The problem is (as you can clearly see) that the interior plane has light caustics (I think that’s the correct expression) mimicking the sun’s light and it’s color is a lighter blue due to light that shouldn’t be affecting the plane.
After disabling the directional light and atmospheric fog I got the effect I wanted in the first place, a black surface reflecting the torch’s fire:
I would like to know if there’s a way to edit an instance of the water’s material or any other (better) way to get the dark water effect I’m looking for.
I tried to change the reflection map of the material to see if that was the problem but it didn’t seem to help.
I would be grateful for any insight into the problem or possible solutions.
I ran some tests with the ocean water blueprint you were using, and found that you will get the results you are looking for by changing your Directional Light to ‘Movable’ from ‘Stationary’. Take a look at the images to see if this is what you are trying to achieve.
There are a few things you will want to add to your scene if you do not have them already which can increase the quality of your scene as well as give your greater control over the darker and lighter areas. Be sure to add a ‘Skylight’ actor and set its mobility to ‘Stationary’ as well as checking other options. Use the image below as reference for what to change within the ‘Skylight’ actor.
After adding this actor, you will also want to make sure you have a post process volume in your level, set to ‘Unbound’ and the ‘Auto-Exposure’ set to values you would like when moving from a dark to light area. This is also called the eye-adaptation. I have provided another image with the settings I recommend to start out with for testing your own scene.
Hopefully the combination of these approaches gets you the desired results. If you are still having trouble please let me know and we can continue to troubleshoot.
As soon as I changed the light’s settings the shadow were much more realistic, even in the exterior water plane. I’m going to read the docs about the lighting to better understand what’s going on.
I’ll also read and experiment with the skylight actor next, just wanted to tune in and thank you for the quick answer.
Thanks
PS: Voted up your answer. If there’s a better way to mark it as correctly answered please tell me.
You are welcome, glad I could be of help. Whenever there is an answer that resolves your issue on AnswerHub, you can upvote like you did and then click the circular check which accepts the answer. This marks the question as resolved and will help others who are having a similar issue when searching on the AnswerHub.
