[LVL ED] Lighting Maps...

[Rapture]

I would suggest looking at other people's CS that have good atmosphere and look at how they light a level. It really isn't that hard, so saying "I really suck" isn't a option anymore. You suck because your not actually attempting to it. Their is plently of work out their to give you a good understanding to how to do it. Practice makes perfect, I was really shitty to, at the start you just have to go over that barrier of not trying it.

Look at the original Amnesia maps. Make a dummy copy of any room and start adding lights in and you'll get really good at withen a few weeks.

P.S. You might want to work on your mapping. Like I said, look at other people's work. You really need to spend a lot of effort of rotating/sizing objects to give your maps a organic and atmospheric look and feel. And add particle effects like fog (Change the color if you have to), they make a world of difference.

[FlawlessHappiness]

And if you can't find the right color, take a look at FGs maps that has the same theme as yours. (Sewer, Study, Morgue, etc.)

[SonOfLiberty796]

I would suggest looking at other people's CS that have good atmosphere and look at how they light a level. It really isn't that hard, so saying "I really suck" isn't a option anymore. You suck because your not actually attempting to it. Their is plently of work out their to give you a good understanding to how to do it. Practice makes perfect, I was really shitty to, at the start you just have to go over that barrier of not trying it.

Look at the original Amnesia maps. Make a dummy copy of any room and start adding lights in and you'll get really good at withen a few weeks.

P.S. You might want to work on your mapping. Like I said, look at other people's work. You really need to spend a lot of effort of rotating/sizing objects to give your maps a organic and atmospheric look and feel. And add particle effects like fog (Change the color if you have to), they make a world of difference.

Haha, I'd have to agree. Nobody can practically say "I suck" anymore because all it takes is practice and that's all.

Then that's what I shall try to do: make a dummy room and work on lighting (and the atmospheric look). That's pretty much one way I can practice well.

And I realized that as well, no matter how hard I try to rotate/size objects and do all these mapping stuff to create atmosphere, it ends up crappy (and I see it too lol :p ). So I need practicing on that as well. As for fog, can you suggest what kind of fog? Because aren't there different types of fog in the Lvl. Editor? And If I use fog, I want to make it so that it doesn't cut into other room.

And if you can't find the right color, take a look at FGs maps that has the same theme as yours. (Sewer, Study, Morgue, etc.)

Yeah I've been looking at their maps from time to time to see what kind of lighting color they have It helps out.

[Adny]

Good red/orange color (for torches/lanterns):
R: 0.5
G: 0.3
B: 0.07

Good Blue color (windows)
R: 0.3
G: 0.4
B: 0.7

Good Yellow (Alt Windows, Candles)
R: 0.15
G: 0.15
B: 0.1

The fog I tend to use the most is area_fog.ps - there are a few applications where small, large, and x-large would be good, but I find the best balance of control (in the editor) and performance (framerate) is the standard fog.

A few tips for fog:

-Under fade distance, use these values (respectively):
4
5
10
20

When coloring fog, inherit the color of the nearest pointlight (if there are none nearby, use the boxlight's color, then bump it up a little by use the +/- on the color box to increase the value by 0.1).

The darker the color, the more faint and realistic it will look. I always set the alpha (A) value to 0.5 - the only exception being that the fog is off in the distance in an area the player could never reach, so in such a case it is acceptable that it is more noticable. The settings I gave will make a cleaner fade distance (naturally reducing wall cutting), but if you want to further improve, make sure the particle system is at least 1.5 units off the ground, and in the center of the area (i.e. a hall or a room).

A quick note on alpha and particle systems: From what I've observed, particle systems only have 3 alpha settings that actually affect it: 1 (clearly visible) 0.5 (somewhat visible) and 0 (invisible).

Oh, and if you use any particles like water/drip, make sure to turn off "Fade at Distance" altogether - those things look really glitchy when you walk up, then suddenly appear, then you get too close and they disappear.


/rant

[SonOfLiberty796]

All of this information about lighting is helping really well guys, thanks

I've created my dummy map, and while I was about to do lighting, I realized something else I needed to ask: how do you "Connect Lights"? For instance, in my dummy room, there is a bonfire (the player has to light it up to "warm himself" - lol yes, it's turning out to be a small custom story, but again, it's just a dummy), and I'm using a PointLight to lighten up the room once the player has lit the bonfire.

I know already that in order to have proper (or "professional", like in Amnesia) lighting, it's pretty much a MUST to use the "ConnectedLight" line. I have tried to read the tutorial that was up on the FG Wiki, but I am completely lost. I need help with this (I'm sure once I understand it, my lighting will be dramatically improved).

