Lighting Experimentation

Lighting

I needed to understand some lighting techniques before experimenting in Unreal. There are two types of lighting techniques, namely high-key and low-key lighting (Farrell, n.d). One is used to “evoke an upbeat and optimistic environment”, and the other is primarily used to distil “fear and worry” within a scene. In this exercise, I wanted to showcase the contrast of these two techniques.

I created two small rooms to showcase the lighting experiments. The first room is full of point lights while the other comprises spot lights with some starter content assets.

The high-key lighting is used within the room where the player spawns.

With a lightmass importance volume and a box reflection capture, we can see the subtle reflections from the spotlight aimed at the window. Having this would realism and improve the overall quality of my sequence.

This room has more general low-key lighting set up for moody and intense scenes.

I’ve also experimented with the light colour on each individual spotlight to get a sense of how these would work in my sequence.

All of the spotlights have different colours to them, which sets up a specific scene perfectly.

Colour Theory.

Thinking about how many colours are in the scene, I have to think about what tone I will be going for. There are many different types of tones and colours “that have meaning and that meaning changes with context.”, and how specific games adopt that palette (Stewart, 2017).

Figure 1 – The examples of different colour palettes (Stewart, 2017)

I intend to apply some of these tones to enhance the mood to my sequence, such as having cool colours and a cyberpunk feel to the city scene.

References:

Farrell, A. (n.d) HIGH KEY & LOW KEY LIGHTING. [Blog Post] ABI FARRELL. Available online: https://abifarrellblog.myportfolio.com/high-key-low-key-lighting [Accessed 6th December 2022]

Stewart, D. (2017) Color in Video Games: How to Choose a Palette. [Blog Post] Game Developer. 11 April. Available online: https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/color-in-video-games-how-to-choose-a-palette [Accessed 8th December 2022]