All language subtitles for Environment_01

Hello, and welcome to the next lesson in our
little serious here.

So,

Today is the time where we actually start digging
really into some good stuff here.

So before we going to do that,

I just want to give a huge shout out to our
sponsors

because wanting to work on these things. It is
really important to have proper environments,

proper content to actually do all the things that
we would like to do.

So, our first sponsor is real biomes and it's this
one here.

So this is the exterior that we that we will be
working with.

Then we have Reno's Diner from decagon
Studios

which is used for the interior space that we
have.

We have Rosie's Restaurant / Diner from solo
mode which

is the exterior that we use for the diner building.

And then we also have the desert gas station by
Joachim sticks on.

So huge shout out big,

thanks to sponsoring this content for us to work
with and this is the scene here.

So we have a really nice and big open
environment to do as we please with.

And we do have the two buildings down here.

So we have the gas station with the car

and we do have the diner.

With the interior here.

and right now like this is a little bit like all over
the place which is to be expected because

I did go in and just like, delete a bunch of things
as well. Mostly in terms of the lighting,

so,

what we need to do is we need to just like step
by Step

start sort of rebuilding what we actually want
here.

But before we really worry about any of these
interior spaces and all that.

The first thing that we kind of need to do is we
just really need to

do what I call like an analysis pass.

So this is usually like one of the most important
things and it will help you

down the line to make sure that everything
works in a consistent way.

So one of the biggest tips in that sense that I can
give to anybody as like,

if you work with bald content, like Marketplace
content,

or even with your own content,

I think it's always really, really important before
you start the actual actual lighting work too.

Do like a quick sanity check on everything,

you know, like make sure that everything is a
clean base.

Start building on.

And one thing that is really important in here.

And we haven't really talked about this much
before because we did

like the portfolio rendering stuff and all these
kinds of things.

However, working with a proper environment.
Now,

all these things become a lot more important.

So what am I talking about here?

So this has been really important with static
baked lighting as well.

It was not as important with Dynamic lighting
before and unreal because

unreal did not really have real-time Global
illumination.

However, now that we have it with Lumen,

it changes the things quite drastically.

And what I'm talking about here is like, diffuse
color or base color balancing.

Like,

because we have to understand that based on
the color, an object has the way.

Reflects the lighting,

it varies a lot and not only do we need to make
sure that our materials are physically plausible

but we also need to make sure that we have
enough range in our colors so we can sculpt

the lighting nicely and we also have some room
for some potential color grading on top.

And there is a bunch of things that are quite
interesting.

For example,

like the are from a physically based rendering
point of view values that are just impossible,

like, we call them physically impossible and that
is pure black. And pure white,

there is really nothing and like like,

let's not start a discussion about vantablack
here but there is

There's no real materials that are.

Were black or Pure White,

like even if you expose it correctly and if you
measure it like even snow is not Pure White,

so snow is actually one of the widest or
materials

that we know what are the darkest is charcoal.

And both of them are neither full black nor full
wide.

So that is one important thing to know because
every material that we have in our life,

it does

Reflect and bounce light. So, if you make
something in,

in your game engine or wherever and you make
it full black,

it means that it bounces absolutely no light.

And that is just not possible. And the same goes
for white,

which means it bounces like everything 100%,

which also doesn't really happen.

So, that's one thing.

But another thing,

and then we can use the buffer visualization
here and go into base color.

Another thing is Is that you kind of want values
to be?

I really like balanced and mostly rather flat,

because you want the lining to add the variation,
and the spice and all that.

And here for example,

this is quite great because we can see that
overall everything is rather low contrast,

but we do have a little bit of like the Reds here.
Did they pop quite well?

But it is not super extreme.

And if we look at this stuff here,

we can also see that this is like, everything is
rather flat.

And if we look at this texture information, it is
rather flat.

And to be honest, this is exactly what you want,

like here. Like, you don't want a million of detail
in your in your base color textures.

