Project looks dark on different monitors: What do I do?

Devon M

So I have a project that looks great as far as lighting/shadows on my monitor and other monitors. However, on other monitors it looks too dark. What should I do to avoid this? Is it impossible? I have a feeling this is why video games have a brightness slider at the start of a new game.

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/om59q

I've had suggested to me that I should increase the brightness (in engine) on my end, however, what if I have the inverse problem: the scene is now too bright on some monitors but fine on others? Am I stressing too much over this? Haha.

Thanks everyone for any help you can send my way.

Scruples

looks spot on here, most people don't have calibrated monitors, nothing you can do about it. Well, other than calibrate your monitor if it isn't already.

I suggest going through all of these a few times http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/

Devon M

@Scruples

Thanks for the suggestions. I'm not at home but I'll test it asap and report back. 

Devon M

@Scruples

Just went through the tests and everything seems to be fine on my end.

Scruples

Then you've done what you can, anyone who could be reviewing your work would have a calibrated monitor anyway. You could add the brightness adjustment sliders but people usually just crank that to the max anyway,

CreativeSheep

The OP needs to render things out in linear space; calibrated monitors has only to do with getting correct color representation, especially when printing etc. Once rendered in linear space, then composite in sRGB as that is the most common format for a majority of monitors, unless you have a 10-bit monitor.

Devon M

@Scruples

Yea, thanks for all of your help. I never knew about that website, so I'm definitely bookmarking that. 

@CreativeSheep

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by your suggestions. I'll have to research that. The screenshots I have are directly from Unreal, as well as my video. Thanks for your suggestions though

Devon M

@perna

I guess that's exactly what I'm worried about, because on my end the darkest it gets is about 75% to black, and that's in the far corners of the room. I'm looking at it right now. 

I do appreciate the reference images and the suggestion of lighting it better. I completely understand and agree the lighting could be light years better. But I'm looking at it right now and there's not a lot of places where I'm seeing super dark areas, but close to it. I'm looking at the reference images you sent and those are much darker than my cabin, however If I put it on my Cintiq then they look fine. 

I've put my cabin on a few different monitors now and I can see pretty big changes. For instance, at work, I've got two monitors: one is a Cintiq. My monitor on the left is dirt (Hanns G), and the cabin looks super dark with drastic changes from light to dark. But if I put it on my Cintiq it looks fine, with what I explained above. I've sent it out to others with similar results for both instances.

Should I just go through and brighten my scene overall? Lighting is my weakest skill, so I'm up for some good lighting critiques

Thanks again for all the help!

pior

Yeah, there's definitely something very odd going on with this scene, and it's not a monitor issue (unless your monitor is waaaaay off, which I assume is not the case). I have a hard time putting my finger on it because indeed, it does look a lot like old gen lighting. Simply adjusting the gamma helps a lot already, but that's obviously not a satisfactory fix since it  should look correct in the editor to begin with.



Maybe the issue is the idea of making a dark attic populated by bulb lights to begin with. These lights are obviously going to be very bright and the walls closeby are going to bounce off a *lot* of light - meaning that this scene will just not look if you keep trying to make it "artificially dark".

Devon M

@perna

Ha, thanks

The number I gave was me eye balling it because I don't see any super dark areas =P Interesting Photoshop stuff though, I'd never done that before. Had to look it up. Thanks for that.

I don't think I want to enhance that brightness of the room anywhere close to your quick edit though, but maybe find somewhere in the middle. Sort of ruins the ambiance of the room for me and flushes the color out. In the room there are light bulbs, but some of them are out and there's just the one window in the back of the room. Maybe I shot myself in the foot by not having enough light sources haha.

Thank you for your honest critiques and I'll give them further inspection when I'm back at my station.

Devon M

@pior

Hey thanks for the suggestions. 

The updated image you posted looks more similar to how I'm seeing it. You adjusted the gamma? Interesting.

I'll have to check this out when I get back to my station. For the scene, I tried keeping a moody ambiance, something mysterious, old, used, which your updated image still holds. I'll check this out when I'm back at my station. Thanks again.

pior

Heya - sorry, should have posted a before/after image for clarity. Here goes :

http://i.imgur.com/BgS5RQB.gif

But yeah I think that as Per stated, your best bet at this point is to study and practice real world photography to train your eye at picking up this sort of issues.

Devon M

@pior @perna

Thanks for all of your help

Any suggestions of particular subjects/topics you think I should look into?