PHYSICAL LIGHTING STUDIES

My research on Physically Based Lighting started as a way to improve my skills in this field and understand the way light behaves in real life. It gradually became the main topic I’ve worked on in 2024 and led to the launch of my first Unreal plugin.

LOOK UP DOODLES

Look Up Doodles were the first lighting studies I’ve worked on. I was always inspired by the sunlight hitting the roofs during my morning walks and thought it was a good starting point for a project.

TIPS & TRICKS

As I was learning so much along the way, I started to share my discoveries on Linkedin and the engagement was higher than ever before.

80lv: THE SCIENCE OF LIGHTING

I contacted 80lv to write an article for them which they agreed after highlighting my Look Up Doodles project. I divided the article in two parts: the behind the scenes of Look Up Doodles and a deep dive into the science of lighting. If any of those subjects matters to you, I invite you to read this through.

PBL DATABASE

Seeing a growing interest in what I’ve done with the article, I started to develop an Unreal Engine plugin that gives people all the resources needed to learn and use the Physically Based Lighting workflow. 6 months and a lot of iterations later, I released the PBL Database on Fab.

FAB

The PBL Database is available exclusively on Fab for Unreal Engine 5.

PRODUCTION

Spreading over the course of a year, the development of my first plugin was a real challenge. Even though I was the only dev on the project, I still needed to tackle the work as in a real professional production with stages, deadlines and a pipeline. Using Notion, I managed to plan and organize the workload to stay focused on what mattered.

PROOF OF CONCEPT

The plugin evolved through many shapes and forms but the initial idea never changed. You can see here a very early version of the PBL Database that served as a proof of concept and pushed me to go further.

NOTES

I spent a significant amount of time figuring out how to sort the data. The key was to think about the use of actors related to specific scenarios. It became clear that dividing the natural and artificial light would be the first step and the type of units would be the second one.

MARKETING

This was the first time I was working on my own commercial project. In that regard, I spent a lot of time thinking about the best marketing strategy for the project. I ended up inspired by the traction I got from my tips and tricks posts during the Look Up Doodles project and only targeted Linkedin. Throughout the production I gradually released more and more teasers, highlights and lighting studies.

80lv article

Part of my marketing strategy was to reach out to the lovely people at 80lv to write another article that would act as a beginner’s guide. We synced the release of the tool with the article to increase the visibility of the launch and provide as much as possible to the users.

FEUDAL JAPAN STUDIES

In the end of the production phase, I put the tool to the test through 3 series of lighting studies. I only had a few hours available in the planning so relying on existing environments was crucial to meet the deadline. For the first lighting study, I used the Feudal Japan Megapack. The quality and diversity of the assets made me want to play more with this pack.

NORTHERN ISLAND STUDIES

Working with natural lighting was necessary to cover as many scenarios as possible. While the individual assets available in the Northern Island pack were not meeting a cinematic quality, the overall topology of the place was really interesting and felt natural.

HIGH SCHOOL CLASS STUDIES

For my second 80lv article, I wanted to do a step by step of a lighting study. I chose the High School Science Lab Classroom from Dekogon Studios as they have been an industry standard for years.