You kind of just want this to come from all the
different

texture maps that work together to create?

Something good.

Now, you may say like oh but there's like quite
some dark spots up here.

And if I do remember correctly,

this is actually wetness here.

So I think there is some sort of like are we can
see it.

I think it's a little bit unfitting here to have this
wetness,

but the funny thing is not sure if you have seen
it but there is the Australia content.

In the marketplace.

Just going to.

Pick this up here quickly.

So it's this one.

And this one is actually from a good friend of
mine, Andrew.

She used to be my art director on Star Wars and
he has these Cliffs here.

Like these cliffs.

And he uses these wetness masks because
there is a river

and it like fits the environment and all that kind
of stuff.

And the funny thing is like, this guy,

he is really, really good at what he does.

And this content pack is one of the best
examples and it's free, so that's great.

It's one of the best examples.

How to balance your textures, how to set up
content and all that,

because this guy he really knows how to do it.

And it is a lot of these Concepts that are in here
is how we did things on Star Wars as well.

And the Anything is that?

I went through this environment and the way that
some of these objects are set up,

the way that the textures are balanced.

It is exactly how the rural Australia content has
been built,

which is not a bad thing. It's a good thing
because that is sort of like how you should do it.

It was just a little bit funny to me to see this
because like it's the same

kind of wetness effect that Andrew had used in
his stuff too.

And I was like when I saw I was like,

okay, I noticed I noticed.

So

Coming back to the colors here.

When you have something that is wet,

the diffuse usually gets darkened.

So that is why you have this more contrast here
and that is fine.

But again,

overall everything is rather flat and that is what
you want to because when when epic that the

the Valley of the ancient stuff they had a little
production breakdown from it as

well and they said like that some of the mega
skin textures. For example,

they were not balanced as well as They could
have been.

So they actually had like issues where the GI for
example

was like two-week or it wasn't like a saturated
enough.

So they had to revisit their content with the new
technology available

to make sure that it actually works and looks the
way it does.

So they had to fix it via texture balancing and
Something that is just

really important to know when you work with
your lighting setups.

You really want to make sure that your textures
are all.

Well balanced everything is like working the way
it should.

So so that it works well.

And just looking at this quickly again.

I think this is great, this this works. Well,

there are some some values that are on the
darker side, but then again,

they're also like rather dark materials.

And one really good tip that I can give to to.
Everybody is like, if you don't know,

just basically take your textures do like a quick
like snip here and then put them

into Photoshop and use the histogram analysis
to just see where you are.

So in like this case,

for example, you know,

just like take the Snipping tool

Snip it.

Copy it.

And then like,

just go

Photoshop.

Paste this in.

And now if you go here to the histogram,

you just go to luminosity and you can see that
we have

a mean of 212 median of 214 and that is rather
bright,

which this is. So this is something where we say
like yep, that's fine.

So for for darker stuff or like medium stuff,

you kind of want to be around 100.

This is not.

Scientifically proven or anything.

This is just something that based on my
experience I have isolated as a decent value.

So let's just have a look here. This is probably a
bit on the darker side.

But let's see what we get here.

So this is 120,

and this is great.

This is absolutely great because you have to
see, like 128 is sort of, like, medium gray.

And personally,

I balance a lot of my

Materials that are more on the darker side
around like 100 to 110.

So this is absolutely perfect because it will give
us a lot of Bounce lighting.

We have some decent saturation going on here.

And the problem is that if you would download
a material like this from Ms, for example,

like A lot of the times not always,

but a lot of the times you kind of like get
something like more like this.

And you can see, then we're like on 75 and 75 is
really dark.

It means that there will not be a lot of Bounce
from it and all those kind of things.

So this is just something where I do like my
sanity checks.

And again, there will be a lot of materials that are
potentially around like 85 95,

but I think like,

around hundred is usually the sweet spot for me
even

though if a material Tyrael seems rather dark.

And I think this is quite interesting looking at
this because

it does not look like super bright here either.

