The MetaHuman Lighting content sample contains several ready-made lighting environments that replicate a number of the lighting setups used in the MetaHuman Creator (MHC) online tool.
The purpose of this project is to provide these lighting environments offline so users can test and render their MetaHumans in Unreal Engine 5. This is a primarily visual feature aimed at lighting artists, technical artists, cinematographers, and other roles who work with props and environment lighting as part of their day-to-day. It also helps visual artists to develop characters in the context of their final lighting.
This project is geared towards still shots and renders and is not optimized for real-time performance. If you want to use these lighting scenarios at runtime, you must make the appropriate performance optimizations on your end.
Downloading the Project
Download the MetaHuman Lighting sample pack from the Unreal Engine Marketplace.
Using the Project
When you open the project, you will see the following screen:
Use the Content Browser to navigate the project files. All lighting presets are provided as individual maps, as described in the Lighting Scenarios section below.
You can import your own MetaHumans into this project to test each scenario. To do this, follow these steps:
Create a MetaHuman in MetaHuman Creator.
Generate and download the MetaHuman’s Assets, as described on the Exporting to Unreal Engine 5 page.
Open your project, then export the MetaHuman to Unreal Engine.
Open the map that contains the lighting scenario you want to use (for details of which scenarios are available, refer to the Lighting Scenarios section below).
After your MetaHuman has been imported, from the Content Browser, go to the
MetaHumans/(MetaHumanName)
folder, and drag theBP_(MetaHumanName)
Blueprint into the Level Viewport.
Quality Settings Widget
The Quality Settings widget opens by default when you open the project. The widget controls your MetaHuman’s quality. It behaves similarly to the Quality drop-down in MHC, setting the quality level of both the MetaHuman and the lighting / shading.
Quality settings in MHC (left) and the MetaHuman Lighting Presets sample project (right).
If you accidentally close the Quality Settings widget it and need to open it again, follow the steps below:
In the Content Browser, go to the
BlueprintUtilities
folder.Right-click the
EUW_MHCQualitySettings
file and select Run Editor Utility Widget from the context menu.
Lighting Scenarios
The lighting scenarios provided in this project correspond to some of the lighting scenarios available in the MetaHuman Creator. They are located in the Maps
folder and divided across two separate subfolders, based on whether or not ray tracing is used.
All lighting scenarios follow the same naming convention: MHC_LightingPreset_(PresetName)
, where (PresetName)
is the name of the corresponding lighting preset in MHC. For example, the MHC_LightingPreset_Portrait
map in the Lighting Presets sample project corresponds to the Portrait lighting preset in MHC.
Each of these scenarios uses a combination of different types of light Actors, together with post processing volumes and Static Mesh Actors, to achieve a specific effect. You can review how each of these Actors is configured by selecting them from the World Outliner and referring to their Details panel.
A Spot Light Actor selected in the World Outliner (left) and its settings in the Details panel (right).
City Sample Lighting Scenarios
Underpass Night lighting scenario.
These scenarios are located in the MHC_LightingPresets_IBL
folder. They recreate the following presets in MHC:
Rooftop
Downtown Night
Underpass Night
The maps can be used with all quality levels, both with and without ray tracing.
Artistic Lighting Scenarios (Ray Tracing)
Fireside lighting scenario.
These scenarios are located in the MHC_LightingPresets_RT
folder. They recreate the following lighting presets in MHC:
Portrait
Fireside
Moonlight
Tungsten
Red Lantern
Split
We recommend using the High (Ray Traced) or Epic (Ray Traced) quality setting with these maps.
Artistic Lighting Scenarios (No Ray Tracing)
Portrait lighting scenario.
These scenarios are located in the MHC_LightingPresets_nonRT
folder. They recreate the following lighting presets in MHC using a combination of lights and ambient settings that can run on computers with no ray tracing hardware:
Portrait
Fireside
Moonlight
Tungsten
Red Lantern
Split
We recommend using the Medium quality setting with these maps.
Further Reading
To learn more about how lighting and post-processing is implemented in Unreal Engine, refer to the following pages in the Unreal Engine 5 documentation: