If you are wondering why your island looks drastically different on PC compared to the Nintendo Switch, graphics quality might not be the only culprit.
Lighting plays a huge role in the visual impact of your islands.
Using the Lumen Exposure Manager, you can adjust post-processing settings to keep the look and feel of your highly polished UEFN island across all supported platforms.
The Lumen Exposure Manager allows you to modify post-processing for mid-range to low-end platforms (NonLumenPostProcess), as well as the high-end ones, (LumenPostProcess) to maintain consistency across Fortnite-supported devices.
The default Day Night Cycle contains automatic exposure management.
You should use the Lumen Exposure Manager when all Time of Day Managers are disabled and you are manually controlling all lighting.
To enable fully manual controls, go to the World Settings tab and check Disable All Time of Day Managers.
To place your own lighting components in the project:
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Open the Place Actors panel
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Select desired actors from the Lights or Visual Effects tabs and drag them into the Viewport.
Finding and Placing the Lumen Exposure Manager
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Open the Content Browser.
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Open the Fortnite folder.
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Open the Lighting folder and select the Tools folder.
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Select the LumenExposureManager and drag the device into the Viewport.
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Customize the options for the NonLumenPostProcess component for low-end platforms.
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Customize the options for the LumenPostProcess component for high-end platforms.
If your Global Illumination settings are at High, Epic or Cinematic, your Viewport will display the LumenPostProcess component settings by default.
You can check your settings here:
To see what your island looks like without Lumen, set your Global Illumination settings to Medium or Low and edit the NonLumenPostProcess component.
Exposure settings for Lumen-enabled Islands are configured to match the latest Fortnite Battle Royale look and feel.
User Options
You can set the following properties using the Lumen Exposure Manager:
Lens
The Lens category contains properties and settings that simulate common real-world effects from a camera lens.
Bloom
Bloom is a real world light phenomenon that can greatly add to the perceived realism of a rendered image at a moderate render performance cost. Bloom can be seen by the naked eye when looking at very bright objects that are on a much darker background. Even brighter objects also cause other effects (streaks, lens flares), but those are not
covered by the classic bloom. For more information, see Bloom.
| Property | Description |
|---|---|
| Bloom Intensity | Scales the color of the whole bloom effect (linear). Possible uses include fading in or out over time, and darkening the scene. |
| Bloom Threshold | Defines how many luminance units a color needs to have to affect bloom. In addition to the threshold, there is a linear part (one unit wide) where the color only partly affects the bloom. To have all scene colors contributing to the bloom, use a volume of -1. Possible uses include tweaks for some dream sequences. |
Exposure
Exposure (more commonly called eye adaptation) automatically adjusts how bright or dark the scene looks. This effect recreates the experience of human eyes adjusting to different lighting conditions, like when walking from a dimly lit interior to a brightly lit exterior, or the other way around. For more information, see the Auto Exposure page.
| Property | Description |
|---|---|
| Metering Mode |
|
| Exposure Compensation | A logarithmic adjustment for exposure, only used if a tonemapper is specified. When set to 0, there will be no adjustment, -1 is two times darker, -2 is four times darker, 1 is two times brighter, and 2 is four times brighter. |
| Apply Physical Camera Exposure | This toggle only affects Manual metering mode. When enabled, brightness of the scene is affected by the Camera settings (ISO, Shutter Speed, and Aperture). When disabled, the camera uses default values of ISO 100, Aperture 1.0, and Shutter Speed 1.0. Most scenes will be significantly darker when this flag is enabled. |
| Exposure Compensation Curve | This slot takes a Curve Asset, which is used for finer control over exposure compensation in the scene. The X and Y-axis values in the Curve graph translate to the Average Scene EV100 and Exposure Compensation (Curve) values. |
| Exposure Metering Mask | Use your own texture mask to meter exposure. Bright spots on the mask will have high influence on auto exposure metering, and dark spots will have low influence. |
| Min Brightness | The minimum brightness for auto exposure that limits the lower brightness the camera can adapt within. The value must be greater than 0 and should be less than or equal to Max Brightness. A good value should be a positive near 0 and should be adjusted in a dark lighting situation. If this value is too small, the viewport image appears too bright. If too large, the image appears too dark. Actual values depend on the HDR range of the content you are using. If Min Brightness is equal to Max Brightness, auto exposure is disabled. |
| Max Brightness | The maximum brightness for auto exposure that limits the upper brightness the camera can adapt within. The value must be greater than 0 and should be greater than or equal to Min Brightness. A good value should be positive (2 is a good starting point), and should be adjusted in a bright lighting situation. If this value is too small, the viewport image appears too bright. If too large, the image appears too dark. Actual values depend on the HDR range of the content you are using. If Max Brightness is equal to Min Brightness, auto exposure is disabled. |
| Speed Up | The speed at which the adaptation occurs from a dark environment to a bright environment. |
| Speed Down | The speed at which the adaptation occurs from a bright environment to a dark environment. |
| Low Percent | Auto exposure adapts to a value extracted from the luminance histogram of the scene color. The value is defined as having X percent below this brightness. Higher values give bright spots on the screen more priority, but can lead to less stable results. Lower values give the medium and dark values more priority, but might cause burnout of bright spots. Values should be greater than 0 and less than 100. A good starting range is 70 to 80. |
| High Percent | Auto exposure adapts to a value extracted from the luminance histogram of the scene color. The value is defined as having X percent below this brightness. Higher values give bright spots on the screen more priority, but can lead to less stable results. Lower values give the medium and dark values more priority, but might cause burnout of bright spots. Values should be greater than 0 and less than 100. A good starting range is 80 to 95. |
| Histogram Log Min | Defines the lower bounds for the brightness range of the generated histogram when using the HDR (Eye Adaptation) visualization mode. |
| Histogram Log Max | Defines the upper bounds for the brightness range of the generated histogram when using the HDR (Eye Adaptation) visualization mode. |
| Chromatic Aberration | Defines the upper bounds for the brightness range of the generated histogram when using the HDR (Eye Adaptation) visualization mode. |
Chromatic Aberration
Chromatic Aberration is an effect that simulates the color shifts in real-world camera lenses. It's a phenomenon where light rays enter a lens at different points causing separation of RGB colors. For more information, see the Post Process Effects page.
