change the value of the "Lumen Global Illumination Diffuse Color Boost" in video games, but I don't know the command console to enter. Can you help me?
I just discovered you! Lighting is the make it or break it secret that has been ruining all my unreal scenes. All my characters looks blown out by the directional light (while the environment looks nice). I have a lot of hope that you can help me!
@@JoshToonen I actually watched it already! It was very good. First time I heard about upstage lighting. I am really curious, however, how to light a character in an outdoor daytime environment, since I seem have much less control over the "light-sculpting" since everything gets so easily washed out by the sunlight. On the other hand, if I dim the sunlight enough to start making effective lighting choices with rectangle lights on my character, then the entire environment is unusually dim for a daytime shot. What is the standard approach to an outdoor shot (specifically, I am working on a well lit, saturated look, aimed at kids)?
@@binyaminbassI was wondering if you've been able to find any resources on the subject since your message? I have the same problem (except in my case it's real time), I don't know how to make the lighting look good on both the environment and my character. During the cinematics, you can 'cheat' by reducing the intensity or changing the orientation of the Directional Light, for example, so that you can add lights around your character. But during the gameplay phases, I'm not sure what you can do to ensure that the lighting on your character is correct.
@@khalhorikNo, I haven't. Actually, I have been rendering in Blender lately. I find it much easier to control the look. Plus, it has light linking! As far as I know, Unreal does not.
I didn't understand quite well the difference between having to remove the skylight when using hdri backdrop and not having to remove it when using the inverse sphere, isn't it the same? Can't you make an hdri backdrop have the shape of a sphere?
But if I wanted some more things like the bullet tracer strike the wall and blast like in real life. Is it possible to do that like I seen the battle staber tutorial. In that you showed that the bullet and tracer as well as the bullet blast were also moving with the object. So pls a small tutorial on how to move them together in realtime.
Hey man this is really top premium contento! thank you very much for sharing it with all of us, you resume in one single video great technical and artistic tips and contents that Im always trying to look for in all kind of videos of lookdev, archiv, art fundamentals, etc. You got it all, even shaders creation! Please keep up the great content!
Hi, how do you render Alpha on unreal 5.3? I got no problem deferred render in unreal 5.1, but in 5.3 it doesn't work anymore. The Alpha doesn't come out.
It’s pretty simple! Its a custom material with a fog texture, and you add animation with a panner. Then yeah just apply it to a card and tweak to your satisfaction! Lots of good tutorials online. :)
I got confused when you made your caveat about lumen regarding the tracers. Aren't you using lumen? Did you say that you NEED to use both a light and a mesh with an emissive material?
Photogrammetry, but the electricity lines + poles in the background are all on a card! (I find for wires and thin objects, usually this is the easier route than modeling!)
It’s all on-demand and designed to be completed while working a full-time job. You’ll get daily emails with reminders and recaps to help you finish in just two weeks
Excuse me, sir. Should we delete the Sky Light when using HDRI? Also, can we use HDRI for real-time illumination with Lumen, or is it primarily intended for rendering with a pathtracer?
Great Video. What about setting up a "neutral scene" and somewhat related to that, how do you deal with autoexposure? (I'm guessing you neutralize it, but is there some technical specifics about it)
My personal go-to settings are create a post process volume and set it to "Manual Exposure" and set the Exposure to 10. This provides a good base and the default light intensities are still bright!
As an old photo/video shooter I'm doing a lighting tutorial app in UE and I can tell you simply that neutral scene lighting as to exposure has little meaning in UE lighting. Why, because it's a gaming engine mainly and as such all lighting is 'optimized' for gaming. The answer the guy gave you below is a common feedback you get as you really have no way of seeing exactly what his system shows. Is his monitor calibrated? What are his atmospheric settings? Exactly how are the light sources configured? ...etc., etc. Using 'realtime feedback' as suggested doesn't mean realism, it only means this is what YOU see. UE has no base lighting scene that I've found that accurately simulates real world lighting, either atmospheric (sunlight based), ambient, (sunlight and local light) or a good combo of both. Sunlight scattering thru the trees is a good example of this. Add in white balance and time of day interactions along with fog, clouds, scattering, light reflection, etc. and it quickly becomes a deal where all the realism factors fight each other as each wants to dominate.
@@imricor2250 ok. Fair enough. But if light is broken on a macro level (that btw makes sense. Specially when lumen comes into play as it is the mother of all approximations) then... why do the epic team insists with the physical units? (candelas and stuff). There should be an universal setup in UE where AT LEAST the physical light numbers behave as a real light should right? Else whats the point of using those units?
