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Tutorial #1: Get Started
In this tutorial, we'll cover everything needed to get up and running using Immersive Lighting. After getting the new plugins installed in Unreal Engine 4, we'll make sure to cover getting it setup in your project, some of the classes/objects included and how to make sure your consumer or professional lights are ready.
#1: Installing the Immersive Lighting plugin in UE4
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After downloading Immersive Lighting for UE4, open the installer and install it to the /Engine/Plugins/UltraStorm folder.
#2: Enable the Immersive Lighting plugins for UE4
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Open up your project in UE4 and make sure that all plugins are enabled including the UltraStorm Licensing plugin.
#3: Setup your Lighting Interfaces
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Open up your project in UE4 and make sure the plugins are enabled and setup properly. Check settings for the Philips hue, Corsair iCUE, iCUE IL, DMX, and DMX IL plugins depending on what solutions you use. There are no runtime settings at the moment for the Philips hue IL plugin. The DMX IL plugin is the one that requires the DMX Library asset so it knows what DMX lights to use as Immersive Light Controllers.
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Currently in the editor, you are only able to use Philips hue using a developer account. See Get Started - Philips Hue Developer Program (meethue.com) to learn how to setup a developer account on your hue bridge.
You will also have to restart the editor after setting up these plugins however there will be an option in the future to do all of this without a full restart.
We will go into depth about the Immersive Lighting settings in the next tutorial. After you've setup all of the settings and restarted the editor, you should notice your lights/devices reset to a default light color specified in the Immersive Lighting settings. We'll look at how we can test that we're ready to move on and also about some of the custom actors available in Immersive Lighting.
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#4: Test Out Lighting Interfaces (optional)
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Let's test out that our lights are functioning properly. Start by grabbing an Immersive Light from the Actors panel and placing it in our scene. We'll need to enter the name of our light to access it. If you need a list of the light names, select Display All Light Names. At this time, we don't have a custom widget to select individual light controllers but we are planning to implement this to make it easier than having to enter the name for an Immersive Light. As a note, Immersive Lights are typically used for testing but they can be used to drive specific lights or animate them using Sequencer.
Once you've entered the name of the light, you should automatically see the associated Light Controller referenced in its property. Make sure the light has Is On set and click the color and in the color picker, try different colors and the light or device should be updating. Aside from DMX lights which the system doesn't know if they are available, all other light names that are displayed should be initialized properly and ready to rock!
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#5: Getting To Know The Actors/Components Available With Immersive Lighting
Immersive Light: Can connect to light controllers directly and is typically used for either testing or if the user wants to control a specific light directly (which could be used via Blueprints or in an animation in Sequencer).
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Immersive Light Group: Used to connect to a group of light controllers and is also used the same way Immersive Lights are. Groups are early implementation and only really compatible with Philips hue Groups right now. We will be expanded upon this moving forward to allow the user to create their own groups.
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Immersive Lighting Origin: Updates the origin and POV for where the real-world lights are in the level. This can be used to update a static position (such as an origin in a virtual production scene) a single time, or to update every frame if attached to a player for instance.
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Immersive Lighting Origin Component: Same as the Immersive Lighting Origin Actor but in Component form to easily attach to other actors.
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Immersive Lighting Probe: The Immersive Lighting probe is what is used to gather the lighting information from the level needed for Dynamic Sampling
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Immersive Lighting Rig: Allows the user to visualize their lighting layout(s) but also can be used to test lighting configurations and also to place a virtual rig (such as a truss setup on a stage with lights fixed to it) where you want the lighting to be sampled from (requires Use Immersive Lights on the rig and Override Immersive Lighting on the IL lights to be set).
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Immersive Lighting Sensor: The sensor shows you an accurate representation of how the light is being sampled in your level for standard Surround Lighting and also for ILGI (which you can test and tweak dynamically in the editor).
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Experimental Actors:
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Immersive Lighting Effect Volume: The base for all IL Volume effects and can be spawned in the world to dynamically affect real-world lights that fall within.
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Immersive Lighting Particle Volume: Serves as the base for the IL Emitter Volume and provides basic functionality for particles within its volume that are spawned in the world to dynamically affect real-world lights.
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Immersive Lighting Emitter Volume: A new type of IL Effect Volume that emulates a basic representation of a particle system similar to cascade. The volume injects particle color into nearby lights allowing you to use VFX in lighting like never before. Future support planned for Niagara will take this to the next level allowing you do to use lights in performances that weren't possible before.
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Immersive Lighting Video Volume: A new type of IL Effect Volume that represents an Immersive Lighting Video Effect that can blend a static texture or video into the controllers as the real-world lights overlap the volume.
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Immersive Lighting Audio Volume: A new type of IL Effect Volume that represents an Immersive Lighting Effect Volume that can be spawned in the world to dynamically affect real-world lights that is reactive to audio.