I’d start with a dark outdoor ambient, as well as that I’d add choose the colour based on what suits the map. Another way to make a map eerie is to make the sky very dark, having a starry night sky isn’t as eerie as a dark and cloudy night sky. I’d also add small lighting checkpoints to “guide” the player through the dark. I’d love to see where you take this game in the future and I hope this helps!
3 Likes
Damn, that showcase looks amazing. I get the vibes and feel like I’m about to get jumpscared at any time.
But yeah, it’s something along those lines. Just darker ambience and surroundings in general.
3 Likes
Yeah I tend to get lucky with finding visuals, whenever I find something that catches my eye I bookmark it for future references.
On a unrelated note… would anyone know how to replicate the effect? I believe it was accomplished through dark fog + a screen GUI yet I’m not entirely sure.
2 Likes
With the trees, should I make them more realistic? I was thinking of making it with scary faces etched into the trunk, or is that too cartoony?
1 Like
Play around with the terrain colours, make everything look more “dead”.
On top of this, also play around with the lighting/fog, similar to what @LocksOfDispair said above. Make it difficult to see far distances, as people typically fear the unknown. Making it hard to see what’s “around the corner” will make people more on their feet.
Also, a good idea would be to play around with free variants, maybe add some grass and bushes. Perhaps add some dark pine trees to this landscape, dead grass, or bushes. Remember to make each of the trees vary in size, or maybe even make 2-4 different variations of trees.
The terrain right now looks a little too flat, and really easy to see to the other side. A good idea would be to do what @Unsayableorc stated, which would be to add some hills. It does not have to be anything too much, just enough so the user can not see flatly across the map.
4 Likes
Hello, thanks for your feedback, what do you think I could do with lighting to make the map look more spookier?
1 Like
Apply a dark fog, as well as turn the ambient and outdoorambient to a darker shade of grey.
Also, you can play around with properties alike to color correction - if you want to go for lighting that is a little more detailed, though I’d suggest to play around with it.
2 Likes
Surely it’s not that simple, I’m pretty sure there’d be some effects (colorcorrections, blooms, etc) involved in it aswell. For the screen gui, just a simple vignette would work fine. Dark skyboxes, and all that comes after that is just a lot of messing around and testing with the lighting.
3 Likes
You definitely could make the trees more realistic, but remember to try and keep your map to a certain theme that you have in mind. If you are wanting everything to be a bit more realistic, then go for it!
1 Like
So, should I make a color correction? Should I make it like a light shade of black?
To make a place eerie on purpose only makes it less eerie. Make it natural, but make it feel off. Look at ROSES by Clockwork Entertainment for inspiration.
From what I can see in your current build, I would:
- Delete the trees already there, replacing them with individually tall, large trees, such as this and this. I would detail the base of each tree as the player would look at that part the most.
- I would rework the house you have created as it currently looks severely undetailed which would fail to incite a feeling of eeriness. Each brick would have its own surface, created in Blender, and the wooden planks barring the windows as well as roof tiles would be made with CSG unions.
- I would use smooth terrain with desaturated grass (rather than the black grass which you have used) to create two parallel (but not identical) hills around the path leading to the house. The faces of these hills would be riddled with various tree roots (made with CSG unions) as well as rocks (meshes) of varying colours and sizes. Eventually, the path would look more like this (but with the aforementioned rocks, of course).
- I would put work into creating shrubbery and vegetation to bring the place to life.
- In terms of lighting, I would use an “evening” time (approximately 18:30 in Roblox’s lighting) as well as sun ray effects to create a sense of “finality.” The stark darkness of nighttime fails to achieve much emotion in this respect.
What does ROSES do to augment its ‘eerie factor’?
The game predominantly focuses on the quality of loneliness, solitude, and an inability to escape. There is little exploration on the map and it is highly linear; as well as this, the use of certain lights and the emptiness of the asylum itself builds on the sense of loneliness - which no human particularly wants - to create anxiety and suspicion.
Good luck.
5 Likes
Possibly but a colorcorrection effect (apply the above) and set its saturation pretty low
1 Like
You could add more Detail to the Terrain, More Detail to the shed too. Use the Cobblestone Material adds a more realistic effect 
1 Like
As always, look for reference material. Before you get to lighting and atmosphere there are a few things you can do to make the model itself look scarier. Creepy houses by their nature are uninviting. Adding things that make the house feel inaccessible can help a lot. Putting the house on higher ground was mentioned. Fences, gates, boarded windows, fallen trees, overgrown shrubs can all create subtle obstacles that signal to a player that they shouldn’t be there. Building the house with a mishmash of odd angles can make it feel like the whole thing isn’t quite stable. The regularity in the shape and placement of trees you have is actually a calming factor. It looks like an orchard at night. Make the trees taller and more spindly (thinner with irregular branches). Cluster some together and rotate them on the Y axis if you are using the same tree over and over. Put a high garden wall around the back to give it a claustrophobic feeling. That will also help you to use fewer trees and remove the feeling a player might have that he can just run off through the woods if things get hairy. Anyway, go find a bunch of reference and cherry pick the parts that you feel add to the creepiness factor.
1 Like
I don’t understand what you mean?
Can you put a picture?
1 Like
Ok. This is a quick example that illustrates some of the things I was talking about above. I didn’t use a reference, so I’m a terrible role model.
A wall can create the sense that a player could become trapped. That’s what I meant. In a creepy place they can be used like arms reaching out to pull a player in. There are always hedges if you aren’t a fan of walls. Anyway, modeling from imagination or off-the-cuff is great for blocking out scenes and working through how you want to approach things, but when you’re ready to do it for real (which it sounds like you are) use a reference. There are countless ways you could make that scene scarier. It would be easier for us to give advice if you could show a photo or sketch that illustrates the kind of scary you are going for. My point in the post above was that you might do well to look up ways you can make the models themselves creepier (photo/video ref, not tutorials) before you layer on the scary atmosphere ideas that others are suggesting.
Fog was mentioned above. Just a reminder that particles can be used in places for a different effect than you get with the fog in Lighting.
5 Likes
Are your trees meshes? Also, the scene kind of looks cartoon-like. I’m trying to look for realistic, but what you made is… Amazing! Keep up the great work!
1 Like
Heh. No, I just made it in studio after I read your post. The trees are just Parts and the cartoon feel is from exaggerating stuff to make a point… and also from not using a reference! 
Oh okay! Great work still!
Try setting ColorShift_Top to red, blue or white as well as turning down the ambients. Then the ‘moonlight’ can be fine tuned using the Brightness and ColorShift_Top settings.