Many tracks I've seen recently have what I consider to be a major flaw in their lighting. When you play the tracks, there are no shadows anywhere, from the rider or from stationary objects. Often, this has been done deliberately in an effort to improve performance. However, it leaves the tracks feeling very flat and lifeless compared to a track with good lighting.
There are several ways to do the lighting corrrectly in a track. If its set outside in daytime, then simply using the environment settings suffices. If its nighttime, then these settings can still be used effectively or in conjunction with dynam and static lights. When working indoors, it is still possible to use environment lighting in sections if it is done carefully but is more likely to achieved effectively with a combination of dynamic and static lights.
In an effort to highlight this, I have made an extremely simple 3 sided structure lit in 5 different ways. By watching the video below, you should be able to see the difference between all the tracks. In particular you should be able to see how flat the track looks when there is only light provided by point lights and/or nothing else.
I would be interested to hear what people think about this (including the devs if they feel so inclined) and wether it is even something that people notice, or pay particular attention to when either riding or creating a track.
Edit: I had to add this post fro mcannibal shogun to the op as he know far better than I do! lol
Originally Posted by CannibalShogun
that last example looked really nicei dont usually pay much attention to lighting, but i definatly will in the future
thanks for the vid!
I thoroughly agree. Lighting is so important to the theme of a track. I hate it when I see that hours have gone into decorating and then the lighting has been killed. Dead is the right word, lighting can help make a track feel much more vibrant and alive.
I understand that it can help with performance, but the same can be said about complex decorations. If you are willing and able to spend hours on a driving line and decoration, why not spend and hour or two on getting the lighting to work out?
@boris - That's spam, sir.
Always try to place lights in places that will enhance the detail. Even if you're just using pointlights, try placing them in a position so that the light will glance off of an object's bump maps. You can bring out a ton of detail in rock objects and brick walls just by letting the light fall on them at the right angle, and try to keep the brightness relatively low, or you'll wash out the bump map detail.
I agree with the OP, i figured this out a while ago while wathcing some random trials hd replay.
If you look at my track Crimson Wine (shameless plug, booo) i used a lot of differently colored point lights and some directional lights and it really gives the track a better look than what i would've obtained by just using the ground/sky ambient light or the light of the sun.
Yup. Makes a so-so track look great.
Originally Posted by Barrybarfly
a beautiful demonstration of the importance of lighting and shades
it would be although you continue the examples with on the last piece of the different tests with fog, camera effects, color sunlight and site of the sun (in front of, behind…) - to see evolving/moving a track
, all the four will create the environment of a track
still cheer of this demonstration
When I start making tracks I always begin with lightning. I think lighning is the most important thing because thats what makes the overall feeling.
Well detailed tracks can look bad with bad lightning. Its nice that you made a video about it![]()
defo agree a great example of how lighting can really make a huge difference to a track. Sadly its not always to clear cut.
Take my last track ;
i had HUGE problems just getting it to run as well as it did ( and even now there are area's that aren't perfect ), if i had dynamic shadows, the track would have been unplayable with both screan tarring and more pixcellation than you could wave a big stick at.
To date, i have never built anything on the ground, and always build in the sky. This helps with the complexity ( not 100% sure with lighting ). But when you add lots of diffent lights along with a **** tone of detail something has to give and often results in pixcellation. It was the same in HD, only to a lesser degree.
I know you wasn't having a pop at me, but i wanted to point out that its not so cut & dry as adding dynamic lighting to everything