Santa Carla Skate Shop - Lumen Nights!

When I created the Santa Carla Skate Shop two years ago it was with the intention of learning Unreal Engine. Since then I've been fortunate enough to work in Virtual Production on shows such as The Book of Boba Fett, The Mandalorian and others. As such I've been using UE as part of my day job and learning a lot!

When Epic released UE5 I was excited to play with the new Lumen lighting tools, so I decided to go back to the skateshop and explore a night time scene to see what I could do with dynamic lighting and raytracing.

Here is the result! I haven't modified the assets at all (although seeing them two years later there's lots I could do to improve them.) But I thoroughly enjoyed using Lumen. Finding this new look was so interactive and a real joy especially as all the GI and soft shadowing was readily available and calculated in real-time with no baking.

I only spent a few hours back in the Skate Shop, but am excited to take these techniques to my ongoing UE project - Santa Carla Video City. More to come!