The Hevedy's custom illumination solution (Technical)
The first solution for UE4 using materials and post process to create fake light probes in order to illuminate zones at low costs and in a total dynamic way.
The lights can be shaped in spheres or boxes but cannot be rotated given the costs of the function, the functions used to be manually managed, now are auto managed by a director that split the world in chunks and each chunks have their lights, after that are injected inside the materials.
Example of a character from Paragon using the custom light solution, features the backface normals lerping for better showcase of the mesh.
Normal shadows control per light, allows to give GI details or fit for character presentations
The light is managed by a manager that direct chunks that auto get lights per area, the system can only render x number of lights at time so this manages the lights active
The light used the sphere masks and box nodes to get rid of the whole system, this is a little example, the actual one goes up 32 different spheres with lerpings
Crytek scene using the custom dynamic light solution inside the materials.
The optional injector to materials using the material based solution, rather than the post process one, saving cost from the whole scene and allowing mobile and VR without PP
Negative lights working in the injected material.
Now the whole lerpings are managed inside custom nodes where the whole spheres are processed in some semi automatic way
Dynamic light solution illuminating the whole scene without use actual lights to lit it
UE4 Epic Matinee Demo - Hevedy Simulated Light
View from given scene using the color probes without actual real lights in use other than direct ones.
Example of a character from Paragon using the custom light solution,