To begin implementing lighting, I began with the crepuscular/god rays, ticking the box in the directional light details allowing for the light bloom shafts to show in engine.
I needed to position and angle the directional light appropriately for the light to beam through between the blinds. When happy with the positioning I began experimenting with colours and shades which I had visualised using early on for the lighting.
I began toying with pinks and oranges, as the shade of my skybox in-game, due to the time in which my game is set, is an orange/pink tone. This had been a plan from earlier design units and so I also consulted peers whilst toying with the shade of light and through my own vision and peer comments I ended up settling on a more orange tone as opposed to the, I feel as though there is a very slight hint of pink remaining, but was ultimately happy to use the shade decided on.
Screen grabs can be seen below;
I had not initially accounted for the light bloom shafts also shining through the bars within the exterior prison cell walls, though the beams coming through the cell exterior, and also splitting between the physical interior bar structure also at certain angles, I feel displayed nicely.
Screen grabs specifically of the cell light shafts can be seen below;
Along with the god rays, my research drove me to create my own custom mesh based god rays utilising a YouTube tutorial mentioned earlier in this blog., these in combination with the god rays themselves allow me to give the effect that there is still light piercing through the windows whilst the user cannot actually see the god rays themselves.
This took some careful positioning and colour/tone work once imported into Unreal Engine, to which extent I have duplicated the mesh and material, to create a softer tone, to gain a perspective on how harsh or soft I would like the manually created god ray to be in scene.
I feel the softer iteration of the god ray setup gives a more respectable effect than the more solid, harsher setup, though this may well have its own use at another point in the design process.
They can be seen both alone and through god rays when god rays coming through separate windows cannot be seen.
My scene lighting is made by largely static lights, apart from the movable, dynamic lighting present used to pierce the blinds and actually throw shadow onto the walls behind and to the side of the desk, this was a decision made due to the fact that the shadows did not bake onto the walls at all when building lights, no matter the quality level when using stationary or static lights.
As as result I used movable lights, which give a more real time lighting output, this of course may strain a CPU more likely a GPU in a much more crowded area, but within a smaller area it does not hinder the performance or my scene whatsoever.
For the more basic interior lighting, that which does not necessarily have to be piercing through holes or illuminating surfaces, I have used a mixture of point lights, spotlights and also a single point light blueprint set to flicker in one of the cells.
I have been experimenting with the attenuation radius for all types of lights used, both inner and outer cone angles when using spotlights and intensity levels so as to not light the office too much, yet to light it appropriately enough for it to be obvious to a user or viewer that the room is indeed an office/prison type building.
I decided to leave the desk lamp illuminated so as to illuminate the items on the desk and also to allow it to be shown in scene, as from certain angles, the desk is almost too dark to be seen, though this is intentional, as per the dimly lit vision.
The desk lamp needed some more attention to the attenuation radius and intensity than other lights within the scene, as not only is the desk a focal point, but I needed to make sure the spotlight could appropriately light enough of the desk to show the meshes I had created for the scene.
Spotlights, seen above, were used to cascade some light downward on the walls and to bring a bit more visibility to the area itself.
Show above are the detainment cells, with point lights used to light each, though I feel not too strongly, appropriately for the scene and also avoiding any lighting errors being caused by larger attenuation radius measurements.
As mentioned above, the desk lamp was illuminated to allow for illumination of items on the desk, with this in mind, the attenuation radius and inner/outer circles needed to be carefully manipulated to give a realistic amount of light to the desk.
As can be seen throughout my screenshots, there are also a number of dust particles set up through the scene, five in total reaching from one end of the room to the other. These are customisable in their own right, but I have chosen to leave them as they are as my scene requires a more realistic, natural ambience.
I feel the dust particles give me that ambience necessary to push the realism within my level, staying subtle and not showing up too much, especially where there are not necessarily lights present in the scene. If I wanted I could make them more prominent with ease vie duplicating and editing the materials used, either in Unreal itself or in Photoshop.
From this point, I would be consulting my peers to gain some insight from fresh eyes through peer feedback questions and answers as usual and attempting to make changes based on the feedback given.
In tandem with this, as my deadline looms, I would be taking high resolution screenshots, at 4K and higher resolution to try to showcase my scene and would also be creating a video capture sequencer, to render out a video clip to showcase my scene alongside the high quality screenshots.
