I thought it could be useful for Junior Lighting Artist or someone trying to get contract, work or otherwise in Lighting to see how an organized and successful art test might look like. Leave a like and comment if it is helpful.
I originally did the lighting for this game in Unity around 2016, and it was terrible result back then but it was my first commercial stylized lighting. Since then the company has been wanting to port, expand and improve the game. I was therefore asked to relight it again, since I obviously improved a lot by then. And since then I had also learned to use Unreal Engine. So first I would like to show what I did in 2016 in Unity Engine.
Basic Progress Report
Below is how it looked like for the Unreal Version when I got the project.
Below is the first draft where I figure out the placement, technical limitation and issues that can arise by placing out light sources with custom lighting setup.
Once I realized I needed more colour and a different level design to put it into practice, I was allowed to change the level design enough to improve the lighting even further. However, I needed to test out different colours in case I wanted fantasy fire.
In the image above you can see I am trying to decide on the ratio of the light, the colours and expand the level design to support the vision.
In the image above you can see that I thought straight corridor needed to be broken up a bit, so I added some dead end rooms that went up.
In the images above you can also see I am avoiding skylight and instead opting in for manually adding bounce lights.
In the image above you can see I am checking exposure to get an idea of how dark I can push it, and how big the dark areas can be before it disrupts gameplay. I eventually got an idea of the base lighting, level design and mood I wanted so I started pushing it for the first dungeon. I also added vents and magical green glowing lights to walls. Below are some changes to the lighting on the last iteration.
So far the above images are for Dungeon 2 that could use some more work, so I will quickly show you images for Dungeon 1, where I established the guidelines. And also why I started adding elevations and brighter areas in Dungeon 2. Part of it is to keep player interest.
So, you can see the changes that has happen both in terms of level design and lighting. Where I also use fog to create the depth and mood needed. But let us explore a bit in detail why these choices are made and what are the limitations here.
Technical Limitations
Originally there were real time lighting on the torches, and they were placed pretty close to each other. That means it was very expensive. Too bright. And no bounce lights. To deal with this I created a default torchlight setup with a specific intensity and range, which I could tweak individually if needed.
Point light is set on static to create enough fill. The spot light is set on stationary to cast shadow when items are spawned randomly in front, and on the spiders climbing on top. Together they create the minimum I need for illumination around the torch areas. However, I had to carefully test and place those lights to avoid overlapping lights. As you might know the overlapping stationary lights become either real time or static (I forgot), when there are 4 of them overlapping. This resulted in a lot of work and thought on where to place the lights, and how to create the desired effect and mood. This also made everything too yellow, so I created a higher roof with exterior blue light coming in to balance things out.
As you can see in the image above I created a larger ceiling and placed those near doors, corners or half way through the corridors to break up the yellow dominant light everywhere. This is expensive so I tried keeping it within a certain range. The reason for that is because for Dungeon 2 the areas are sometimes bigger, more corners and thus more likely to have overlapping lights coming through the wall. To counter this I reduced some of the ranges and added fake lighting. Whether I keep it is another test for another time.
As you see in the image above I have more static lighting in the bigger dungeon to deal with the stationary overlap limitations. And you can see I utilize it to push more light into the darker areas of the hallway, because I had to cut down the range for the lights.
What does it mean? And why is this important? If I kept the original stationary light there would be around 6 overlapping lights thus forcing me to go either to real time or static. The other solution would be to move the lights around. So the solution for now was to add in fill lights manually.
As you can see I have manage to optimize the game cost by keeping the amount of real shadow being cast to minimum, and overlapping stationary light within green. As discussed earlier the seemingly innocent looking lighting job required some careful thoughts in optimization while developing the look for it. Further more I had to ensure that the real time cost around the map stayed out of red. We can see that using lightmap complexity view below.
In the above image you can see red occurring due to it being close to the starting area, which has a big fire pit and particles.
As you can see the reason lights are placed the way they are, the level is designed the way it is and the thought that has to go into such a straightforward game is in fact a bit more complicated than simply dragging out lights. As for Lightma^p density I have kept it within green as seen below.
I hope this article showcase some of the important mindset and decisions that goes into lighting. Sometimes things might look straightforward and you might think you do not need a lighting specialist, but I improved the visual quality and frame rate using these methods.
In this test I am testing out how to light and lead the player for a multiplayer type of map. For multiplayer map you need to focus more on readability around the map but also the characters moving around. Since I still do not have my graphic card it gets difficult to do too much intensive work.
Right now I decide on the colors I want first before I pick the HDRI sky and generally the time of day. So if I want more yellow and orange, I know my time of day is earlier or later in the day etc.
