Summary

We have covered a lot of topics in this chapter: the different lighting workflows in Unreal and how they work, how to enable and configure each of them, and what are the best practices to follow. We have explored dynamic lighting, which includes the Lumen system and path tracing, and how they handle GI. We have also learned about baked lighting, how to prepare our scene for baking, and how to perform a bake using either GPULM or CPU Lightmass. In addition, we have discussed the various types of lighting Actors, their settings, and some tips and tricks to optimize them: Directional Lights, Sky Lights, Spot Lights, Point Lights, Rect Lights, HDRI systems, and emissive materials. We have also touched on lighting channels and how they can be useful. In summary, we have learned the basics of lighting in Unreal Engine 5. Now, it’s time to apply these concepts and learn how to actually light an environment. Let’s do that together in the next chapter!