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
Hmm, I like it
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: https://gyazo.com/6362c34a71847a34067d2d2167b4b81a
That being said, I might decrease the bloom. It’s a little bright right now
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. :^)
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:
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.
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
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. https://i.gyazo.com/7551e1229fe042682b1a8bf4e029da10.mp4
