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LIGHTING

INTRODUCTION

Lighting is one of the most important and influential elements in environments. It has thepower to make or break the visuals, theme, and atmosphere. Even the most simplistic levelcan still be brought up to a high level of quality with nothing more than lighting. Likewise,even the most awesome architecture can look horrible if it is badly lit.Lighting is often forgotten and underestimated. Designers often add it quickly and withoutmuch love. While in the past this was partially excusable by the weak hardware and gameengines, these excuses just don’t hold up anymore. Lighting is just as important as geometry.Without lighting there is no environment but just groups of three-dimensional objects.Lighting has the power to communicate the atmosphere to the player; for example scary orhappy. Lighting has the capacity to bring life to a group of objects and bring them to thenext level of quality. Its purpose has expended further than just giving the players the abilityto see where they are going. It creates and enhances the ambience. Lighting can make placeslook scary/cozy or cold/warm. It augments the three-dimensional feel of objects, createscomposition and balance to lead the player’s eyes around.Yet, despite all of this, there are still a very large group of games and levels out there whichuse nothing more than white ambient light everywhere.

THE SOURCE

The most basic rule of lighting is that italways needs a light source. It is impossible tohave lighting in an area with no source, as inthis bad example.While there is plenty of lighting in thiscorridor it’s impossible to tell where the lightis coming from. This completely breaks theillusion and looks artificial.The opposite can also be true and is also bad.There could be light source in a level but nolight coming from it, which is the secondrule. A common mistake is to add lava in anenvironment without adding any lights nearby.Lava is molten rock and fire, both give off light.Thus lava should emit red or orange lighting.This is also true for any other type of lightsource such as a regular fire, the vehicle headlights, radioactive slime, and so on. An exampleof this can be seen at the top of the next page.

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Another lighting aspect to avoid is lighting that isout of balance with the size of the source. An examplecould be a small light source that somehow managesto illuminate an entire room or corridor, as in this badexample on the right.Keep lighting in proportion to its source and itsenvironment!Light sources can be anything: small or large lampshanging on walls or from ceilings, the moon or thesun, crystals,lasers and other type of high-tech beams, fire,mirrors, magical effects, water surfaces that reflectlight, lava, radioactive slime, and so on. Almostanything is possible as long as there is a noticeablesource that is large enough to warrant the amount of light in an area.The same goes for the brightness of the source itself.If the lighting is very bright the source itself shouldnot be dim. It should be just as bright and, if possible,be paired with effects, like a surrounding glow, toenhance the brightness.The example on the left is bad because the lampappears to be ‘off’ even though the environment doesseem to be receiving a lot of light emitting from it. Thebrightness of the light source and the brightness of thelighting in an area must be balanced and appear equal.

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Similarly, the player should see exactly where the light is coming from. The area near asource should appear the brightest.The left image is bad because the entire corridor has an equal brightness, which is strange.It doesn’t feel like the light is really coming from the lamps. The light should be considerablybrighter near the source rather than ten meters further away in a corner. Its brightness shouldfade as it travels further and further away from the source. The light should show variationin brightness as it travels. This is not only more realistic but it also helps the lightingcomposition. Show a direct influence on one element from another!If there are multiple identical light sources in a row, such as the lamps in a corridor above,it can help to give some of the lights a slightly different color or brightness to add additionalvariation.

LIGHTING COMPOSITION

Think about the concepts explained in the composition and architecture chapters. If thereare no, or barely any, changes and contrast in an area, then the scanline chart would be a veryflat line. No change is repetitive and is thus predictable and boring.Lighting composition examines the way highlights and shadows are scattered around. If an area has flat lighting without any contrast, it will look boring. The best example of thisis a corridor. By creating darker areas in between the highlighted areas the area gains somevariation and thus it will be more visually appealing. Have a look at the example screenshotat the top of this page again.This is also true for rooms. If the entire room only has one light source then there is a goodchance the lighting composition is not being exploited to its full potential; which is especiallytrue for highlights. Shadow composition is much easier to achieve because it is simpler tocreate. A single light can create quite a lot of interesting shadows by itself but it will be muchmore difficult to create an interesting highlight composition, although it can be done.This is especially a problem for outdoor environments. Outdoor areas typically only havea single light source like the sun or the moon, and while a single lightsource in the sky cancreate nice shadows, it won’t succeed in creating a nice highlight composition. Both areneeded to create a good composition. The shadows need to play with the bright highlightsand in outdoor lighting this is too often forgotten.When I have to light an outdoor environment I always add highlights like small lamps, carheadlights, torches, and any other small light sources that could give off light throughout the

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