This is the documentation for Enlighten.

Probe placement

Owned by geosw (Unlicensed)
Oct 31, 2024
3 min read

By default, Enlighten places probes automatically around static actors that are lit with probes.

Movable actors are always lit with probes. To make sure movable actors are lit correctly, place Enlighten Adaptive Probe Volume actors to completely cover the regions where Movable actors are positioned during gameplay.

Add probe volume actors to the same sublevel as the movable actors that will be lit by their probes. Enlighten adds probes to the sublevel which contains the probe volume.

If the sublevel isn't loaded, the probes in that sublevel can't be used to light movable actors.

In case Volumetric Fog is present in your level, probes should be placed as described in the Light volumetric fog page.

Place probes automatically

Enlighten automatically places probes for:

  • all the Enlighten Adaptive Probe Volume actors 
  • all static actors lit using probes

To place an adaptive probe volume:

  1. Open Quick Add > Volumes and drag the Enlighten Adaptive Probe Volume actor into your level.
  2. Use the Geometry Editing tools to adjust the shape and size of the volume.

To avoid creating unnecessary probes, cover only regions of the world in which Movable actors can move.

Enlighten creates probes automatically at the next precompute. 

Landscape probe volumes

An Enlighten Adaptive Probe Volume is automatically generated directly above a Landscape actor when its Create Enlighten Probe Volume property is checked. Control the resolution with the Enlighten Adaptive Probe Resolution property of the Landscape actor. When World Settings > Use Landscape Water Level is checked, Enlighten probes are not placed for Landscape below World Settings > Landscape Water Level.

Overlapping probe volumes

When Adaptive Probe Volume actors overlap, if the actors are in different sublevels that use the Blueprint streaming method, the Enlighten data may contain duplicated probes. This does not increase runtime memory usage, but can increase the size of data on disk and the time to load the level package. To prevent this duplication, split the volumes at the boundary between sublevels, or set the sublevel Streaming Method to Always Loaded.

For more information about streaming methods, see Managing Multiple Levels in the Unreal Engine documentation.

Visualize probes

To see the probes in the level, enable View Mode > Enlighten > Probes.

For more information about visualizations, see Visualizations and statistics.