Background to crit (especially lighting)

[Babar]

I hate to bother you when you are so far along, so perhaps you can take my crits for future work. It's a perfectly serviceable background as is, and I feel uncomfortable cricising it, especially when I doubt I myself could ever reach something so great.

The room doesn't really look "cosy". As far as I can tell (with my limitted experience), it is because it is such a large room with so much empty, bare space. There are no awards or even rifle above the fireplace, no paintings, no decorations on the table, no rug, no tears, etc. The bookcase looks more like a shelf at a video rental place than a "family" bookshelf, or something that "dad would have in the study". The chair does look odd being so far from the fireplace (or even bookshelf or lamp), but since you seem adamant to keep it there, I'll assume it has something to do with the story .

But you asked about the lighting. From what I can see, the light coming from the top part of the lamp looks a little odd. Remember, you can't actually "see" light, only the shadows and highlights where it lands. So the brightness should be what lands on the wall behind the lamp, not the light coming out of the lamp itself. Also, the shadow of the table leg looks awfully blurry for something that is so near the source of the light.

[Venus]

Maybe there's a plasma TV on the wall it's facing?

Yeah, that's it  .

No, basically it is just for story-telling purposes. In the game, there will be an old man sitting in the chair surrounded by his three grand-children, reading a story to them. I just wanted to have a cosy atmosphere (and there is nothing more cosy than a nice fireplace), but it is quite hard to show both the fireplace and the front of the chair with the people, so I decided to simply turn it and have one of the children playing with blocks in front of the fire while listening to the story.
As the man isn't that old and the arm-chair isn't that heavy, he can easily turn it around if he wants to sit facing the fire-place (when nobody is watching).

Anyhow, I've made another version with the chair (now a sofa as there weren't any bookshelves behind the chair and I was too lazy to draw them  ) facing the fire-place more. I don't really like this version as I kind of screwed up the lighting, but I thought, I'd show it anyway.

8th version:


Concerning decoration, I kind of left it out on purpose. Like I said, there are going to be four people in it, some toys and maybe a dog or cat or something. The fire will be animated and there will be snow falling down outside the window. I thought adding to much decoration would just make the room too cluttered and over-loaded. Since this is supposed to be in a cut-scene, I didn't want to draw the attention away from the characters.

What do you think?

[Andail]

hold your horses, my friend, it's not a supernova!

I made an edit:


With two moderately bright lightsources in each end of the room, the shadow play isn't very spectacular. Be soft and gentle! Use brushes and don't rely on filters, it will make the lighting artificial and weird.

[Venus]

hold your horses, my friend, it's not a supernova!

Oh yes, it is! 

Seriously now, thanks for the edit, Andail. I think I went a bit over-board there. Your lighting looks much more realistic. I did another version, trying to improve on the things you pointed out. I will stick to the chair facing in the original direction. I just don't like the sofa.

The latest version:

I'm still going for a darker look as both of the light-sources are supposed to be rather dimmed.

Gimme your feeback.

[stuh505]

Ok, it looks good now

[DanClarke]

looks better, just bare in mind the shadow andail has painted though. Your shadow is very long, which impleies there's a low lightsource casting the shadow, this isnt the case as the lamp is quite high.

[Snarky]

No, I think krishmuc's diagram of how to construct the shadows demonstrates that it would be as long as in Venus's version.

I think it looks very good now, except for the "halo" around the lamp. I'd get rid of that.

[Andail]

Such a diagram would only work to a 100% if
a) there would only be one lightsource in the room
b) there would be no ambience that would reflect the light
c) the light would be very direct and strong

I mean, look in an ordinary living room, with a covered lamp in some corner. Making the shadows strong and defined might be good for some dramatic effect, but it also gives a rather upset expression. For a calm scene, make shadows subtle.

[stuh505]

Andail,

clearly the shadow technique described is not meant to assign binary values of "shadow" or "not-in-shadow" but merely to roughly find the positions that shadows from primary rays would lie...

then yeah, you'd have to use logic to determine how dark and how blurry to make them, how they would interact with other lightsources, etc

the fact is that light bounces around many times for every surface that it hits, and even though it bounces at reflection angles there are enough roughness in surfaces that the particular angle a photon bounces does not always coincide with the wall-plane!

[Venus]

Wow, this turned out to be far more complicated and difficult than I had expected. Thanks to all of you, I think, it developed quite well.  You'll surely appear in the credits of my game (when I release it in about 50 years  ), since I wouldn't have got anywhere near this without you.

I made another version, trying to find a sort of mixture between my long shadows and the shadows Andail pointed out in his paint-over. I'm really satisfied with this version, so I think I'll take this for the game.



Thanks again for taking me from this

to the final version.
   

(Comparing the two directly, it really shows how crappy the first one was. I wasn't really aware of that when I made it, but looking back... Ugh! Luckily, it improved  )

[DanClarke]

Looks a lot better!

As a final suggestion, just something about the outside thats not quite right. Its evident that youve drawn the snow after youve drawn the frame, as it looks as if the hill 'ends' at the sides. Id recommend drawing the snowscape fiully then cutting away the window frame from it. The snow's also too bright to saw its night time, itsd be more of a blue colour than white:

heres a really shite example ive just knocked up:



on the top picture, i drew the frame 1st then added the snow, on the bottom 1 i drew what was outside the window then added the frame over the top, i also changed the snows colour to suite the lighting outside. I hope you understand what i mean. Otherwise good work, a nice scene

[Oneway]

Oh man, yet another CL successtory! Congrats to Venus and all that helped her with their knowledge and encouragements!

DanClarke:
Your post makes total sense, but i had the impression that the snow was actually against the window, indication an even colder environment and making it even cozier and snug inside. (the perfect setting for storytelling).

As a final suggestion, Venus, i think the saturation on the books is pretty low. If you would up that it would contribute to the warm feeling of the interiour.

[ildu]

I also thought the snow was pressed against the window. Looks good anyway.

[Traveler]

I think your final version looks awesome. It seems to me that the snow is on the window ledge, so it looks very good to me.

[DanClarke]

i thought from looking closely there was a buoild up of snow at the bottom of the window, then the actual landscape  was seen higher? that's how it seems to me anyway?

[stuh505]

I wasn't even sure what that white stuff was supposed to be 

[Afflict]

One last thing Very nice work by the way. One last thing,
the character shadow?

[Andail]

That's another reason you shouldn't make shadows too prominent
The characters will stick out a bit

[Venus]

The stuff in front of the window is supposed to be snow, not landscape, but I might add some later. Thanks to your tips, Dan, I'll know how to do it  .

Thanks to all of you again for your nice tips. I haven't even started on making the characters and I might change the lighting if they turn out to be too difficult to be put into the scene properly. But for now, I think I'm not really able to do any more work on this bg as I've already started dreaming about it at night and stuff like that  .
I'm gonna let it rest for a while and once I start to put the characters in, I'll update this thread to get your opinion.

Again, thanks for all the help. 

[Phemar]

This final version looks really good -- just one question though: Will you be able to replicate this style for the rest of the game?