Sky and lighting

Unreal Engine provides many different environment effects to give visual appeal to your ArcGIS scene. Common lighting and visual effect pipelines works with ArcGIS Maps SDK for Unreal Engine.

Environment example

Use Unreal's New Level templates

ArcGIS Maps for Unreal Engine will work out of the box with Unreal Engine's New Level templates. You can create a Basic or Empty level, then use the Modes Panel UI to add the essential Actors for an ArcGIS level, or use other scene setting option and create your own custom Actors to initialize an ArcGIS scene.

Lighting and Atmospheric Blueprints

ArcGIS Maps SDK for Unreal Engine comes with several sample Blueprints that assist in accurately positioning Unreal Engine's Sky Atmosphere and Directional Light Actors. The Sample levels each contain an Environment folder in their Outliner panel that use these Blueprints.

They can be found in the Plugin Content folder here:

ArcGIS Maps SDK for Unreal Engine Content\Blueprints

Sky Atmosphere

For the detailed information about Unreal Engine's Sky Atmosphere, visit the Unreal Engine Documentation page. You can also learn more about adding ambience and fog in Unreal Engine by visiting the Fog Effects Topics page.

ArcGIS Sky Atmosphere Reposition Component

The ArcGISSkyAtmosphereReposition component is a component that can be attached to a Sky Atmosphere Actor. Its purpose is to reposition the Sky Atmosphere Actor and adjust the Sky Atmosphere size and blending when the map type changes from global or local, when the map's spatial reference changes, and during a tick update when the ArcGIS Camera that is registered with the ArcGIS Map Component Actor moves.

Directional Light

For the detailed information about Unreal Engine's Directional Light, visit the Unreal Engine Documentation page. You can also learn more about lighting in Unreal Engine by visiting the Lighting the Environment page.

Attach To Active Camera Blueprint

The BP_AttachToActiveCamera Blueprint component is attached to a Directional Light and follows the Pawn. It is set to find and follow the plugin's ArcGIS Pawn, but it can be changed to follow any Actor.

Global Shadows Blueprints

The BP_GlobalShadows Blueprint component is attached to a Directional Light. It changes how far you can see the Directional Light's shadows based on the altitude of the ArcGIS Map Component Actor. Visually, this is used to keep the shadows of 3D objects and terrain elevation visible when the ArcGIS Map Component is far enough away from the planet.

NYC Shadows

Your browser is no longer supported. Please upgrade your browser for the best experience. See our browser deprecation post for more details.