How to Create photorealism lighting in UE5

hello everyone my name is Kim ausha I'm senior lighting artist at Ubisoft and today I'm going to show you how you can create photo realism image in Unreal Engine by using the default light in Unreal Engine 5 there is many tips in Unreal Engine especially in the exposure and the post processing uh also in the lighting that you can allow to create uh an aive the very realistic uh or realism look like what you seeing now so today I will try to show you how you can get the daytime lighting or the overcasting lighting or even the nighttime okay so now uh if we go here and check the daytime as you can see here we have a very nice realism look okay so there is some tips and some secret um and I will try to uncover all the secrets that I know uh to to know how you can achieve uh this uh look okay uh so let's get to started the first thing you have to do there is two thing you have to change it first from the setting the first thing go to the plugin and search for hdri because we're going to use the hdri backdrop okay and just enable and we need to restart it but before to restart the engine you have to go to the project setting and search for rendering and from rendering you have to go down and make sure you enable support Hardware R tracing okay and also high quality translucent reflection okay so just make sure all of this setting is enabled okay and also virtual Shadow map okay and then you have to restart the engine and your engine will be ready so as you can see here I have very very basic uh uh scene just add some trees from Mega scan and Basic Ground so let's try to add the light so the first thing you have to ask yourself from what the light comes from in the in the world so if you can answer this question you will be able to uh understand how the light works so basically the light comes from two sources the First Source is Sky which is called skidome and we call it in 3D it's Global illumination and the Second Source is Sun uh is a is the Sun or the moon so the sky is always exist in the scene or exist on the world so the sky will never disappear but the sun is always visible and then the the sun it goes and then the the moon's coming come on okay so that's mean the sky has has to be always visible and then we can change the intensity of the of the sunlight or the Moonlight is that right okay so if you can set up the ambience uh or the global Ambience correctly in the scene you will be able to get very realism look and this is what we're going to do now so I'm going to go to the lighting and drag and drop hdri okay and just I'm going to push it down here and we'll reduce the size to 1,500 okay and let's go back to the uh to the L viewport and from here I'm going to change the intensity for the scy for the cube map to 100 okay and now it's time to import the uh the hdri so basically you can search for hdri backdrop and from here you can find many uh hdri so we can for example use this one or any other kind of uh hdri okay so I'm going to use this one because I already imported so let's try to find it here okay so here my uh my HDR I imported the only thing you have to do to change from uh should be the normal from texture group to no mid map okay and save it and now it's ready to import it here uh the second thing you have to go to the Skylight and also import it here but you have to change to specific Cube map and import okay this step is very important now we have to put very high intensity uh uh in in hdri to get the specular or the roughness effect on the leaves especially if you are working on the something like in forest or if you have any follow in the scene okay so I'm going to add uh now uh 1,500 okay and as you can see now everything looks too bright so it's time to add uh post processing okay and here is the other secret so the first thing I'm going to do it's uh search for Infinity and make sure yeah your post processing is uh cover a all the area okay and now we have to enable H Auto exposure and here's the tip okay so if you are working uh if you need to achieve the daytime lighting so you can work uh you can put the M EV and the high AV something like nine Okay so it's you see it's dark but the idea here here is the the secret so there is many people they can't get balance between the sky and the environment overall so now the sky looks great but the environment looks dark so now many people they said okay I'm going to add more exposure but if you add more exposure you will get more uh pride in the sky so how we can solve this uh issue so the first thing I just want to make sure that I can get the same uh result by using the ex one the exposure as one okay I will not go for crazy value like five or anything because I don't want to lose uh any details so one is the default value okay if you if you have the night times you can start to add something like 12 but it's going to comes after so now let's say nine okay so how we can get this area brighter without effect on the sky uh intensity so there is uh nice options here I know many of you maybe they never used this before but we can actually go to details and just enable Shadow contrast and mid grade Pi okay in mid gr Pi we we start with one okay and in details we need to have I need to get more details in the scene so let's add 1.3 okay and in the shadow here is the secret let's change this to 0.6 or 0.7 boom now we have the scene it looks matching with the sky right so now we can go back to the hdri and we can uh choose the intensity for example, to have lower maybe lower value okay but because we have two bright sky here and we need to get the the modood like in the daytime so I can keep it thousand 500 okay now we have the Skylight matching with the uh uh with a global illumination now okay so the next step we can first put this in folder okay so now you can try to use the mid uh gray for example one or we can uh bring it back to zero okay so now after we set up the global ambient it's time to add a direction lights okay now the direction light it doesn't matter where you're going to put