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Unreal Engine:
UE Architectural Projects
Course: Understanding Global Illumination for Architectural Visualization
GI meaning: the process that simulates indirect lighting (for example, light bouncing and color bleeding from surfaces
Target: Interior Room
Parameters on:
1. Post Process Volume:
Lens: Exposure on, Bloom off
2.Directional Light
Transform: Mobility-> Static (won't show the instant change effect on GI)
Light Intensity: 10 lux
3. Click "Build" (Top bar)->Lighting Quality-> change Production to Preview (speed up work)
(RE: 1.Always check the light solution using game mode (Shortcut: G) as the final reference; 2. Rebuild the scene every time (Quality: Production) to see the change applied)
-Lesson: Creating and Controlling GI - Understanding Lightmass
Lightmass meaning: Bascially means GI. It creates lightmaps with complex light interactions like area shadowing and diffuse interreflection
Build->make sure Light Quality as Production, then click Build Light Only-> Swarm Agent Running window? (1:33)
World Setting, type Lightmass to change its setting
-Lesson: Creating and Controlling GI - Generating Lightmap UVs
When import mesh (e.g. fbx file): Tick "Generate Lightmap UVs"->Import (not import all)
If didn't tick UVs box, can fix it by open the fbx asset in Content Broswer, Details (R side)->LOD 0-> Build Settings-> Tick "Generate Lightmap UVs"-> Apply Change.
at LOD 0, also increase Min Lightmap Resolution to 1024. (2:00-3:09)
-Drag the FBX object in the scene, Details->Lighting->Tick Overridden Light Map Res (to force lightmap resolution higher on only this fbx object, to increase shadow quality baked into texture, i.e. for high contrast lighting area)
-Lesson: How to Focus Lightmass Calculations
-Place actor from Volumes->"Lightmass Importance Volume" (Area within the volume box employ higher quality setting)
-Lesson: Controlling Secondary Light Bounces (Map 01_06)
Adjust bounce light to illuminate the dark scene when using:
1. directional light (mainly rely on number of bounces):
World Setting->Lightmass->Num Indirect Lighting Bounces (change from 0 to 1-5, max 10. Above 10 just wastes computing resource while limited quality improved)-> Rebuild the light (i.e. Build->Building Light only)
2. Skylight (mainly rely on Intensity) (map 01_06b):
World Settings: Lightmass-> Environmental Intensity (0->5)->Environmental Color (RGB: 0.7,0.9,1)-> Num Indirect Lighting Bounces (0->5)->Rebuild the scene
3. Blend both directional and skylight in the scene (map 01_06c):
Directional light: Details->Light->Intensity: 5.0 lux
Skylight: World Settings->Environment Intensity: 5.0 , Num Indirect Bounce: 7, Num Sky Lighting Bounces: 4 -> Rebuild the scene
-Lesson: Lightmass Portals for Interior Spaces
Place Actor: Lightmass Portal, Drag in the scene needs HDRI improvement. Subtle change but the noise level is improved (1:20-2:32)
Avoid using in large or open world type
-Lesson: Saving out a High Resolution Still Image:
Factors on the lighting: Directional light, Skylight, Sphere Reflection Capture, Post Process Volume, Atmospheric Fog.
Save screenshot:
Or use editor command for more specific request (e.g. specific resolution of the screenshot):
Open Window \> Developer Tool \> Output Log → Then type command “HighResShot 4096x2160”→ Enter (a box pump up with a folder location, where the 4k screenshot created
Quiz 4:
Post Process Volumes are a powerful method for setting room by room camera and visual settings, why?
A: Any camera within their volume will use their properties.
You need to use baked lighting within a scene which will use objects that move. How are you able to achieve this?
A: With Volumetric Lightmaps
Course: Advanced Techniques for Architects
- 3 “P” Parameters: 1. Box/Sphere Reflection Capture (adjust brightness level, box for larger area while sphere
for smaller area), 2. Lightmass Porta (provide more variation for Lightmass); 3. PostProcess Volume (adjust in Detaill→ Rendering Feature→ Ambient Occlusion: Intensity and Radius)
-Import 3d max asset procedure: In lesson: Ways to Import Our Dataset into Unreal Engine
-Lightmaps are textures which have precomputed lighting applied to them.
