Building Your First Level · Beginner · 15 min
Lighting Basics: The Sun, the Sky, and Lumen for Beginners
Light a daytime scene the way modern UE5 games do — a Directional Light for the sun, a Sky Light for soft fill, and Lumen handling the bounce light for you — then learn to read a scene that's too dark or too bright.
Before this: Add a Floor, Walls, Sky and Player Start to Make a Real Space, Navigate the UE5 Viewport Like You've Done It for Years
- Add and aim a Directional Light to act as your sun
- Add a Sky Light so shadows aren't pitch black
- Explain what Lumen global illumination does and that it's on by default in UE5
- Read a too-dark or too-bright scene and tell auto-exposure apart from real lighting problems
Three lights make a daytime scene
A blocked-out level with grey walls and a floor looks flat and lifeless until you light it. The good news for a beginner: a believable daytime scene needs only a couple of lights, and Unreal Engine 5 does the hardest part — bounced, indirect light — for you automatically.
In this lesson you'll add two lights. A Directional Light is your sun: it shines from one direction across the whole level, casting parallel shadows. A Sky Light gathers light from the sky and gently fills in the shadows so they aren't pitch black. On top of those, a system called Lumen handles global illumination — the way light bounces off surfaces and spills colour into nearby areas.
We'll also tackle the thing that trips up everyone new to UE5: the camera adjusts its own brightness as you move (auto-exposure). Once you can tell that apart from a genuinely too-dark or too-bright scene, lighting stops feeling like guesswork.
Lock in the four key terms first
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Before you start
You'll get the most out of this if you already have a simple scene to light. Tick these off:
- An open level with a floor and a few walls or blocks (the block-out from the earlier lesson is perfect, or any level with some geometry)
- Comfortable flying the camera around the viewport (right-mouse + WASD, and F to frame an object)
- A new-ish UE5 project on default settings, so Lumen is active and you can see bounced light
Light the scene step by step
Work top to bottom. Each row stays ticked even if you close the page and come back, so you can take your time.
- 1Open the Place Actors panel and find Lights
Lights are 'Actors' — things you place in the level. Open the Place Actors panel (the quickest way is the green '+ Add' / 'Quickly add to the project' button in the level editor toolbar, top-left, then choose Lights). You'll see a Lights category with Directional Light, Point Light, Spot Light, Rect Light and Sky Light.
If you ever lose the panel, you can also reach the same list from the main menu — look for a 'Place Actors' option in the Window or Tools menu.
TipDon't worry about the other light types yet. For a daytime scene you only need the first one (Directional) and the Sky Light. We cover the rest in a later lesson.
- 2Drag a Directional Light into the level
Drag 'Directional Light' from the Lights category into your viewport and let go. Its exact position doesn't matter — a Directional Light shines across the whole level no matter where the icon sits, because it represents the sun (effectively infinitely far away).
Your scene should immediately get brighter and pick up clear, hard-edged shadows that all point the same way. Those parallel shadows are the giveaway that this light is acting like the sun.
TipBecause position is irrelevant, place it somewhere you can easily click later — up and out of the way is fine. What matters is its ROTATION, which you'll set next.
- 3Aim the sun by rotating it (not moving it)
With the Directional Light selected, press E to switch to the Rotate tool, then drag the coloured rotation rings to change the sun's angle. Rotate it so the light comes down at an angle rather than straight overhead — a lower 'morning' or 'afternoon' angle gives long, readable shadows and looks far more natural.
Watch the shadows in the viewport swing around as you rotate. That live feedback is Lumen and the dynamic shadows updating in real time.
TipAim for the sun coming from above and to one side. If your whole scene looks lit from underneath or the sky goes wrong, your sun is probably pointing the wrong way — rotate it back so the light clearly comes down from above.
- 4Add a Sky Light for soft fill
Drag a 'Sky Light' from the same Lights category into the level. Look at your shadowed areas: the sides of walls facing away from the sun should lift from near-black to a soft, believable shade. That fill is the Sky Light feeding ambient light back into the scene.
A Sky Light captures the surrounding environment (your sky) and uses it as gentle, all-directions light. Without it, anything the sun can't directly hit tends to read as a flat black void.
TipIf the fill doesn't seem to update after big changes to your sky, select the Sky Light and look in its Details panel for a 'Recapture' button — pressing it re-reads the current sky.
- 5Add a sky so there's something to light up (if you don't have one)
If your scene has no visible sky yet, the Sky Light has little to capture. The easiest fix is to add a sky from the Place Actors panel — look under the Visual Effects / environment category for a Sky Atmosphere, and optionally a Volumetric Cloud, to get a proper daytime sky.
Many UE5 templates already include a sky and a sun set up together. If yours does, you may be adjusting existing lights rather than adding brand-new ones — that's fine, the same rotate-the-sun idea applies.
TipIf you'd rather not assemble the pieces by hand, the Place Actors panel also offers a 'SunSky' actor that bundles a sun, atmosphere and a built-in time-of-day control into one — handy for a quick, good-looking daytime setup.
- 6Walk it and check the light reads at eye level
Press Play (or Alt+P) to drop in and walk around. A scene almost always reads differently at player eye level than from the floating editor camera — shadows you barely noticed from above can dominate the view down on the ground.
