IGDATC Gamedev Meeting April 2026 - Michael Tetzlaff

This event is open to the public! IGDA Membership not required.

Please join us for a night of industry and community presentations! Postmortems, live demos, and talks on game design, art, marketing, audio, community, social issues, and more, given by developers from the Twin Cities and all over the world.

We also stream live on youtube.com/igdatc.

Shedding Light on Global Illumination Techniques in UE5
Unreal Engine 5 has a wide range of options for simulating global illumination -- from the relatively new Lumen system to older legacy implementations like lightmaps, reflection capture probes, and screen space reflections. Unfortunately, the complexity of having so many layers in one engine, with documentation scattered across multiple pages (and sometimes inaccurate information on third-party sites) can make it less approachable for novice users. Incorrect configuration or combinations of settings can break lighting builds, resulting in wasted development effort. This talk aims to demystify all these options, diving into the technical aspects of how they work, and discussing their tradeoffs along with compatibility restrictions.

Michael Tetzlaff is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Wisconsin – Stout with 6.5 years of experience teaching game design courses at the undergraduate level. Tetzlaff received a B.S. in Computer Science from Bethel University in St. Paul, and a M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Minnesota. Tetzlaff is the development lead for Kintsugi 3D, an open-source software project to support heritage photogrammetry with improved color appearance accuracy. Research and creative interests include computer graphics and game design education and applications of computer graphics in cultural heritage.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-tetzlaff-06282439/

GitHub: https://github.com/michaelt919

Kintsugi 3D project: https://michaelt919.github.io/Kintsugi3DBuilder/

At the beginning of our in-person meetings, we like to put a call out for game trailers, demo reels, and other short game development related announcements. Please come 15min early or contact us (Discord is best) beforehand if you can!

• 6:30: Youtube stream opens, meeting intro and monthly slides.

• 7:00: Presentations.
• After: we head to a nearby restaurant to get food/drinks and socialize!

Join us on our Discord server!

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