ABOUT

We built this scene as a hands-on experiment to explore the performance and visual impact of different lighting workflows in Unreal Engine. Our goal? To compare Lumen, baked lighting with ray-traced reflections, and fully baked lighting with baked reflections and see how each performs in terms of visual quality and FPS.

The results:
Villa Scene - Powered by Lumen, stunning but heavy (~10 FPS)
Bathroom Scene - Baked lighting + ray-traced reflections (~50 FPS)
Apartment Scene - Fully baked lighting & reflections for peak performance (~100 FPS)

This test reaffirmed what many already know: while Lumen delivers beautiful real-time lighting, for high-performance and ultra-realistic renders, baked lighting is still unbeatable.

All models were sourced from the Unreal Marketplace. We were responsible for lighting, baking, and cinematic camera animation directly within Unreal Engine.

We’re excited to keep pushing this further, hope you enjoy the visual comparison!