[Amnesia] Screenshot criticism thread

[FlawlessHappiness]

Ok. It does not look like a dense wood. That's probably what created the problem in my eyes... It's impossible to make shadows without all the objects

[ExpectedIdentifier]

UPDATE:



More feedback and criticism would be great now that it's more finished.

Created my own particle effects: Moths, leaves falling and new dust.

[OriginalUsername]

I think it still looks really bright, even in the shadows. You should lower the boxlight a bit, or whatever you use to light the area.

[Rapture]

Tad grass overload I think.

(1) About the grass, I would suggest having a couple more variations on hand to use (Sorry the paint is so crappy, but think of the lines as you turning/snaking the grass. Like look at the Vanilla Amnesia grass models and compare yours to theirs and see how they made them.)

Spoiler below!

Red = What you have right now, I think, they look to be a 6 or 8 star formation.

Green + Teal + Orange = Various variations. (Add some flowers, height, subtly types or shades of grass)

(2) If by any chance you know how to animate the leaves, that would be a cool thing, to watch the leaves slowly shake in the breeze as your walking through their. In combination of your leaves particle effect.

Looking pretty good now.

[ExpectedIdentifier]

Tad grass overload I think.

(1) About the grass, I would suggest having a couple more variations on hand to use (Sorry the paint is so crappy, but think of the lines as you turning/snaking the grass. Like look at the Vanilla Amnesia grass models and compare yours to theirs and see how they made them.)

Spoiler below!

Red = What you have right now, I think, they look to be a 6 or 8 star formation.

Green + Teal + Orange = Various variations. (Add some flowers, height, subtly types or shades of grass)

(2) If by any chance you know how to animate the leaves, that would be a cool thing, to watch the leaves slowly shake in the breeze as your walking through their. In combination of your leaves particle effect.

Looking pretty good now.

Really appreciate the feedback Yeah I though about animating the leaves, the only way I can think of doing it would be to use a script to move the entire tree slightly but that might look a bit stupid, what method were you thinking? But for the grass that could work but I think it would affect performance because of the amount of grass. And yeah, I have some different grass colours I could use, there's already one other colour variety in there, hidden behind too much of the other colour I think

As for the grass positions, thanks, I will make some changes!

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I think it still looks really bright, even in the shadows. You should lower the boxlight a bit, or whatever you use to light the area.

Alright, will mess with the colours a bit

Edit: Really happy, managed to get all the leaves and grass moving without scripting by using UV animations in the material editor, actually looks really good, especially with shadows being casted and some spot lights.

[CarnivorousJelly]

SonataArctica is getting pretty awesome with the outdoor environment models :o

Spoiler below!

I'm actually making a non-mansion-base room. It's supposed to be a foyer (and the first main hub) for my CS. There's more to it than just this little alcove, but I figured I'd show off what I've managed to create so far.
Also, rounded walls are a pain in the butt

[ExpectedIdentifier]

SonataArctica is getting pretty awesome with the outdoor environment models :o

Spoiler below!

I'm actually making a non-mansion-base room. It's supposed to be a foyer (and the first main hub) for my CS. There's more to it than just this little alcove, but I figured I'd show off what I've managed to create so far.
Also, rounded walls are a pain in the butt

I've got an indoor environment that looks pretty awesome too but I'm not sure if I want to show it yet! Also that lighting looks terrific in your screenshot, puts mine to shame have you got any tips on lighting for my outdoor map?

[Rapture]

You could use some gobos for your windows, and some more light shafts for the two windows beside it (Make sure they aim in the general direction of that front mirror only, not each individual mirror.)

I would add a faint orange Fog Box near the windows also (Area should be a bit brighter, the windows themselves are very strong). I like the orange/reddish palette a lot, can you try adding some more faint blood red lights/billboards along the edges and see if it enhances the look?

[CarnivorousJelly]

I've got an indoor environment that looks pretty awesome too but I'm not sure if I want to show it yet! :D Also that lighting looks terrific in your screenshot, puts mine to shame :D have you got any tips on lighting for my outdoor map?

Spoiler tags for massive amount of text :) There's a TL;DR at the bottom

Spoiler below!

Hmm, lighting. Well, natural sources of light will always have blue-ish shadows, so it helps to have the boxlight tinted blue (this colouration becomes more noticeable when the sun is closer to the horizon).

Other than that, more contrast often helps. Start with your darkest lights first and build your way up. That way, you'll be able to tell if you need to adjust your spotlights or boxlight.

In terms of colour theory (if that's what you were looking for)...
This tutorial applies mainly to photography, but to maps as well. The important part is this: "There's a test that you can do for yourself in Photoshop or almost any graphics program. Create squares of complementary colours and compare their relative intensities. While Red and Green are roughly equal in their affect on each other Orange and Blue need about a 3:1 ratio for the same balance. With Yellow and Violet it's about 5:1. (Your mileage may vary)."
To summarize and expand at the same time:
Complementary colours = Yellow with Purple, Green with Red, Blue with Orange.

When using Red and Green for lighting, a ratio of 1:1 (same amount of red as green) works nicely. The shade, saturation, and vibrancy of the colour should be determined by your map and what suits it best. This would probably work best in a sunset-map although Blue-Orange is the better complimentary pair for sunsets (even with forests).

When using Yellow and Purple, you need a lot of purple and a small amount of yellow, approximately 5 times as much purple as yellow. I find using a very desaturated yellow with a very light yellow makes for a nice dawn colour.

When using Orange and Blue, you'll need more orange than blue. Sort of like what I did in my screenshot. Most of the light is very blue and only a bit is orange.

Using this in relations to your map, it pretty much means use (slightly) more colourful lights, darker shadows and a blue boxlight - dark, desaturated blue. Try 0.105, 0.116, 0.141 (R, G, B) or 0.061, 0.082, 0.106 (R, G, B).

You could use some gobos for your windows, and some more light shafts for the two windows beside it (Make sure they aim in the general direction of that front mirror only, not each individual mirror.)

I would add a faint orange Fog Box near the windows also (Area should be a bit brighter, the windows themselves are very strong). I like the orange/reddish palette a lot, can you try adding some more faint blood red lights/billboards along the edges and see if it enhances the look?

I'll give a the red billboards and a couple more gobos a shot. I was actually worried it would be to saturated :p I'll also increase the alpha on the fog box since it's not quite as noticeable as I had hoped for it to be.

Quick question though:
I have a gobo on the main window, it's just not really noticeable :s but the other two are spotlight-less. This is mainly because the gobos look really weird through an angled window (see here). Is there a way to stop that weirdness?

[Rapture]

Your question of "weirdness" is vague, I'm not even sure to what your referring to. All I see is a badly positioned/rotated Spotlight Gobo.

Spoiler below!

Which part is weird, the green or the blue? Or something else...

Spoiler below!

Re-creating what your doing, to see what potential problems might come up... All I found was the spotlight would leak through the Window. So I put a Black Screen to block some of it.

Didn't spend much time on it, the angle/size of the Spotlight Gobo is wrong. But with messing around with the Radius, FOV and playing with each X/Y/Z rotational values, you shouldn't have any problems getting it the way you want.