Knowing the different Lighting Types in UnrealEd

Today's tutorial is going to be how to use the different lights in Kismet. I know this is a fairly simple thing to figure out, but not everyone knows the different types of lights.

Knowing the different Lighting Types:

So first off, we have the PointLight. This is going to be your standard lighting choice and it is shortcutted to L + Left Click. These are omnidirectional and will put light out as far as the radius of the light in all direcations.

Next, we have the SpotLight. As it sounds, this is a light that starts at a location and is focused on a certain direction. Thing of it as a flashlight where the starting point is a smaller diameter than the end result which spreads out as it goes. You have change the distance and radius of the further point as well as the radius of the origin. This is useful for shining light on something that you want to emphasize against the environment.

After that comes out SkyLight. The best way to think of this would be like a sun. I generally don't recommend using these lights unless you know exactly what you're doing with the lighting. They have a high probability to wash out the lighting on your level if you use them incorrectly and can result in a lack of shadows which takes away from the altogether feel of the environment.

Up next is the DirectionalLight. This one is like a mix between the skylight and the spotlight. When you place one of these, it will take it's placement and direction and point a light coming from that direction at what it's facing. Worthy of note on this light is that it will not work in an enclosed space. Basically saying, think of this light as needing the sun as the sound and pointing where the sun should look. If you try and place one of these inside of a room with no windows or openings, the light will hit the outside walls and not illuminate the inside of the room at all.

Toggleable. Like it says, this light can be enabled and disabled at will. If you want a lightswitch to turn on the lighting in a room, it's important to use this type and not just the standard pointlight. If you try and turn a pointlight on and off without the toggleable tag, then the enable and disable will not work post-editor.

Moveable. This light type is what you'd want to use if you're making the lighting system change. Say you have an actor moving around the level and you want a lightsource around to illuminate the path instead of relying on static lights, this is what you'd need to use to tell the editor to change the lighting when the light moves.

Finally, there are pickup lights. These, you generally won't have to know. When you use the UT weapon lockers and such, the compiler will tell you that you don't have any pickup lights. Fortunately, these are so commonplace that the UnrealEd actually has a button to automatically place pickup lights where ever you have one of these pickup locations. It can be found in Tools>Add Pickup Lights.

That's pretty much all there is to know about the different kinds of lights. From here, you'll want to go into the properties of the light actor itself and change the radius, color, falloff exponent, and brightness to achieve the lighting that you're attempting.