UDK Neons and Mirrors

   A particularly important design element of my scene is in the neon lighting that surrounds the strip club area. As I have already said lighting has not been a strong point in my previous works, so a specific type of lighting like neon is definitely not something I am overly familiar with. As it is such an integral part of my scene I decided this was something I should definitely research first.
   I found a very helpful site http://udn.epicgames.com/Two/ExampleMapsAdvLighting.html which among some other tutorials which may likely come in useful (particle effects etc.) detailed how to create an effective neon effect. This guide broke down the process into three fairly simple steps.

   First I need the shape of the static mesh that will function as the source of the neon lighting. This could be either strip lighting or shaped writing like below.


   
      This mesh would be set to the colour of the light that it is supposes to be emitting.
   Next I will need to create a projector that emits a blurred version of the shape of the mesh onto the surface upon which it is attached.

   The final stage is to set up lights of the same colour with low intensity and radius to emit the colour of the neon to anything close within the vicinity.


   Another important factor that occurred to me was that in my head I expected  the bathroom to have mirrors but I had never payed any thought as to how this effect was achieved. Whilst this is not the most important detail in my scene I considered that it would be a good thing to include if possible. I found this tutorial online that gave an easy to follow example of how to achieve this effect. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arOtKrvT0F4 The only complaint would be that the mirrored result was particularly low in its pixel quality. However a brief look through the comments section explained how this could be quickly altered in the settings to achieve a much more desirable result.

   After looking at some of these guides and having completed my prep work I decided it was appropriate at this point to begin working on my design document.