On the morning scene, my first step was turning off precomputed lighting to avoid baking process, on World Setting. Then I turned on “Generate Mesh Distance Field” to activate the feature of DFAO and Raytraced Distance Field Soft Shadows on Project Setting. I also edited the ConsoleVariable.ini file.

My lighting component was pretty straightforward. There are the light source (sun), skylight, atmospheric fog, sphere reflection capture, exponential height fog, light mass importance volume and post process volume. The one thing I love about Unreal Engine is its ability to produce lighting pass or render passes like conventional rendering but in realtime.

Different Techniques

Dynamic lights is about making all lights to move freely without any baking process. The sun (light source) and the skylight actor must be set to movable instead of static or stationary, so we can make time of day lighting system.

-DFAO or Distance Field Ambient Occlusion and Raytraced Distance Field Soft Shadows, are the solution for achieving realistic shadows when sun hits the meshes. It will give nice raytraced soft shadow for our scene. These features are only available on epic quality and require the project setting ‘Generate Mesh Distance Fields’ (under Rendering) to be enabled.

You can get more info here and there.

HFGI or Height Field Global illumination is the feature I found on Unreal Forum. It’s used for indirect lighting from the landscape. So, if your landscape is colored green, then your mesh above has been influenced by green too. The Kite Demo uses this feature too.

Check out this info.