My main engine job during this project was to light the scene. This process has been extremely iterative and experimental as I am a complete beginner when it comes to the lighting workflow in UE4. That being said I am extremely pleased with how the level was lit in the end even after scrapping and starting from scratch many times, I feel that this process has allowed me to get the lighting to a state that I could be proud of. I started by creating a directional light from a dark scene and tweaking that until it was 100 percent where I needed it to be before introducing secondary lights like sky lights and point lights to further enhance areas of the scene. I found that I was able to better control my shadow density and fall off by altering indirect lighting intensities as well as including a post processing volume. I had hit a stage where I needed to add some cooler tones to the level to help contrast the warmth and bring back the original diffuse maps on the textures. This is where post processing really shows its strengths because I was able to utilise global illumination to cool the shadow areas whilst adding some UE4 built AO to add that extra piece of realism as well as other colour and exposure related settings to get that healthy balance of light/dark/warm and cool. The inclusion of lanterns and torches really helped break up the more extravagant dark areas with some light interest without becoming too over saturated and difficult to look at whilst being able to add some nice bloom and light shaft effects. Overall, there is still a lot for me to learn when it comes to lighting but at this stage, I feel that I have done the best of my current ability and will definitely pursue this area more in the future projects as well as over the summer.
