Good Lighting Tips?

[DanTheMan004]

I always compare the levels I make to default MP2 ones and the lighting is never as good and natural looking. Can anyone offer me any tips on gettings nice, smooth looking and evenly spread light? Check the pics to see how my level lighting looks crap compared to mp2 an one.

[Maddieman]

By the looks of it, you're overlighting the scene too much. Looking at the screenshot, you must have 3-4 lights there; wheres in the mp2 shot there's only one central light.

Basically, my rule of thumb is that shadows (not light) make the level look good. Shadows provide shading, which gives the geometry form, depth, and a sense of 3 dimentions. So the first thing I suggest is cutting it down to 1, low-intensity light, and building up on it. When you switch to lightmap mode (where you can only see the lightmaps) you're aiming for a fairly even amount of shadows. If it's 'all white' or splotchy (very instense white in some areas, then shadows around it) you're using too many/bright lights.

Second point: the size and direction of the light matters as much as the intensity and colour. To get smoother, more accurate lighting, consider rotating your light source at an 45. angle (both x and y axis); and light each face of the light (not just the underneath); so that the light gets scattered and bounced at different directions. If you just having it directly facing the ground and walls, it won't be as interesting. Also, use small-ish lights not giant 'room-sized' light tubes -- that stuff works in mp1, but you can't get away with it in mp2.

Third point: Texture map of the light affects the colour of the light. If you want perfect control over your light colour, use a white texture-map. If you want to simulate ambient lighting, try texturing the light with the same textures as the walls and floor -- this will amplify the colour, and give the room a 'glow'.

Final point: For the best results, you probably want a mixture of direct lighting and ambient lighting. Direct lighting lights the area, and draws attention, as you'd expect; ambient lighting 'fills in' the shadows, so they're not as harsh. Basically your ambient light should be very low intensity, and illuminate the entire room (either with 1 light, or several evenly spaced out). Use direct lighting to signify important areas, and cast heavy shadows (like on pillars and chairs, under tables, etc).

To be honest, you might not even need ambient lighting -- the light bouncing off the direct light should scatter and provide some ambience. In the mp2 screen, this appears to be the case -- the floor and table are the best lit; and the light bouncing off the floor illuminates the ceiling a little bit. Whereas your ceiling is black, because the light isn't bouncing back up, for some reason (try angling the lights).


Further reading:
http://www.itchy-animation.co.uk/light.htm

[HazMat]

have you noticed that alot of office rooms in games only have half of the lights on? Or maybe 1 or 2 lights on in a room? You should show us a pic wit just one light on please.

[NeoPain]

What is better way to create a room lamp lighting? Making a single plane that spreads lighting or a cube all faces of which spread the light? if so, what should be proportional intensity of each face for the best?_

[Maddieman]

I'd go with a cube, angled so that the faces aren't parallel to the walls. Intensity depends on the size of the light; the size of the room; the colour of the light+textures; radiosity boost; and so on.

For MaxEd1 Remedy recommened a high radiosity boost, with low intensity lights (so that even a small light would provide good light coverage); but it really depends on the level. Basically what I do for small rooms (the typical appartment size rooms in MP2), is put one main light in the centre of the room, at about 50% intentsity (colour: white); render it; then adjust the intensity to my preference - or add/move the lights.

Outdoors is much harder (especially daylight), because you've got to light larger areas. It's tempting to make a gigantic light tube or 'sun'; but I've never seen that work out well. For MP2 I'd recommend looking at that DMW map they made available -- look at how they medium size light 'blocks' to light specfic areas.

have you noticed that alot of office rooms in games only have half of the lights on? Or maybe 1 or 2 lights on in a room?

This is probably to keep the office from being overlit, and the lightmaps from being washed out.

[NeoPain]

Can you remidn me, where that DMW level is downloadable?

and question 2:

Remember "Breaking Daylights" map? Any ideas how such lighting was produced?

Previously, thanks.

[Maddieman]

I think it's this one:

http://www.rockstargames.com/maxpayne2/mods/Example_levels_001.zip

I can't quite remember the mod you're talking about - if you can post a screenshot, I'll hazzard a guess.

