Karim Yasser, Senior Lighting Artist on Dune Awakening, Gears of War: E-Day, and 1348 Ex Voto, showcased his new personal project – a practice for gameplay lighting with a new style of post-war lighting.
This type of lighting combines harsh, sharp highlights from fire against a grim and oppressive darkness. The artist explained his approach and outlined the main steps of the workflow. Yasser started by setting up PBL values for Sky, Directional Light, Exposure, and the Tone Mapper, and then proceeded to dynamic effects and added Exposure Compensation Curves. According to the artist, it ensured good visibility in the entire level.
The artist also used Curves to dynamically adjust the values based on the average scene luminance, without getting overexposed highlights or very dark shadows. To maintain consistency, Yasser used FalseColor PPV Material.
For global illumination and reflections, the artist used Lumen with default values in Surface Cache mode for optimal performance. Lumen’s automatic ambient occlusion was disabled in favor of Screenspace Ambient Occlusion, which better captures fine surface details and contributes to the overall mood.
Color grading was handled entirely within Unreal Engine’s Post Process Volume tools, with no LUTs. Rather than using the PPV for major mood adjustments, the artist handles most of the coloring directly in the light actors, keeping the Post Process Volume for subtle fine-tuning only.
