Learn How to Use PBL Lighting in UE5.6 to Create a Fantasy Environment

Introduction

My name is Anastasia Gorban, and I'm a Level & Lighting Artist specializing in Unreal Engine 5. When I was at school, games felt almost magical to me, something that is impossible to replicate. But at some point, I realized there's no secret magic behind them. They're made by people who are simply more experienced than I was. I started digging into how games are actually built: the techniques, pipelines, and roles that exist in game development.

Before that, I was simply an admirer with zero technical knowledge. One video interview with a Level Artist from Pathologic 2 inspired me more than anything else, because it showed the real artist's workflow and removed the mystery around the job. I had tried starting with pure modeling a couple of times before in Cinema 4D and Maya, but never felt real inspiration there.

The moment I discovered game engines, especially Unreal Engine, I knew this was exactly what I had always imagined myself doing. That realization came at the perfect time in 2022, when UE5 was becoming powerful yet surprisingly beginner-friendly. I began with simple tutorials and learned everything step by step on my own. Later, I gave myself a serious boost by completing a test task for the wonderful studio Scans Factory. The scene got great feedback on YouTube and valuable advice on Reddit, which kept me motivated.

Soon after, I landed my first job as an artist. Since then, I've been constantly developing skills in many different directions. One project that means a lot to me is the award-winning short film Lightfall.

I joined the team as a Level and Environment Artist and gradually expanded my skills into technical and cinematic fields. It was a pilot project for our team, so not everything was perfect, but the technical growth I experienced there was enormous. Seeing the film win multiple awards, including several Telly Awards and a Webby Honoree, felt incredibly rewarding.

The Eternal Bridge Project

My main motivation for the Eternal Bridge project was to test myself. I wanted to see how much I had actually grown as an artist and how well I could create a conceptual, story-driven environment. At the same time, I wanted to push myself into lighting more, especially physically based lighting.

I find a strong inspiration in the medieval fantasy aesthetic, and I was drawn to something more grounded and monumental, like the early medieval castles and fortresses in Georgia and the Caucasus: massive, heavy, almost brutal stone structures with strict geometric forms, thick walls, built to last and to impress with sheer scale and solidity.

Another strong inspiration came from discovering Luminism, a 19th-century American painting style, best represented in the works of Albert Bierstadt. It's all about the dramatic light and shadow contrast and the way light seems to radiate from within the scene. I wanted to bring this mystical and adventurous feeling into my fantasy world.

With the core idea in mind, I started gathering references to help plan the composition, architecture, lighting, and overall scene mood.

Composition

The overall composition came to me very naturally. I remembered those iconic (or cliché?) film posters and game covers from the 2000s–2010s, where the hero stands with their back to the camera, looking out into an epic world. That framing always felt powerful and memorable to me, so I decided to pay homage to it. It's a kind of visual "clickbait" because it immediately creates a strong connection with classic games and films.

Arches and bridges are some of the strongest cultural symbols we have. They represent passage, transition, connection between two worlds, hope, and the unknown all at once. I knew that using such a strong archetypal shape would make the image instantly captivating.

Blockout

I love playing with scale and distance. I wanted the viewer to feel that the bridge and the castle are enormous, that there are several layers of depth between the foreground and the far mountains, so that the structure looks even more imposing because of how far away it sits in the scene.

I started by placing and locking the camera first. For this piece, I wanted a strong, static, poster-like composition. Then comes the blockout, and I usually keep it deliberately simple by using only primitive shapes to quickly establish scale, proportions, and the feeling of distance from the camera.

I spent time testing different camera positions and focal lengths until I found the one that gave the strongest sense of depth and perspective. Once it felt right, I locked the camera completely. This approach saves me a huge amount of time, as I only have to build and polish what would be visible in the final shot.

Set-Dressing & Asset Approach

Because the main focus of the project was exploring the lighting, I chose to work with ready-made assets such as Megascans and packs from Fab. This modular approach allowed me to concentrate on the lighting and enriched my ability to adapt existing high-quality assets across different scenarios.

I started set-dressing from the foreground, so that ground cover and large rocks gave me a solid base and correct scale reference. Then I moved to the background, placing the largest rock formations first. They became the foundation for the canyon walls, creating clear layers of aerial perspective.

Castle Building & Storytelling

I began the castle by blocking out the main walls to outline their direction, height, and placement, so the entire structure felt grounded. Then I added a second layer of assets to create depth and damage: broken sections, collapsed parts, areas that looked like they had been affected by earthquakes or ancient battles. This helped tell a story through the architecture itself.

