Unreal Engine 4: Beginners Guide To Lighting

A practical guide to understanding lighting in Unreal Engine 4.

What you'll learn
A fundamental understanding of how to install the unreal engine and use its interface
What are the different lights that are available to use and how to use them
How to light full production ready levels, both from a static perspective and real time
How to problem solve quality issues with your lighting
The ability to understand and debug lighting errors inside of Unreal Engine
Requirements
A PC or MAC that is capable of running the Unreal Engine
Description
Lighting inside of Unreal Engine is hard. Not only are there literally hundreds of options for controlling lighting, but there are multiple menus for controlling the lighting that you might not even know about. This can leave you feeling overwhelmed. What light to select, how to use it, and when to use it seems impossible to wrap your head around. 
What really would be useful is a systematic approach to explaining the different lights and how to use them inside of Unreal. You would understand the different menus and options that affect the lighting. Finally, you would take all that knowledge and use it in real scenes to apply what you just learned in a practical way. 
This course is designed to do just that for you. In this course we will be covering the whys of the lighting system inside of Unreal engine. This course will give you practical understanding and knowledge of how to set up your lighting. Then you will be guided through case study scenes that will use the knowledge you just gained to light full production levels. Finally you will have access to a long list of common issues and fixes that can appear when working with lighting inside of Unreal engine. This course will leave you with not just an understanding of how to light your scenes in Unreal engine but the confidence to understand what will result in the best quality and performance for your project. This course is built to help you stop struggling with understanding lighting and finally master the concepts of creating great lighting inside of Unreal engine. 

Overview

Section 1: Welcome

Lecture 1 Overview of Course

Section 2: Getting Started with Unreal

Lecture 2 Section overview

Lecture 3 Installing Unreal Launcher

Lecture 4 Installing the proper unreal engine version

Lecture 5 Setting up a project in the Unreal Engine

Lecture 6 Unreal Engine Quick Layout overview

Lecture 7 Navigation and Manipulation in Unreal Engine

Lecture 8 Congrats! : Review what you learned

Section 3: The basics of lighting in Unreal Engine

Lecture 9 Section overview

Lecture 10 The different types of lights in Unreal

Lecture 11 Creating a test scene for our lighting

Lecture 12 Building our Test Scene Lighting

Lecture 13 Congrats! : Review what you learned

Section 4: Breaking Down the Systems

Lecture 14 Section overview

Lecture 15 Adaptive Eye and its effects on lighting

Lecture 16 Static Lighting / Stationary Lighting / Movable Lighting

Lecture 17 Cleaning up our test scene

Lecture 18 Engine Scalibilty settings and its effects on lighting

Lecture 19 Build settings : Lighting Quality and its effects on quality

Lecture 20 Congrats! : Review what you learned

Section 5: Lighting Test Scene: Static Lighting

Lecture 21 Section overview

Lecture 22 Setting up our test scene for static lighting

Lecture 23 Lightmaps

Lecture 24 Lightmap resolution

Lecture 25 Lightmap Optimization and Scale Preview

Lecture 26 Lightmass / Global Illumination / Swarm Agent

Lecture 27 Lightmass Importance Volume

Lecture 28 Moveable Objects in Static Lighting

Lecture 29 Congrats! : Review what you learned

Section 6: Stationary Lighting / Moveable Lighting

Lecture 30 Section overview

Lecture 31 Getting Started with Stationary Lighting

Lecture 32 Shadow on Movable Objects from Stationary Lighting

Lecture 33 Setting our scene up for a Moveable light / performance considerations

Lecture 34 When to use a movable light

Lecture 35 Congrats! : Review what you learned

Section 7: Workshop Case Studies

Lecture 36 Section overview

Lecture 37 Adding content to our Case Study project

Lecture 38 Downloading the Case Study scene

Lecture 39 Installing the Case Study Base Map

Lecture 40 Case Study: Baked day time lighting : Preparation

Lecture 41 Case Study : Baked day time lighting : Setting up our scene

Lecture 42 Case Study: Baked day time lighting : Adding Skylight and refining

Lecture 43 Case Study: Baked day time lighting : Fog and Reflections

Lecture 44 Congrats! : Review what you learned

Section 8: Case Study: Real Time Lighting

Lecture 45 Section overview

Lecture 46 Real Time Lighting setup

Lecture 47 Distance Field Ambient Occlusion

Lecture 48 Distance Field Shadows

Lecture 49 Polishing our Real time lighting daylight scene

Lecture 50 Night Time Real Time Lighting

Lecture 51 Congrats! : Review what you learned

Section 9: Common Issues and Fixes

Lecture 52 Section overview

Lecture 53 Why is there shadow splotches on my static mesh?

Lecture 54 Seams in between modular meshes

Lecture 55 What does this red X over my light mean?

Lecture 56 Overlapping lightmap uvs : Warning message

Lecture 57 Lightmass Portals

Lecture 58 IES Light profiles

Lecture 59 Light Shafts / Bloom

Lecture 60 Emmisive Lighting

Lecture 61 Congrats! : Review what you learned

Section 10: Conclusion and next steps

Lecture 62 Conclusion and next steps

Is looking to understand how to light scenes inside of Unreal Engine 4,Curious about the technical knowledge of lighting so you can make better informed decisions,Looking for the ability to make smart choices about lighting that lead to great final results,If you're looking to finally get a grasp of how to make great lighting and improve your art and skillset