the direction light okay so we can put the direction light anywhere so from the right from the left from the top anywhere so here you have to put very high intensity like thousand between th000 or 2,000 to get the daytime uh the correct daytime for the SK from the sunlight okay so now I will just move the direction I just need to make sure where exactly the direction light yes here okay and let's move it to this side because in the middle of day the sun should be uh on the top okay so now the sun Direction it looks fine okay for me uh there is an option here so if you want to get some soft Shadow you can change the source angle here to get more soft Shadow but because we are in the uh midle of day so we can keep it as a default value or even we can get more sharp Shadow okay now the scene looks so okay but is not doesn't look the the realistic that we are looking for so the third layer we are looking for is the fog fog also will give us some uh more blending between the background and the the atmospheric okay so I will enable volumetric fog and don't try to go crazy with this value so we can just put this as 0.9 okay and from here we can get something like this okay and if you want to change the start distance we can change the sech distance to make sure that we have some Char uh Point here and only for effect on the background okay so now as you can see the layers and everything looks matching okay and listen we don't do any change on the on the post processing yet the post processing it's the default okay so there is an there is something I always try to check so try to always go to the unlet to see the color of the uh the base color of the acids that you have and try to match it with your final uh effect so if you see too much different that mean your uh scene is not correct or not realism but now as you can see here the color and everything looks natural there is nothing overexposure even the direction light so be careful to not go with very crazy value because it's going to have something more overexposure so I'm always try to have this natural feeling okay as we are in middle of day we can change the temperature to get more a yellow okay something like this should be okay and maybe I will try to oh it's okay we can have some shading here but that's fine that's it's completely fine for me okay now we have more contrast uh I think it's it makes sense as uh midle of day we need to have more contrast from the Sun okay so I will keep it like this okay and now we can start to go to the post processor and start to play with some setting so the setting I always prefer to to work with it's chromatic we can add 0.1 not goes with is a crazy value just maybe 0.1 okay and uh the second thing here also the plor uh limits here if you change this value you see we can get some nice blending on the top but you will lose some uh details here but in the meantime you see the color will get close to the more natural uh look okay so the default value is 0.6 so we can go with 0.3 okay now we can really see the the the M the base color of this element and also we can see the sun effect even if you look at to to this area you can see the natural uh effect okay and now if we move around you see even the ground everything looks very natural if we get close to the leaves looks natural like in real life and this what I was talking about you see this kind of uh uh of specular on the leaves this something was uh very difficult for me to achive because this is the secret to to achive the realism look especially if you are working in something has uh some trees or uh or you are working in the forest okay uh also the secret in the um in the local exposure now uh many of you uh few has some issue to have uh to get some dark shadow in some area so after we tweak this uh this setting now you don't have this kind of uh of issues okay you see this is the default value but here after we tweak this uh this setting okay so now I can uh enable the we can oh yeah we can get something like this to just have some nice effect but it's okay it doesn't matter for me now and it's up to you you can disable the vage uh uh V point or you can keep it 0.2 and three it's up to you okay uh the only thing I always try to tweak it here I go to Mid tune and enable gamma and again okay so sometimes in the forest you need to get this kind of of yellow effect okay so to have this more a yellow you see now we have something similar to the midle of day time I want not to change something here so I can keep the same value oops so yeah I think that's that's it also if you want to get more blue like from the because the sky here it's blue so we can get some blue effect by we can add just a little bit of tend blue blue tend here so turning this off this on now we have this nice plue tend like in the sky so now we are matching the same uh tend color from the sky but I feel it's too much so we can just move it like this okay so now if you start to move your camera we have this very nice look everything looks natural now so you can create your own video and just export it okay so the same principle I used to uh to to create for example the the fogy day the fogy day it's the same uh the same thing but I can change the HDR I okay so the first thing I'm going to turn off uh the direction lights okay and from h i I can use this kind of uh foggy uh image okay so let's try to or yeah I think is a similar so we can use this and from here I will add more blue effect okay and in post processing I just need to reset this value I will remove the direction light for now okay so now we going to go to the uh h i and just add more flu and turn this off turn this on now we get some uh effect but as you can see here uh if we turn this off the cloud is too uh too bright so we can go to the h I and uh change the value to 30 for example now we can start to see the the real Cloud uh effect but compared to the cloud and the sky it's uh it looks too bright is that correct so what we're going to do is we can start first to look at uh maybe add oh not that one we can change the value to