The only major element I couldn't find at the right scale was the bridge, so I modeled it in-engine using booleans and simply applied an existing brick texture. To hide repetition and add realism, I dressed the bridge with additional masonry around the edges, scattered broken bricks, and protruding stones.

At first, I wanted the castle to feel completely desolate and abandoned. But then I decided it would be much more interesting to show that this ancient structure is still being used, as if someone had come to inhabit this place quite recently.

I added a whole network of wooden scaffolding: some parts look like they're supporting unstable walls, others like temporary walkways for navigation. It feels as if the castle was recently seized or is being slowly restored. To speed up the process, I used BPPs (Packed Level Blueprints), reusable groups of assets that work like prefabs.

To enhance the story, I modeled heraldic flags using in-engine tools and created a texture in Photoshop. I placed torn old flags next to newer, brighter ones, and built simple torch blueprints from existing assets so the structure would feel lived-in.

One little cheat I allowed myself is that I intentionally broke the real proportions of the farthest walls and scaffolding, making them slightly larger than they should be. I also tilted the entire castle structure a little away from the camera. These small optical tricks make the fortress look even more monumental and looming over the viewer.

FX

To bring the scene to life, I really wanted realistic waterfalls. Creating a full water simulation or using plates in post would have been too time-consuming, so I took a Niagara waterfall effect from the Scans Factory's Ancient Temple pack and tweaked its material and emitter settings. By scaling and layering different emitters, I achieved varied flow speeds and volumes, which made the waterfalls feel natural and powerful.

I also added flocks of distant white birds using a Niagara particle system from the same Ancient Temple package. To make them more visible against the background, I applied a pure white emissive material to ensure their visibility at a great distance.

Polishing & Final Touches

To bring the whole scene together, I switched to Base Color view mode and balanced the overall color palette. I went through assets and adjusted their albedo so that pieces from different packs would feel like they belonged in the same world.

I added subtle puddle decals to create nice reflections and extra depth in the foreground. The foliage is quite minimal and was all hand-placed, mostly to break up the large stone surfaces and to create nice color harmony between red poppies and flags.

Lighting

Lighting was the absolute core of Eternal Bridge. For this project, I wanted to move beyond intuitive lighting and build a solid understanding of physically based values: real-world light units, exposure, and how they translate inside Unreal Engine 5.

At the same time, I aimed to grow my artistic eye and push the mood I had in mind. I studied a lot from artists like Karim Yasser and quickly realized how much more confident and intuitive your decisions become once you have a solid understanding of the core principles and nature's laws.

I began by establishing a physically grounded base. Using real-world reference tables for light conditions, I first set realistic values for the Directional Light intensity (starting around 20 000 lux during blockout) and locked the exposure early at EV100 = 12. I also enabled Real Time Capture on the Sky Light right from the beginning so I could immediately see how every change affected the entire environment.

To create a stronger contrast, I scaled up several large rocks and placed them throughout the scene as light blockers. This gave me precise control over where the sun rays would break through. At the same time, I made the near area darker than the bright background to add depth and guide the viewer's eye toward the castle and bridge.

Later, once Volumetric Clouds and Sky Atmosphere were set up, I lowered the Directional Light to 11 000 lux and kept exposure locked at EV100 = 11. At that point, the atmosphere started behaving like a real sky, so the earlier blockout values no longer worked correctly and needed to be fine-tuned. I left the sunlight color almost untouched and only slightly lowered the temperature to match the cool, stormy mood.

I increased Source Soft Angle for softer shadows and raised Indirect Lighting Intensity so light would bounce nicely from the foreground rocks. In the final polish, I enabled Ambient Occlusion and Light Shafts and added a simple cloud-shadow Light Function for a soft gobo effect. Here are the final settings for Directional Light, Exposure, and Sky Light:

Sky Atmosphere & Clouds

Only after fixing the Directional Light and Exposure values did I start sculpting the sky and clouds. It let me see exactly how Sky Atmosphere and Volumetric Clouds react to accurate physical input. It was a fun experiment and gave exactly the dramatic stormy look I wanted.

I decreased the Sky Luminance Factor to make the sky darker and more dramatic. This setting is really helpful, as it doesn't influence the scene lighting and only affects the brightness of the sky.

