Using custom shadows and light flares

something I try to avoid is having flat looking scenes; using things such as fake shadows and making textures on the side opposite to a light source darker, you can achieve a very realistic effect.

All I did to create these was make a gradient that fades out then blur the edges with an angle!
also using billboard GUI’s to make bright lights is another effect.

this again is just a simple decal I created using blurs and motion blur in external software.
the outcome: it makes scenes look a lot more realistic as shown below!

(questions I get is if I bake in blender to do this, although I’ve played with it I don’t think baking large scenes in blender is a good idea due to low resolution Roblox supports so I came up with this method)

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This is awesome.

The lighting and ambiance you’ve created with the shadows and light flares really make for a neat aesthetic. You should put out a tutorial on how you do some of this - I’m sure a lot of people would definitely appreciate it!

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It’s nice to see that you are sharing your ways of creating visually realistic scenes. Can’t wait to see what you plan to show later on.

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Looking at your portfolio and now this, I think it would be awesome if you made video tutorials about lighting and realistic building/modelling. I think any developer can benefit from such a resource. Your work is truly incredible, keep it up!

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This is really nice :slight_smile: Would you happen to have a place link we could join to walk around the scene? I’d love to see how those BillboardGUI light FX look in game!

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check my twitter tomorrow!! im telling all c:

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The light FX actually change dynamically through some simple angular math and raycasting.

They fade as they go towards the edge of your vision. This means that they don’t distract or block peripherals, but they add a awesome effect when you stare into the light.

The raycasting determines if AlwaysOnTop is true. In general, it looks better when on top but if the light is obscured then the flare shouldnt be over the object.

This looks really really nice in game, and its such a subtle way to increase visuals of your game.

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agreed, never even thought of turning on the ‘ontop’ property on until you enabled when making the view script, but I can easily say its one of the best things ive learnt, now my recent two builds look a lot more alive just because of a simple tick box lmao (ty btw)

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You’re welcome! Always enjoy working with you, and I’m glad you’re learning from our collaborations.

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of course!! hope your learning something from me too even tho I may not arrange my parts :face_with_hand_over_mouth:

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Sksksks don’t get me started on your:
-workspace
-Model
-Model
-Model
-Model
-Mesh-183x2826
-Mesh-9263y824

How you find what you’re looking for is beyond me lol

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f3x of course!! couldn’t live without it

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Can you do a tutorial on this (I know you said it uses a billboard gui, but is there any scripting involved?)? It is very cool!

Just realized that I made a necrobump. Sorry.

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Well since it is already a necrobump, I really want to sustain what you said DragRacer, I’ve tried to make them before and I didn’t had the greatest results.

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This is pretty detailed. It’s at the realistic level of basically RDR2! Nice work on this!

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So,Just wondering,If you could release or can I have the decal for the light?

He probably won’t open source any of that.

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if I can improve then I may in the future but yeah currently keeping it to myself

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What external software did you use to create these? im having some trouble finding some free ones on google. Help is much appreciated.

This looks really cool! I had no idea that Roblox could look so good.

What I’ve found through baking in blender is that you can export parts of scenes piece by piece. I’ve only used this in practice for Roblox like twice, but as long as the part texture isn’t too large it’s possible to have really high-res baked shadows.

I tend just to use custom shadows, like you, because my potato(computer) doesn’t like baking.

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