I decided to have one side identified as the brighter area and the other one in the shadow. So for that the light from the sun was coming into the left side.
As you see the lit side is easily identifiable. So I allowed the purple to dominate more on the shadow side.
The shadow side as seen above is dominated by the color purple. And does perhaps become flatter than intended. The overall values are okay in some of the other areas though.
Even though some areas as inaccessible I wanted it to feel bigger. For that reason the blocked areas are lit up a bit.
You can see in the image above that the brightest area is under the dome by the bridge, to encourage people to go there. And there is a contrast with the background that is dark on the right, where the players can not go. The light in there does however give impression of scale and something going on outside of the play space.
The darkest area is under the map and also where it can be hard to spot the players, but for now it is readable enough. This area is darkest so players will know by the layout, design and lighting where they are. Overall it could use more brightness and contrast to deal with the flatness. To show this I have recorded a short video running around the level with and without color in it. The character and weapon are not working in the lighting right now due to capsule shadow bug.
Since I still have not managed to replace my graphic card I continue to focus my time into gameplay lighting and color palettes. This time I went with the epic games tower defense assets relighting session. With this decision I decided on a joker and batman color palette of green and purple being the dominant colors. Let us investigate what I ended up with.
As you can see from above I did not use a lot of lights. And the only lights that are dynamic are the ones near the path. Those are the purpose lights. Everything else is baked.
As you can see from above it is fairly lit, perhaps a bit too much and not enough contrast.
Here you are able to see some difference between the path but it is generally flat, this can be fixed but increasing brightness of path light or/and decreasing skylight to be darker so overall the scene is darker.
There is a bit of darkness in the corner here due to removing a light source but the statue is still overly bright with odd green light coming through the eyes.
I tried establishing more mood, depth and atmosphere by using fog. I primarily wanted the acid pool under to get more of a glow through the fog. You can notice the evenly lit path at this side of the map.
Above you can see I reduced the skylight a bit to darken the scene, pushed fog to be stronger under the acid pit, increased the light on the path and took away the statue light and pushed the green out from the eyes a bit.
The above image is just a quick edit on how it should have been with clearer light and dark areas. That said I think the color palette worked well this time around. Below is a short video testing the level but since I do not have a graphic card it lags a lot.
In short, I used an hour on this and would need more time to get the contract between dark and light areas more obvious. Overall I am happy with the color palette but could have tried some yellow golden on top of it.
If you like these posts then please leave a comment and like.
Due to not having a graphic card I am unable to use a lot of lights. For that reason I have been playing around with game-play lighting and color palettes more actively. These are unfinished pieces done in a few hours. The rules are simple. Try and light something in an hour and then share what could be better. That means there might be some self critical pointers on what I could have done better. #whatwentwrong Since I really dislike this piece I am being fairly short this time to share the thought process and experiment. These blogs are about being honest and share the critical mind that goes into creative work.
In the above image you see the lighting view where I tried getting some interesting shadow coming into the area. Since the player is starting here and need to be directed to the other side of the room, I kept the furthest area darker with more blue. Although this area could have been more gradient and variety, as it is kind of flat here.
In the image above you see the locked door that the player will notice, if the player goes to the very bright orange red light area then they will realize it is locked. Hence a darker red color over the door. But still bright enough to separate it from anything else nearby. Although, this area might have too strong direct light as it is clipping a bit.
In the above shot I translate the dominant orange into more blue and higher contrast. I tried making it clear that I want the player to go this way into the room. I also tried having some interesting shadows. Although, I do have reflection issues here.
In the image below you see specific reflection probes and no fill light being used. It does have a nice transition from bright, dark to bright. Although, I should have added accent lighting on top and background to inform player about the origin of the warm lights to the left. And I should have boosted the warm light from the left.
In the image above you see the two lights being used. One up close to the light fixture and another one to push the light with shadow out to the hallway. Although, it could have been more interesting to place it on the side to have interesting shape to the lighting.
As you see much clearly on top image here it is fairly flat in some places, it could use gradient by blocking out light from one of the window.
As you see in the top image it ended up too bright on the direct light. Commonly known as clipping the highlights.
As you see in the top image the reflection is not working correctly, so the metal objects are almost black. I also do no like the lighting in the end around this area. Probably the least.
As you see in the above image it is fairly boring back at the wall and the highlight on the floor is clipping here too.
As you see in the image below it is probably the best shot of this gameplay lighting practice. Although, I could use orange light on the roof, by the plants in the back you probably do not see and stronger light on the left going further up the wall to build the mood better.
That is about it. I hope you like that I share imperfect and unfinished pieces and discuss the reasoning but also what went wrong. If you like this please leave a like and comment. Thank you
Inspiration
This time I went for general inspiration and I ended up with these two images. What you will notice is that they do not reflect the final lighting. This is because I used the grayscale and general idea of it, rather than copying it.
Turning inspiration to BW
Turning Inspiration to Opposite Color
Setting up Basic Lighting
I then set up the basic lighting in which we want as few light as possible to maximize the effect, range and intensity. I also wanted the middle light to have the blue and strongest light intensity. And the outer areas to have a orange weaker light to them.
Tweaking Shadow
I didn’t want my usual sharp shadows. I wanted them a bit more diffused so I adjusted the source radius on all.
Key Light as Area Light
I used area light for the key light to get diffused shadow but also a nice soft effect overall to the scene.
Reflections
I tweaked the reflections to get the desired reflection out of the whole area, including ground. For the ground I use planar reflection.
Skylight
I didn’t want too much bright light coming in from skylight, so I kept it to the minimum using the cubemap.
Fog
I then added some orange fog to emphasize the mood and spread the light around a bit.
Key light Color Test
It was important to get the basic color right, intensity and range of the key light. Which as mentioned earlier was an area light.
Camera Angle
I started tweaking the camera angle to decide the composition, depth of field and other features.
Post Process
During all this I also tweaked the post process to pump up the desired effect.
Light complexity
These days I like to check the light complexity to optimize the scene a bit. This is why there are so few lights on this scene.
Lightmap Density
I also bumped up the lightmap density to get more out of the quality, but not too high.
GPU Visualizer
And to ensure the optimization is at its best I check the GPU Visualizer. I try my best to keep the numbers low which means the ms cost and fps is optimized.
Final Shots
Reference/Color Wheel
The first thing I did was look for general references that could work for me. And after that I decided to create a colour palette that I think might be interesting to do. This scene is popular to light, so I wanted to use colours that were less popular. For that reason, I went with teal, purple and yellow/orange.
Greyscale Lighting
My preferred way of lighting is to get the greyscale the way I want it. So I focus on where the light should come from, where is it hitting and generally ensuring that the values from light to dark is clear.
Deciding on Color
Once I have an idea I go back and forth deciding where the color should be for what, its intensity and range.
Shadows
As the process continues I start looking at the darkness and which method to use to remove complete blackness when viewed with materials on.
Post Processing
For this particular scene I decided to lean on stationary light a bit, and use post processing volume to bring out the light using exposure and global illumination.
IES Profile
I would adjust the IES profile to get the desired effect, which meant changing intensity and range to deal with the changes that came with using IES profile.
Shadow Length/Shadow Bias
Certain stationary lights where not giving contact shadow and it took me some time to realize I had to adjust Contact Shadow Length. For the movable lights I adjusted Shadow Bias.
Detail Lights
For the few detail lights I prefer using movable lights, and those tend to be added to a different lighting channel to save resources. Additionally, I will turn off shadow if possible. This makes moveable much cheaper to use.
Window Material
To get the desired look for the window, I changed the map and overall settings to get the look.
Reflection Probes
Eventually I added reflection probes to see if I wanted to make any changes or adjustments.
Summary
Naturally during the process I added dirt mask, bloom, colour correction and tweaked the lights into I got it just right.
Doing game lighting compare to cinematic poses some other challenges, unless you are doing real-time cinematic that is. I am specifically talking about performance, gameplay, and clarity to name a few. In this blog post, I will break down a test lighting I did for a game jam 2D Side scroller with a sci-fi theme to it. The majority of the level was put together by my friend with some adjustment made by me later on. So let us start with the general workflow, starting with References.
References – Color and Mood
The first thing to do is always get some references, it makes it much easier to establish your mood and lighting setup. Let me provide two samples from the reference library that I used to light the area.
Once I spend a few hours doing this process I try and establish my own color scheme based on my references, this ensures creative freedom, expression and artistic decisions suitable for the particular game you might do lighting for. Provided is a sample of
Light Placements
With the concept, planning and reference phase semi-completed I recommend thinking about where to put the lights, as in my case there are suggestions on light sources but in some cases none at all. So an example of how it would look like is this:
Looking at the environment I started playing around with different light placement but ended up placing lights somewhat like this:
The reason for
By now, maybe you noticed the color of the materials. This plays an important role in what color light to pick. In this case, I was the one who changed the materials to yellow and red, to emphasize the blue/teal lighting that would go in the playable path. With minor breakups using red/orange.
