Realistic Basketball Court - Lighting

After making separate UV channels for lightmaps, i'm now starting to create the atmosphere and mood i'm looking for.

I began using the standard UE4 set up with a directional light to act as the sun, but tweaking the environment and skybox parameters myself to try and get the time of day, as seen in the image below.




After referring back to my original images for the lighting and mood I've decided not to use the directional light source as it essentially carpet bombs the scene with light and I need more control over it. Subsequently I've changed to using a combination of spotlights (for emphasis of directional highlights) and pointlights for ambient glows, as this got me closer to the effect i'm striving for. Using multiple light sources is expensive to run, also multiplying light baking times and causing problems when they're overlapping, however the results are a lot nicer and allow for more freedom with aesthetic interests such as cool and warm tones and creating focal points.





















The sky was difficult to get a good result with and I'm still not sure now if it really makes sense to have such a light sky for a night time scene. However I did try making the sky darker and it also didn't look right, making the level feel enclosed and didn't offer any contrast for the framework in front. I looked into how games like GTA portray their night time scenes and they're never pitch black but do seem to use a consistent amount of dark blues. Mine probably does need to be darker but i'm hoping it gives across the impression of light pollution from the city. I Think it's just a case of how else you portray that it's night with the surrounding environment, for example using glowing emissive lights, showing stars etc.

GTA V Screenshot

Additionally to the point and spot lights I'm using a skylight just to soften the shadows and give the slight glow to the reflective elements. I've added some simple surrounding buildings with emissive lights, the skylight s also helping here to give the impression that it's the glow of the city ambiently lighting the basketball court.

I'm using Exponential Height Fog and Atmospheric Fog volumes to further to aesthetic of illuminated city smog.


As you can see below there is some light bleading happening on some of the interior walls, i'm hoping this is just because of the lightmap resolution and I can irradicate it by optimising the padding on my UV islands.

With some pointlights position outside the windows I'm trying to get the effect of the city lights casting through, creating focal points, I'm also intending to make some faint Godrays to emphasise this further.

 More on the lighting soon...