All right.

So it feels dark in comparison to a lot of these
but it is not too

dark like by no means and we have a good
overall value.

This one,

probably different story. I would assume that it's
more like around 80 or 70.

So let's just see

Then again the these materials like it's this like
roof thingy that they

have to like like I think it has like tar in it or
something as well

and they use like a burner to put it onto the roof.
So I think our we just yeah.

So here we like 97 so still very, very good and for
comparison on Star Wars.

The texture balancing for Darth Vader was 53 in
the median.

So, if I put this here,

you can see now we're at 60.

And I'm just going to put this down a bit more.

So,

this is basically the full black of Darth Vader and
it doesn't look full black in the texture

but we need to have some sort of information to
to have it, represent properly.

And then we also had like some decent tone
mapping on top of it.

So

That is why he looks really nice and black.

But so overall, we can say, this is some working
texture balancing here. Same goes for this, like,

none of this is like really too dark here.

So that's, that's all right. I want to quickly check
this value here just so I can be sure.

And what kind of range we are here.

And maybe we will.

Look at it, alter it a bit, we'll see.

So here again,

so this is 110, this is great.

So it really like sometimes our brain gets fooled
by. In this case,

the fact that everything else is so bright.

So it's not necessarily that this is so dark. But all
this stuff is just really bright.

And that's okay.

So, we just need to double check.

Because, again, like I said our brains, they,

they can get fooled by this.

And then we just don't really know.

Always good to double-check.

Now with that sort of out of the way,

what I would like to do is like I would like to just
really do a clean slate for this so I'm going to

clean this up and say like yep I have I haven't
really nothing

in here so I can do whatever I want to make this
work.

So let's go and check and

first of all,

I will completely delete the post process volume.

If it.

Yeah,

cool.

So,

going to get rid of the post-process volume here
to make

sure that there are no like settings that I did,
I don't like,

or like the basically saying this is quicker than
going through the post process volume and just,

like, turning everything off that has been said
before.

Or like something like that because like,

I don't know.

So let's make sure that this works the way it
should.

Then let's see. What type of fog we have in here.

So we do have an atmospheric for up if an
exponential height fog.

And for now, I'm just making sure that the
atmospheric fog.

Uses,

default settings here.

And I will turn it

off.

and you can see how it has quite an effect,

not only on the clarity of our Sky Box but also
just like

Everything sort of it affects the colors so we can
see here, like if we turn it off for example, right?

Like our Sky becomes a lot more blue and the
same.

To our GI as well. And when we do this it like
fades it a bit.

So it does also have quite a significant effect
here on our lighting,

so I'm going to turn this off.

I have the exponential height folk. Here,

we're using volumetric fog, not a lot is
happening.

And we just going to turn this off as well.

We can actually see that it is tweaked in a way
here where there's not a lot happening.

So again just making sure we have a clean slate
here.

We go into our directional line.

We are movable we are on 9 lakhs because this
project

has not been set up to use physical values.

However,

I did set it to the EB 100 stuff already like the
extended Manasa T,

luminance range and in the project settings.

So it is set up in a way that we can start using
physical values,

which we will be doing

I'm gonna.

Delete this though.

And just start all over.

And then we have our sky here.

And this is interesting.

I'm going to delete this.

Here we have our Skylight set to movable
capture. See there's like some color set up here.

Now, it has recaptured with Adara, with a black
sky. So that is what is happening here?

It's a bit interesting.

Why we still have this glow?

Very interesting.

Oh,

I think it was

No.

Well in any case it will be fixed rather soon.

So this is just like stuff where I sometimes don't
know what is happening

because this was not like something that
happened in unreal 4.

And I'm ready for like when because the seems
to be like some still cash lighting from

Lumen or something so like you can see when I
turn it off and just really goes away.

And when I turn it back on,

it kind of like comes back.

So

Looking at this.

Let's see.

How we do this?

So I have a material here which is my sky Master
material.

