This demo can give some insight into why we rebuilt all of the materials from the ground up for this realtime scene by Jonathan Frederick in order to achieve better lighting.
When starting a lighting overhaul you always start with an analysis of the scene. Since we are working in a PBR (Physically Based Rendering) environment we start off by making sure that all of the materials have physically correct properties. Materials in the real world adhere to very specific rules that PBR tries to mimic and if done incorrectly can adversely impact your lighting. You can always break the rules for stylistic purposes but unless you really know what you are doing it is best to stick to the rules.
In this specific case we had to redefine all of the surfaces to be interpreted correctly as a metal or a non-metal. This has a large impact on how light interacts with the surfaces and will therefore need to be changed if you want physically correct lighting. We also had to make sure that surfaces were not too bright or too dark as this will also change light interaction. Because most realtime software like Unreal Engine don’t tell you what the correct brightness of a surface is, it is very easy to go over the top without even recognising that there is a problem.
Above is a screenshot from the environment with correct materials and lighting as we have resolved it at Studio Delta.
Below you can find the original environment of the Author that we reworked. Note how little reflections are visible on the surfaces compared to our example. If you look at the stacked blue barrels in both examples, it is much easier to recognise what exactly it is you are looking at in our example as the lighting gives you more information about its surface properties. And this even though our scene is overall much darker.
[Above] Original scene by Jonathan Frederick.