Final Shots and Evaluation

After looking back at my scene at the end of this unit I was happy with the outcome but I thought I could do a lot better with the unit given more time, I would also like to try and explore more avenues in my post processing process to create some unique and unusual affects. But this aside I achieve my goal of getting a realistic looking scene together and would like to further develop it in the future.

Also as a side note I would of added in god rays but since my directional light was turned off and I used spot lights to simulate the directional light, I placed these outside the windows for more control of the light this meant I was unable to use the function for god rays in the directional lights. But I would like to review and change this to improve my work.

Post process

Post processing

To change the look of my scene I implemented a post process volume into my level and used this to manipulate the values of saturation and colour balancing. I used this to give the scene a darker tone with hints of red, this drastically changed the look of my scene as you can see in the before and after images below but I believed that it looked better without and decided to take my screen shots without it.

Lighting

Once my living room was set up I then decided to look at my lighting and there placements for nice affect. I began with 2 spot lights which I placed inside the lamps id created earlier I then toggled the lights so that the light inside wasn’t too bright since lamps are not generally very bright and are used to light corners of rooms and such these turned out very well I thought and didn’t over take the room and seemed not over power the other lights.

The next one on the list was my rooms main light so the one in the center of the room on the ceiling which is the most common of all the lights, this was done with again a spot light I was going to use a point light but I thought that it would have too much of an impact on the room and since I wanted the room to be dim to more pronounce the light shining in through the windows to create a really nice atmospheric feel to my scene.

Next on my list was to create the light that would be entering my room through the windows this could have been done with the directional/skylight but I had already messed with the settings on this to create a night time scene so I decided to use to spot lights instead both placed outside at the same angle facing their own respective windows this would create an identical light shine across the both which is the same result I would of got with the directional light. This gave me some trouble since it was difficult to get a good balance on the intensity of this light so it didn’t fill the room and instead just shone in adding some contrasting light which was its main purpose.

After this was my final light which would be the fire place, I decided to go for a particle light since it looked really nice and since this was just a demonstration of understanding lighting I thought it would be good, I know that its memory intensive to have multiple particle lights in a game since its takes a lot of GPU to render each individual sprite but since it was just one it would be fine so I simply made a fire place out of simple geometry and the put in the default fire from the starter content I then proceeded to manipulate the particle so that it gave off more light and made the surrounding space have a tint of orange too it this warmed up my scene before this it felt quite empty and cold but with this addition it really helped things along.

After this I had peer review and asked 3 questions

1. what do you like about my scene

2. what could be improved in my scene

3. can you think of any lights I should include in my scene without affecting the design choice I’ve went for.

1^st peer

1   1.    I like the contrast you have going on between your lights they are all different but don’t look mess.

2   2. I thought even though the lights looked nice together the lamps may be a bit too bright for the rest of the room.

3   3. You have included the most needed lights and got a good affect, if you added anything else it may throw of the balance of your scene, but you could try add god rays to your level.

Due to time constraints I didn’t do much peer review but I believe I got enough information from this one.

After this I went and changed values for the lamps I did this by decreasing the intensity but increasing the attenuation range this made the brightness drop but I increased the range to compensate for the light falloff drop from lowering the brightness, so it was still providing light across the room.

Setting the Scene

Setting up the scene

When I was looking at starting my scene I decided to use a project had already done last year since the rooms were created but not furnished or textured, this gave me correct architectural structure for my room.

From here I went into Maya and set my grid to the same settings used in unreal so furniture I made will fit directly with my room I started by making a table and lamp, the table would  be the center piece of the room I decided to make most of my furniture black as a main colour for a sort of more modern look this also mean that any specular or reflections would stand out more against the black look of the room.

These were the only furniture I made myself the rest I found on a royalty free website since I believed all my time should be focused spent on the lighting since the unit says nothing of the modelling process and so it wasn't important or of any relevance to the unit. This was a design decision I made to help increase the output of my lighting quality.

Once I had gathered all my assets I then began placing them around the room in a way to set up a realistic looking space this would make my lighting once added look that much more believable and authentic. To increase this I took out one of the walls and added in two windows that weren't previously there I then made blind models to fit the gaps so that the light shines through the individual gaps creating a row of lights that will shine through creating a cool effect over the room.

Research

To begin my research I first thought about the kind of room I was going to build and what lighting would be relevant or needed for said room, my idea was for a simple living room because this could have a variety of things in it like lamps for small lights, a fire in a big fire place this is something that could be used with a particle effect used as a light source.

Now that i had my idea I began to research different lights used in the unreal engine, these consisted of;

Point lights

This was a simple light that radiates from its centre in a sphere so it shines in all directions; this could be used for a light that has nothing to block its light like a standard light bulb hanging from the ceiling like what’s common in most households. This has a variety of different options for customization like its radius size or intensity or even colour to get exactly what kind of result I want.

Spot Lights

This is similar to the point light since it is a simple light with the same customization options except for a few and this is where its sets itself apart that and the fact its shape is cone based so it can be targeted like a light that’s point at things, the extra options this has is the radius of the outer cone and inner cone as well as there length which dramatically alter the shadows and intensity of the lights, I believe this is probably going to be my most used light just simply because of the complex things that can be done with such a simple light.

Directional/Sky light

This light is used to simulate the lights created from the sun, this allows the creator to simultaneously light the entire level which is useful for open world levels and games but less useful for interiors since they would be blocked by the ceiling created. Since my level is going to be a room this wouldn't be needed but would still be useful for some light coming in through the windows.

God Rays

God rays are simply beams of light that are visible in the air that are created by viewing lights on certain angles in rooms this would be something I will try to incorporate into my level.

Emissive/Particle Lights

Emissive and particle lights are a lot more niche and not as commonly used lights in game since they take up a lot of GPU especially particle systems these are more used for demonstrations or short scenes, this meant I would try to include one of these to cover more lights in my level and since it’s only a short section I thought the GPU issues wouldn’t affect my small scene.

Introduction

For this unit we were tasked with looking into the lighting method of games and scenes and then implementing this knowledge in some kind of scene or demonstration of our own design.

With this in mind I decided to do a simple room with furniture and then make the room look as nice as I can I already know a fair amount of lighting options available for me in unreal so I decided to show off how I can make lights look rather than just getting different lights to function which is arguably the easier path for this unit.