[NeoPain]

Here is the shot:
http://www.levels4you.com/screenshots/f_10210.jpg

Please take a notice on how light spreads throughout th window._

[Maddieman]

Yeah, I remember that one -- Aavenr and I were trying to recreate that effect in another map, with limited success. I'm guessing they have two main lights - the roof, and outside, behind the window (no surprises) -- probably uses big-ish rectangle shaped lights, like that Remedy DMW level. The key thing to note here is that it's still indoors, so the roof, walls, and other objects provide a lot of good shadow. Again the trick here is not to make it so bright that it whitewashes the main area (or if it does, make sure that part can't be seen, like the other side of the window).

There's two approaches you could try to emulate it:

1. Start with the main lights first; then fill in the shadows. So you have the hole in the roof, and that big window on the right. Those lights should (when correctly tweaked) provide some nice, detailed shadows (note the window pattern on the wall) and a fair amount of spot lighting; but everything will be fairly dark overall. The next job is to add ambient lighting to 'fill in' the shadows (i.e so they're not pitch black), and boost the overall light of the level.

2. The second approach is the opposite of the first -- start with ambient lighting first, get that looking good; then build up the main lights. The aim with ambient lighting is to give the entire room an even amount of shading first, so that even the darkest shadow reveals texture; then start to build in the main lights on top the ambient light.

Some practical tips:

-Keep your rendering settings fairly moderate, so you can render the entire room in under 3 minutes. You can't experiment or test lighting if it's taking over half an hour between renders.

-When testing out the basic lighting, hide all unnecessary objects. If you can light the 4 walls, floor and ceiling, and make them look quite good on their own, the rest of it will be fine too -- no need to render all that stuff every single time. If you wan't an idea of how shadows will be cast, keep any major objects like pillars, walls, etc.

-Practise the shadow settings with a basic room, like in the tutorial -- i.e. a small room with some pillars. The goal is to get those sharp and detailed shadows on as low a setting as possible. Rule of thumb: If it looks 'quite good' on a low setting, it'll probably look amazing on the final render.

-There's also an option (somewhere in the menu) that lets you adjust the curve/levels of the lightmaps. If you've used photoshop, you should be familar with this function. In practise, this has the same effect as raising the ambient light in the room (without using lights).

-I can't remember if there's an option for this in MaxED2, but make sure the falloff of the lights is as high as possible -- in MaxED1, this is controlled by Radiosity Backplane (which should be 100%), and Radiosity Boost (which can be as high as 150-200). This way, even a low intensity light will provide a good amount of light coverage.

-This is a personal preference, but try to avoid the strong specular highlight effect you get if you place a light too close to a wall. It knocks out the texture, and doesn't look good, imo.

[NeoPain]

Hey man, thank you. This sections are very useful.

BTW i know that somewhere that map is overlghted, but as for indoor daylight map, i can say nothing - but amazingly cool!

"if you place a light too close to a wall. It knocks out the texture, and doesn't look good"
Yeah, i agree. This is a problem i always had long time ago._

[DanTheMan004]

Thanks for sharing your great insight with us Maddieman. I have rethought my lighting techniques. But what do you mean by using angled lights? Do you mean exactly what it sounds like? i.e instead of having a light on the roof parallel with the roof, you rotate it on the x axis (i think?) so it is angled towards the ground differently?

[Maddieman]

^Yes. I'm not sure if there's any logic behind it, but it seems to provide better results if the light is angled at 45 degrees away from the ground/walls.

[NeoPain]

Maddieman, can you show a screenshot to make us know for sure what do you exactly mean about those angled lights?_

[Maddieman]

Well it's not a hard and fast rule -- there are examples in Remedy's levels where they've not rotated their lights. Regardless, the best example of ambient lighting is in the Subway_B level for Max Payne 1.

Attached is a screenshot -- it's a simple box stretched into a long tube, then tilted at a 45 degree angle. Each face has the same colour/brightness value, set at a very low intesity (but a high radiosoty boost of 150) so that it doesn't wash out the scene.

However, please bear in mind that this technique doesn't work in MaxED2. Several smaller lights, shaped like photographic reflectors (see the example and Manor DMW levels), works much better in MP2, than one giant light (like the sun). For the ambient lighting, change the lighting curve/levels. Do this under the GIS menu, 'Set Lighting Curve'. The higher the output minimum, the lighter everything gets, but remember it affects all of the shadows in the level, so keep it as low as the darkest shadow.

Honestly, outdoor lighting is a nightmare in MaxED2 -- I remember Aavenr went through a lot of frustration with the 7th Serpent level.