[The chaser]

All of this information about lighting is helping really well guys, thanks

I've created my dummy map, and while I was about to do lighting, I realized something else I needed to ask: how do you "Connect Lights"? For instance, in my dummy room, there is a bonfire (the player has to light it up to "warm himself" - lol yes, it's turning out to be a small custom story, but again, it's just a dummy), and I'm using a PointLight to lighten up the room once the player has lit the bonfire.

I know already that in order to have proper (or "professional", like in Amnesia) lighting, it's pretty much a MUST to use the "ConnectedLight" line. I have tried to read the tutorial that was up on the FG Wiki, but I am completely lost. I need help with this (I'm sure once I understand it, my lighting will be dramatically improved).

Make a light (the light that will be showed when litting on the bonfire)
Set it's values to 0.
Now, connect the bonfire to the light. Be sure that it's unlit.

[Streetboat]

I've posted this before, but here's my shpiel on appropriate lighting:


For me, it's lighting. Lighting and billboards go a very, very long way. It's very important to use a mix of spotlights, pointlights, and billboards for your major light sources. I'm gonna post examples from my own work to clarify.


See how I used a single lantern in that room, so I accentuated all the features in the room from that particular angle. There's a pointlight lighting the area directly around the lantern, as well as a spotlight shining at the stairs so they cast a poignant shadow on the far wall.


Same principle, but this time the light from the lantern casts a clear shadow behind it, with just a pointlight lighting the area in front of it, since the single pillar is a central part of the room.


The player is trapped in a dungeon, so naturally the retina will be accustomed to the dark. As a result, I placed a very large billboard at the lantern, making it clear that that is the only light source in the room. Also, there is no ambient light in the room, making the contrast between the orange light of the torch and the blackness of the rest of the room that much more obvious.

[Cont'd in next post due to image limit]

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This one is harder to see unless you're in-game. First, there are two spotlights present, causing the door to cast a shadow as it opens and closes, and the same is applied the the fireplace. There is a billboard with 'halo' enabled in the fireplace, so as the door opens and closes, it flickers while the shadow is cast. A huge point I would like to make to other mappers is, to create pointlights with low light levels but large radii in addition to the main light being cast. This gives a bounce glow to the rest of the room. It's present in this room, but hard to notice with the white background of this forum.





This is a clear example of the last point. There is a huge billboard in the ceiling, attracting the eye to its origin, but it is still possible to see the rest of the room due to the large radius of the pointlight underneath it. There is also a spotlight with the water gobo at the bottom of the room.

In short, the best way to achieve realism in your rooms is with contrasting and believable lighting. I never let a lamp go with no attached light entity, the default lights Frictional put on their lamp entities just looks bad. They're very bright in the middle, and then they fade to pure back very fast. It looks bad. Real lights go for much farther than you'd think.

Good luck and happy mapping!

[SonOfLiberty796]

@Streetboat Thanks for that whole post, I'll make sure to go over it every single time I need tips with lighting. By the way, you should make a lighting tutorial, because that whole post itself had so much detail to the point where it would qualify as a tutorial or tips.

Ok, so now, I created my bonfire, I created the PointLight and for it to light up when the bonfire is lit, but...



That's how it looks like. Notice the light also hits the top of this stove entity, which is unrealistic (it also hits the celling, and from what I've heard, lights hitting the celling is a no-no). However, while I was looking at this, I thought "Why not just use SpotLights?" Because as you can see, the bonfire entity itself already has its own default SpotLight (creates shadows, too). So I thought why not create extra SpotLights to hit other objects around, like the chair, the beds, etc. This would solve the little issue with the top of the stove being lit up unrealistically.

Oh and don't worry about why the picture is "blurryish". It's because the sanity was dropping :p my mistake.

[FlawlessHappiness]

Yes put a spotlight inside the stove. But!
The light that land on the floor is getting reflected again in a darker color! So actually, there COULD be light on the ceiling, if it is a darker color. It would make more sense.

Think about it. There is a room, with a lighted stove. Everything around the stove is pitch black, except in front of it... Would that make sense?

[SonOfLiberty796]

Ok so after I placed SpotLights, this is how it looks like now. Note: The SpotLights have shadows enabled.



By the way, I know when you look on the right (at the darkness) it looks blurry or as if something is there. There is: it's a door, however, for some reason it came out blurry, I don't know why.

ALSO one more thing, if you're looking at this on a VGA monitor, the brightness of this pic will be REALLY crappy. (I'm using both an HDMI monitor and a VGA one... lol good combo, right?)