Author Archives: tomas

So I need to update my portfolio. Started working on a scene, and this first post is posted about 10 hours in.

First mock up, with assets prepped for mudboxification.

Started sculpting

Tossed on a new rim light shader to see better and continued sculpting. Rearanging alot of stuff

More detailing

Tried baking it to a low res model. Looked like crap

Sculpted this far then decided to scrap the terrain and go with a modular approach insted, so today i’ve prepped a bunch of low res models for import to Mudbox. Will post progress when there is anything worth showing.

I’ve decided to make all the terrain in mudbox so I some time making a very simple base mesh. Still got some areas left.
Also decided to change composition of the picture a little because there was such a big empty area in the upper right corner of the picture just below. So i tilted and moved the camera a bit, as can be seen in the picture below it.
I’m still struggling a bit with the composition but it’s some progress atleast.

Before we start: the mod is out so go download it.
http://www.moddb.com/mods/the-haunted

I opened up Stronghold and flew around on the map in the editor for the first time mid-production of Canyon, just to get a feel for the level. It was a very different visual experience compared to Canyon.

TH-Stronghold

Exterior
The first thing I did was to remove all the lighting, re-save the map with -lighting01 at the end and toss in a few directional lights and alter post process effect. But I’m getting ahead of myself, lets start off with a comparisson shot:

Once again I was reminded why I joined up with the Hegi and Schlauchi because the map was just so incredably flat. The image had no depth, no sense of scale and was just a bit uninteresting to look a.

——–

So this is after my first initial quick test and I showed it to the guys…. Now, when I start doing lighting I start with the big lights. And you know what the sun is? It’s a big fracking light, is what it is. So this is a scene with only the sun and an ambient light active along with a supporting backlight (directional light)
I got the feedback”TOO PINK!” and, yea… it really, really was. =D

——–

I reduced the pinkness of the overall scene but still wasn’t quite happy with the colors

——–

Continued tweaking it and looked at some reference pictures Hegi sent over that they had used during the development.  At this point I removed the ”temporary” light setup and worked out a more final light setup that I then could use all through out development. It was between 6-7 Directional lights and a skylight. The sunlight actor and 4 of the other directional lights had shadowcasting on, the rest did not.

———

Flew around the map and came to this corridor/alley kind of deal that I really liked and saw that the shadows were too dark. To those familliar with the term ”white out” this is the same thing, only with shadows.. What has happend is that the lights combined with the post process effects result in some of the shadow-areas being all black.  I guess we can call it a ”blackout”.

———

Tweaked the post processing towards and got rid of the blackouts and adjusted the lighting towards a more green/yellow/orange setting that I kind of fell in love with.

———

So at this point I was getting pretty happy with the lighting so I made a comparisson shot. Here is a view of the lighting in the original level.

———

And here is the same view with my new lighting. People said ”oooooh” and ”aaaaaw” and then got thinking… ”Wow, that looks really dreamy. I want to go quest in the tallest tower and rescue the princess!”
I was really pleased with this lighting but as both Hegi and Schlauchi pointed out it was far too fairy-tale-goodie-goodie and not nearly enough ”demon spawn coming to kill you!”
Back to square 1…

———

A quick adjustment to the post processing resulted in this quickie test towards the more demonic/hellish lighting that was requested.

———

Same as above

———

Same as above

———

I wasn’t very happy with this redish lighting but I realized that the old lighting was too dreamy. I kept tweaking it and kept making adjustments, trying to find something that would make the guys happy while still speaking to me in the same way the dreamy lighting did.

———

Tweaked Depth of field, saturation and blackouts on the interior on the right in the picture

———

The new lighting with the bridge area, with continued tweakings on the post process and over all look.

———

Back in my favorite alley.  Neither I nor the other guys in the team was very happy with the colors of the lanterns…

———

So I changed them and continued tweaking everything.

———

Placing and tweaking god rays for the entire map was done all through out the process, mostly just as placeholders that I’d return to later and tweak to final. As I was flying around doing my thing I came across this nice alley way that I had crossed oh so many times before. Here I saw the redness of the lighting and also got feedback from the guys that the overall exterior lighting was too dark. Adjustments had to be done…

———

And here’s a picutre after those adjustments. Other than tweaking colors in the post processing I also adjusted the depth of field once more.

———

Pretty alley…

———

And here is the pretty-much-final lighting from the same point of view as the original comparisson picture you saw the begining of this post.

———

Interiors
So for both Canyon and Stronghold I’ve used two sets of Post process volumes, one for exterior and one for interior. Getting these to work well together along with the ambient lighting (that is global for the entire level) while maintaining some kind of nice contrast between the two settings has really been the most troublesome thing in Stronghold. I did not make the exterior first and interior second but worked on both and finished them both around the same time but for simplicitys sake I’ve devided them up into two sections to make it easier for you, dear reader, to follow the progress.