uh 800 okay so now it's a bit matching with the sky okay and let's add the fog element here so I will change the fog effect a bit to the top okay now we start to get some uh nice uh foggy and also you can use my high fog the free tools that I shared before you can get from my website uh it's uh it's it's very basic blueprint uh it's called high fog or Misty fog so you can just drag it and drop it in your scene to get this kind of uh of fog and start to control of your fog you can get more more foggy from the top or even keep it like this so now we can really see this kind of realism for the fog but we need to have something more cinematic so we can go to the post processing okay and from here I would prefer to change the value to have uh oops no not that one so um I think uh 9.5 9.5 it's a good value I just need to match the same uh effect but you can really see the Speer of on the leav here it looks very natural okay and the amount of light it's matching with the sky okay uh if you don't have experience uh in the lighting uh I would advise you to search for some reference to start to try to see that some reference and try to match it with uh with the same value okay uh so now I will uh go to the post processing okay and from here I will go to the mid tune and start to move a bit blue now you can see the difference between this and this now we get more cinematic look and here if you want to get more uh uh contrast and that's too much for me uh we can just add a little bit of tendy here and nothing we going to do here so you see here we didn't do any change in the temperature or even in possible processing I don't uh touch anything here but it's up to you you can move it the temperature and now it's time for sure yes you can and add Direction light so I would prefer to add Direction light and let's add the intensity now for 600 okay and from here we can just get some nice light from the from the Sun so just see the difference between this one and this one we get some nice shadow on the ground we can keep it 300 for example now just a little bit of 10 so don't go with very high value for example you see the difference between, 500 and just add this for sure you can keep this because sometime the sun H can be visible from the clouds but if you want to uh achieve this uh realism effect uh as overcasting lights so you can use this now we have this nice look if we check the light everywhere the balance and everything looks very natural okay so it's very simple you see we just use uh using the the default light system in unre engine so we didn't use anything I know some of you already put my sky atmospheric but yeah I just decided to uh uncover some secrets about the uh the realism Lighting in Unreal Engine so the same principles that we use we can for sure achive the night mod so let's try to get the night mod you see this image it looks beautiful so it's like the real it's uh for me it's very uh realistic so now just we're going to disable this for now okay and from hdri I will select one uh of the KN uh HD so from here let's select this now as you can see here we have this uh Sky it for me the ampian or the intensity uh looks okay now 50 or 60 I think 60 it's good okay and from post processing I just need to go with 11 okay to have this kind of dark effect okay and from h i now I'm am going to change the intensity for H to something to like 2,500 to have more intensity okay or I think we can go with uh 11 sometimes uh there is I think this is a bug from Unreal Engine so I don't really know why we have this so it's crazy uh I don't really know what is the problem here but this kind of bugs always happen uh but we'll try to fix it now okay still exists no problem with this okay so now I will turn on the the direction light and we can go something to uh 12,000 to have the night uh color uh the moon uh light color okay for sure the light is not like this so let's try to remove it okay H so weird okay so we can go back to my uh my main uh what's it called level and just turn on this one okay so as you can see see here we have this night mode effect okay so let's see the setting here as I mentioned we have the the intensity 30 okay and the Skylight intensity is, 500 okay so if we turn off this one and the fog we can see the same uh the same fix that I was talking about we need to get this kind of effect on the leaves from the global Ambience so that's why I put the intensity now it's 1,500 okay and also the color there is difference between this color and this color Okay so let's try to keep it blue and by adding the the direction light and uh exponential fog we can get this but be careful when you use this uh this idea your light has to go with very high intensity so for example if you just put uh this maximum intensity it will never be visible so you can add thousand or maybe more to just start to see this uh intensity because we are using now the the real value like in real life okay so that's pretty much for uh for the lighting uh uh you can start to test this and try to uh test it with different time of day uh you can get the same uh same effect by using the sunset okay or the sun even the sunrise so the sunrise we can go with something like this okay so yeah that's that's it uh there is nothing that special but as I mentioned before the the secret it's all about how you can tweak the setting uh oh still exist here sometime happen with me so the oh let's try to move this okay so as I mentioned the main idea here to try how to how you can tweak the uh the value for the exposure and uh the local Ambience so I wish you like this video please don't forget to subscribe my YouTube channel and share this video if you like it and see you in next video thank you bye-bye

Channel: Karim abou shousha

Views: 20,846

Keywords: Karim Abou Shousha, كريم ابو شوشة, أنريل إنجن, Unreal Engine, Unreal Engine 4, Unreal Engine 5, ثري دي, 3D, انريل انجن 4, game engine, صناعة لعبة, انريل انجن, unreal engine 5, ‏‎Lighting Artist, ‏‎lighting artist

Id: Qv4sbYKwHDY

Length: 31min 18sec (1878 seconds)

Published: Wed May 01 2024