Sky lights in Unreal capture both direct and indirect lighting in your scene. In this introduction to sky lights, Tom Sirdevan, look developer and lighting artist, shows you how to use an environment map, aka cube map, lat-long map, HDR map, or light map, to provide an essential component of CG lighting in everything from video games to films to visualizations.
- [Voiceover] In the early days of 3D video games,…unlit lighting mode was all you had,…and in a way this equates to a single ambient light.…In the context of lighting you can think of it…as everything being uniformly lit.…In other words, as a uniform ambient light.…The real world, however,…is not uniformly lit.…We need to vary the intensity in color…as a result of both direct and indirect lighting.…An environment map is the easiest way to do this,…and as I'll demonstrate,…it can simulate both direct and indirect lighting.…An environment map is a term that covers both…cube maps and lat-long maps,…and Unreal supports both of them,…although you're encouraged to use lat-long maps.…
Lat-long maps are also called HTIR maps.…HTIR maps, HTIR light maps,…and there are probably other names…out there as well.…Whatever the name, lat-long maps…are authored to map a 2D image to a 3D sphere,…much the same way that a regular old map…that you'd use to find your location maps…to a 3D sphere that is our planet.…The environment map I'm using for this scene…
Author
Tom Sirdevan
Released
7/6/2016- Direct lighting
- Indirect lighting
- Creating a sky with Blueprint
- Deferred shading
- Dynamic sky and sun
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Video: Skylights and environment lighting