[Amnesia] Screenshot criticism thread

[lllDash]

NOW Imma show you the cleaniest and the tidiest room you'll ever see in your life. If you take a deep breath it looks like being at the core of the garden of eden, smelling the fresh air and perfume of the leaves and the trees.

AMAZING!! JUST AMAZING!! You make my maps look ugly The lighting, all the stuff on the floor. Serious, it looks great!

[Tesseract]

I'd like some opinions on this, but focus on the lightning and the window.

In this image I find that everything has its own group as though it was organized like that: barrels live here, light source lives there and the water puddle can sit over there; everything seems to be meticulously placed in their own little groups. There needs to be some randomization. You're going too heavy with the fog particles and they just seem to be a plain consistent white; as particles are caught in a particular light colour they pick up that light colour.

The candle needs a fall off so it doesn't just end with a yellow colour, I usually give yellow colours (or most colours) a fall off of 3 colours, for yellow I'd go a very faint dark brown and then blue. In the editor it doesn't actually give a brown colour it gives an orange sort of colour which compliments the primary light source if you get the colours right and I just find that a deep subtle blue just blends well with yellow and orange.

You seem to be using a primary colour for your billboard up on the window and the trick to billboards is that you have to bring the colours down to a very dark colour, for the standard blue billboard I usually make it a very dark grey slightly leaning on blue (to the point where it is almost invisible) mainly because if one billboard alone is too bright it will look horrible with a whole bunch of other billboards.

One thing works really well in this engine from what I have noticed after playing around with it since it came out and that is subtlety and subtlety is anything from billboards to lighting (not saying don't use too many lights) use dark ones that don't overpower use them as gradients and don't use primary colours because they look ugly. Subtlety works for particles; again, don't use bright particles and give them a colour that fits the lighting, there's an alpha scroller for the colours so use that to dim the particles down, use subtlety for custom textures too. Same with fog and box lights.

[Kreekakon]

A work-in-progress map I'm working on that I'd like to ask some help with. Most everything is unfinished, so just focus on the parts my problems concern currently okay?

Spoiler below!

As you can see I think the above's billboard's look very weird, one of the reasons I suspect being them too visible. However this seems to be a problem I'm having trouble solving, because seeing as this a ceiling-window pouring light viewable from 180 degrees, I need a lot of them to emulate the billboard effect. When I add that many however...the previously faint billboards will all overlap, and become very visible.

Any suggestions on how to solve this? Also, any other problems with them?

[PutraenusAlivius]

A work-in-progress map I'm working on that I'd like to ask some help with. Most everything is unfinished, so just focus on the parts my problems concern currently okay?

Spoiler below!

As you can see I think the above's billboard's look very weird, one of the reasons I suspect being them too visible. However this seems to be a problem I'm having trouble solving, because seeing as this a ceiling-window pouring light viewable from 180 degrees, I need a lot of them to emulate the billboard effect. When I add that many however...the previously faint billboards will all overlap, and become very visible.

Any suggestions on how to solve this? Also, any other problems with them?

Make it very faint. Light rays in real life is quite faint. Also, you don't need a lot of billboards to emulate that. It's like the windows. You do the edges then some at the middle with some rotation.

[Kreekakon]

Make it very faint. Light rays in real life is quite faint. Also, you don't need a lot of billboards to emulate that. It's like the windows. You do the edges then some at the middle with some rotation.

Well...as for faintness I already said I made them very faint, but they're overlapping which is what's causing the problem.

As for less billboards in the fashion you said...I'll go try it!

[Kurton]

I think the problem is they're all just too uniform. Try scaling a bunch of 'em this way and that, some unevenness does well for a more natural look.

[Rapture]

I try to avoid scenes like those because all the billboards just saturates the area to much (Especially if it's dark, they can't dynamically blend or change with the background darkness (It's like having a poorly placed FogArea). And. It would be like playing games with god-rays and instead of only one close to you being shown, every god-ray in your FOV is shown to you at once.