I continued adding static mesh light sources down the hallway, in the process I added elevation and other details to adjust the level design. The darker red light was added to the door entrance with a big wall in between, and other light sources
Adding the light to the level
One of the first thing that is good to do is getting a decent emissive from the materials that are on the static mesh light sources itself. This will give out a light that can be baked into the texture, saving
Then a lot of time goes into adding the best suitable type of light type, such as
All of these lights have unique settings to them for different purpose and reasons. I will try and explain some of the principles behind it. In general only the important lights have dynamic shadow on which means it is calculated every second while the game runs, everything else is baked to save on resources during gameplay. This allows me to be slightly free in using extra lights in areas that I need to in exchange for longer baking time/rendering.
As shown so far there are many things, thoughts
An example of such a scenario would be the image shown later below which has hotspot created
The lights being used for the game level is also using Inverse Square Law which is basically how lights fall off and lose’s intensity over distance as shown above. But I took another image to save time, this time from Johannes
This is when we can turn off the Inverse Square Law and play around with intensity, range and light falloff exponent. In my
Basically you keep going like this looking at your reference, color palette and adjusting it based on values, contrast and what you are going for. I tried making sure the background was visible enough while the main path was brightest. Smallest thoughts went into it such as purposely having white tiles on the path and black on both sides of it, this creates contrast and also ensure brightest spots are in the middle of the path.
Fog
I won’t go too much into detail but when you add fog into the scene such as Exponential Height Fog you need to remember it creates flatness due to the type of technology it is. Some time was spent to push the fog to the middle of the scene rather than the whole scene, this was to ensure depth without losing value and contrast. Additionally fog sheet was used to put around on the side background to create further depth and mood. The light sources closer to the player area and higher up was given volumetric lighting as well.
Post Processing
Final Touches
For the final
I hope you learned something. Feel free to share, like or contact me. Easiest method is to contact me on linkedin or artstation.
Lighting Breakdown – The Shield
In this blog post I briefly break down the basics of the lighting for the shield scene, done in Unreal Engine. So, the first thing was putting out the main key light, which in this case was coming from outside of the cave. Similar but dimmer version were added backwards to light up the background using the outside as the source.
Because it is very blue main key light, it is a general good idea to balance it out with some warm. To do that I created fire sources outside of the image and aimed it on the shield, surrounding walls and such to fill in the shadows with warm light. I also used skylight to fill in the shadows everywhere with some colour.
I then added more point lights, and these were baked rather than real time. This was to fill in the cave with a mix of orange and blue, and have it transition more around to avoid harsh transitions.
Because I was using skylight and baking, and the surroundings were not reflecting as intended, I added what I was missing: Reflection Spheres. This created the reflection that would occur in such a wet environment.
Which brings us to the important part of this lighting setup. The fog. It is important to understand that fog is really water particles. And light slows down when it hits dense objects like glass or water, which in return creates refraction, which spreads the light everywhere and makes it diffused. That is the simple explanation. So here is a quick example below. Originally explains how rainbow is made, but the principles are similar for our purpose. The light hits the hovering water particles in a fog, it comes back out somewhere else, and also different colour. In our case we have less white and more blue/orange. And the light we want to turn into fog, is the main key light which is blue. On a side note, that is also why you see that things are somewhere else when in water, because the lights slows down, bends what we see and shows a different position of a fish or a pencil in a glass etc.
Anyway, that is why you see fog a lot in concept art, backgrounds in movies and otherwise as it helps light up the scene evenly in a intelligent way. So you end up with this:
The main reason I created this scene was to understand the fog and volumetric settings better, so this scene will probably receive an update in the future unless I make a new scene to replace this. But as you see, the dark cave now becomes lit due toe the fog picking up the light sources, and spreading out more diffused rather than specifically on the spots.
Below are the settings used to get the look, and it can still get better.
Key light settings
Fog Settings 1
Fog Settings 2
So, hopefully you learned something new.
Summary:
The general idea is to understand that light behaves different in the environments, and keeping the ratio between each light fairly different. Like, the key light is at 4K intensity and 8500 temperature color following Kelvin scale. This means that the other lights are less in intensity and has another color temperature to create the atmosphere, depth, feeling and environment.
We also need to add in extra lights to fill in the shadow, and help build the environment storytelling by leading the eye where we want the viewer to look.
Lastly, I did change the materials roughness/specular level and after this blog post, I changed shadow bias to deal with some of the light bleeding occurring (light reaching places it shouldn’t be).
