I’ve been building this really cool world inside of Unreal. Since classes started – I’ve fallen back in love with the software, and I’m using it much more outside of work. I chose this cool rock as a base for the environment and began building a series of caves around it. Rock is a difficult material to light, so I tried a series of point lights inside of the space. However, these quickly began to overlap, leading to lighting errors. Instead, I found a particle system with a good emissive range – this allowed lighting to feel natural, preventing the overlapping of traditional lights. Paired with a single directional light, I now had an environment along with an awesome lighting system.

The lighting only looks good in a yellow or blue color. The yellow is a bit harsh, and the blue is a bit soft. For an intangible reason, the yellow looks much more natural than the blue. Going with the yellow color, I’m not cycling through palettes for the NPCs. The walls are brown and dark grey, the yellow light gives them a natural look, and the particle systems create some nice shadows. I love these darker tones, now do I want to stay within the theme, or break them? I’m leaning towards adding in some clashing colors – I think this would be very shocking to viewers and lead to much more interest.