Decided to have a fully animated, 8-direction moving character

[KyriakosCH]

I changed the brightness and contrast settings on my monitor (apparently contrast was at 30 - now is at 80). Is this visible?



Under the new settings i too could hardly make anything at all of the room in the previous pics i posted...

Btw, sorry Snarky for my own snarky comment; thanks for the help there

The textures and tones and other stuff are by no means final in this pic, i just wanted to establish whether it is at least showing ok, so tell me if it is

[Mandle]

It's showing fine... Maybe a bit too much for the dark look I think you might be going for...

So hard to quantify but:

On my monitor the door on the left looks about the colour of really cheap rich-in-milk kiddies' milk chocolate...

Interesting feeling though: trying to describe colours one sees without being able to resort to screenies for examples, for the obvious reasons...

[KyriakosCH]

Making it darker is no problem, i just wanted to first secure people can see it. If they can more than just see it, well it will be darkened quite a bit by the end

[Danvzare]

Yep, that picture is as bright as day.
Quite literally.

[KyriakosCH]

Hm, how about this one?



Room is supposed to be pretty dark (in fact darker in the story than what i am looking at now)...

Edit: a lot darker and with a bluish lighting in blender:

[Mandle]

Dude...go with the second pic...That just looks so awesome!

The others just look like Blender renders... But that last one actually looks like something you'd expect to see in a game!

EDIT: It might need a slightly heavier occlusion shading setting for the room corners...And maybe push the ladder into the wall just a tad more to make it really identifiable as a ladder...

[Cassiebsg]

Yes, that last pic is much better. Very moody.
Only the shadows look a bit too strong (very black with a clear defined edge) for the soft low light, IMHO.

[KyriakosCH]

Thank you guys

I tried this one, with a spotlight (it is furthermore altering its transition of light due to being in a room above which has a very small opening next to the full ceiling of this room)



Tell me what you think, if it is too dark, if the contrast is nice or not, etc

[Blondbraid]

Now this really, really reminds me of the intro to mr Bean...


But I do think it looks rather nice otherwise, the cone of light does a good job of highlighting the door, man and ladder.
Maybe the walls could have a bit more going on, cracks, brickwork or similar, and the border between the middle wall and floor looks odd, but otherwise it looks good.

[KyriakosCH]

^LOL!!!!!!!!

Ehm, maybe i should change the color of the coat then!!!

Are the walls visible in the border between the light cone and the TERRIBLE DARKNESS?

[Cassiebsg]

It's not THAT dark either, walls are very visible, now it's the "it's bright" scene, you can darken it a bit more.

[KyriakosCH]

^Ack... :o

Well, making the rest of the walls utterly black is not an issue, but would it really be better that way?

Eg currently i did sort of the opposite:

[Cassiebsg]

Starting to look good.
Looks more natural with that lighting and shadow is softer.

Maybe the cone is still too large at the bottom? Not exactly sure how you want it to look, and how much light there should be there. The guy's shadow is still very sharp and crisp. You could try and render his shadow to a new layer and then give it some alpha transparency (you'll need to use the composite in Blender for this). It's a pain to do, but well worth the effort.
This would allow you to still have that dark crisp shadow under him, but still have texture left from the floor visible.

[KyriakosCH]

Hm, maybe the walls on each end should be looking a bit darker ideally (and currently i also am using some very VERY minor ambient occlusion -- factor of... 0.09-- which if taken out will just leave those places black.

A gif of a bit of the coughing (hello player) animation. In the end the visible hand will slightly move as well

[KyriakosCH]

Better or worse?



Btw, the current animation isn't exactly the coughing idea i first had. More like a spasm of apparently acute pain.
The right limbs might either be paralysed or just kept immobile in a (false) attempt to numb the pain overall.

[Cassiebsg]

Much much better, for me anyway.

You could try and put a limb or two "out of place" (twisted/bend in an unnatural way) assuming the guy has fallen from above. It would be logical that a couple bones have cracked. Like maybe the right upper-arm lowered into the floor and then bend the lower-arm in the wrong direction the elbow joint would have allowed it. As is now, it's not resting on the floor. Unless his arm isn't broken and he's trying to get up, then it's perfect.

[KyriakosCH]

Well... i made that animation due to having another idea. Originally i aimed to just adapt my story (posted part of which earlier in this thread), but i think it may allow for more of an adventure game if it is sort of a continuation of that story, and (very importantly) in such a case the animated character in the above gif is NOT the player-controlled character, but someone who happens to be on the floor of that room.

And it won't be a pleasant storyline, you can be sure of that

[Blondbraid]

Wow, the dark sure brings out a rather claustrophobic feel to it.
Looks good!

[Snarky]

Btw, sorry Snarky for my own snarky comment; thanks for the help there

No worries. The new Mr Bean-style screens look a lot clearer; good improvement!

[cat]

The last screen is a big improvement - it feels dark, but it is clearly visible on my monitor.