Details on New Unreal Engine 5.5's MegaLights Revealed

The highlight of the newly released Unreal Engine 5.5 is the brand-new lighting feature MegaLights, which allows artists to use exponentially more lights in their 3D environments. Recently, the developers published a documentation for the feature, revealing its details.

MegaLights is "a whole new direct lighting path in Unreal Engine 5," presenting a range of new functions that can elevate creating environments in the software. It allows the artists to place many dynamic and shadowed area lights in a scene and supports current-generation consoles. MegaLights leverages ray tracing, so the artists can create realistic soft shadows from various types of area lights.

MegaLights traces a fixed number of rays per pixel towards important light sources, and if a light source is hit by a ray then that light’s contribution is added to the current pixel.

Also, the new function reduces the cost of dynamic shadowing and the cost of unshadowed light evaluation. It enables the use of expensive light sources, such as textured area lights, on consoles. MegaLights also supports Volumetric Fog.

Take a look at how Principal Environment Artist Martin Teichmann used Unreal Engine 5.5 to recreate his old work with revamped lighting and gameplay elements.

Read the details on how to use MegaLights here and don't forget to join our 80 Level Talent platform and our new Discord server, follow us on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Telegram, TikTok, and Threads, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.