- Say when to reach for Megalights, Lumen, or Lumen Lite — and what each trades away.
- Build a base light rig that reads as a specific time of day rather than "lit".
- Judge a lighting change by measuring it, not by looking at it once.
10:00 · Brief Light gives the hour
A space with correct geometry and correct materials can still feel like nowhere. Light is what tells a body what time it is, whether it is welcome, and where to walk. Today you stop lighting so you can see the model and start lighting so the room means something.
Choosing your light engine
Megalights is the headline: many shadow-casting lights at a cost that used to buy you a handful. It changes what is worth attempting — practical lights in every fixture, light that comes from the actual sources in the room rather than from a rig pretending to be them. What it asks in return is judgement, because "you can afford a hundred lights" is not the same as "a hundred lights is good."
Lumen remains the general answer for dynamic global illumination and reflections: bounce light that responds when you move a wall, without baking. Lumen Lite is the reduced-cost path for when the target hardware cannot carry the full feature — a real consideration the moment your project is heading for a headset, which for several of you it is.
The honest framing: pick the engine from the destination, not from the demo. A piece bound for the LED wall and a piece bound for a standalone Quest are not the same project, and lighting is where that difference bites first.
Light from sources that exist in the room. If there is a lamp in the model, the light should come from the lamp. Audiences cannot articulate why an unmotivated light feels wrong, but they feel it — and it is the single fastest way to make a good blockout look fake.
10:45 · Guided lab Light one room, properly
We light the class blockout together — base rig first, then practicals, then measurement — and you do the same to your Project 1 space.
- Base light rig
Directional light for the sun, Sky Atmosphere and Skylight for the sky's contribution, and height fog for depth. Set a time of day and commit to it — 8am and 6pm are different rooms, and "sometime midday" is not an answer.
- Turn on Megalights and go practical
Enable Megalights, then place lights where the fixtures are. Every practical in the model gets a light; nothing gets a light that has no visible source. Judge from eye height, walking, not from an orbit camera.
- Measure, don't vibe
Open the GPU profiler and take a reading before and after your lighting pass. Note the cost of what you just did. A scene that looks beautiful and runs at nine frames a second is not finished, it is a picture.
- Back up the lit scene
Zip a dated copy named for the time of day you chose. Your Project 1 crit is in two weeks and this is the state you'll build the atmosphere pass on.
12:00 · Workbench Practice, unhurried
No new material. You work on your own file while I circulate — this is the hour where the technique from the guided lab stops being something you watched and becomes something you can do.
- Light your own Project 1 space
The lab used the class blockout. Now do it on the space you are actually submitting, at the hour you chose.
- If you fell behind, catch up here
Say so and I will come to you. Lighting is fast to fix with someone standing next to you and slow to fix alone at 2am.
- If you are ahead, go deeper
Build a second lighting state — night, or lights-off — and compare. Two honest states is a Project 2 requirement, so this is time well spent early.
- Ask the AI TA anything
The tutor on the course site is open all term for questions about how and why. It explains; you build. No agents in the work until Week 9.
- Your scene reads as a specific time of day, and you can name it.
- Every light in the room has a visible source in the room.
- You have a before/after performance reading, not an impression.
- The lit scene is saved and backed up.
1:15 · Crit / share One view, one hour
Everyone shows a single view of their space at their chosen hour, from eye height. One view — the discipline of choosing is part of the exercise. We look for motivation (does the light come from somewhere?), for depth, and for whether the hour is legible without being told.
Homework — due before Week 6
| Task | Deliverable |
|---|---|
| Finish the lighting pass on your Project 1 space at your chosen hour, with practicals motivated by fixtures in the model. | Lit level backed up, plus one eye-height still. |
| Record the performance cost of your lighting pass, before and after. | Two profiler readings noted in your process log. |
Resources
- Unreal Engine documentation — the lighting, Lumen and Megalights sections.
- Project 1 brief — the lighting and atmosphere rubric row you are working toward.