About lighting in Spark
spacedaniel
Join Date: 2009-11-11 Member: 69348Members
Join Date: 2009-11-11 Member: 69348Members
Reading about the lighting issues I can't help but noticing the number of light sources people are using. In all honesty I haven't mapped anything in my whole life but I do know a few things about lighting and computer graphics although compared to the ones that deal with this daily I'm a flat toad on the highway.
It seems to me that it's "too easy" to add a light and get carried away. The "cast shadow option" should be off from the start, I agree on that. There's no reason a mood-light should cast shadows. If it has to, it's no mood light. What is needed is really some old school lighting basics on what is necessary and what's not (did I just write "old school", jeeeezuz.... I'm an old fart).
What do we want to do in-game? We want to make sure that the player models are properly and efficiently lit and give atmosphere. The 3-light method is s good rule of thumb (a bit boring but still a good place to start) on how to light an object. A "sun" or general light is step 1, a spot with shadows from the front and maybe slightly to the side is no 2 and a backlight with shadows but slightly lower intensity is no 3.
It's a fairly efficient set up. It's up to the mapper to "direct" each section so that player models or assets look properly lit in a majority of positions/cases with a minimum of light sources. In a large room there might be several "scenes" that player move between. Make sure that each such area has at least this kind of lighting. The effect of a single light source can be very sci-fi and cool but it still requires an additional general light to be accepted by the brain as believable (due to reflections and scattering etc). Look at films and surf the net. Less is more if properly placed.
After that, add mood lights to the environment and be careful with shadows. Use colour to set a mood, blue near a monitor set, red by the melter, green in the lab etc. Remember that colour affects people - red for aggressiveness, yellow is mellow and so on. Google it.
The thing to remember is that a computer generated environment, especially in a game engine which has less time and power to render than 3d-software producing high quality stills, simply cannot be lit as if it was real. A hallway can't be adequatly lit by 25 little lamps along the walls as it would in real life. Especially if all of them are set to cast shadows, that's just insane.
It's not easy. There are people in both CG and traditional film industry that do this for a living. People are educated in prop, scene and lighting production. It's not as simple as placing lamps untill it's bright enough. It's effectively an art. And I, for one, will need help from people who knows this stuff.
So, think again before adding one more light. Maybe the effect can be achieved by changing the settings on already existing light sources?
Happy mapping!
It seems to me that it's "too easy" to add a light and get carried away. The "cast shadow option" should be off from the start, I agree on that. There's no reason a mood-light should cast shadows. If it has to, it's no mood light. What is needed is really some old school lighting basics on what is necessary and what's not (did I just write "old school", jeeeezuz.... I'm an old fart).
What do we want to do in-game? We want to make sure that the player models are properly and efficiently lit and give atmosphere. The 3-light method is s good rule of thumb (a bit boring but still a good place to start) on how to light an object. A "sun" or general light is step 1, a spot with shadows from the front and maybe slightly to the side is no 2 and a backlight with shadows but slightly lower intensity is no 3.
It's a fairly efficient set up. It's up to the mapper to "direct" each section so that player models or assets look properly lit in a majority of positions/cases with a minimum of light sources. In a large room there might be several "scenes" that player move between. Make sure that each such area has at least this kind of lighting. The effect of a single light source can be very sci-fi and cool but it still requires an additional general light to be accepted by the brain as believable (due to reflections and scattering etc). Look at films and surf the net. Less is more if properly placed.
After that, add mood lights to the environment and be careful with shadows. Use colour to set a mood, blue near a monitor set, red by the melter, green in the lab etc. Remember that colour affects people - red for aggressiveness, yellow is mellow and so on. Google it.
The thing to remember is that a computer generated environment, especially in a game engine which has less time and power to render than 3d-software producing high quality stills, simply cannot be lit as if it was real. A hallway can't be adequatly lit by 25 little lamps along the walls as it would in real life. Especially if all of them are set to cast shadows, that's just insane.
It's not easy. There are people in both CG and traditional film industry that do this for a living. People are educated in prop, scene and lighting production. It's not as simple as placing lamps untill it's bright enough. It's effectively an art. And I, for one, will need help from people who knows this stuff.
So, think again before adding one more light. Maybe the effect can be achieved by changing the settings on already existing light sources?
Happy mapping!
Comments
Generally speaking, 'realistic' lighting is NOT what you should be aiming for. Having light coming only from where it should would seem to be the best solution, but frequently leads to an overly dark area that looks great in screenshots but would be awful for actual gameplay. Filmmakers, for example, will almost never use just the natural light of the scene, but will add in plenty of their own lights that wouldn't make sense in the real world, but make the film better looking, and easier to read. Games use similar techniques (I seem to recall the commentary for Ep1 or Ep2 going on about using floating lights with no 'source' to make a scene play beter.
Also, going back to your point about reflections, I seem to recall reading somewhere that light bounce was going to be implemented in a later patch?
If light bounce is coming I think it will automatically adress the problem to some degree.
The future looks rather exciting, at least for NS-gaming. Now to hurry home and play with Spark some more :)
Add light to light things, not because a possible source exists, and similarly add sources to rationalise lights, not because you added a light and all lights need sources.
Basically, just because your model is an omni light, it doesn't need to have an omni light attached to it, you can use spots, HL2 does this a lot, and not all lights need to be sourced, HL2 also does this a lot.
Generally things look good if you light them from three directions more or less, you have two primary lights and then a backlight to soften shadows and add rimlighting, ingame this translates to two primary 'feature' lights and an ambient light for any given point in the level. I wouldn't go more than two shadowing lights affecting any one point because it's likely to clutter up the scene with shadows and I would also not suggest relying only on ambient light because it will make the scene look flat.