@@juanmilanese In the real world, a photographer/videographer can do actual light metering to establish shot parameters as to lighting values. There is no such feedback in UE that compares and it only makes sense are you are viewing the light on your setup which could be so far out of calibration that nothing will align. A typical case scenario is macbooks/imacs that have Auto Brightness turned on. Based on the light surroundings your monitor could vary brightness tremendously and so one day your UE settings look good and the next day you thing something is wrong with UE. Plus the macs will have auto tone on by default which makes it even worse. Epic could probably make a 'Shirley' app for us that centers real world average values based on specific lighting scenarios. But again, that would only work if you have a decent baseline to start with.
Lovely tips thanks alot! I have a question about the HDRI, is the format you are using TextureCube or 2D texture? Im getting an error when trying to replicate the Master material when using HDRI texturecube. Any insights?
Totally depends on what your film is about (abstract motion graphics vs characters are completely different) but typically if you use Unreal Engine you're also using Blender to prep your assets anyway!
I looked in a blender there are some tools that are going to change animation forever and unreal engine what I have heard it takes long to animate because your tutorial
both! use blender for modeling/animating/rigging your assets, then use unreal for lighting/rendering/cinematics. If you're a music artist though, it's better to use a pre-renderer like octane, v-ray, corona, etc, since they will make nicer-looking renders than ue5 generally.
Can you please give me your thoughts on something? I have a scene involving a giant who is going to be walking through an area and under his feet I need sand and rubble to break upwards, but also for the ground to be fractured. How would you go about doing this in Unreal for sequencer rather than a video game? Thanks.
For custom HDRIs: -use midjourney or ai and create a “360 panorama of…” -aspect ratio of 2:1 -open in photoshop -image - mode - 32 bit -save as “radiance” hdr. Pro tip: changing the extension from .exr TO .hdr (accept warning) seems to work for unreal from like hdri haven or something.
Want to Create Your Own Films? 🚀Our Launch Sale Ends in 24 Hours!
Enroll Now in Unreal Fundamentals: www.unrealforvfx.com/fundamentals
PSA from someone who has made more AAA cinematics than I can recall. If you're looking to work in the industry as a lighting artist, don't learn with lumen or GI. Most engines don't have GI and as such the process is an entirely different beast. Learn to simulate bounce light with other lights and learn to get the most out of as few lights as possible. Not only for your performance budget but you need to learn not to over-light scenes and characters which is incredibly tempting to do when you have to fake every bit of bounce. Sure you can still play GI but do leg work and really challenge yourself to only use direct lights and probes/cubemaps. Trust me it'll pay off in the long run and you'll have the artistic skill to work in any engine for any studio and then GI will be like gaining super powers.
Totally agree! To anyone looking to enter the games industry, Lumen is a great bonus but shouldn't be taken for granted. This workflow is great for "offline-rendered" cinematics or VFX work first and foremost.
So when I try practicing lights in a new project in UE5, I should turn off GI in the project settings before I start?
@@michaellijr2895 The original poster is spot on. As for your question, I would say start off with Lumen (GI) enabled and create a simple scene, say a sunlight coming through a barn door or a window of a room. Then take a screenshot, disable Lumen (GI) and try to recreate that same scene by placing non-shadow casting bouncing lights. You won't be able to get a 100% replica, but you should get something that looks close enough.
Excellent breakdown. In case no one has covered it, there is no need to constantly hit that 'refresh' button on the Sky Light in order to update it. By default, Sky Light in UE4 and UE5 updates whenever one of it's properties has been changed. It can be any property. For example, I like to do it by changing the Light Intensity by a whisker. For example, if it was set to 1.5, I would change it to 1.6, hit Enter, and the Sky Light will update. Then I would set it back to 1.5, and it will update again. Hope this helps. 🙂
Really glad to see a person from the industry explaining proper stuff. Love your videos, they are very straightforward and helpful! You've got a new Unreal Engine follower :)
I'm also pleased with the content you're creating on your channel... I loved the car rig in Blender, I'm subscribed to your channel there as well.
love the unreal community. you all give so much. thank you very much
The perfect go to lightning tutorial.
Hey Josh, a good way to make daytime to overcast is by increasing the Mie scattering a bit, that will diffuse the light in a more realistic kind of way. I really gotta give you Reverie for you to test :)
That is just incredible, watch videos from you is sooooo educational its amazing, thx a thousand times man !
Hey great tutorial. but what for an node is the situation param node?
This is incredible. Thanks alot
You make the best unreal tutorials
I really like your editing style, and thanks for sharing!
boooy that's a great one, thanks!
Amazing lighting tutorial！I want to know how the dynamic fog in this scene is added.
I cover all the techniques in my Volumetric Fog video, check it out! th-cam.com/video/Kjg6kCW2BtY/w-d-xo.html
Could you explain further the workflow of your scenes for the same scenario (geometry) but different types of illumination? You mentioned it at 10.36 but I am not sure if you suggest having three duplicated levels and only work on different lighting. Isn't there a way where you can have different types of illumination (sunny day, overcast, night) in the same level ? Instead of having three levels/maps duplicated...