| Property | Description |
|---|---|
| Intensity | The amount of aberration / camera fringe, or camera imperfection, to simulate an artifact that happens in real-world camera lenses. |
| Start Offset | A normalized distance to the center of the framebuffer where the effect takes place. |
Camera
A set of properties controlling the camera shutter and cinematic depth of field.
| Property | Description |
|---|---|
| Shutter Speed (1/s) | The camera shutter speed in seconds. |
| ISO | The camera sensor sensitivity to light. |
| Aperture (F-stop) | Defines the opening of the camera lens. Aperture is 1/f-stop. Typical lenses go down to f/1.2 (a large opening). Small numbers result in a larger aperture opening, blurring more of the foreground and background. Larger values result in a smaller aperture, blurring less of the foreground and background. |
| Maximum Aperture (min F-stop) | Defines the maximum opening of the camera lens to control the curvature of blades of the diaphragm. Set it to 0 to get straight blades. |
| Number of diaphragm blades | Defines the number of blades of the diaphragm within the lens (between 4 and 16). This defines the shape of the bokeh. |
Local Exposure
Local Exposure is a technique that automatically applies local adjustments to exposure — within artist-controlled parameters — to preserve both highlight and shadow detail on top of the existing global exposure system. This is especially useful for projects with challenging high dynamic range scenes using dynamic lighting, in which applying a single global exposure adjustment is not enough to avoid blown-out highlights and completely dark shadows.
| Property | Description |
|---|---|
| Highlight Contrast Scale | Controls the contrast of highlights. Local exposure decomposes luminance of the frame into a base layer and a detail layer. Contrast of the base layer is reduced based on this value. Good values are usually found between 0.6 and 1. |
| Shadow Contrast Scale | Controls the contrast of shadows. Local exposure decomposes luminance of the frame into a base layer and a detail layer. Contrast of the base layer is reduced based on this value. Good values are usually found between 0.6 and 1. |
| Detail Strength | Controls the strength of detail applied to the scene. Local exposure decomposes luminance of the frame into a base layer and a detail layer. Values different from 1 enable local exposure. This value should be set to 1 in most cases. |
| Blurred Luminance Blend | Blends between bilateral filtered and blurred luminance as a base layer. Blurred luminance helps preserve image appearance and specular highlights, and reduces ringing. Good values are usually found between 0.4 and 0.6. |
| Blurred Luminance Kernel Size Percent | The percentage of the screen (or kernel size) used to blur frame luminance. |
| Middle Grey Bias | A logarithmic adjustment for what Local Exposure considers Middle Grey (the tone that is perceptually halfway between black and white). 0 is equal to no adjustment, -1 is twice as dark, -2 is four times as dark, 1 is twice as bright, and 2 is four times as bright. |
Lens Flares
The Lens Flare effect is an image-based technique that simulates the scattering of light when viewing bright objects due to imperfections in the camera lens.
| Property | Description |
|---|---|
| Intensity | Brightness scale of the image cased lens flares. |
Image Effects: Vignette
Vignette is an image-based effect that creates a borderless window that fades the image out towards the edges.
| Property | Description |
|---|---|
| Vignette Intensity | Controls darkening of the screen corners to create a borderless window from the rendered image to the edge of the window. Larger values increase the amount of vignetting. 0 is no vignetting. |
Color Grading
The Color Grading category includes properties to control the contrast, color, saturation, and much more for full artistic control of the look of the scene.
Temperature
The properties in this section are used to adjust the colors in the scene so that whites appear truly white. This allows for other colors in the scene to be correctly lit under the given lighting in the scene.
| Property | Description |
|---|---|
| Temperature Type | Select a type of temperature calculation to use.
