Hello guys,
so some of you may have seen a small little creation I made and put on cool creations, a bedroom window view of a suburban neighborhood on a wintry night.
A lot of people asked how I got the lighting to look so “realistic”. By no means do I believe it’s realistic, but it does look more interesting I believe than usual. I wanted to share a simple idea I had to make lights look more “lighty”.
I noticed when I was adding the lighting touches to this that Roblox pointlights(and surfacelights) have a very odd fall off system.
Under most circumstances point lights for instance, illuminate a certain radius, and pretty much just transition to black immediately.
Here’s an example with pointlights(even with shadows)
This isn’t the look I wanted for the view.
I wanted the lights to look brighter at the center, and subtly illuminate a larger area having the light fade to darkness rather than immediately transition to it.
This is what I wanted to share, because although common sense for some and a basic “hacky” idea, I think it could help others out there with their creations if they’re looking to try and do something similar.
In order to make the light look more illuminating at the center and gradually fade to dark, I got the idea or placing surface lights above the surface pointing down at it, and cloning it moving it outward from the source and upwards more and more to make it appear to fade. There are lots of carefully placed surfacelights scattered throughout the scene.
https://i.gyazo.com/3a297c6dc90d65134e5ae94a401b3fa7.mp4
And this is the result I got 
Sometimes this only works under circumstances where you’re not actively moving around the scene, as there is some strange lighting/rendering issues that may occur like light seeming to “clip” and fight. But at a distance, moving around the window in the bedroom, none of this occurred so it seems to be safe at a distance. So if you’re looking for making cinematic looking backdrops or anything, I hope this can be useful to someone who didn’t know about it 
Happy creating and happy holidays!
