Working on a room for a horror adventure game...

[Snarky]

To me the biggest weakness of these external backgrounds is that the lighting is boring. It's just a kind of vague glow from the middle of the screen: it doesn't come from any clear source, it doesn't emphasize any particular part of the scenery, it doesn't even have any particular hue. It just makes everything look flat. Being deliberate in how you light the scene and knowing about the effect you want to create is as important as the modeling.

Some things to keep in mind:

-In a modern city, most of the night-time light comes from street lamps, windows, or even neon signs. This light tends to be reddish (as seen in Cassiebsg's reference), though it can vary considerably.
-With artificial lighting, the parts of the scenery that are lit are much, much brighter than the parts that are in shadow. You get very stark contrasts.
-Without artificial lighting, the main source of light is the night sky (or moon), which is brighter than anything else in the landscape. In particular, the sea is never brighter than the sky.
-Light from the sky is blue, light from the moon appears silvery. Because it's too dim to activate the cones in your eyes to really distinguish color, colors don't appear clearly: in particular, red appears as black.

[Babar]

In that case, the horizon should be much


...higher? Wuh?
Eyeballing it and "feeling" it it seemed the horizon should be much lower, but perspective says it should be higher.

[KyriakosCH]

Re the lighting: yes, i know that currently it is terrible, but it is only placeholder

I -ideally- would want to have at least one external scene in mid-day, with natural light (most likely the white tower one). Then the external scenes (three i think) will have light from the street-lamps. As yet i did not place any lighting other than a general sky, cause i am not in that part of scene finalisation yet

[KyriakosCH]

Btw, given i am by now means a pro painter/graphics creator, i would really welcome any advice on what colors/contrast to use to achieve a more ominous effect. Given this will be a horror game anyway!

[KyriakosCH]

More wips, i sadly have very little time and am trying to finish something...





Chose another story for the plot as well, to make things more condensed!

[Mandle]

In that case, the horizon should be much


...higher? Wuh?
Eyeballing it and "feeling" it it seemed the horizon should be much lower, but perspective says it should be higher.

I think the issue is that at night the ocean horizon and the sky above it would usually both be very dark and you would only see the first mile or so out to sea in any real detail and then it would pretty much just fade to black until you had a few stars to kinda pick out where the sea ends and the sky starts...

So...your horizon is correct but the sea should fade much quicker into blackness and then there should be a gap, and then the first stars should be visible...

Just my take on it though...

[KyriakosCH]

More stuff from that room





Nothing to worry about, though. It likely just happened by accident.

Anyway, it is doable. Character animation and shading needs loads of work, but in the demo there may just be two rooms (yet 10 other graphic zooms and a couple animations as well, including cutscenes).

[KyriakosCH]

Thoughts?



Some furniture are missing, cause they will be placed as objects.

[SinSin]

Just did a little paint over here.

First up nice claustrophobic feeling can be achieved with this room however you must... MUST shade it correctly.
 
I would also add some details to the doors and maybe add some skirting boards to the image ...( maybe a worn old rug and some torn wallpaper)

So what I did here was

• Shade the walls where I could,
• Highlight the edges of some of the objects
• Dulled the door knobs
• Aged the lamp slightly
• Animated it to show atmosphere. Gave it a flickering light as an example.

Remember the dodge and burn tool CAN be your friend, just practice with it. 

Hope this helps.

[KyriakosCH]

^Very nice!

Yes, i am still working on the rooms... I may ask for your help, including ideas

Love the flickering effect as well.

[KyriakosCH]

Also, any suggestions on this? Using just built-in Blender shading, no Gimp post-work:

[SinSin]

Its good, maybe flatten down the wallpaper and again darken the room for effect.
Wear down the wallpaper for the age effect too and maybe put in some dust...
change the lamp for a candle maybe?   

Just a couple of points.
nice modelling tho

[KyriakosCH]

Thanks

[KyriakosCH]

Anyone know how to make an interesting/atmospheric 'light flicker' animated background?

Main background likely being the following:

[Kumpel]

Well just do a darker, more shadowy version of this (very atmospheric and moody but maybe too dark for some users) background and put it in the room as a second background frame (or more versions to have a smoother effect). Then change the frame, timed the way you want it. This should give the illusion of a flickering lamp. If you want to do a little tweening, i'd suggest the tween module 2.0 by Edmundito. There you'd need to set the other backgrounds as non-clickable objects behind all other objects. That way you can play with transparency and even tinting.

Happy trying

[KyriakosCH]

Thank you!

I know of the generic use of 4 secondary backgrounds, i am mostly trying to find what would work better as an atmospheric flicker (ie just how much darker/lighter, and if 2 added backgrounds are better than just 1 for this kind of light effect )...

I have noticed that some make use of the engine to create more animated backgrounds (more than just 5 frames), as i suppose happens also in your suggestion... I will have to look into that!

(edit, and some progress, although object sprites need cleaning up... ) ^^