This tutorial is a brief follow-up to the USD workflow tutorial. This brief tutorial will show you how to work with lights between Blender and Unreal Engine 5.
Step 1: Setting up Blender for export
Before we jump into Unreal, we start in Blender with a basic scene
Create the main structural elements of your scene
Set up initial lights to simulate how the scene should look
For better color matching, you can adjust Color Management in the Output tab in Blender and set The Look to High Contrast to match the Unreal visual style
Step 2: Match lighting and post process settings
To match the lighting between Blender and Unreal, adjust Unreal’s post-processing settings
Add a Post Process Volume in Unreal by going to Add > Visual Effects > Post Process Volume and add it to the scene
In the Details Panel, enable Infinite Extent to make it apply globally
Search for Exposure in the details panel
Change the Metering Mode to Manual
Adjust the Exposure Compensation
A value of between 6 and 8 typically works well, but you may need to tweak this for your scene
It is important to note that Blender uses Watts and Unreal uses Lumens to determine the power of the lights
I have provided a link in the description for a Watts to Lumen Calculator
I know that my Area Light is set to 750 watts in Blender so I use the calculator to determine the equivalent in Lumens
In my case, I can just use 9000 Lumens and scale the light
I can now do this for each of the other lights
Conclusion
This pipeline from Blender to Unreal using USD is incredibly powerful for iterative workflows. It allows for quick previews, easy updates, and seamless scene management. By exporting your Blender scene to USD, you can iterate freely, make quick changes.