Heyas,

The last time I was running reloaded was back in May. At that time, the lighting seemed a bit off but things were reasonably pleasant to look at.

Now that I've updated, things are crazy bright and saturated with color. The fog seems to not be nearly as smooth either.

My question is:

What do you guys recommend for lighting settings in Reloaded?

I've seen several really nicely lit screenshots here so I'm wondering what I'm doing wrong. I messed around with things but I couldn't seem to get something that approximated my earlier lighting from May...



Certain settings such as the surface lighting seems to behave differently than it used to... I'm guessing that it is somehow improved now but I don't know how some of these setting are meant to be used.

I do like that it is now possible to get a bit stronger specular reaction out of things but geeze... I am hoping that the global spec slider addition Lee had mentioned somewhere will allow me to take the edge off so that I don't feel like I'm on acid.

On a side note. are the skyboxes lower resolution now? It seems really grainy to look at now but maybe it's some other setting I have messed up.

Thanks in advance for any help/tips!

there is new sliders you might of missed, contrast and brightness perhaps its those? but honestly no idea but defo a noticeable difference to those screenies..

I messed around with brightness and contrast a bit to get to where I was at with the "tweaked" image. They seemed really difficult to fine tune (+/- 1 clickers would be nice) and only seemed to have a narrow "natural" range (outside of that it looked like I was applying photoshop filters).

ah well then sorry m8 no clue

have you tried deactivating "bloom"?



-Wolf

Yeah. The "tweaked" pic isn't completely off but I had to turn it down quite a bit just to keep the ground from glowing it seemed.

Wolf, you usually know your lighting stuff quite well. Are there any general rules you have for generating natural feeling lighting?

I'm ok with not being able to achieve exactly what I had before. I just want something natural to use as a baseline because the default settings do not seem good at all.

What happened and I think a big huge mistake was to drop a technique or shader. And since then it is cartoon world definitely got 300 times worse graphically. Should of left it as it was. But a few experts on forums commenTed and we have day glo screens as default.
I do believe it is being addressed mid this month

Can't help with the settings, but love the Charger.

Ahh. I suppose a different shader treatment would go pretty far in explaining things. It seems like now the specular is being multiplied by an insane amount. Hopefully a slider with a default setting that isn't bezerk will help out. I can imagine circumstances where being able to ramp the specular multiplication via script could be really neat. My fear though is that specular maps will have to be artificially dimmed by the artist which would result in loss of fidelity as values are clamped. Hopefully this will not be the case.



Thanks, man! I really hope they add drivable vehicles at some point. I also have versions with full interiors and engine/trunk detail. If there's enough interest, I might put some on the store that people can use as scenery or spawn/win zone markers.

Ignoring brightness and contrast for a second and leaving them at default........Try this..

Attack the Ambience sliders for better results I find..
Start with the actual ambience slider to about 25%.....then the ambience colours to about 50%...then the surface colour sliders to about 50

Then adjust the brightness or contrast after that .... I found this to have a better control over the glare especially ?

@synchromesh

Thanks- That was helpful! I feel like I'm on the right track now.

Somehow it had eluded me that the surface lighting is the sun/global directional and as such, should be of a greater value than the ambient light. I had them flipped

No probs....Its surprising how many people ignore the surface colour sliders....
But they do impact greatly on the ambience........Also it looks like it wont work until you adjust that very last surface colour

Love the car model.... Where did you get that one ?

@synchromesh

It sort of seems like there should be a slider for surface lighting intensity like there is with ambience so that the level can be easily adjusted once you have your colors mixed.

And Thanks. I made that model a few months ago. Ultima

That would be an advantage yes .......
I think the Default setting is all wrong when you initially load the editor which I know they are changing for V1009. But i still don't think they have considered the colour sliders in their new settings ....But by now the whole look may have changed with the new baking system so its a wait and see i think

The baking system will only affect static elements. Not sure about if ambient occlusion will be static-only or also include dynamic objects (I'd think it probably should). It will be interesting though... I've been doing AO bakes on most of my models into the textures. So we'll see how much that messes me up.

EAI,

Firstly, with regards to the lighting; I struggled when I made my indoor horror game (we all now how poor indoor levels look in Reloaded currently), but, I simply used the ambient colour sliders and brought them all down to 10 or 11. I actually put the blue slider at around 15 to give a cold look. That brought everything down to a nice looking tone. This also gives you a little bit of play with the overall ambience level slider.

Also, I took the surface colour sliders down to around 10-11. This stops walls and floors (that would be in direct sunlight) from glaring and being blown out.

You noticed that bloom should actually be called, 'blown out and blurry', so, I put that to '0'.

These are just my settings to achieve an eerie lighting indoors, but, decent lighting can be achieved.

Secondly, are you going to be bringing your older model packs over to Reloaded? You already have a loyal fan base than would be very happy to see your stuff in the store.

Oh, love the charger! I am trying to teach myself how to model cars at the moment, as Humster3D have a car modelling competition on. My idea is to model the DeLorean from Back to the Future.

Cheers

Jay.

@unfamillia



Yes... I too am finding that low input values seem to be the key, for sure. Thanks for sharing your night-time formula



I've been on modeling hiatus while I waited for reloaded to mature but I'll be bringing a lot of conte

I believe that is being added in 1.9. According to Lee's blog.