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| Temp | This will adjust the white balance in relation to the temperature of the light in the scene. When the light temperature and this value match the light will appear white. If you use a value higher than the light in the scene it will yield a "warm" or yellow color, and, conversely, if you use a lower value, it will yield a "cool" or blue color. |
| Tint | This will adjust the white balance temperature tint for the scene by adjusting the cyan and magenta color ranges. Ideally, you should use this setting once you've adjusted the white balance Temp property to get accurate colors. Under some light temperatures, the colors may appear to be more yellow or blue. You can use this to balance the resulting color to look more natural. |
Global
The properties in this section are a global set of color corrections you can use for your scene.
| Property | Description |
|---|---|
| Saturation | This will adjust the intensity (purity) of the colors (hue) represented. A higher saturation intensity results in colors appearing more like their purest forms (red, green, blue) and when saturation is lowered colors will appear more gray or washed-out. |
| Contrast | This will adjust the tonal range of light and dark color values in your scene. Lowering the intensity removes highlights and lightens the image resulting in a washed-out appearance, whereas raising the intensity tightens the highlights and darkens the overall image. |
| Gamma | This will adjust the luminance intensity of the image's mid-tones to accurately reproduce colors. Lowering or raising this value results in the image being too dark or washed-out respectively. |
Misc
Scene color tint is a multiplier for a filter color applied to the HDR scene.
Lumen Global Illumination
Lumen Global Illumination solves diffuse indirect lighting. For example, light bouncing diffusely off a surface picks up the color of that surface and reflects the colored light onto other nearby surfaces — creating an effect called color bleed. Meshes in the scene also block indirect lighting, which also produces indirect shadowing. For more information, see Lumen Global Illumination.
| Property | Description |
|---|---|
| Diffuse Color Boost | Allows brightening indirect lighting by calculating material diffuse color as pow(DiffuseColor, 1/DiffuseColorBoost). Values above 1 (original diffuse color) are not physically correct, but they can be useful as an art direction knob to increase the amount of bounced light in the scene. It works best to keep the value below 2 as it also causes reflections to be brighter than the scene. |
| Skylight Leaking | Controls what fraction of the Sky Light intensity should be allowed to leak. This is useful as an art direction knob (non-physically based) to keep indoor areas from going fully black. |
| Full Skylight Leaking Distance | Controls the distance from a receiving surface where skylight leaking reaches its full intensity. Smaller values make the skylight leaking flatter, while larger values create an Ambient Occlusion effect. |
Rendering Features
Post Process Materials
Post Process Materials provides a means for materials that have their Domain set to Post Process to create visual screen effects. These can be used for just about anything you can do in a material that affects gameplay or the visual look of the scene. For example, you can use it for applying a damage effect, creating a stylized or video effect on the screen. For more information, see the Post Process Material page.
Simply assign one or more post process materials to a post process volume. First click + to add new slots, select a material in the Content Browser, and click the left arrow to assign it. The order here is not important and unused slots are ignored.
Motion Blur
Motion Blur is the blurring of objects based on its motion. In photography and film (like with a sequence of frames), motion blur is the result of an object moving before the image has been captured, creating the blurring effect seen. How fast the object is moving can determine how much motion blur there is for the object.
| Property | Description |
|---|---|
| Amount | The strength of the motion blur effect. 0 is no motion blur. |
| Max | The maximum distortion caused by motion blur (in percent of the screen width). 0 is no distortion. |
| Target FPS | Defines the target frames per second (fps) for motion blur. It makes motion blur independent of actual frame rate and relative to the specified target FPS, which results in shorter frames, and therefore shorter shutter times and less motion blur. Lower FPS means more motion blur. A value of 0 makes the motion blur dependent on the actual measured frame rate. |
| Per Object Size | The minimum projected screen radius for a primitive to be drawn in the velocity pass for motion blur consideration. The radius is a percentage of screen width. Smaller radii cause more draw calls. The default is 4%. |
Film Grain
Film Grain is an optical effect that simulates the look of processed photographic film. It can appear as tiny, randomized particles and adds a filmic look to the rendered frame.
| Property | Description |
|---|---|
| Film Grain Intensity | The amount of grain to apply to the scene. 0 is no film grain, and 1 is full film grain. |
| Film Grain Texel Size | Size of the texel of the film grain on the screen. |
Other Post Processing Volume Settings
The Post Process Volume Settings are specific settings for the Lumen Exposure Manager and how it interacts with the scene and with any other Post Process Volumes it may overlap with.
| Property | Description |
|---|---|
| Priority | Specifies the priority of this volume. In the case of overlapping volumes, the one with the highest priority overrides the lower priority ones. The order is undefined if two or more overlapping volumes have the same priority. |
| Blend Radius | Sets the radius (in world units) around the volume used for blending. For example, when walking into a volume, the look can be different than that outside of the volume. The blend radius creates a transitional area around the volume. |
| Blend Weight | The amount of influence the volume's properties have. A value of 1 has full effect, while a value of 0 has no effect. |
| Enabled | Determines whether this volume affects post processing or not. If enabled, the volume's settings are used for blending. |
| Unbound | Determines whether the bounds of the volume are taken into account. If enabled, the volume affects the entire scene, regardless of its volume's bounds. When not enabled, the volume only has an effect within its bounds. |
Rendering
Rendering will determine whether or not the changes you are making with the Lumen Exposure Manager will be visible.