A matte separates the subject from the background. Relighting helps that subject fit the light in a new scene.
In this October 31, 2025 tutorial, we generate VFX passes from live-action footage and use them in an Unreal Engine material. A material instance gives us controls to adjust how the subject reacts to the scene’s lights.
The recording uses the application’s earlier Creative Relight name. The free tool is listed on our site as VFX Passes.
Generate the passes
On first launch, let the required models finish downloading. Choose an image, video or folder of image-sequence frames, then scrub through the source to check that the right shot is loaded.
Choose an output folder and the passes you need. The tool creates normals, albedo, specular and depth, with a separate folder for each pass.
The normal pass describes which direction the surface appears to face. Albedo estimates the surface color, specular relates to its highlights, and depth estimates distance through the scene. This tutorial focuses on using the normal pass to help the material respond to light.
These passes are estimated from the footage. They are not exact measurements of the original scene, so check and adjust the result in your composite.
Build the material in Unreal
The tutorial begins its Unreal section with the media sources, players and textures already prepared. The material uses the albedo, normal and specular passes, plus an alpha generated separately with Auto Background Remover.
In the demonstrated Default Lit setup, albedo and specular contribute to the base-color branch, multiplied by a brightness control. A normal-strength parameter adjusts the normal input, and the alpha feeds opacity for the foreground extraction.
The material also exposes metallic, specular and roughness controls. These let you tune the response without having to rebuild the graph for each lighting adjustment.
Shape the light in context
Create a material instance and view the subject in the environment you want to match. Adjust the lights, then tune the material while watching the image.
Keep metallic near the non-metal end for surfaces such as skin and cloth. Use roughness and specular to judge how the highlights sit on the subject, and normal strength to control how pronounced the surface detail becomes.
The goal is a believable response, not the strongest possible effect. A highlight that looks interesting in isolation may feel wrong once the subject is placed in the scene.
Check the passes in motion
The video calls out flicker in the albedo and specular passes. Temporal smoothing can help reduce it, so compare a short processed section before committing to a full sequence.
Scrub through the exports, then play the composite at speed. Look for lighting that pulses, fine detail that shifts and edges that stop matching the original footage.
Build your first relighting test
Download VFX Passes, choose a short shot and follow the material setup in the video. If you also need an isolated foreground, the Photoshop background-removal workflow covers the alpha stage.
Working with the passes separately makes the process easier to inspect. You can see what each stage contributes and spend your time on the decisions that change the final image.