Make sure to check up my previous blogs:
Compound Lighting Breakdown in Unity
Crunch goes to war Lighting Breakdown in Unreal
Don’t forget the skybox in Unity
Youtube:
LIGHTING BREAKDOWN OF CRUNCH ARMY (PARAGON ASSETS)
I made this scene for a competition and I haven’t looked at it for a week or so, as I still think I can improve it and change the way I lit it. It is meant to be a still image, so this one uses Unreal Engine and still image lighting approach which isn’t recommended to use for an actual game. Unlike my previous blog about Game Lighting for Compound Map using Unity, which is fully baked, this one is fully real time. Special thanks go to two people who helped me, they wanted to remain unnamed. So with shared credit, let us get a quick overview of my rather overkill method which I probably update and change after writing this blog.
Step 1 – Gather References
The first thing I do is to gather references as this helps establish the overall art direction, mood, style and approach I will be going for. After a whole day of talking to someone about which reference to use, he finally accepted two choices as good lighting reference.
Now, why are there two lighting reference which are totally different from each other? Well, the blue tone one is mostly for composition, while the red one is for the lighting. As I am limited to what other people provide me, I had to compensate by finding an idea of setting up the scene that might be done using existing animation poses, and generally cinematic lighting. So with the general art direction and inspiration in place I went to Step 2.
Step 2 – Setting up scene and composition
The next thing I did was changing the environment a bit, placing out the models, changing the animation poses, creating variety so their silhouette are clear and unique, look like they are running into war and generally using my reference. You see the blue camera hints on my composition, which is essentially what I use as final image. That means I wouldn’t look at this current angle, to decide if the angle is good or bad, I would look through the camera lenses as this is to be a fixed image.
Step 3 – Lighting up the main Crunch character
As mentioned in my first article Lighting Breakdown of Compound Map, I will turn off all lights, including the hidden default lighting such as bloom, ambient occlusion and so on. So the first thing I did was generally follow three point lighting principles by spending a lot of time, placing spot light around Crunch to figure out how to best light him. Of course, Shawn Booth was a great help during the whole process with vitally important feedback.
Step 4 – Rim Lights for Crunch Main
Rim Lighting Crunch Main Character was up next, and I found that to be the hardest part and I still must tweak it. Because Crunch is metal based, have unique shapes to him and reacts different to light I decided to go overboard to get the general rim lighting I wanted since it isn’t meant to be game based however I do recommend placing those rim lights further up, with wider angle to get the desired effect, rather than doing what I did. But for this purpose, it worked fine.
Now, the reason for the rim lights is to separate him from the background more, otherwise you wouldn’t get the perspective and depth. And the reason for blue color choice, besides the reference is to give a nice contrast of color scheme with warm and cold.
Step 5 – Fill Light for Weapon
As you light you will notice that some areas are not getting the desired effect, and if you understand light you know that light bounces and picks up color as it bounces. You will also know that shadow is hardly ever completely black. So after another round of feedback and fresh eyes, I added some shooting effect, lighting, and fill light to blow the weapon up a bit.
The reason for adding specifically red color to the fill lights, is because the weapon is firing, so naturally the fire and effect around it would give out a highlight inside of the barrel, and around the weapon. I continued adding some fill lights around, to get rid of the darkest shadow but also build the silhouette of the character.
Step 6 – Big Fill lights
I needed more fill light and surrounding areas to light up, this give out of picture reasons to where the lights are coming from so I added lights for front to simulate red light from weapons, guns, fire, explosion and strong led lights from back.
By doing so you would see the terrain lit up, and surrounding characters also starting to pick up some light. Giving the character and rest of the characters a more believable light source.
Step 7 – Transferring the principles
It doesn’t make sense that only the main character who is the focal point, gets all the lighting. So, I added some quick lights to the other character using somewhat the same principles. Although, at this stage I would probably redo the rim lighting all together and tweak the values.
The big guy behind was another challenging character with mixed feedback, some didn’t like the pose, others didn’t like him visible and there at all. Regardless, I decided to fill up the light, so he became visible and I changed his model to be more unique from the rest. Important thing to keep in mind is that I tried to ensure that the rim light (blue) and frontal light (red) came from the same direction, which is why I want to redo those rim lights, as right now I don’t find them to fit naturally enough. I also added walls and lit them up to have brighter background once the fog was added.
Step 8 – Atmosphere
I started added in fog effect, to create the mood and dust feeling. I couldn’t get enough control and depth for the army itself, behind the main Crunch character. So I went and did another step.
Step 9 – Fog sheet
I added another layer of fog using fog sheet, to create more depth and color variant in the air. And eventually was ready to play around with the post effect for the camera.
Step 10 – Post Effects
With color adjustment, tone mapping, ambient occlusion, depth of field, adding particle effects and water effects around water. I eventually called it finished but at this stage I might revisit to make some changes.
Maybe you can learn more if you read my previous blog where I lit up a map for Intruder game. Which is a different process and fully baked. Here
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