Setting up and details in UE4

When I was starting out setting it up in unreal I at first wanted a nighttime scene with foggy streets and a gloomy atmosphere, a Victorian setting with the light from the gas streetlights providing an amber contrast from the colder moon lighting. However I changed this idea when I was messing with the light and found out how to get the perfect amber sunlight which made me rethink my idea and do instead, a little warm village shop that looks inviting and has light pouring out from it making you want to go in.

This I think I managed to achieve, I made light leak out from windows using a mix of emissive maps, point-lights and a spotlight. The emissive maps gave the impression that the light was on inside the house but didn't bounce off the surroundings much so I added point lights where I wanted such an effect which is seen in the top attic window and the light bounces nicely off the overlap of the roof that looms above like a flat cap. I used a spotlight to point light outwards from the shop window and most importantly the door I left ajar and I colour picked the lighting to be the same as the suns colour so it would have that same amber warmth that makes it seem homely. I also tried to make it look more atmospheric by adding fireflies to the scene. Since I wasn’t using the starter content set I had to make these myself which was fairly straight forward. I created a material with an emissive map and had it set to flash. Once I had my material I made a particle system that spawned a few of the material ball I just made and have them float around.

I still used a cobblestone effect for the flooring which was part of the original  concept but I didn’t make the texture completely greyscale ,I added some three dimensionality through the use of normal maps which translate an image to colour code the depth of the image or painting. Though the use of this map I was able to make the flooring and wall look more realistic . 

One thing I wish I had done is utilised the sound features in my scene by adding quite talking ,which I would sample myself, coming from inside the building and I think this would have really added nicely to the entire scene and a finishing touch . 

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