Material and Lighting Pass

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Today I have made some large steps towards starting to create a more finished looking level as opposed to adding more assets as I have been previously. I have added the Unreal 4 default materials to a large bulk of the assets. These look nice but don't fit perfectly on some assets due to their complexity. Ideally all materials and textures will be my own but I am not against using these defaults as I think the current look is fairly good.

The major addition I have made today is how the scene is lit as I have completely overhauled the lighting from the previous default settings. The bulk of the lighting comes from a skylight which simply illuminates the level so that the player can adequately see the environment. A skylight has no obvious source position and covers a very wide area. Balancing the lighting to achieve clarity whilst still looking like night time scene was fairly tricky but I am happy with how it looks now. The rest of the lighting comes from a directional light which comes from the moons position in the top screenshot. The directional light is set to cast light shafts which adds a lot to the fidelity of the level.

The directional light interacts with another addition to the level in the form of the exponential height fog that I added which also adds atmosphere to the level. I have also added an ambient occlusion modifier in the post process voume.

I have also changed the settings of the Sky Sphere, adjusting the zenith and horizon colour to black and changing the star brightness to create a night time scene. I feel the same way about this default Sky Sphere as I do with UE4s materials in that I am happy with it's current look and functionality and feel comfortable using it instead of making my own. I have chosen this night time set up to create a more dark and moody atmosphere for the level. The sky sphere also allows me to have animated clouds move across it. Currently I am quite happy with the exterior lighting and the atmosphere it provides. The interior is currently not lit at all and I assume that this will be more challenging than the exterior lighting.


Unfortunately as a result of this lighting change and post process volume adjustments my level is starting to cause the frame rate to chug as the current performance make-up is very inconsistent depending on what area the player character is in. Walking through the castle entrance causes the frame rate to drop just below 30 whilst being in the cathedral interior causes the frame rate to hover around the 40s. Other than adjusting the castle gate asset to have a lower polygon count as I mentioned previously I doubt there is much in my power I possibly can do to resolve this issue due to my inexperience in optimising in Unreal 4.

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