I will create an instance of screen for this.

And then classic move.

As always,

I will go into the engine content. I will type
sphere.

I will grab my editor's fear here.

and,

Let's turn off all the shadow casting.

Then apply my sky material here and we can see
beautiful emissive light source.

And upscale this to 15,000.

And now we can see that we have this sort of
thing here.

And now, what I need to do is I need to recapture
my skylight.

so we have something ready,

exposure starts matching because we had our
bottom information

was almost black and we had to Bright sky so

that is Thing to remember.

So now we have this

and like I mentioned before I really do like to just
always start with my sky.

And here we have a sum in here.

So sometimes I actually put this into Photoshop
and I added the

sun disk out because this is a very strong light
source as well.

So, like there is definitely a sort of, like,

directionality from the light that is quite strong
when we do this,

so it can help to edit it out. And then like use the
atmospheric fog to basically render a son,

Ask on top of this.

But again, there's like, many, many ways to do
this.

I will just put this up here.

And here we can see that we have this lower
hemisphere.

Corset.

And I will.

Make this black.

Just so we don't have any interference and this
does not really matter.

Because what this does is that basically none of
this stuff from here because I give

I would turn it off, we would get this stuff as
lighting information as well.

I don't want anything to leak and locally
speaking.

Everything will get replaced with the local
bounce. Anyways because we have Lumen,

before we had Lumen, we could use this to fake
bounce lighting and stuff like that.

But we don't need to do that.

So I just want that like all the lighting information
from the

bottom is sort of like erased to not cause any
problems.

So now I haven't really decided where how I
want to rotate this guy and this

depends a little bit. Because, as you can see, we
do have a son here.

So the idea now would be to just bring in a
sunlight because what we need to

do is we need to sort of make it aligned with the
actual Sun position here,

we can have it like a little bit lower potentially
just a tiny little bit but we still need to see

from where it should come and then we will
rotate this guy accordingly to match it up.

So let's get ourselves a son here.

Beautiful.

And what I'm doing right now is I'm just seeing
where

the sun also would hit the interior.

And I'm kind of curious.

About this glass here.

Is it kind of seems almost like the sun is not
really going into?

Into the building here.

Which could be something with the material
setup or with the angle.

So let's just see what happens here.

I would love something that looks great outside
but also it would

be kind of neat to get a little bit of lighting to like
hit inside here.

So we have something here but like it's probably
the angle still that is not yet fully there.

So let's see here.

Yeah,

so it was still just Shadow.

Casting

But again, we can't really make it too low
because our son is not that low.

So we need to sort of find like a bit of a
compromise here.

but I think I do kind of like this where

we have a bit of it exposed.

It's not all in Shadow.

And we are actually automatically pretty.

and with this,

I think we would need to

rotate it just a slight,

a tiny little bit to the left, like a very tiny little bit.

So what I'm using here now is, I will,

I'm using

the arrow from the Sun actor.

To see

how aligned do this. And we can see, like if
I basically Center myself in a way,

we're

like this overlaps perfectly here,

we can see that we are still a tiny little bit off
here. So,

Something more like this.

I think this works.

Looks good.

so,

This is the first thing that we do, right?

Throw these in.

And now,

what I want to do is I kind of want to balance this
out, really, really well.

So you can see here that my brightness is one
which is obviously

not the physically plausible values that we
usually go with.

So what I'm going to do now is I'm going to go
for this fear again here.

Drag the editor sphere in.

And then,

let's see if I can find something for quick
debugging.

Yeah. Yeah,

let's use this one should be fine.

Alright,

so now we have the gray material here, okay?

And what I'm going to do is like,

I'm going to drag this out a bit because I don't
want to get too much like bounce light from

The the ground or something.

I want us to be like yeah, rather rather neutral.

So now let's start this with the physical values
quickly

and just make a super basic setup for this.

so, this son is,

even though my Shadows are not 12:00,

like this is

I don't know maybe like 130 or something like
that.

