Unreal Engine 4: Beginners Guide to Lighting (Udemy.com)
A practical guide to understanding lighting in Unreal Engine 4.
Created by: Bradley Wascher
Last updated October 2023
What you will learn
- A fundamental understanding of how to install the unreal engine and use its interface
- What are the different lights that are available to use and how to use them
- How to light full production ready levels, both from a static perspective and real time
- How to problem solve quality issues with your lighting
- The ability to understand and debug lighting errors inside of Unreal Engine
How it compares
Against the other 70 rated Udemy courses in Unreal Engine on CourseDuck:
- Rating4.4 out of 5higher than 34% of them
- Reviews632#32 of 71 by number of reviews
- Length3.2 hoursshorter than 87% of them
- Last updatedOctober 2023more recently than 60% of them
Quality Score
Overall Score : 88 / 100
Course Description
What really would be useful is a systematic approach to explaining the different lights and how to use them inside of Unreal. You would understand the different menus and options that affect the lighting. Finally, you would take all that knowledge and use it in real scenes to apply what you just learned in a practical way.
This course is designed to do just that for you. In this course we will be covering the whys of the lighting system inside of Unreal engine. This course will give you practical understanding and knowledge of how to set up your lighting. Then you will be guided through case study scenes that will use the knowledge you just gained to light full production levels. Finally you will have access to a long list of common issues and fixes that can appear when working with lighting inside of Unreal engine.
This course will leave you with not just an understanding of how to light your scenes in Unreal engine but the confidence to understand what will result in the best quality and performance for your project. This course is built to help you stop struggling with understanding lighting and finally master the concepts of creating great lighting inside of Unreal engine. Who this course is for:
- Is looking to understand how to light scenes inside of Unreal Engine 4
- Curious about the technical knowledge of lighting so you can make better informed decisions
- Looking for the ability to make smart choices about lighting that lead to great final results
- If you're looking to finally get a grasp of how to make great lighting and improve your art and skillset
Instructor Details
- 4.4 Rating
632 Reviews
Bradley Wascher
Hey folks!
My name is Bradley Wascher, I am a 3D environment artist working in the video game industry. I've worked for some of the biggest names in the video games industry, from Liquid development, to High Moon Studios, which is owned and ran by Activision. I have several years of on the job experience creating 3D art for video games. I have even worked for a design company creating 3D products all the way down to 2D web graphics and print ads.
I've had the great pleasure in my many jobs to have learned a lot and met a lot of great people that had their own techniques and insight. I wanted to give back to the world of 3D by releasing classes and tutorials that would help others either get a grasp of how video games are actually built or help artists that are already working to advance their skills.
If you ever have any questions just let me know. -BW
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Reviews
By Tobias Heussner on 11/7/2020
Its a good first overview, however, it lacks going deeper into the topic and teaching more about the application of what you learned and how to create actual light scenarios.
By Luis Romero on 10/27/2020
Great introductory course. I really enjoyed it!
By James Hunt on 10/25/2020
I learned a lot about lighting from this tutorial. If you are a novice in Unreal you will learn a lot about the generic settings and some of the troubleshooting aspects in regard to lighting.
By James DeBeck on 10/20/2020
It's a nice light course and I learned a lot about lighting.
By Mike Crane on 9/14/2020
This was a FANTASTIC tutorial on lighting! It provided me with a lot of the details I needed for utilizing lighting effectively in my Unreal Engine 4 projects. Bradley is a very good instructor and one of the best instructors that I've had on Udemy. He spoke very clearly, and was very engaging. It was clear that he was a subject matter expert on all aspects of UE4 lighting. I ESPECIALLY liked that all the lessons were short - many of them were less than 5 mins. I ended up going through all the tutorials in one evening. While I was listening to Bradley explain the various concepts, I had my current project up on my other monitor and was able to fix the lighting in that project. The other thing that I enjoyed was how Bradley started with the simple lighting room example and then took us through the different lighting case studies within a real world game environment - which was a good way to re-emphasize the concepts taught earlier. I will DEFINITELY be referencing these videos in the future. Thank you for an awesome learning experience!
By Michael Skelton on 8/4/2020
Very good overview of lighting, would recommend it if your trying to derust or get back up to speed with lighting in unreal.
Would be nice to see the tutor do a advance tutorial set for lighting in the near future and maybe a class on the new rect lights in current UE4.
By Ben Kelly on 7/25/2020
Pretty good intro. Bit outdated though as it uses v4.15. Could use a section on raytracing.
By Jeremiah Liggins on 6/23/2020
Clearly explains concepts and repeats them enough to reinforce, but not so much that it's annoying
By Erik Hubertz on 6/19/2020
There was a couple things I did learn. The major one was right at the end with emission. That would become very useful for things like magic or glowing bullets. Not to sure about particle's.
By Gina Levy on 6/17/2020
This has really helped me in remembering what certain things do and how to improve my lighting skills! Thank you!
By Harrison Richlin on 6/10/2020
This is a very great introduction to all of the most important elements of lighting in Unreal. This is a quick overview, so expect to-the-point explanations and general best-practices.
By Ryan H on 6/9/2020
This course helped me how to make lighting realistic in UE4.