Good looking out on this.
Hi, I would like to have the possibility to change the value of the "Lumen Global Illumination Diffuse Color Boost" in video games, but I don't know the command console to enter. Can you help me?
thanks for sharing your experience :)
Hi, can we download this tank scene somehow ? Thanks for this great video !
Excellent video!
amazing video man, thanks!
Hey, I really appreciate your content, Just want a video on dress simulations, armors etc stuffs
Very cool, Thank you!!!
I just discovered you! Lighting is the make it or break it secret that has been ruining all my unreal scenes. All my characters looks blown out by the directional light (while the environment looks nice). I have a lot of hope that you can help me!
Check out my other lighting video, it’s focused on character lighting and should help! th-cam.com/video/jAz4Lb93gwY/w-d-xo.html
@@JoshToonen I actually watched it already! It was very good. First time I heard about upstage lighting. I am really curious, however, how to light a character in an outdoor daytime environment, since I seem have much less control over the "light-sculpting" since everything gets so easily washed out by the sunlight. On the other hand, if I dim the sunlight enough to start making effective lighting choices with rectangle lights on my character, then the entire environment is unusually dim for a daytime shot. What is the standard approach to an outdoor shot (specifically, I am working on a well lit, saturated look, aimed at kids)?
@@binyaminbassI was wondering if you've been able to find any resources on the subject since your message?
I have the same problem (except in my case it's real time), I don't know how to make the lighting look good on both the environment and my character. During the cinematics, you can 'cheat' by reducing the intensity or changing the orientation of the Directional Light, for example, so that you can add lights around your character. But during the gameplay phases, I'm not sure what you can do to ensure that the lighting on your character is correct.
@@khalhorikNo, I haven't. Actually, I have been rendering in Blender lately. I find it much easier to control the look. Plus, it has light linking! As far as I know, Unreal does not.
amazing video!! thank you!
very nice
I didn't understand quite well the difference between having to remove the skylight when using hdri backdrop and not having to remove it when using the inverse sphere, isn't it the same? Can't you make an hdri backdrop have the shape of a sphere?
How do you make an Unlit Material? I dont know much about the Blueprints
But if I wanted some more things like the bullet tracer strike the wall and blast like in real life. Is it possible to do that like I seen the battle staber tutorial. In that you showed that the bullet and tracer as well as the bullet blast were also moving with the object.
So pls a small tutorial on how to move them together in realtime.
Sir your video inspire me to do my best and create some best environments.! Great job sir .
Learned a lot
Thank you so much
Hey man this is really top premium contento! thank you very much for sharing it with all of us, you resume in one single video great technical and artistic tips and contents that Im always trying to look for in all kind of videos of lookdev, archiv, art fundamentals, etc. You got it all, even shaders creation! Please keep up the great content!
This is damn cool!!! I am about to shoot my first unreal short film and this video really clears out so many deadlocks I had
I honestly thought the video was a scamming ad at first, was searching everywhere for the 'skip' button xD
Sir, Your system config Please?
Super cool stuff.
- Where are these assets from?
- Are individual modules of your course available?
I want it too.
Hi, how do you render Alpha on unreal 5.3? I got no problem deferred render in unreal 5.1, but in 5.3 it doesn't work anymore. The Alpha doesn't come out.
YOU ARE THE BEST
Hi is there a tutorial on how to make the HDRI material?
If you pause on that frame, just match all of the settings. Everything should be there!
@@JoshToonen ouh i missed out that part thanks!
What will be the cost of the course?
Hi, on this link for the sample file is no file for this tutorial. Where could be loaded from?
I cant put in words how amazing this was
Where do I get these smoke cards from? Did you make them or something?
It’s pretty simple! Its a custom material with a fog texture, and you add animation with a panner. Then yeah just apply it to a card and tweak to your satisfaction! Lots of good tutorials online. :)
I got confused when you made your caveat about lumen regarding the tracers. Aren't you using lumen? Did you say that you NEED to use both a light and a mesh with an emissive material?
Yeah, you want to use both, Lumen only helps so much and doesn't work well for fast moving emissive lights
Is there another way to exclude fog on certain objects, aside from cutoff?
Great work and very intuative! Are the buildings in the background photogrammetry or images on cards?
Photogrammetry, but the electricity lines + poles in the background are all on a card! (I find for wires and thin objects, usually this is the easier route than modeling!)
Fucking love this video, I now all the concepts but never put in practice, I feel motivated
0:30 I have android flashlight, does that work too?
