hello guys,I'm working on a stage here and I admit I am a terrible lighter. But, I got to learn something some time. I was really happy with my results here but I want to know if I am going the right way.

I enjoy light and color blending, in anything so I tried to use that here a bit.

Here's an unreal 3 screen. I wanted to get some advice on the lighting. Heck even the environment. I'm still working on filling it with my props. But , the lighting sidetracked me a bit. I'd excited to hear any help on how to light something like this.

Hey. Where´s the colorfull scenario I was expecting. :-p

Man. The only that bug me a lot in your study is that I can´t figure out a proper light source. I see you´re trying to play with colors, hot and cold hues (lamps in the wall), but first you have to think "monochromatic".

Like in painting, this can help you to get contrast in dark and light places.
Your Global Illumination are too strong for a underground place like that. It looks to be a dark, mud place...but the strong GI don´t show that.

I hope you get my point. And hope you get a proper explanation in true english. LOL

The water is too bright! Change that to reflect the color and brightness of the scene and the whole thing will look much better.

im not a lighter but what lampoly was saying is to desaturate your image and do lighting that way. youll get strong lights/darks. adding color is really the last step after that.

if you take your screenshot and desaturate it, you get a bunch of midtone greys. no real contrast, no real lighting. adding color isng lighting.

i did a really quick paintover of your original screenshot. top one is untouched.

you need to really push the darks and lights more. then worry about color.
but im not a lighter or anything, just my 2 cents.


oh also, your water is throwing the whole scene off. try fiddling with the material or copy it and make your own, but either way, the cubemap is totally wrong for that environment. you need a darker one, not a cloudy day cubemap.

anyway, best of luck, i hope this helped. im teh nub

It also looks a bit odd that you've got identical light fixtures yet half of them are orange and half are blue. It's a bit too aesthetically designed for a sewer.

I'd maybe make all the lights an orangey colour and add in some light shafts or similar as a source for the contrasting blue light.

00Zero's suggestion will likely help, too. Getting a lot more contrast in the overall lighting rather than just colour.

Zero's paintover reminds me of the first gears,which had this desaturated,near greyed out look,which was got over by gears 2's colorful treatment.Any way coming back to menechus work here,lets not put him down for what he is done so far.he is got a decent level here with some nicely detailed pillar sections and things like that.
First the water needs to look more filthy,as it is after all a sewer passage i believe.Right now its too bright and it kinda spoils the look of the level. I do like how the light is falling on the pillar section. But as some one said,the overall light treament lacks the source here.The only source is the cieling lights and the side wall lights,which means the level will not be as bright as it looks now.Try and work on the attenuation of the lights or the intensity. Also go ahead and polish the props as some of em seems to have some nasty seems,which are looking very obvious in this view. And also get rid of the ambient light which prevails in the level or some kinda of light which is spreading all over.
Keep it coming!

vjbox zero was showing the values , what should be light and what should be dark, easiest way to do that is to desaturate the image to gray. He wasnt implying that the image should be gray or desaturated like gears at all on the contrary he was showing how the lights and darks could be exaggerated to create a better atmosphere.

my take, love a lighting challenge but not sure i pulled it off

pretty basic, just lots of contrast

Couple of lighting thoughts -

- Even lighting is flat and boring. Focus on an interesting light source that will create nice shadows and forms.
- Create pools of light so that your scene does not look flat (again, make sure the lighting isn't even across the scene). Play with the falloff of the lights and think about how far they would realistically travel. Some of this can be solved w/ a GI solution like Beast for Unreal.
- You're in need of some lightmaps to better showcase shadows.
- Use your lights to draw the viewer / players attention to whats important. Maybe its a door out of here to the next zone, an interact on the wall, or something else. Give it purpose.
- Don't forget about bounce light, again a GI or Global Illumination thing (and other basic lighting principles).

