[05/11/2010] Lighting set-up / Blockout stage

After a conversation with Nathan Alderson (Eurocom) and Dave Wilson (Industry Lecturer) last Monday, I found the next stage in development for the project will be getting the lighting all blocked out. We found when looking at reference for the environment that lighting is going to be a strong point when everything is finished, using lots of emissive light sources and boucing lights.

This is a new avenue as I'm not used to setting up the lighting before building all the assets first but I can definately see the logic. Setting up the lighting, getting details in there such as brightness, colour, bouncing lights and emmisive light coming from objects (Computer monitors, medical equipment) will make asset creation and how much detail REALLY needs to be put in to certain assets a lot clearer. There might be certain regions that are not lit well enough to show off any high details on an asset, so more time should be spent on assets that are highlighted by the lighting set-up.

I've very quickly highlighted a few light sources in the scene that will help blocking out in UDK:

[Annotated shot for lighting]

At the minute I feel things are running a little behind shedule with lack of knowledge of certain areas. However its now a real push to get a lighthing blockout done ASAP so I can get started with asset creation sometime next week.

Lighting is something I struggle with however I have aquired a lighting tutorial in UDK from Eat3D which I will watch in the next day or two. According to my peers its rather good! (Eat3d - UDK Lighting)

I've started to think about how I can build everything as modular as I can to save time and effort, being that lighting is something that really makes a game environment. The floor has been seperated in to sections that can be copied around. The same goes with wall pieces and all sorts of different assests.

[An example using blockout pieces of how everything will fit together modulary]

Currently I am cutting down the blockout in to modular parts, giving a very simple UV set which will help with lightmaps and getting lighting to work. A lot of pieces of the blockout just need a little touching up and will be good enough to make in to final assets, which will save time.

I aim to get the lighting blockout done as soon as possible ready to get some assets in to the level.

Its still certainly got some potential to look awesome!

Thanks for reading and leave any comments you may have! Good or bad!

Noel