(Here’s the master material I use in UE4. Nothing too fancy just the Base, MRE, Normal, Translucent and Emissive input with some tint tweaking, roughness adjust, opacity strength and panner if needed. For decals I use another master material.)

Lighting

The funny thing about the lighting in the scene is that this is my first time I really get in touch with lighting. That’s where I learned maybe the most.

I started my lighting with getting the right angle of my directional light and then adjusted the sky sphere to get the right time of day regarding the position of the sun. Then I added a sky light to capture a little bit more light and make it a bit brighter. The next step was to add static lights at the main light sources (roof lamp etc.) to get natural shadows from them. At this stage you got often times some problems with too dark areas. These can be lit by using some static lights with a really low value and turning shadow casting off – just to imitate some bouncing light and to have a better fall of by the light itself. When it comes to lighting always think about your props who emits light like the tactical laptop I created. This asset got a bluish monitor which means that the surrounding objects get a slightly blue tint. This helps to sell your scene much better and give it some nice contrast. Working from the big to the small lights helped me a lot to create a believable look. In the end I’ve made some minor tweaks and adjusts in the post processing volume. Keep in mind that you always take care with post processing effects because it can bring your scene to a complete different look very fast.