@DVader

Ahh! That's good news.

Probably a little late to the party here but:

The bottom picture if you turn down your surface sliders, will reduce the reflection/glare you're getting from the sun. I run about 25 ambient, like pretty much everyone else here, with between 50 and 80 as the settings on the actual ambient sliders.

And just a quick rundown as to what does what:

Ambient level - overall light level of all objects.
Ambient RBG sliders - basically builds off of the above.

Surface RBG sliders - these are how much your objects in the world will reflect the natural light. I highly recommend turning these to 40 or below. Indoor scenes need a 0-10 value to avoid the look of having the light from outside reflecting off your floors.

In your case, the 'doge challenger' (Much fast, very 440, wow) is getting too much ambient as a whole (evidenced by the entire scene's brightness but also the glare coming off it is directly a result of too much surface level. Bring those sliders down man!

@Bolt Action Gaming

Thanks for your input. I think that I've got a pretty good handle on it now but It's nice seeing what different people are using for values (they seem to be generally similar) because it helps me to figure out how to tune the textu

Sweet looking car even with the bad lighting. Hope to see that in the store soon! How about a maroon '73 Cutlass Supreme with a white vinyl top? LOL, just kidding, that was my first car. Awesome work. Just awesome.

if your going to make a dodge charger you really MUST paint it like the "general lee" i loved that car when i was a kid ... and would buy it just for having it again... my mum threw all my toys away lol so i don't have the car toy of it anymore please do a paint job like that it was awesome lmao.

and a Jessie model on the hood

@Jerry Tremble



I plan to add it after the next update when the lighting is a bit more final (not really the right word as Reloaded is still essentially in alpha) because I was looking at it tonight and will need to do some tuning to the specular maps but don\'t want to make revisions tuned to the current build.



My overall goal for it is (since vehicles are just scenery) to do a couple variant meshes such as parked (like you see here), hood popped open (maybe the player starts the level stranded on the side of a desolate road), wrecked and/or flipped, etc. I also think it would be neat to be able to open the trunk and reveal an item hidden there. There\'s a lot of possibilities but I have to be careful to not get carried away because I have a bad habit with that.



The next car that I do will most likely be based on a Crown Vic or similar as there are so many ways to use them once I have the base model. Although... your first car sounds pretty amazing!





@almightyhood



Psst.. click this and view at full size

This is an earlier WIP render set I compiled to show some friends. This was before I added the interior trunk and engine bay details so the polycount is a little higher for the full-on \"hero\" model (essentially what would be needed if we had detailed, drivable vehicles- The silver one in the pic currently sits at 12,068 on the highest LOD).



Obviously there would be copyright issues with selling a GL but that doesn\'t mean that an alternate texture set won\'t materialize as a \"bonus\".



As a sidenote, the reason I did this model was because of the iconic nature and versatility. Obviously there was the GL but 68/69 Chargers have had other notable roles in Bullit, Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry, Blade, Deathproof, etc.



Please tell me you meant to say Daisy.

that's right god .... daisy duke lol, who's Jessie...LOL erm i am getting old wot..

and yeah your probably right about making a general lee look alike model tbh copy rights n such
i guess using it as an easter egg in a game wouldn't be so good after all, disappointing..

Uncle Jesse
Sometimes, an orange Charger with a brush bar and vector rims is just an orange Charger with a brush bar and vector rims.
But like I said earlier.... I really want to make a moonshine running game if vehicles are added to Reloaded.

nono no!! i was defo thinking of a hot chick lol maybe something will return to my failing memory later on lmao..

but yeah sounds like a plan for a game m8 . good luck with it when cars come out if of course driving them is possible (im guessing much later ) but hopefully we do get them in reloaded. would be cool !!

lee did mention infinite terrain and high speed vehicles somewhere on his blog or something not to long ago so positive thoughts and requests for such should yield us something good in that department sometime or another..





ps, love the picture m8 very class indeed

EAI, the image you linked is stunning! I have always admired your use of the texture space. You are the same with your weapons. Not a single pixel is wasted!

Moonshine running game sounds like it could be fun!

Cheers

Jay.

Thank you!



Unfortunately, I don't know a decent fix either as this is not a lighting but more a post-processing issue. I'd take a shot in the dark and say that you might want to check if there are some tweakable values in the shader you can't adjust with the sliders (?). Me, I just wait until the next beta release gives us more options in this regard.



Also, that car looks great.







-Wolf

@almightyhood

Let's hope he wasn't talking about jetpacks

@unfamillia
Thanks! I have OCD when it comes to texture sheet usage. Wasted space drives me crazy and call me weird but I find UV tetrising to be a very relaxing activity.

@Wolf

I'm going to have to agree with you 100% here. It can't come soon enough!

You let me know next time you are feeling stressed and I will send you some of models to unwrap. I won't even charge you for helping you unwind! I will let you do it for FREE!

I thought this only happened to me.

But I love everything about it. I must be a masochist.

3com

@Wolf : Can you email me a quick reminder what it is you need to see in the next beta in this regard, so we are clear. I have been doing some post process work but for all I know I might have gone further in the wrong direction for you