Here are the final settings for Volumetric Cloud's material instance and the breakdown of the PBL ambient lighting setup:

Hand-Placed Lights

Most of the highlights and drama in this scene come from hand-placed sources. When I start adding hand-placed lights, I switch to a greyscale image back-and-forth by setting the Saturation to 0 in the Post Process Volume. It's a fast and effective way to judge the lighting.

I started with strong key Spotlights to create bright sun rays breaking through the clouds, then added softer Point Lights for smooth light-shadow transitions, warm interior fills to suggest life inside the castle, and finally Rim Lights to separate forms and give the stone volume.

Atmospheric Effects

Fog was essential for depth. I enabled Volumetric Scattering on the Exponential Height Fog and made slight adjustments to lower its density and soften the falloff. When the fog was denser, it quickly swallowed fine details on the distant castle. By reducing it, the fog gently affects mostly the ravine and foreground while keeping the architecture sharp and readable. Here are the final settings for Exponential Height Fog:

For full artistic control, I relied heavily on custom fog plates from William Faucher's Easy Fog tool. This gave me precise layering of mist in the ravine and additional textured clouds in the distance. To complete the dramatic lighting, I added god-ray meshes, which help sell the bright sun rays piercing through the clouds.

Post Process Volume Settings

As the last step, in the Post Process Volume I added a subtle chromatic aberration, fine-tuned local exposure, applied light sharpening, and film grain. I also gently boosted contrast, temperature, and gamma to strengthen the stormy mood. For video renders, I usually disable all these settings completely, so I can have full dynamic control later in DaVinci Resolve. Here are the final settings for Post Process Volume and the final look:

In the end, this project pushed me to take a more disciplined approach to lighting. The biggest difference was that I worked entirely with real physical values and used only Unreal's native systems from start to finish. The biggest insight is that no matter how deep you dive into physical values, your eyes and artistic taste must always have the final word. Numbers are an excellent starting point, but they are never the goal.

Rendering & Post

The rendering process for this piece was quite simple. I created a short cinematic sequence with a slowly moving camera and the Echo character, then rendered everything using Movie Render Graph. I find this pipeline introduced in 5.4 much more convenient and flexible than the old Movie Render Queue presets. I had recently done extensive R&D on the Movie Render Graph pipeline for layered rendering, which was published in the Unreal community, so I was already very comfortable with it.

Because I wanted the final image to rely mostly on the lighting I built in-engine, I rendered everything in a single beauty pass without any extra layers or heavy compositing. To stabilize the render, I used a few console variables, and to get a sharper result, I increased spatial samples to 64.

In DaVinci Resolve, I applied almost the same settings I had in Post Process Volume. Usually, I love going deep into post-production for videos, but this time I barely touched anything. The moment I felt happy with the result straight out of the engine, I knew the lighting had hit the right spot.

Here is the final sequence:

Conclusion

This project took me about two weeks, working 4-5 hours a day. A big part of that time was spent watching workshops, reading Unreal documentation, and studying physically based lighting theory. The main challenge was not to get swept up in theory. There was so much technical information that at times I had to stop myself from watching yet another video and actually apply what I had just learned.

Looking back at my early projects, I clearly see a few things that have helped me grow the most and changed how I approach my work. Fake it till you make it. Sometimes, the technically "wrong" value, a completely unrealistic scale, or random material settings suddenly give exactly the feeling you're looking for. Don't be afraid to break the rules if your eyes say "yes".

Tell a story, always ask yourself: What happened here? Who walked these walls? Why does this place feel the way it does? When the environment starts to tell its own little story, the lighting stops being just a tool. And most importantly, learn to trust your eyes as the final judge. You can study physical values, read documentation for days, and still end up with a technically correct but emotionally dead image.

At the end of the day, numbers are just a great starting point. Your taste and your feeling is what really matter. At the end of this interview, I'd love to share a few resources that helped me a lot on my journey and that I still come back to:

• Karim Yasser's clear and practical videos on PBL
• Arthur Tasquin's articles and video on PBL, as well as the amazing toolbox, PBL Database
• A compelling article on PBL principles
• William Faucher's channel with tons of valuable breakdowns and tips
• Josh Toonen's incredible channel

A huge thank you to the 80 Level team for the opportunity to share the story behind Eternal Bridge and for all the amazing work you do for the community. It was a very special project for me, and I will be happy if it inspires someone else to try something new.

Anastasia Gorban, Level & Lighting Artist

Interview conducted by Emma Collins