[.75][Art/Lighting] Now That LH Has Dynamic Shadows Please Improve Object Lighting

from Elemental Forums

Now that we have dynamic shadowing on the Kumquat engine, maybe we should re-think the nasty, too-dark shadows on the back side of the 3d objects in the game.

Here are some tweaked settings (not perfect by any means) I've come up with which improves visibility over the entire 360 degrees of viewing.

CoreEnvironments

ElementalDefs

A little video:

4,819 views 6 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

 

  Thanks mqpiffle.  Im playing with your changes locally.  I like some changes (more ambiant light) and not others (changing of light direction so that it no longer matches the world lighting).  But I definitely think you are on the right track to increase the ambiant to make the units pop more and reduce the dark sides of the units.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

Cool! :thumbsup:

I started messing with the numbers before I realized what they did, so I knew I had screwed some stuff up.

When I finally figured out how to get rid of the blueish 'dark side of the moon' shadow on objects I was pretty happy.

I've also altered the settings since this video was taken (terrain lighting etc.)

CoreEnvironments

ElementalDefs

Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top


mqpiffle can you please specify exactly which changes you made in the ElementalDefs file? I have done some changing of my own, and don't want to spend the time to try and compare the 2 in order to see which changes to port over to my file if I can avoid it...

Thanks :)

Bendiwolf

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

The important changes are to AmibentLight and DiffuseLight, especially in CoreEnvironments as these numbers override the Defaults set in ElementalDefs.

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

I can't tell you how much this annoyed me when I was building and importing 3d models for Stormworld into the game. As far as I can tell most models don't have lightmaps, only a very select few have them (I think ignys and air elementals in FE). So lightning was handled like they had a spotlight on one side of the model and no global lightning at all. Every model had to be turned around 8 times in-game just to see that every way the model was facing didn't make each side look ugly given the current status of the lightning.

The whole "bucket of paint" approach to lightning on models really is beneath a state of the art game like LH, but I guess it saves a ton on memory and gpu to not use lightmaps, not to mention development resources not having to make them in the first place. Heck, I know it saved me tons of time. It reduced the 3d pipeline to "what you see is what you get".

 

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

I know not of what you speak, but I'm sure it's very interesting.

:maybe: