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Old 17-09-12, 19:16   #3
Level NextGen
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Fourth Step: Lighting and Visual Effects:

Ligthing and Atmosphere
I've made a separate tutorial for how to create lighting for atmospheric levels with visual examples HERE


A useful tip with Bigfoot : Creating Contrast
But here is something I want to explain a little more. When you create, it's not just about to add some colors to your game, so you can express feeling and vivid your level. You also have to think how a room will recieve sun. I help a friend of mine : Bigfoot - the great builder of Harmony Around a Red Star (Prologue) - The Hidden Lair. (Ahah he gonna kill me if he knows I promote him this way)...

Anyway beta-building a level, he created this room :


As you can see, he applied some green bulb and even a yellow sun... but it seems flat. Bigfoot and I wondered why it doesn't work here.

We finally understand it was a problem of contrast and luminosity : the fact how the sun would shine here!
Since it's an escarped place, the sun would shine on the top of this hills and the lower aera would be darker. There was only the need to gradually decrease the "ambiant" lighting.

Here is the result ; it sounds better and still with the same colors applied :

Though the middle part is darker than any other, so we create a contrast between the sky and the floor in the deep. However, the player could still see and enjoy the place. If you place some bright bulb you will also attract the player's sight.


I hope you get my point!
Thank you to Bigfoot to let me post this example.



Visual Effects:
Now it's time to talk about Visual Effects. Objects, texturing and lighting are done, but you might want to know how to enhance your level with some effects.

Static effect: fog and ligthrays
The first basic step is to add lightrays and fog to your level! What is a level with lightray and fog effects?

Including fog in your script with this script line will help you to create an atmospheric level but could fix the engine limit issue. You have to understand that your horizon background have to fit with the fog color you choose.
By example:
Code:
Fog=			0,0,0
FogRange=		0, 29
LevelFarView=	30
The fact is to play with the Fog Range Limit. The first one is where the fog starts and the second where it ends. Here you will get a dense white fog for steamy day (like morning)

But as you can see I added ligthrays through the leaves to enhance this steamy effect. As the air is satured by particles when sun passes through the leaves it is reflected by particles and create a lightray

Lightrays can be oblique and scaled up at the end, it more makes sense by the way



And sometime a static fog can be added uppon water or near fire or wherever you want to add to the atmosphere. It add opacity to level and give a mystic sensation.

In empty rooms it avoid the emptyness


Of course, all these static effect add atmosphere to your level but... there are static, so not animated. It somehow slow your level, that is to say that your level looks freezed. However it's great for peaceful/deadly/calm gameplay but sometimes some movment brings to life your levelset

That's why we will study the...

Moving effect: fluids and particles
The best way to animate your world is too use the waterfall object in your wad. It handles scrolling textures on objects.
How to create Seamless scrolling waterfall object texture by teme9

The fact is that you can have more than 3 waterfall textures and even more objects with scrolling textures.
But you have to take care, only textures applied on a Waterfall1/2/3 and Planet_Effect objects will be considered by the editor as a scrolling textures. So I advise you to keep these objects as a place holder for your scrolling textures then use the static objects as the waterfall'ed object (applying the scrolling texture)
Do you understand?

Once you get your seamless scrolling texture ready you can create your mesh and applied your texture on it (as a static object). The tip is since a static object has static lighting you can shadowed your waterfall'ed objects to get fine transitions at the end of the waterfall'ed object! I mean that way:

As you can see in the red cercle the transition was forgotten, and the render looks weird But in blue cercle the transition is fine and render effect is perfect
Of course shadowing the end of meshs only works with semi-transparency textures

Then you could get some amazing effects
like steam....

or fluids and winds...

or magical power...


Something usefull is the waterfall speed you can control, slow down or fast up:
Code:
Customize=		CUST_WATERFALL_SPEED, -4

But you can also animate some effect thanks to wadmerger and multiples meshs:
like in this video with the glowy particles

Tutorial - Wadmerger
This tut will helps you to integrate and animated meshes in one objects




Special effect:
This part will be continued later because it uses some advanced tricks I don't want to reveal before the released of Aqua Sahrym and Beyond Illusion (that is to say soon... really soon!)

Part 1: Meta2TR - Tip on how to animate tree leaves easily click to access to tutorial

Part 2: How to animate Lightrays (SOON)

Part 3: Creating a Water Light Reflection by Klona!

Part 4: Special effect on screen (SOON)


Where to get some effects:
Object Pack with lightrays by teme9
StuffPackage with lightrays by teme9
Wysteria Tree with fog by teme9
Raider Skyrim Package with lightrays by me: LNG
Pumpkin Package with magic fluids and winds by me: LNG
Mansion objects with lightray from window by mike quahe
Water Ripples by mike quahe
Bubble Effect by lathander
Spinning Orbs by mike quahe
BtB 2011 Steampunk Package with steam/fog and lightrays effect provided by Horus
Btb 2008 Peru with lightrays provided by TimJ

Last edited by Level NextGen; 04-07-14 at 00:45.
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