Cartoon lighting Critique/Review

Currently I’m trying to expand past my comfort zone so I’ve decided to use @DieSoft 's 2017 open sourced terrain template to test out different level design concepts by using a variety of colors, lighting(s)…

Previously I had tried following @HolidayPwner 's lighting guide however the final result hadn’t been what I anticipated so I decided to change the presets provided

here

:

Current progress




Modified template file

Cartoon lighting test.rbxl (1.1 MB)

Planned updates as of 2019-03-17

Thank you in advance for taking the time to read this post as I greatly appreciate it and by all means don’t hold back on the constructive criticism.

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Seems a little foggy, but that’s likely due to the bloom effect?

Otherwise, really cool.

I wouldn’t mind trying to substitute the fog effect for something else, got any alternatives in mind?

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Perhaps by adjusting the FogStart, it could result in less “fog”. Other than that, you could perhaps mess around with the fog colors too.

I made a quick adjustment. You can decide if you’re into it.

lightingtest.rbxl (1.1 MB)

If not, it’s fine man. The work you already did, is pretty good anyway.

Interesting, though it seems rather too bright:thinking:

though it could’ve just been my outfit, would you mind testing it yourself?

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I did a few changes here and there, perhaps it gets a better result.
I tried to minimize the glow upon players, which occoured on the last example.

lightingtest2.rbxl (1.1 MB)

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I’d say it’s a improvement from my modification, though now it seems bland in comparison somehow… perhaps a new skybox will resolve this issue?

Well I’ve got to look into this further before I decide, thank you for your assistance.

Hmm, I like it :slight_smile:
I’m not much of a builder, but I plugged the lighting into my procedurally generated map for my MOBA game, and I think it looks really nice:

That being said, I might decrease the bloom. It’s a little bright right now

Couldn’t agree more, I’m currently tampering with @Someware 's edit to see if I can adjust it to my liking.

Decrease bloom, make the fog start at 0 and end at like 500 or something if not more. Depending on the skybox you’ll have to pick colors. I would normally say that a daytime you could use a light blue (assuming that the skybox has light blue in it) for fog to give a faint “distance fog” going. I would also say that you want to use a warmer color for the top and a colder color for the bottom. Maybe a slightly orange/yellow-ish top and a purple-blue-ish bottom.

Purple is usually a good shadow color for cartoon-ish styles.

Make sure to play around with Lighting brightness as well, maybe bump it down a bit below 1 and throw in a Color Correction shader that you play around with a bit to give more depth to the place.

Overall, It is trial and error and you will get it eventually. But honestly even though I know a lot of people praise HolidayPwner for his lighting and style, I can’t say that I find his lighting to be exceptional. I would instead point you in the direction of @Sofloann who is an exceptionally good builder when it comes to lighting and I’ve asked him for pointers in the past (given he might not be all too interested in sharing his secrets, but you can view his places to at least try and learn from them).

Best of luck and remember practice makes perfect. :^)

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It really depends on the style you’ve got in game.
If you want “cartoony” you have to have a cartoony building style, then you can start building a lighting with whatever colors and embiants.

The lighting is only there to enhance and make the design stronger, adding effect such as particles, beams etc… is also part of the lighting building process imo

Picking the right material, the right color for your build is essential, thats not the lighting’s job to recolor stuff.
I got a few examples for you:



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Hey!

So I’m a strong believer of how integral lighting is to a game, even if the game is well built and constructed, it’ll absolutely be a shame to not adorn it with awesome lighting.

File:Lighting Experiment.rbxl (654.5 KB)

I worked a bit on the template to prove this point!

Original >


After >

Original >


After >

Properties >


Note >
I did not recolor nor touch the map (add my own skybox however), you can see how much clearer the colors pop and this is because of color correction’s contrast, and saturation features. This’ll hopefully create the ideal cartoon lighting you’re looking for. I don’t really recommend using bloom (for ambiance)…it obstructs text bubbles which enrages the player, yes I know :c

Cool Lighting Experiments >


(Lighting can naturally highlight material detail)

Hope it wasn’t too much to read :c
Cheers! Hope I helped!

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I really don’t have any feedback on it, it looks stunning.

I love how you can do some weird stuff with lighting

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Took your advice into consideration, so far I’ve spent nearly 2-3 days trying countless combinations to make the colors pop enough to where I’m satisfied enough to present a preview.

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I’m curious if anyone can manage to actually play in that environment without straining their eyes :thinking:

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