Game Lighting for whiners.
by Eric Elwell · 01/07/2007 (7:15 pm) · 9 comments
Basic Game Lighting Principles... check it out...Due to a lack of spare time, I am unable to give a proper "what's up?"
post; but seriously, who cares? Useful information is much more worth
while, anyway. (also, an apology, the Mighty Fist posts are missing the
images. I will try to find them and re-upload.)
This is a tutorial ripped right out of my site. Some basic
stuff, but I think this may be useful to most if not all of you.
This is a GX Adam deGrandis original model, the texture is
covered in another tutorial (which I may or may not post in
subsequent plans. For now, find it on the site.)
Now that we have our model completely textured, it's time to apply some proper lighting to it.
With the model open in showtool, I will turn lights on. Let's have a look:
This is how Torque will light the geometry with the default settings. Not much of an improvement if you ask me.
Let's have a look at the Synapse Lighting Kit:
The Lighting Kit does
a great job of pushing
the highlights on the
texture, but we don't
want this overblown
look. We don't want to
simply darken areas
that need to be shaded,
or lighten geometry
facing our light source.
What we want to do is
create a lighting setup
that will pull our
characters into the scene
and be an extra weapon
in our arsenal to make
this game visually
appealing. We want our
characters and
environments to have a
level of coherency that is
convincing and interesting.
The solution is actually
pretty simple.
The source of the problem:
The core problem is that
objects in the real world
recieve color and light
differently than you might
expect without looking
into it. We tend to assume
that shadows are black
and that "shaded" areas
are simply darker. The
truth is, objects recieve
light and color from their
surroundings. If we assume
that our object is fleshy,
and that it recieves light
reflected from the ground,
we will choose a tinted
reddish-brown color for our
shaded areas or in the
case of Torque, ambient
light. Directional light
(recieved from the sky)
should be a blue-ish tint.
With these settings our untextured model might look something like this:
Stock Torque lighting will darken the whole model when the texture
is applied. The Lighting Kit won't make a difference on the untextured
geometry preview, but when we add the texture, it should look like this:
This lighting solution
looks far fleshier and
believable. It also
causes an interesting
color combination
because of the
application of color
theory. (Look it up.)
Now let's change our
default middle gray
background to one
that better fits the
type of environment
we might find our
character in.
I've chosen a dark
desaturated red
with a hint of purple.
This really helps the
character to pop
out of the "scene".
Playing with lighting
and backgrounds in
this fashion is a quick
way to get a good
idea of what you can
accomplish with the
engine, since this is
all rendered with
Torque in Showtool. I
would strongly
discourage you from
simply copying the
values I am using. In
no way do I intend to
just "tell you what to
do". Rather, I hope
that you take the
principle of light and
color reflection/refraction,
and apply color theory
to come up with your
own interesting lighting
solutions for your
characters and
environments.
Have fun!
About the author
#2
01/07/2007 (9:33 pm)
Glad to see you follow through with the "post it on GG" idea. Nice job pal. :)
#3
01/07/2007 (9:46 pm)
Great stuff as always Eric. :)
#4
Oh and it's very well punctuated!
01/07/2007 (9:51 pm)
I like this better with the text to the right.Oh and it's very well punctuated!
#7
01/08/2007 (8:23 am)
very interesting but are these lightning settings also exported into torque?
#8
Florian, all of these images are screengrabs from Showtool. It is Torque. You can't edit your project directly with Showtool, simply inspect. You will have to set up your lights separately within your project.
Truth is, we have barely scratched the surface. We are only using two lights in this setup, you can take it so much farther than that in your own torque project. I'm not really suggesting exact settings, so much as a smarter approach to get more mileage out of the tech. No matter what tech you are using (ranging from no lighting to shader blingbling) , a poor artistic approach will give you poor results. Conversely, a wise artistic approach will take advantage of the technology available. Even in an unlit 2D game, you can apply these theories to get better results. It's simply untrue to think that if our game engine cannot calculate lighting/refraction/reflection/specular/normals/pick-your-poison perfectly then the look is unattainable. Not always, but many times, the problem is user error. We simply don't realise how much we could accomplish if we would just do it right.
I hope that helps explain a little better!
01/08/2007 (9:49 am)
Thanks for the responses, Florian, all of these images are screengrabs from Showtool. It is Torque. You can't edit your project directly with Showtool, simply inspect. You will have to set up your lights separately within your project.
Truth is, we have barely scratched the surface. We are only using two lights in this setup, you can take it so much farther than that in your own torque project. I'm not really suggesting exact settings, so much as a smarter approach to get more mileage out of the tech. No matter what tech you are using (ranging from no lighting to shader blingbling) , a poor artistic approach will give you poor results. Conversely, a wise artistic approach will take advantage of the technology available. Even in an unlit 2D game, you can apply these theories to get better results. It's simply untrue to think that if our game engine cannot calculate lighting/refraction/reflection/specular/normals/pick-your-poison perfectly then the look is unattainable. Not always, but many times, the problem is user error. We simply don't realise how much we could accomplish if we would just do it right.
I hope that helps explain a little better!
Torque Owner William Todd Scott
Thanks.
I'm heading over to your site now...