Week 7 focused on the dynamic lighting system in Unreal Engine 5. The main goal was to understand how real-time lighting works in the engine, and how it is used in animation, cutscenes, and scene atmosphere. Unlike traditional offline rendering, lighting in UE5 is not something that is decided only at the final stage. Instead, it can be adjusted throughout the production process and provides instant visual feedback as a core part of the workflow.
Week 7 focused on the dynamic lighting system in Unreal Engine 5. The main goal was to understand how real-time lighting works in the engine, and how it is used in animation, cutscenes, and scene atmosphere. Unlike traditional offline rendering, lighting in UE5 is not something that is decided only at the final stage. Instead, it can be adjusted throughout the production process and provides instant visual feedback as a core part of the workflow.
Enabling Lumen
Enabling Lumen is easy, once your project is started up or converted, just go to the project settings and activate it. No problem.
A Skeleton is a hierarchy that is used to define Bones (sometimes called joints) in a Skeletal Mesh. In some ways, these Bones mimic a real biological skeleton due to their position and control over how characters deform.
FBX files imported into Unreal Engine as Skeletal Mesh assets will contain the character’s model, and skeleton. The character’s skeleton will be imported as an additional asset called a Skeleton asset, which you can view and edit in the Skeleton Editor.
Sharing Skeletons
An important feature of Skeleton Assets is that a single Skeleton Asset can be used by multiple Skeletal Meshes, so long as the Skeletal Meshes use the same general rig hierarchy. This means that the names and hierarchical order of your Bones must be consistent in order for sharing to work correctly.
In UE5, the physics system is mainly responsible for gravity, collision, and movement feedback. Object falling, rolling, and character contact with the environment are all calculated by the physics system. This shows that physics is not a separate visual effect, but a core system that works closely with Levels, animation, and interaction.
The class first explained the difference between static objects and simulated objects. Static objects are usually part of the environment, such as floors, walls, or buildings. They do not use physics simulation, but they still affect how other objects collide with them. Simulated objects have physics enabled, so they are affected by gravity and forces, and can interact dynamically with the environment.
The physics system does not calculate based on the visible mesh, but on collision shapes instead. These collision shapes are usually simple geometry used to approximate an object’s volume and boundaries. Proper collision setup helps maintain believable behaviour while keeping performance costs under control.
Rigid Body Dynamics
Chaos Physics provides many features for rigid-body dynamics. This includes collision responses, physics constraints, and damping and friction. In addition, it provides asynchronous physics simulation and networked physics.
The link to the official UE profile is attached below. For more information, please refer to it：
This week focused on how to correctly apply textures to a model and turn them into reusable materials. In practice, textures do not work as independent assets. Instead, they are organised and interpreted through the Material system, and then displayed on the surface of a model.
In UE5, textures usually exist as Textures, such as Base Color, Normal, Roughness, and Metallic. These textures do not affect the model on their own. They only contribute to the final render when they are connected to the correct input slots in the Material Editor. For this reason, the first step is not simply dragging textures onto a model, but creating a material and understanding the role and position of each texture within it.
The Material Editor starts with a blank Master Material Node, where you’ll connect textures and nodes to define your material’s appearance. Key inputs for a standard Physically Based Rendering (PBR) material include Base Color, Metallic, Roughness, and Normal.
Essentials:
Base Color (Albedo/Diffuse): Defines the surface color under neutral lighting, without shadows or highlights.
Normal Map: Adds the illusion of surface detail without extra geometry. A flat plane with a normal map can appear to have surface detail as if it were modeled.
Roughness: Controls how smooth or rough a surface is, affecting light reflection.
Metallic: Determines if a surface is metal or non-metal. Metallic textures use black and white values, with no in-between unless specified by a texture.
Once the material is set up, it can be dragged onto a model in the scene, and the surface result appears immediately. This instant visual feedback is one of the key advantages of UE5’s real-time rendering workflow.
For finding suitable materials and textures
Fab provides a large library of ready-to-use models, materials, and texture assets. These resources are very useful for learning and for project work, and they can be installed directly into a project.
The link to the official UE profile is attached below. For more information, please refer to it：
Sequencer is the main tool in UE5 for controlling the timeline. It is used to manage character animation, camera movement, lighting changes, and other elements that change over time. Unlike timelines in traditional DCC software, Sequencer is not a separate animation tool.
With Sequencer, different types of tracks can be placed on the same timeline, such as camera tracks, character animation tracks, and event tracks. Managing everything in one timeline makes the relationship between animation, performance, and camera work easier to understand. In scenes with multiple shots, Sequencer clearly shows the timing of camera cuts, which helps when checking whether the story flows well during real-time preview.
From a project structure point of view, Sequencer works together with the Level system from last week’s class. Levels organise content in space, while Sequencer organises content over time. This separation of space and time is similar to how traditional film production works, from building sets to planning shots and editing. It also explains why UE5 is widely used for real-time animation and virtual production.
In Unreal Engine 5, a Level is responsible for both holding content and organising space. All Actors, including models, lights, cameras, and characters, exist within a specific Level. From an animation and cinematic perspective, a Level is closer to a reusable and adjustable filming space rather than a fixed, one-time scene. This approach helps keep projects structured and manageable, even when working with complex stories or multiple shots.
A project does not rely on only one Level.
In animation production, this also makes it faster to switch between different set-ups and supports clearer teamwork and collaboration.
The session also introduced Level Sequences. While Levels define space and content, Level Sequences control time and storytelling. They allow unified control over camera movement, character animation, and lighting changes, helping to create a more cinematic result. By combining Levels and Level Sequences, UE5 functions not only as a real-time rendering tool, but also as a complete platform for animation and narrative production.
