How to make your lighting more realistic in shadowmap

[pobammer (HowManySmall)]

Holy mother of god that looks great.

[Headstackk (Stacky)]

Great tutorial! Have been looking something like this.

@Lolaphobia

The last part of this tutorial I’d like to draw on is skyboxes, and how finding the right skybox makes your lighting so much more immersive and realistic, here I found a good skybox to suit the morning glow of the scene, and you can see how it enhances the realism of the lighting.

Do you have any suggestions on finding good skyboxes apart from the library? Maybe any developer that create really great skyboxes or any common skyboxes?

[Lolaphobia]

Generally if you look up something along the lines of what your going for you’ll get a pretty good result. For example “afternoon sky” is a good search key to find good skyboxes for that kind of setting. I also look for ones that are real life skyboxes as it gives the map a more realistic feel.
Hope this helps!

[MountVulcan]

Thank you so much for creating this post! it’s important to know just how important lighting is in a scene and it has proven very useful for me.

[revcane120alt]

With the new grass decoration feature coming, the lighting looks even better with this lighting and the grass.

[bigcrazycarboy]

Super great tutorial, nice results.

[Antiael]

I’m going to put this into my game. Much love.

[Elttob (dphfox)]

I’d be wary of using any ShadowSoftness below around 0.15 - if you make it too small, your shadows start to appear ‘aliased’, especially along diagonals. 0.15 still makes for a nice crisp look without exposing the aliasing, from my own testing

[iamtkl]

Amazing, I’ll try this lighting in my game.

[Lolaphobia]

Yeah, I can see that, one thing I didn’t mention is that with the varying cloud levels you can increase the softness relative to the overcast scene, but yes it depends, I personally prefer 0 as my artistic lighting works with the sharp shadows, that’s why I put it in the tutorial, however as you say 0.15 works great as well and in cases can avoid the aliasing

[sylvnce]

Oh. My. God.

[Arstheking_Me]

Thank you dude!
This is so helpful

[Crazedbrick1]

This may be off-topic, but are those roads in those screenshots decals?

[TheOfficialSharky (Sharky)]

Awesome! I’ve been trying to find night shaders now I can use them!

[bigcrazycarboy]

No they’re not, they’re textured meshes. The meshes were spliced correctly so the collision mesh would fit well

[ppwwppw2 (Preston)]

Hey great job one question how did you get the trees to be so realistic.

[tomsterBG]

@Lolaphobia

I hope you’ve found this tutorial helpful for your future projects, below I have the place shown in this tutorial with the lighting and other parameters set for you to use as a template!

In the tutorial I didn’t see anything about SunRaysEffect so I’d hope that you add it (I already know it but it would be helpful for others who are reading this tutorial)!

[bigcrazycarboy]

Trees were realistic because they’re a mesh with a leaf texture on them. The mesh itself is composed of only bent planes, and the texture on those planes is the branch and the leaves on it. It makes for a pretty nice effect when you make the mesh transparent and the texture visible.

[G8Max]

One con about having ShadowSoftness to 0, is that though it is more crisp, it will be pixely up close which might ruin the realism a bit.

[ReversedLua (khdreams)]

Quite Amazing. This may help in the future