--- title: Understanding 3D Art Lighting Through Landscape Painting description: Mohamed Baki, a 3D environment artist with credits on Call of Duty titles, explains how plein air landscape painting has sharpened his understanding of light,... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/understanding-3d-art-lighting-through-landscape-painting-qon9vcgwv twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Understanding 3D Art Lighting Through Landscape Painting | daily.dev og:description: Mohamed Baki, a 3D environment artist with credits on Call of Duty titles, explains how plein air landscape painting has sharpened his understanding of light,... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/understanding-3d-art-lighting-through-landscape-painting-qon9vcgwv og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/qon9VcGwv.png og:image:alt: Understanding 3D Art Lighting Through Landscape Painting og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Understanding 3D Art Lighting Through Landscape Painting **[80 LEVEL](https://daily.dev/sources/80lv)** · 11 min read · 1 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Mohamed Baki, a 3D environment artist with credits on Call of Duty titles, explains how plein air landscape painting has sharpened his understanding of light, color, and atmosphere for 3D work. He outlines a painting hierarchy — composition, value, color, edges, detail — and discusses how real-world lighting subtleties like bounced light, shadow color shifts, and atmospheric scattering differ from what cameras capture. He then maps these observations to Unreal Engine 5 setups, covering direct lights, HDRI skylights, exponential height fog, volumetric clouds, Rect lights for window ambient fill, and the Ultra Dynamic Sky plugin. The interview concludes with his view that traditional observational study is essential for 3D artists to develop a strong artistic foundation. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### How can I make lighting in Unreal Engine 5 look more realistic like real-world photography or painting? Use ray tracing to simulate how light physically bounces around a scene rather than relying on approximations, and plug an HDRI into a Skylight instead of using a flat sky color, since an HDRI carries real brightness information so light arrives from different directions with varying intensity. Rect lights can also fake bounced or ambient light through window openings for more three-dimensional surfaces. _daily.dev surfaces practical Unreal Engine lighting techniques for artists chasing photoreal environments._ ### Why do shadows in photos look darker or grayer than what I see with my own eyes outdoors? Cameras tend to mute subtle color variation in shadows, making them appear gray or almost black, while the human eye picks up faint green, blue, magenta, or brown tones from ambient and reflected light bouncing off nearby surfaces. A camera excels at capturing detail but compresses these subtle color shifts, especially in shadow areas and blown-out highlights like sunlit water. _Landscape and environment artists compare photo reference against real observation on daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Turning a 1800s Painting into a 3D Environment](https://daily.dev/posts/turning-a-1800s-painting-into-a-3d-environment-3cd7c0y5u) · 80 LEVEL · 3 upvotes · 0 comments - [From Film to Unreal: How to Make 3D Scenes Look Like B&W Photos](https://daily.dev/posts/from-film-to-unreal-how-to-make-3d-scenes-look-like-b-w-photos-scuy4e3je) · 80 LEVEL · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [Learn How to Use PBL Lighting to Create a Fantasy Environment](https://daily.dev/posts/learn-how-to-use-pbl-lighting-to-create-a-fantasy-environment-eljlpbzqa) · 80 LEVEL · 1 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#game-development](https://daily.dev/tags/game-development), [#unreal-engine](https://daily.dev/tags/unreal-engine) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/understanding-3d-art-lighting-through-landscape-painting-qon9vcgwv) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Understanding 3D Art Lighting Through Landscape Painting","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/understanding-3d-art-lighting-through-landscape-painting-qon9vcgwv","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/understanding-3d-art-lighting-through-landscape-painting-qon9vcgwv"},"datePublished":"2026-07-20T22:46:46.833Z","dateModified":"2026-09-14T09:29:02.141Z","description":"Mohamed Baki, a 3D environment artist with credits on Call of Duty titles, explains how plein air landscape painting has sharpened his understanding of light,...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/55af01f3a69257fbbf886e27a2f5b521?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/55af01f3a69257fbbf886e27a2f5b521?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"80 LEVEL","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"80 LEVEL","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/78eebcd76c154e6bbfd565fed7dc4093","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/80lv"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/understanding-3d-art-lighting-through-landscape-painting-qon9vcgwv","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":1},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"game-development,unreal-engine","timeRequired":"PT11M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"80 LEVEL","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/80lv"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Understanding 3D Art Lighting Through Landscape Painting"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/understanding-3d-art-lighting-through-landscape-painting-qon9vcgwv#faq","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"How can I make lighting in Unreal Engine 5 look more realistic like real-world photography or painting?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Use ray tracing to simulate how light physically bounces around a scene rather than relying on approximations, and plug an HDRI into a Skylight instead of using a flat sky color, since an HDRI carries real brightness information so light arrives from different directions with varying intensity. 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