General feedback -

- your specular and normals need love. These two together can really make a good light setup look even better. Lights and quality surfaces / materials are copmlimentary.
- some of your geo has odd smoothing groups which will produce lighting artifacts. If its a hard surface give it hard edges or a proper high-res bake down. Look at your lighting in lighting only mode for these dark spots on your geo.
- Lastly, think about the atmosphere. Post FX will help tie things together (and make your light sources bloom look much nicer). Some subtle fog will help create scale and size of the space. And some DOF will help in the distance.

Keep at it!

-Tyler

much like gamedev says
try using more asymetric light , if you build for sp, draw attention, by adding a strong light in one of those shafts.
play valve games to see good lighting !
hope this paintover helps a bit, tried to stay near your initial thought (maybe its mp?)

Good luck trying to get the water to reflect in UT3

Is their ANY way that the water can accept lighting as well? Couldn't for the life of me, get that to work along with surface reflection that isn't faked with a cube map.

This was a good idea. Thank you all. Im going to use these paint overs as reference. You guys have given me some priceless material here.

Originally Posted by whats_true

Good luck trying to get the water to reflect in UT3 :

Is their ANY way that the water can accept lighting as well? Couldn't for the life of me, get that to work along with surface reflection that isn't faked with a cube map.

can be faked by additional geo, otherwise not worth it for cost

if you're feeling really naughty I suppose a render to texture would do it but that's only for one off's really, dont go throwing them around (to be avoided like the plague!!)

Unlit translucencys can be lit. It's either on hourences, or UDN, but there is a way to bake lighting in to them iirc.

environment wise, I think it's very nice. Take on board what gamedev said, but it's pretty strong imo. Just watch your texel densitys (theres a large concrete support that looks very low res)

Shimmer's second paintover is lovely. May I suggest a bit of floating dust particles here and there, maybe some steam coming off the water? Maybe stronger caustics than shimmer painted?

steam and dust particles would look really good, you could also add nasty nasty stuff floating in the water (slicks of grease and scummy bubbles, irridescent oil, bits of wood and slurry). Good if your options are limited for reflections. Hanging cobwebs and other bits would be nice to break up the rectangles through which the other side of the corridor is seen. Maybe have one of the lights knocked out too?

What have I been doing? We'll initially I wanted to use water for this scene but getting water to do what you want is serious business! So, instead I took a dry approach.

Here's what I have so far to continue this scene. I still need help with lighting. Thank you buddies.

It was the fog that screwed up the water eh mate ;]

Composition on this one seems funny. That pipe is blocking the exit and it throws off the whole focal point I think.

Shimmers' paintover is win, I'm not sure fog fits a sewer scene but it's still totally worth the shot, because it gives so much mood and looks so beautiful and there's the mood, and, did I mention mood?.

on the latest update... PURE white lighting sources are hardly ever a good choice, definitly not for a sewer, it needs a theme color, I personally like desaturated color tones, anything close to white, but never pure white lighting.
I have to agree on the pipe, as true said, it throws some of the mood away, unless you'd like the place to purposely look more random and have a small bit of gameplay added... (altho it would make one's portfolio more interesting to have some mood in it)

in fact pure white lights is NEVER a good choice, they don't really exist in the real world. white lights will always gradient through a colour, white light would have to travel from a perfect source through a perfect material. white looking light is generally due to overbrightening, so as it dissipates will reduce in strength through a colour.

I really like Kites PO, I think he has some great suggestions also. It might have a little too much atmosphere, as in fog/humidity. You could probably bump up the brightness a bit.



Something to think about too, is that, lighting is a guide for the player. Where are you wanting them to go? You probably want to tailor you lighting to drive them a specific point or look at key things. For example if you want to lead them to the hallway in the far back left, you might want to tone down the lights on the right side as they get closer to the end of the hall. Same lights, technically they should have the same intensity but realistically you're guiding the player.

In a portfolio piece you can use it to spot light your beauty props without being overt about it. If a viewer/player doesn't know what to look at or where to go, you failed. If they know you're leading their eyes somewhere, you failed. Its a fine line, and you have to be sneaky about it, but you'll get it =)

aye good point vig, I would add that not leading the eyes is a much bigger fail (imo) than being too obvious. players are used to and expect obvious clues, but getting lost or accidentally back tracking is maddening