And they also don't have the Particle Effects property "Fade at Distance" which is a HUGE bummer.

But to criticize your screenie...
(1) If you can help it, I would go with a more interesting design choice for a window(s). It or they should placed about 50% higher. Someone to help model a interesting top piece window for you perhaps?

Squares are boring, and their should be more architectural design in the overall swimming pool (I know you said WIP, but I just wanted to strongly emphasis on this). I've been playing Bioshock 2 for the first time, and that initial levels are amazing. Try using that for reference.


The main attraction of your pool is the billboards and that isn't enough IMO.

(2) As for lights, make a SpotLight Gobo, that matches your current or new window to show off some interesting shadows.

(3) Those tiles will reflect light, so add a boxlight with a very-very low grey-blue color to encompass the area.

(4) The zenith moon position wouldn't be my best choice to show off moonlight rays. I personally find your screenshot's billboard position awful.

Again if you can help it, find a nice looking sky-box with a moon at an angle between 25-60 degrees.

Use that as a gauge on how to angle your moonlight rays. (You will have to adjust the room's lighting; One side will be slightly darker than the other.)

(5) Minor issue with the glass, they seem to have a lot of streaks? Might be a little annoying to look through and they seem to all follow in the same direction.

[Kreekakon]

Thanks for the criticism!

But to criticize your screenie...
(1) If you can help it, I would go with a more interesting design choice for a window(s). It or they should placed about 50% higher. Someone to help model a interesting top piece window for you perhaps?

Squares are boring, and their should be more architectural design in the overall swimming pool (I know you said WIP, but I just wanted to strongly emphasis on this). I've been playing Bioshock 2 for the first time, and that initial levels are amazing. Try using that for reference.

Well, it is a school swimming pool, so while making it fancy would make it pretty, I want to refrain from making it TOO fancy to make it look too overblown for something at a school.

(2) As for lights, make a SpotLight Gobo, that matches your current or new window to show off some interesting shadows.

Certainly!

(3) Those tiles will reflect light, so add a boxlight with a very-very low grey-blue color to encompass the area.

Already done. You just can't see it well from this angle perhaps

(4) The zenith moon position wouldn't be my best choice to show off moonlight rays. I personally find your screenshot's billboard position awful.

Again if you can help it, find a nice looking sky-box with a moon at an angle between 25-60 degrees.

Use that as a gauge on how to angle your moonlight rays. (You will have to adjust the room's lighting; One side will be slightly darker than the other.)

Might have to experiment a bit with this...

(5) Minor issue with the glass, they seem to have a lot of streaks? Might be a little annoying to look through and they seem to all follow in the same direction.

It's from the glass texture which is tiled. It may be personal preference, but I think the streaks look okay.

[lllDash]

A work-in-progress map I'm working on that I'd like to ask some help with. Most everything is unfinished, so just focus on the parts my problems concern currently okay?

Spoiler below!

As you can see I think the above's billboard's look very weird, one of the reasons I suspect being them too visible. However this seems to be a problem I'm having trouble solving, because seeing as this a ceiling-window pouring light viewable from 180 degrees, I need a lot of them to emulate the billboard effect. When I add that many however...the previously faint billboards will all overlap, and become very visible.

Any suggestions on how to solve this? Also, any other problems with them?

I agree with JustAnotherPlayer. Make the billboards very faint. LIKE REALLY REALLY FAINT: Red:0.001 Green:0.001 Blue:0.003 or something like that. I would also stretch the billboards so that they're touching the bottom of the pool.

Also, use gobo "gobo_square.dds" for each window to shine on the bottom of the pool, after all: that light has to hit something.

[Rapture]

Architecture seems odd to me (Being a little biased based on the models used), you have a stairs at the left side with a small entrance, the center looks like a hallway, then the right side is a door.

Billboards seems to saturated for the screenshot, and to much cyan. The middle windows should have some very faint billboards I think, angled the same way as the current right window ones.