Tools: Unreal Engine, Photoshop

In the Fall of 2019 I enrolled in CGMA's “The Art of Lighting for Games” course. This course demonstrated a practical approach to in-game/real-time lighting within the context of a production pipeline.

The topics I learned include the following:

• Lighting considerations / reference/ mood

• Sky light / Sky dome

• Lightmass importance volume

• Global Illumination

• Runtime vs. pre-computed lighting (baked lighting)

• Direct vs. indirect lighting

• Post Processing Volume

• Reflections (spherical and box reflection captures)

• Warm vs. cool lighting

• CLUT

• Dynamic conditions (room vs. character lighting)

• Physically-based Rendering (PBR)

With products such as NVIDIA’s RTX platform coming into view, the need for baked lighting is likely to be less in the years to come. However, I believe that understanding the fundamentals and gaining hands-on experience is extremely important.

(Original models and textures created by Unreal Technologies)

Copyright © Adrian Daniels, 2004-2021