Yes lol, the point is to use whatever lights you have that you can move around easily
Thank u
Can I learn on my spare time or is it live classes?
It’s all on-demand and designed to be completed while working a full-time job. You’ll get daily emails with reminders and recaps to help you finish in just two weeks
Excuse me, sir. Should we delete the Sky Light when using HDRI? Also, can we use HDRI for real-time illumination with Lumen, or is it primarily intended for rendering with a pathtracer?
Yeah exactly. HDRIs work with Lumen but the skylight is doing the heavy lifting. HDRI backdrop should work with every renderer
How do I contact you for a project?
Great Video.
What about setting up a "neutral scene" and somewhat related to that, how do you deal with autoexposure? (I'm guessing you neutralize it, but is there some technical specifics about it)
My personal go-to settings are create a post process volume and set it to "Manual Exposure" and set the Exposure to 10. This provides a good base and the default light intensities are still bright!
As an old photo/video shooter I'm doing a lighting tutorial app in UE and I can tell you simply that neutral scene lighting as to exposure has little meaning in UE lighting. Why, because it's a gaming engine mainly and as such all lighting is 'optimized' for gaming.
The answer the guy gave you below is a common feedback you get as you really have no way of seeing exactly what his system shows. Is his monitor calibrated? What are his atmospheric settings? Exactly how are the light sources configured? ...etc., etc.
Using 'realtime feedback' as suggested doesn't mean realism, it only means this is what YOU see. UE has no base lighting scene that I've found that accurately simulates real world lighting, either atmospheric (sunlight based), ambient, (sunlight and local light) or a good combo of both. Sunlight scattering thru the trees is a good example of this. Add in white balance and time of day interactions along with fog, clouds, scattering, light reflection, etc. and it quickly becomes a deal where all the realism factors fight each other as each wants to dominate.
@@imricor2250 ok. Fair enough. But if light is broken on a macro level (that btw makes sense. Specially when lumen comes into play as it is the mother of all approximations) then... why do the epic team insists with the physical units? (candelas and stuff).
There should be an universal setup in UE where AT LEAST the physical light numbers behave as a real light should right? Else whats the point of using those units?
@@juanmilanese In the real world, a photographer/videographer can do actual light metering to establish shot parameters as to lighting values. There is no such feedback in UE that compares and it only makes sense are you are viewing the light on your setup which could be so far out of calibration that nothing will align.
A typical case scenario is macbooks/imacs that have Auto Brightness turned on. Based on the light surroundings your monitor could vary brightness tremendously and so one day your UE settings look good and the next day you thing something is wrong with UE.
Plus the macs will have auto tone on by default which makes it even worse. Epic could probably make a 'Shirley' app for us that centers real world average values based on specific lighting scenarios. But again, that would only work if you have a decent baseline to start with.
gold
Lovely tips thanks alot! I have a question about the HDRI, is the format you are using TextureCube or 2D texture? Im getting an error when trying to replicate the Master material when using HDRI texturecube. Any insights?
Sorry I’m still looking for an answer should I use blender or unreal 😂 I’m trying to make a music video I’m a music artist btw
Totally depends on what your film is about (abstract motion graphics vs characters are completely different) but typically if you use Unreal Engine you're also using Blender to prep your assets anyway!
I looked in a blender there are some tools that are going to change animation forever and unreal engine what I have heard it takes long to animate because your tutorial
And I’m looking for a software that animates fast
both! use blender for modeling/animating/rigging your assets, then use unreal for lighting/rendering/cinematics. If you're a music artist though, it's better to use a pre-renderer like octane, v-ray, corona, etc, since they will make nicer-looking renders than ue5 generally.
Thanks I’m going to use blender
Hey the tank night scene is lumen or path traced ?
All Lumen, deferred render in MRQ so it’s a < second per frame
Can you please give me your thoughts on something? I have a scene involving a giant who is going to be walking through an area and under his feet I need sand and rubble to break upwards, but also for the ground to be fractured. How would you go about doing this in Unreal for sequencer rather than a video game? Thanks.
Simulate in another program and then import as a .abc (alembic) or .fbx sequence
@@JoshToonen I appreciate it!
For custom HDRIs:
-use midjourney or ai and create a “360 panorama of…”
-aspect ratio of 2:1
-open in photoshop
-image - mode - 32 bit
-save as “radiance” hdr.
Pro tip: changing the extension from .exr TO .hdr (accept warning) seems to work for unreal from like hdri haven or something.
Not everyone feels comfortable using AI in their work.
🟡🔵
Nice scans on the background. Glory to Ukraine
Russian tank is most beautiful thing in unreal engine😊
Nuh uh.
Nah... it's too much, I'll stick with my craft. Lightning is another's people problem
I find it the most fun part of CG, especially in unreal considering that everything renders instantly