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A tutorial about lighting, mood and atmosphere. Click here for the German version. As a lot of people have problems getting the right lighting and colours in their levels or have difficulties to set up a mood and atmosphere I wrote this little tutorial about a way to light your level. It is based on lighting techniques used in the orignal Tomb Raider games (mainly TR4 and TR5). 1 - Creating atmosphere and mood with colours At first, lets take a look how we can use colours to create different moods and atmospheres in our levels. Cold & Wintry Scenes: This is quite straighforward, use bright grey and colours with low saturation. You can try to add grey fog for a misty atmosphere, which works great with an overcast sky. To achieve a clear and cold atmosphere you need a cold and very bright blue sky (right screenshot).
Cool/Chilly: Use different shades of blue. In a warm environment (right screenshot) turquoise will work too. Adding faint fog in a matching colour will add greatly to the atmosphere.
Creepy/Spooky: A creepy level does not necessarily have to be very dark. Take a look at the two screenshots below: both seem quite desaturated. In the right one you can see hints of pink, blue and green, though the colours are very dull. In the third screenshot there is a combination of green ground fog and a matching green fog bulb, it creates an almost poisonous feel.
Damp/Dusty: These two will only work properly with fog. For a damp atmosphere (left) use a lot of thick blue-grey fog. On the right screenshot, it looks like the air is full of dust. To achieve this effect, use dark brown lights and fog. Flame emitters will be a great addition in such situations.
Warm/Hot: Orange and red will do the job. On the left screenshot, you can see the levelbuilder used orange light coming from a setting sun to light the scene. On the right, there's moderately thick red fog, glowing lava and flame emitters... you can almost see Lara sweating in there, can't you? ;)
2 - Night Scenes and Dark Places No player will enjoy pitch-black levels and rooms. So how do we create rooms and areas that seem to be dark but in fact aren't? Night scenes: Moonlight and starlight is usually neutral in colour. However, lighting your night level with blue will give it a more intersting look (left screenshot). For a better effect you can add yellow or orange lights and windows etc to create some contrast.
Dark areas: Have a look at the screenshot on the left. There's sunlight coming into the cave at the back. The part of the cave in the front however is lighted with a touch of green. You can see the same effect in the picture on the right: sunlight comes into the room, the ceiling right above the entrance is lighted with a bluish green.
3 - Colour Schemes Have you ever thought about what colours are most dominant in your levels? A consitent colour scheme can greatly improve the look of a level. There a two easy way to do this. A: Colours in your texture set: choose a base colour (lets say the colour of the brickwork) and a nice colour for decorations that matches the base colour. Screen on the left: light brown base colour and blue banisters, trims and doors plus some accents in a darker brown. Screen on the right: brown temple walls and green trims (the water and the fog in the lake is green too btw).
B: Ambient and light colours: I already mentioned this in the first lighting tutorial. It is a very good idea to combine cool colours like blue and green with warm colour like yellow and orange.
I hope this helped you in some way to improve or refine your lighting abilities. Happy Building!
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