Let’s Build the RPG! - 56 – Landscape Cave Sculpting and Lighting – Unreal Engine 5 Tutorial

In this episode we sculpt a cave directly into our landscape: two entrances/exits, and a hole in the top for the creation of god rays (crepuscular rays). We cover how to edit your landscape material to allow for the sculpting of a visibility mask anywhere in your landscape to make the hole for the cave. We also cover my favorite trick for creating cave ceilings quickly. To finish out the episode we do an overview of the Environmental Light Mixer for indoor lighting, including the settings you need to get two different kinds of god rays- light shaft bloom on the directional light for god rays when looking at the light, and volumetric fog on the atmospheric fog setting. We finish out the episode on how to ensure your AI character can move within and out of the cave. Link to the spreadsheet that contains links to all assets used in this series (up to episode 56), including the free assets from Quixel Bridge used for our cave: 00:00 Intro 00:20 Today’s Goals and Key Concepts 01:59 Getting and setting up free Quixel Bridge assets used in this episode 03:04 Landscape material setup and cutting holes in landscape 05:40 Cave ceiling trick 08:44 Cave floors 13:42 Setting up entrances and exits 20:24 Creating a light hole (for natural light to shine through) in the top of the cave 22:45 Indoor lighting with the Environment Light Mixer, including god rays 28:46 Postprocess brightness settings for our player character 28:43 AI navigation into and out of the cave (NavMeshBoundsVolume) 30:40 Conclusion and preview of next episode New episode released every Saturday morning! References specific to this episode: Landscape Cave Sculpting: #creatinglandscapeholematerials Environment Light Mixer: Volumetric Fog and god rays: Solving the NavMesh problem (AI navigating into caves): Previous Episodes Referenced Landscape Material (Episode 7): Rocks and Foliage Painting (Episode 9): Roman Courtyard walls (Episode 14): Footstep Sounds (Episode 19): Ocean water body (Episode 55):