Walk from a sunny area into a shadowed corner and back. Notice the image gently brighten and darken as you move — that's auto-exposure adapting, which we'll unpack next.
TipPress the Escape key or the Stop button to leave Play mode and return to editing.
Too dark or too bright? Diagnose it
First rule out exposure: look around and see if the area brightens when the rest of the view gets darker. If it does, the light is probably fine and it's just exposure adapting.
If it's genuinely under-lit everywhere, check that you actually have a Directional Light and that it's rotated to hit your geometry. Then check the Sky Light exists so shadows get fill. Only after that, consider nudging the Directional Light's Intensity up a little in its Details panel.
Again, rule out exposure first — a freshly opened bright scene can momentarily look washed out before auto-exposure settles.
If surfaces are genuinely glowing white with no detail, your Directional Light intensity may be too high, or you may have stacked more than one sun. Check the Outliner for duplicate Directional Lights, and lower the Intensity in the Details panel. A single sun at a sensible intensity is almost always the right answer.
You delete your Sky Light to see what it was doing. The sunlit faces still look fine, but the shadowed sides of everything go almost pure black. Why — and what was the Sky Light actually contributing?
The Directional Light (the sun) only directly lights surfaces it can 'see'. Faces turned away from it receive no direct sunlight, so on their own they'd be near-black.
The Sky Light was filling those areas with soft ambient light captured from the sky — light coming from all directions, not just the sun. Take it away and the indirect fill drops dramatically, so shadows collapse to black. That's exactly why a daytime scene wants both: the sun for direction and contrast, the Sky Light for believable shadow fill.
Starting from your lit scene, create a convincing 'late afternoon' look. Rotate the Directional Light to a low angle so shadows stretch out long across the floor, then press Play and walk through a shadowed area into the sun. Confirm you can see the image adapt as you move.
Hint 1
Select the Directional Light and press E for the Rotate tool. Drag a rotation ring to lower the sun toward the horizon — long shadows mean a low sun angle.
Hint 2
Watch the shadows update live as you rotate; there's no build step to wait for.
Hint 3
If the shadowed area looks like a black void rather than soft shade, make sure your Sky Light is still in the level providing fill.
Hint 4
In Play mode, walk slowly from shadow into sunlight and the image should gently re-expose — that's auto-exposure, working as intended.
Select the Directional Light, press E, and rotate it to a low angle near the horizon. The shadows in the viewport immediately lengthen — that's Lumen and the dynamic shadows updating in real time, no lighting build required.
Confirm the Sky Light is present so the shaded sides read as soft shade rather than black. Press Play (or Alt+P), walk from a shadowed spot out into the sun, and watch the picture re-expose as you move. If it does, you've correctly separated 'how bright it looks' (exposure) from 'how it's actually lit' (your two lights).
QuizCheck yourself
1What is the Directional Light meant to represent in a typical outdoor scene?
A Directional Light shines from one direction across the entire level with parallel shadows, which is exactly how sunlight behaves.
2Without a Sky Light, what tends to happen to the areas the sun can't directly reach?
The Sky Light provides soft ambient fill from the sky. Remove it and shadowed faces lose that fill, collapsing toward black.
3Which statement about Lumen in a default UE5 project is accurate?
On default UE5 settings Lumen is already active and dynamic — it handles indirect/bounced light in real time. You still place the actual lights (sun, sky) yourself.
Shortcuts you'll use lighting a scene
- W Move tool (reposition a selected actor)
- E Rotate tool — how you aim the Directional Light / sun
- F Focus — frame the selected light to find and inspect it
- Alt P Play in editor — drop in and judge the lighting at eye level
- Escape Stop Play mode and return to editing
Console commands to inspect lighting (optional)
stat fps ; show frames-per-second
showflag.DirectLighting 0 ; hide DIRECT light to see only indirect/bounced fill
showflag.GlobalIllumination 0 ; toggle indirect (Lumen GI) light off/on to compareMark this lesson complete
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Questions beginners ask
Do I need to 'build lighting' like in older tutorials?
Not for this workflow. Lumen is dynamic, so the lighting updates in real time as you place and rotate lights — there's no slow bake step. Older tutorials that tell you to 'Build Lighting Only' are using baked (static) lighting, which is a different, optional approach you don't need as a beginner on a default UE5 project.
Why does my scene get brighter or darker on its own as I move the camera?
That's auto-exposure (also called eye adaptation). The camera adjusts the image's brightness to keep it readable, like your eye adapting when you step indoors. It changes how bright things look, not your actual lights. You can fine-tune or lock exposure later using a Post Process Volume, covered in the post-process lesson.
My shadows are completely black. Is something broken?
Usually not. Either you have no Sky Light to fill the shadows (add one), or auto-exposure is making a bright area look correct while the dark area is genuinely under-filled. Add or check your Sky Light first, then look around to rule out exposure before changing any light intensities.
What's the difference between a Directional Light and a Point or Spot Light?
A Directional Light shines from one direction across the whole level with parallel rays — perfect as the sun. Point and Spot Lights have a position and emit from that spot (a bulb, a torch, a spotlight), so distance and placement matter for them. For a daytime exterior you want the Directional Light plus a Sky Light; the local light types come in a later lesson.