How To Enable Lumen in Unreal Engine 5

So as you may know, UE5 hit early access a couple of weeks ago and it's pretty awesome.

The only thing is, if you're upgrading from UE4 to UE5, Lumen isn't enabled by default. I would give you the usual thing about not upgrading yet as UE5 isn't production ready but I know you'll just ignore me anyway.

So how do we enable it?

As I said, it's not enabled by default for an upgraded project but is for projects started in UE5.

The steps are pretty simple. The settings will enable themselves when you set one setting but I want to make sure you know what's going on.

To start with, just open your Project Settings then go to Rendering. Hint: it's under Engine.

Next, you'll want to scroll down to get to Generate Mesh Distance Fields and enable it. This will require you to restart the Editor but before you do, we need to change a couple of other things.

You will then want to scroll back up and find the Global Illumination and Reflections headings.

Click the drop-down for Dynamic Global Illumination Method and switch it to Lumen, this will prompt you to change the Reflection Method to Lumen too. Accept it and you'll be set up. If you haven't enabled Generate Mesh Distance Fields, it will prompt you to now.

Now just restart the Editor and you'll be good to go.

Just a warning.

I know I said I wouldn't do this but I feel like I need to say it. Please don't upgrade your project yet unless you're 100% sure you can handle any bugs that may show up in UE5.

I made a post when UE5 was released into Early Access. Read more about it here: The Unreal Engine 5 Early Access Preview is here!

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Thanks for having a read, hopefully, this helped you. If it did, consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi at https://ko-fi.com/rhyce, it helps out a lot. Or, you could check out one of my other posts such as;

Taking In-Game Screenshots With UI in Shipping builds of UE4 Games

or

How To Make Custom Unreal Engine Nodes Easily