New Horizon on 20/10/2010 at 00:43
Quote Posted by Sticky Fingers
Wonderful screen :thumb: (although 16 fps doesn't sound real good.....)
Hasn't been optimized. I'm sure it will improve. :)
Briareos H on 20/10/2010 at 07:53
I'm really glad you did that, and that is a beautiful shot, Melan.
I'm getting a bit sick of all those yellow and blue lights in TDM missions. They're supposedly adding realism to the technical limitation that most windows can only be opaque, but more realism doesn't mean it looks good. This plagued TDS too, but seeing how many people praised the game for its lighting choices, it might just be me.
If it were only for me, I would advise TDM mappers to do the following:
* Use opaque and lit window as little as possible. During the night, people are sleeping and don't let their torches burning unless they own a really large property.
* Moonlight is never as blue as you think it is. Moonlight is bleak and cold, if you give it high saturation, do it consciously for romantic stylistic purposes.
* White light always looks better than yellow light.
Melan on 20/10/2010 at 08:29
Quote Posted by Briareos H
* Use opaque and lit window as little as possible. During the night, people are sleeping and don't let their torches burning unless they own a really large property.
That's not an easy decision, though. If you have your fancy architecture, you have to light it up in some way to show it off, create contrasts and of course for gameplay. It may even be more important in TDM than TDP/TMA since correctly placed lights work well with normalmapped textures to bring even more 3d out of surfaces. Streetlights are appropriate on the street level, but for higher stories, lit windows are generally the way to go. Moonlight is too uniform and flat, while opportunities for other sources are hard to justify. I often end up turning unlit windows into lit ones because the scene demands a light there.
STiFU on 20/10/2010 at 10:59
Quote Posted by Briareos H
I'm really glad you did that, and that is a beautiful shot, Melan.
I'm getting a bit sick of all those yellow and blue lights in TDM missions. They're supposedly adding realism to the technical limitation that most windows can only be opaque, but more realism doesn't mean it looks good. This plagued TDS too, but seeing how many people praised the game for its lighting choices, it might just be me.
If it were only for me, I would advise TDM mappers to do the following:
* Use opaque and lit window as little as possible. During the night, people are sleeping and don't let their torches burning unless they own a really large property.
* Moonlight is never as blue as you think it is. Moonlight is bleak and cold, if you give it high saturation, do it consciously for romantic stylistic purposes.
* White light
always looks better than yellow light.
Personally, I find it boring if only white light is used all the time. The overall scene color has quite an effect on the atmosphere of a scene and that is exactly what Melan wants to do in that shot as he just said. Having always just white light would only make every part of a level feel the same way, which is bad. If you want that, you can go play Fear, the most monotonous game ever seen. :) Also colored lights are also a classic Thief element.
The blueness of moonlight is is just a question of how your eyes are adapted to night-seeing ("scotopic"), which can take up to one hour. The receptors for night-seeing don't receive color information, just brightness, which is shifted to the color blue and that is why people think moonlight is blue, although it is plain white. Since there is currently no HDR with eye adaption and blue shift implemented, I think it is fairly acceptable to have blue moon light... ;)
Judith on 20/10/2010 at 20:25
Actually, light is
never white, it's always a composition of colours. Using pure white lights is a common, basic mapper mistake. You may want to read a bit on lightning in level design, something like this: (
http://www.hourences.com/book/booklighting.htm)
Renzatic on 20/10/2010 at 21:50
Quote Posted by Briareos H
* Moonlight is never as blue as you think it is. Moonlight is bleak and cold, if you give it high saturation, do it consciously for romantic stylistic purposes.
This is true. A full moon high in the sky on a clear night looks silverish white, lower on the horizon it looks orangish.
Quote:
* White light
always looks better than yellow light.
I know this is a matter of opinion, but I still have to disagree here. Like vehemently disagree. To follow up with what Judith said, going pure white for any light source looks flat out fake and horrible. You want to err towards white to make things look natural, but never use it straight up. Same with using any other color. You try to achieve a balance between the two for the best results.
This is especially true of the D3 engine, which seems to look better when using warmer colored lights instead of cold ones. At least in my opinion.
Edit: Just an aside, I found getting the best lighting results from D3 usually involves using a single regular light near the source, a larger ambient on top of that at low-middling brightness to bring out the falloff a little more and help blend it with the surroundings, and a large scene filling dark colored ambient to blend it in even moreso. The last one can be any color. I've used green, purple, red, whatever, so long as it looks good. It's not the most efficient as far as performance goes, but it looks great for interiors.
clearing on 30/10/2010 at 02:22
Can't wait! Thanks for the news :)
I can't see screenshot.
bikerdude on 30/10/2010 at 11:24
Quote Posted by clearing
Can't wait! Thanks for the news :)I can't see screenshot.
Thats due to bloody msn and silverlight, I will upload the SS on IS and change the image link.