It's a bit hard to say.

But let's say it's like 1:30. So we like,

and this is a desert environment, right?

So we have a very

Strong son here and a scenario like this.

so, if I go in here,

actually set this to movable

and,

now with this sector moveable,

let's go down here and let's say that we are at
100

Awesome and Lux.

Now, this happens right?

And we obviously get like a lot of issues here.

So before we continue, let's just quickly add a
post process volume.

And just super quickly lock something in. So it
doesn't completely fall apart here.

So do it infinite extend.

Go to exposure have this set

and then like I don't know like 14 or something.

so,

Now.

what we gonna do is we're going to show

The

visualized hdri adoption.

And now we're going to do the thing where we
balance the stops so we can see here.

We have 15,

pretty much clean.

And here we have like nine and remember when
we looked at this I said that you

want to have four to one ratio sort of of Sun
versus sky with a scenario like this.

So that means that we need to sort of go to like
11:00 here.

And to do that.

I will

bring out the instance.

Oops.

And now I'm just putting in something.

So I can see stuff here.

and you can see this,

obviously still looks rather dark

And what we need to do now is I'm using this
one here, it should be build reflection captures.

And I think it actually did rebuild the sky,

but let's continue here.

So you can see now how the Skylight has
updated and we're like on 11.4.

So, we have 11.4 and we have 15.2 here.

So I say that this is probably rather good in
terms of balance.

Strong one here. So let's go in here. Turn that
off.

So now we have our first like balance set.

However,

I think we can still

Pump this. A bit here.

So, what I would like to do is I would go into my
post process volume.

And instead of changing these 213, I'll just do
this.

And now we also get this like hot feeling back,

right?

So we do have some really pleasing values.

And we have a good ratio overall, as well.

So, let's quickly look here.

Whoops.

all right,

and I just want to make sure that we have the

virtual Shadow map turned on.

Yes,

good stuff.

So now what we can do is we can actually if you
want the Shadows to feather a bit more,

We can do that via the source angle.

so, if we look at this here,

You can see how the Shadows get a bit softer, so
kind of like this.

I think this is nice.

Yep,

this works well.

So now we kind of have our first basic really.
Super basic setup here done.

and now, what we can do is,

Did not delete this.

I will

let's just bring in

a basic height folk here and now you can see
that we get this darkening

again and this is of course because our fog itself
is way too dark.

So like The the height fuck is not physically
accurate,

it's like an additive color that is being added to
the scene and all that.

So this color is just no matter what you like, set
it to like, even if I set it to White,

like,

you don't really see it because it's kind of like

Like this is like the brightness from 0 to 1, but
we are in a brightness that is like way way,

way higher like hundreds or something because
of the physical values.

So what we need to do is like let's say we want
the fog to be like this color

and now we need to do like maybe 200 here. You
see it. Just got brighter.

Let's do 1,000.

So there we go. There we go. So, here we start
getting something.

I sadly resets when we like touch these

So that's a bit annoying.

And this is obviously.

Why did it?

okay, I have to hit enter first before it kind of
respects it,

so

not saying this is beautiful at all.

We need to change this a bit.

So, now we can use the sliders here to,

to actually affect this and the brightness stays
mostly the same here.

So we can

Set up something here. That works rather well.

Maybe like this gives it a bit of like this Dusty
feeling.

Let's not over saturate. It that makes it look
really Weird.

Just like a tiny little bit.

Like this.

And this way, we have our first way of setting
this up.

And this is just really the initial basic thing here.

And from that on we can then continue and you
can also see that with these values.

It is very dark in here and this is completely
expected.

This is totally normal because we will need to
Define exposure zones

for like these things where we have interior
exterior. Lighting mixed.

So we gonna start ironing out these Kinks over
time.

So that's it for the basic initial setup in the
session.

Thank you so much for watching and let's
Continue this.

What the next session and do a bit more polish
on this?

Also start having a look at the interior and
different values there.