How would you light this b***h?

jordan.kocon

Concept:


I want to achieve the crisp shadows from the fluorescent lights on the left, and get the dark shadows along the tracks. Would you even use a dominant directional light in an interior or just point lights? Or dominant point lights...?

Edit: Or should I make the florescent lights an emisive material that light the scene?

Edit: Also keep global illumination on? Or does turning it off give more control and keep the scene from getting too bright?

sprunghunt

If you want to reduce the amount of indirect lighting try turning down the indirect lighting scale on the lights. Look under "lightmass" in the light's properties.

Dylan Brady

depending on the engine yur using either use 2 point lights w/ shadows turned on (notice how theres two shadows on the pillars) and a couple more with no shadows.
if you cant do light bounce then just a very low ambient light would get the same effect probably.
in fact, even if you can, it would probably keep the tunnel from getting to dark and create a strong sense of space when coupled with some indirect illumination.

jordan.kocon

Sprunghunt: Thanks, I'll make sure to play with that property.

Bonebrew22: I am using UDK if that helps. Would you just two 'point lights', or dominant ones? Makes sense though, having the rest of the lights with shadows turned off. Thanks Also I'm not sure if I have ever mentioned but your picture is awesome, single greatest tv character ever!

O, can pointlight's create crisp shadows? I feel bad asking for so much help but I'm stressed to get this done for my demo reel and I think the lighting will make the scene.

Edit: This the problem I run into. This is just 2 point lights, very simple. When I calculate the lighting I lose all shadow detail. I'm a total noob to udk and have no idea how to get 2 crossing shadows like in the concept!

Mark Dygert

Bonebrew22 wrote: »

depending on the engine yur using either use 2 point lights w/ shadows turned on (notice how theres two shadows on the pillars) and a couple more with no shadows.
if you cant do light bounce then just a very low ambient light would get the same effect probably.
in fact, even if you can, it would probably keep the tunnel from getting to dark and create a strong sense of space when coupled with some indirect illumination.

{Cough} {Cough} UDK Sub-forum {Cough} {Cough} I know I've made the same mistake clicking on the highlighted thread in the main forum, which is why I can poke ya in the ribs =P

I think you should do it with emissive materials. Trying to cobble lights together sounds like more trouble than its worth.

You can also use mesh paint to tint the verts along the tracks and paint in some shadows if the lighting isn't able to do everything you wanted it to do.

Jeff Parrott

Yeah light with emissive. It'll make your build times crazy long. But a combo of that and lights is the way to go.

Sandro

What I've been doing a lot lately is approximating ambient lighting with low-intensity, saturated pointlights + lightmass and then using intense dynamic (movable) lights with shadow buffer shadows serving as keylights.

This way you get very high-quality specular response and shadows that tie dynamic + static objects nicely together. Also, bake times are very fast (you can get away with very lowres lightmaps as you are not using them for storing sharp, directional shadows)

In your case you have somewhat red-violet(ish) ambient and intense white key. Orange glowing things are not keylights and do not seem to be bleeding awfull lot of color in the scene, but you can throw in couple of low-intensity/low radius pointlights near them anyways.

And don't forget light temperature stuff You loose saturation as you get close to lightsource and vice versa (lower 2 gradients on image)

jordan.kocon

Mark Dygert: Thanks for the response, I'm just fiddling with emmisive right now.
Sandro: Thanks a lot man, will probably be giving this a try.

Does anyone know why this is happening?? I have a mix of emmisive, spot and point lights, and in lighting only view it looks like my material is lit, but in lit, or game mode there is a very hard shadow. Even adding a light right on top does barely anything. As you can see, there is a point where the level is almost pitch black which you can see by the point light I selected. It's like the light is almost completely non existent on the right side. Argh so frustrating!!