-A benefit of using an offline renderer when creating architectural visualizations is that you can see visual changes in real-time.
-Recommended value settings in Lightmass (enough quality while not overload PC):
Compress Lightmaps: Untick
Static Lighting Level Scale: 0.75
Num Indirect Lighting Bounces: 10
Indirect Lighting Smoothness: 0.75
(Can check the qualiy at “Lighting only”in Lit mode)
-Lightmap UV problems (e.g. dark lines at edges of wall/floor) after building lighting solution:
How to fix:
Quiz 2:
Specular and Roughness of material properties control the reflections onto a material
Lightmap UV of the meshes control unrealistic lighting quality. Can check if the UV has overlapping piece if light error occurs.
Lightmass Portals used to focus light rays through things like windows and doors, it is helpful in providing a realistic lighting to a scene
Quiz 3:
Shadows from objects near a light source are unrealistically sharp. You want to control the softness of these shadows, which properties would you adjust in lights to achieve a softer shadow?
A: Source Radius and Light Source Angle to a value greater than 0.
Controlling Color Bleed (necessary when a high saturation base color map of a static Mesh that cause the color bleed)
- PBR Materials Concept:
A Normal and Roughness map of the textures handle the large scale and micro scale texture variations. (For lighting to interact with the material to create a realistic look)
Color (base) of material has sRGB setting/workflow (Change color in Albedo Tint in Details in Materials)
Roughness and Normal maps of material won’t requires sRGB, but use linear workflow (because they do not use color information)
Using software “Substance Designer” to create PBR material, and export to UE:
-Build a polished concrete floor material with Substance, Photoshop, and Unreal Engine:
-Image-Based Lighting with HDRI that apply to the Skylight:
Purpose: create a lighting environment based on the lighting of a real-life place
-How to apply: Put a Skylight in the scene, choose Source type in Light in Details as SLS Specific Cubemap, then drag the HDRI background in the Cubemap box, then build the light
After rebuild the light, can start to play the parameters to change the lighting of Skylight Details
-Parameters Adjustment to Post Process Volume:
Purpose: To adjust the finer details of lighting and colors within the scene
1. White Bal/ Tint: In Color Grading in Details (In Misc column down Color Grading, can also apply LUT)
2. Ambient Occlusion (a form of indirect shadowing, which applies shadows into places where light rays may not easily bounce.): In Rendering Features in Details (only needed if further brightness control requires)
2B. Indirect Lighting Intensity (control prebake GI inside the post process volume, it applies if building with multiple rooms, while we see some smaller rooms are brightener than others)
3. Screen Space Reflections: In Rendering Features (For material with reflection surface in the scene, e.g. Floor)
4. Vignette: In Lens→ Image Effects in Details
5. Exposure min/max brightness: In Details→ Lens→ Camera→ Exposure (it should compensate with illumination intensity, i.e when the environment in weaker intensity, the exposure should increase stronger to compensate)
- Static, Dynamic, and IES spotlights (Create glowing by material and mesh, not by light actor):
-If need to create an aminating light, turns it from static to movable
-Create a new “self-illuminated” Material for glowing effect, then drag it in Element of the StaticMeshAction, example here is SM Lights Pinhole” (0:50-3:40)
Step:
1. Make a default value of the illumination. In Content Browser, Create Material→ open in Hierarchy, create node Constant3Vector→ Connect to Emissive Color→ R click on 3Vector Node, Convert to Parameter→ Double click the black box on the Node, will pop up Color Picker to change color and intensity (In V value, increase higher than 1 to give stronger glowing effect)
2. Based on the default value, R click the Material just created, Create Material Instance→ Drag it to the StaticMeshAction object
Then turn the Skylight off (untick Affects World in Light in Details) to pop out the glowing effect. Rebuild the light
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