So once again, a picture from the lighting from the original set up that existed when I first got the map.

———

The first initial quick test to see what I could do. I added lights and fooled around with them slightly but mostly tweaked post process effects.

———

In TH-Canyon I reduced the saturation in the exterior when compared to the interior and for funsies I decided to try and go the compleate opposit for Stronghold. The reasoning behind this was that wheras Canyon has a fairly dry and monotone setting Stronghold is a castle setting, set high above sea level and takes place during a sunset. So the outside should be really colorful and whats the easiest way to have a contrast against a colorful exterior? I figured I’d make a very desaturated interior.
This was a really, really bad idea from the start and I never got it to look even slightly good.

———

So I went in the compleate opposit direction. I cranked up the saturation and tried to figure out how to best do this set up. A problem I had that I half-and-half ignored at this point was potential blackouts. I was too far away from finding a good theme for the interiors that I just spend time messing about, looking for references and trying shit out.

———

Added in a bunch of blue through post processing but I wasn’t happy. At all. I didn’t know why and that, quite frankly, pissed me off.

———

Removed the blue, went back to thinking ”Well maybe I can make the desaturated shit look good if I…” and then fooled around with post process effects, reworking how many of the directiona lights cast global lighting and just… Well… Tried to find something that worked. Finally I gave up for the day and sat down to watch a movie, and it’s a good thing I did….

———

I watched Underworld: Rise of the lycans and I quite enjoyed it but more importantl, the lighting in the movie clearly illustrated how I should approach the interior of Stronghold.
You see the result above.

———

Tweaking…

———

Tweaking…

———

Sleepi… Er, I mean tweaking….

———

More tweakification!

———

And VOILA! An interior lighting that I was happy with AND that had a nice contrast from the exterior AND that Hegi said ”Yes, I like!” and Schlauchi said ”TOO DAR.. wait, thats okay.”
Win win win win!
I also made some extra subtle smoke effects for the torches near the end that really made them pop, I think.

———

Lighting Stronghold took me about 2 2-½ weeks.
A big shout out to the other guys working on the TH-team for their continued guidence and support (and bitching and nagging) in helping me make their project more awesome.

You know, I’m like the biggest whiner on IRC. Whenever somebody shows something you can bet your ass I’ll have something negative to say about it. Sure, sure I try to work in some good constructive critasism in there as well but mainly, I’ll just whine over whatever the most obvious flaw is.
So let’s go back a few weeks when Schlauchi, this dude, was pimping The Haunted, a mod for UT3, in #unrealed on irc.quakenet.se and everything looked great, except the lighting. So I say ”hey, you need to work on lighting” and we got talking and he asked if I could help out. I love working with lighting and it has been quite a while since I worked in Unreal Engine 3 so I said ”sure”.
I wouldn’t go as far as to call myself ”Lead lighting artist”on the project  because the actual desicons regarding the lighting is made through discussions with both Head of Game design(Schlauchi) and Head ofArt (Hegi). If I have a title it’s Light-suggestion-guy-and-put-shit-together-person. I make a lighting setup that I like, and then I show it to Hegi and Schlauchi, who makes comments based on either playtests or images.
I came into the project with the intention of making their mod more awesome without adding to their work load so most of the time I tried to stay out of their way.

TH-Canyon

This first picture is mostly for comparisson. This is how thelevel looked when I got in. The main problem I saw was that the lighting was just ”there” (if just barly). It didn’t add anything to the overall scenery, nothing popped. It was just ambient and boring.
———————

I havn’t worked with Unrealengine 3 since I finished my Shack-scene (link) and so I was a little rusty as I removed all lights from the entire map and started from skratch. This is what I came up with the same night that I downloaded the mod for the first time, without even having played it once. The feedback I got at that point was ”Too dark”, two words I would hear alot over the coming weeks…
———————

Still same setup as above, nothing changed or tweaked. I had never used Post Process volumes before but I know the ”just-about” of what they can and can not do but it was a whole lot of experementing this first night.
———————

I fooled around with the settings a bit and got to a point I thought was more pleasing for the eyes. As my main concern with the original lighting was that it was bland I may have gone overboard on the contrasts here in the begining but hell, contrast is good. It makes things pop!
I got feedback from Hegi that he wanted the sun in different position, behind the mountains on the ”left” of the map rather than streaming in from the front. I remember this as a backlash that first night because I had my mind set to this really cool looking lighting streaming in from the front of the map… At that point I closed down Unrealed and went to bed, trying to figure out how to best make it look good under these new conditions…
———————

So I changed the direction of the sunand fooled around with shadow contrasts and scene saturation for the entire level a bit… It was around this point I also actually joined the guys for a playtest and saw for myself what Schlauchi was talking about. The environment was indeed a bit too dark…
———————

