Dynamic Lighting from Emissive Materials

Hello :slight_smile:

Is it possible to do this in UE4.11? Don’t think adding Dynamic Lights to each Emissive Projectile is gonna be performance friendly.

The discussions I’ve come across are all for older versions involving a “hackish” method with ConsoleVariables.ini, so I’m wondering if I’ve been missing out on anything, since there hasn’t been any mention of this by other users for UE4.11.

Visual on Effect to acheive

That link uses the experimental Light Propagation Volume which has not seen a lot of love and i would not rely on it for your tech too much.

If we are talking a small amount of projectiles then having attached lights may not be too bad, just keep the attenuation low, turn off all shadows, and clean them up properly afterward. This would be quite simple to test so maybe try it out and see what’s what.

Alternatively you could do some shader tricks like attach a sphere around your projectile with a material that volumetricly-ish brightens the scene behind it. Would only affect things seen through it but could give a feel of light around it.

I have used quite a number of lights in a similar situation and come out fine. Just optimize them.

Hi! Thanks for replying :slight_smile:

What’s a good estimate on “small amount”? Would 100-150 projectiles max at any given point in time be considered small enough?

I may end up going with the volumetric trick you mentioned if 100-150 is too much.

Hmm, if they are close together (like firing quickly from a single source) then you could produce lights for only every 3rd or such. Honestly it would be good to have a fallback like the material effect for lower end systems anyway, maybe a mix.

Note that there will be a cost for transparent rendering (overdraw) on the material version as well so of plenty of testing.

Hmm, alright I see. Thank you for your input! :slight_smile: