Basics

• Directional Light: Think of this as the “sun.” It has a smaller arrow indicating the direction of the rays.
• Point Light: Gives off light uniformly in a sphere. There are few occasions where a point light will be necessary as it is very costly to use.
• Spot Light: A cone shape light similar to a point light. This should be your most used light actor. You can manually set the outer cone angle to 90 degrees to replicate a full 180 degree light.
• Sky Light: Adds an even amount of light to all surfaces in the level. If you want to boost the entire level, for example, you can add a sky light. A sky light is based on an HDRI cubemap. "SLS Captured Scene" captures your environment to build the HDR cubemap. If you use "SLS Specified Cubemap" you can use a specific HDR lightmap. Cubemap Resolution values will bake more quickly the lower they are. Keep SkyLight mobility set to static.

Special Note

Create a test scene with your specific lighting set-up to test meshes and materials in. This will ensure visual parity across your game. Whenever you change a light’s moveability, rebake the lighting to recalculate light/shadow maps.

Additionally, check Arch Viz Lighting in UE4 for a guide on increasing the Production Light Quality baking levels.

Adaptive Eye or Auto Exposure

Light Maps in UE4

Global Illumination (Lightmass)

Static vs. Dynamic Lighting (Mobility)

Post Processing in UE4

For more information, please look at the Lighting Academy for Unreal Engine 4 by Tillman Milde, Senior Lighting Artist, DICE, on Youtube.

UE4 - Lighting Academy - YouTube