What are these lighting techniques?
by Tuah O\'Daniel · in Game Design and Creative Issues · 06/05/2008 (9:02 am) · 5 replies
So I'm working on a game, and I want to prepare my knowledge for lighting, as it will likely be the most crucial part to making my game interesting. The lighting techniques I wish to copy are those found in Super Mario Galaxy, Mario Kart Wii, and probably a couple of other games in the Mario series. An example: http://www.wallpaperez.net/wallpaper/games/m/Super-Mario-Galaxy-1022.jpg
As you can see there, Mario has such a soft, cool glow upon him. There seems to be a small silvery light all along his body (almost like the shades velvet gets when ruffled), though very close to the shadows on him.
To those who have expertise in lighting, how can I achieve this look?
I appologize if this is in the wrong forum, but this seemed the most well suited for it.
As you can see there, Mario has such a soft, cool glow upon him. There seems to be a small silvery light all along his body (almost like the shades velvet gets when ruffled), though very close to the shadows on him.
To those who have expertise in lighting, how can I achieve this look?
I appologize if this is in the wrong forum, but this seemed the most well suited for it.
#2
06/05/2008 (9:10 am)
Hmmm... Weird. Here's another URL! http://www.wiigamesblog.com/images/super-mario-galaxy-wallpaper.jpg 
#3
06/05/2008 (9:27 am)
This looks like it's some sort of edge detection effect. If you notice, the edge highlights aren't on all parts of Mario's face. It seems like you could sample the depth buffer in a few directions, a few times, and if there was a big discrepancy in the taps, apply the highlight. 
#4
09/22/2008 (7:40 pm)
That's not really a lighting effect, although it's similar. It's a "falloff" material. I'm not sure how you'd go about this in TGE without the Modernization Kit, but it would be a pretty simple shader in TGEA. In the pixel shader, you'd simply take the dot product of the surface normal with the vector from the surface to the camera (you'd have to pass this info from the vextex shader), and use this value to blend between the lit, textured surface and the falloff color. You could also take the dot product to some power to get different rates of falloff, to make it sharp or very soft. And this way, the falloff effect is completely independent of any scene lighting. You could probably find a simple, free falloff shader online as an example. 
#5
09/22/2008 (8:02 pm)
Ryan is correct it is a falloff shader 
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