Development Tips: Better Lighting

[aekume (miso)]

Ending result.

So, recently I’ve been doing a Development tips for my group on videos and stuff but then I got too lazy to do more. From now on I will be doing it on DevForums.

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Keep in mind, I am no lighting god or something, this is just for you to get a good concept on how lighting can affect your game insanely well.

So firstly, let’s see what we are working with. Depending on how your place looks, your lighting will look different. Don’t copy this completely.

Place we're working with.

As you can tell, it is a western style build. The skybox looks horrible and barely fits. The grass is too bright and green for a western style build. It has no energy or life to it. Nothing is happening. It doesn’t tell a story. This can improve a lot if you put time into it.

ROBLOX has this amazing feature that can bring your smooth terrain to life. It’s called “Decorations.” This can be found in: Workspace > Terrain > Decorations.

Example

This should generate some grass onto your smooth terrain. This will not affect your game’s lag rate either.

Update

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Moving on, it still looks pretty off. I personally like to match my grass to how my build looks. In this case, my entire build is made out of wood. In return, I will make my grass an orange color. Be sure to adjust it to your build.

Example

So far, it’s looking better. The grass is matching with the building style. It still looks pretty bad though. Make sure to fit the lighting to how your place looks.

Update

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Next up, we will do the skybox. The default ROBLOX skybox rarely fit any build if you’re striking for realism. If not, you can try to use it but I recommended using another one instead. For my example, I will be using a free skybox model. I don’t know how to make skyboxes so… bare with me!

Simply go into toolbox and search up a skybox. I will be using the skybox made by: Ohio_Enforcement called, “Sunset Skybox.” It fits best in my style.

Credit

Press it once and it should automatically go into lighting. So far, this should improve your game a lot. If it doesn’t keep finding the perfect skybox that will match your place.

Update

The skybox matches with both the grass and building as it seems like you’re currently in the Wild West… kinda LOL!

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Moving forward, the reason why we needed to choose a skybox is because of the EnvironmentalDiffuseScale & EnvironmentalSpecularScale. The EnvironmentalDiffuseScale will change how bright your place can be. The EnvironmentalSpecularScale will determine how reflective your metal material would be.

Before & After Comparison

Before:

After:

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This detail can generate a bit of life to your game. Since this is somewhat an open world kind of game, we can turn on ShadowMap.

Example

This will generate accurate shadow depending on how your place looks. You can mess with the shadow softness if you want to.

Update

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The place looks 10 times better than how it originally looked. Though, there is more that we can do to make it look better. If your scene is a daylight scene, you can use SunRaysEffect. Be sure to not make the rays too bright. This can affect your gameplay and blind the players. Spread the rays out.

Example

Adjust the setting to your liking and match it up with how your place looks. If you cannot see the sun ray effect, go to the top left and do the following: File > Settings > Rendering > Edit Quality Level > Set it to a high amount. Level 17-21.

Update

This looks amazing. Huge improvement from what we did last time. One last detail I would do is change the lighting to match the game. Do not go overboard when you’re doing this. If you want some reference on how to do it, just look at real life google images.

Example

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If you want me to do anything for you, here’s the link to my portfolio.
: [ PERMANENTLY CLOSED ] Aekume

Please look at the name to see if it’s open or not.

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Hopefully this actually did help you out. Roblox added a new feature called, “DepthOfField” and you can use it to take amazing photos. It can be put into the Camera or lighting. Here are some examples of it:

Pictures

Thank you so much for reading! Have a wonderful day!

• Yours truly, landyfritz.

Was this helpful? If not, please let me know why and how I could improve!

• Yes
• No

[lexidogfur (lexidog)]

This is a good tutorial but I’d recommend adding a part saying not to turn the sun rays too high. Often I see people setting the sun rays to a ridiculously high level and it ends up distracting from the actual build or game.

[aekume (miso)]

Thanks for the feedback Lexi!

[FastAsFlash_Dev (Flashy)]

this is a pretty good tutorial!

can you do a tutorial on blender lightning tips too? I am really bad at managing lightning

[aekume (miso)]

I can make some blender stuff, I’m not that experienced but I know the gist of it!

[GamerOfYouTube5579]

This is a great tutorial this will help me out and others when making a game! Thanks!

[rek_kie (Ike)]

Very well done!

I’d also teach people how to utilize some very important effects like Color Correction, Bloom, Atmosphere, ParticleEmitters, Fog, and PointLights as well too, because these can also have a drastic effect on your game.

Utilizing all of the effects (except Blur, I don’t really like it) and messing around with the lighting settings can get you results like mine (this is part of the map for a game I’m working on, also don’t mind the white parts on the minimap lol the map isn’t finished):

Also for people who start using Atmosphere - don’t be afraid to use different settings for different times!

I reccomend lerping through different colors for different times of the day. For example, in my game I lerp between 3 pairs of settings for the Atmosphere’s Color and Decay: one for morning, one for afternoon, and one for night

[Disobeyedcrab04 (Harrison)]

This is awesome! Fantastic tutorial! Also, what screen recorder do you use? I’m struggling to find a good one!

[aekume (miso)]

I use a Mac, which has a built in screen recorder called, “Quicktime.” If you’re on a windows try:

Windows key + g and wait a while for something to pop up. If it doesn’t, try the following:

• Fraps
• OBS