The following post contains the lighting settings and tips for my Wooded Creek showcase to help you replicate them and hopefully improve the lighting in your games!
Lighting Properties
Lighting Effects
Bloom ColorCorrection SunRays
Terrain Properties
The major points for making your game look realistic are contrasting light and shadows. Notice how in the lighting settings my Brightness is set to 6, which is 3x the default brightness. This really makes sunlight pop as you walk passed it, and when you combine it with bloom it gives it a very surreal feel. Personally in this build I went a little overboard with the bloom to prove a point, you will most likely want intense but small radius bloom to avoid making things look smudgy. I prefer a softer look for my shadows, however I achieve it through setting the Ambient setting to a light blue so you don’t take away from the sharpness of the shadows by reducing the softness property. ColorShiftTop is very useful to change the colour of the light emitted by the sun without tinting the entire outdoor ambient. By setting ColorShiftTop to a bright orange, you can make your game feel sunny and warm, by setting it to a blue you can create a night scene or a colder tone for your project.
I hope these settings help you understand lighting better in your games! If you create anything using tips from this post, I’d love to see it!