Same settings as the last picture, but from a closer-to-players point of view.
———————

Same as above, also showing off how”dark” the level got in the shadows. I think it was around here that Hegi sent me the original references for the level and explained the setting a bit further.
———————

” A warm and dry desert camp”-kind of thing… ish. Tweaky tweakerson.
———————

”Alright” I say to myself… But How about some cold colors for contrast?
Response: TOO DARK! TOO COLD! The guys are hard to please but don’t wory, it all paid off in the end…
———————

There is a level event that happends every now and then when a storm sweaps across the level, leaving the otherwise sun lit hot desert in a dark and cold place. This was my first attempt at lighting that event. The only thing that has been altered is the Post Processing.
———————

I tried to please the guys with going to the extremes with HOT AND WARM desert-vibe. In the end, it proved too hard on the eyes during gameplay.
———————

I continued tweaking the Post Process effects for the storm-event. The feedback I got back from this picture was ”Too bright” which was nice for a change.
———————

Godrays… Got to love ’em! First test.
———————

I ended up importing a custom Godray-mesh, which was essentially a sphere scaled up slightly on the Z-axis (height) and with it’s pivot point at the top of the sphere to make it easy placing in the world. I then scaled the mesh again inside the editor up to 10 times (while having different values for the X and Y axis as well, for variation).
I used a volumetric god-ray shaderand and spent some time tweaking the colors, opacity, fade-out effects, particle-dust textures and a few leet hax here and there to come to a resault I was satesfied with.
———————

And here is the close-to-final version of the exterior lighting, God rays included.
———————

This is a picture of how the lighting in the interiors of the level looked in the original version.
———————

I added a bunch of secondary Post Proccess volumes to all interior spaces in Canyon and tweaked them specifically to add contrast between being indoors and being outdoor.
I also added a lantern to break up the otherwise greenage of the scene
———————

Of coure Schlauchi says ”TOO DARK!” so I added more lights and let up the intensity of the shadows.
———————

Even more…
———————

Added godrays to the lamps to all interior spaces and tweaked the material slightly.
———————

From start to finish I spent about 2-2½ weeks lighting this level, mostly during eavning/nights. I worked in sessions stretching from 2-4 hours.
Next up: TH-Stronghold.

Worked a bit on this peice when i’ve had the time. Heres the latest progress:

Worked some more on the terrain

Made a full scene render to see how it looks

Unwrapped it rather quickly and tossed on the wip rocktexture.

Made alterations to terrain so there is a smaller river floating into the big one, removed the left bridge and replaced it with a series of bridges/rock ”behind” the house and tweaked the terrain and rock texture.

Talked it over with dolly and we decided  that a Lighthouse is a good idea so I mocked it in.

Yea, so forgot to make update two days ago when this stuff was made.
More mountains in the making!

Progress shots, scroll down for latest.

Alright, so this wont make it to the final image but it’s rendered now none the less.

I’m gonna scrap the mountains and make 4-5 modules and make all the terrain on that side of the river with, along with simple geometry for solidity.

Meanwhile, here is a pic of what could’ve been.

Started making terrain today. Small pic update, nothing fancy yet.
Because maya is a little bitch and corrupted a file, leaving me with a day old backup without the terrain seen in the picture I’ll have to remake it all. I don’t really think Maya is a bitch, I’m just projecting my illwill against myself for not taking more backups and saving more often.

Shit happends. I’ll be back at it tomorrow. Meanwhile, here is the picture.

Poked around in photoshop with the image above aswell.

 Yea, so more stuff added. Too tired to write about it though so I’ll let the pictures do the talking.

Also made a render with the house in the rest of the mockup scene, and made some changes to the overall composition. More will change but here’s that render!

Spent more time on the house and also started working on terrain textures. I’ve decided to try to go a simple route and not make a highpoly of the terrain but rather just use a tileing texture and vertexpaint. I think it’ll work fairly well, but we’ll see.

Here’s the latest of the house.

– I resized the windows, making them both the same size and alligned their height with the door (thanks to those who pointed that out). I also added a third window.
– I added railing to the lower balcony
– I made the look-out spot at the top of the building, with support on the roof (Personally I think its super cosy up there.)
– I’ve also added some detail to parts of the texture. I’ve decided to keep them fairly clean for now and do a full pass of grungeification later on in the project, most likly at the same time I’m vertexpainting what needs to be vertexpainted (I’ll write a ”how to vertex paint” post at that point as well)
– I’ve continued work on two the texture atlas I’ll use on the house.

The house and all man-built objects in the scene uses two 512×2048 textures. I might size them down, we’ll see. I am building everything as if they were real-time assets, meaning that they could be used in a real time environment, such as a game engine so if I downsize one object, I have to do them all to maintain Pixel density.
I plan to use two or three tileing textures for the terrain, and then another few ones for vegetation.