Hallway (New lighting)

[Ethan D]

Well, this was initially going to be for an MAGS game but there are about 8 backgrounds that i would have needed and I lost focus on this project and soon enough it was a week until deadline. (March 25th)  I still want to make this game however, and now that I have more than a month I want to make sure the art is better.

It is in 640x400 mainly because I've started drawing in pencil and the further I shrink it down the harder it is to clean up the lines cause everything gets blurred.

Here it is:


A few things I want to say before people tell me that the lines are not all straight and the door frames are slightly uneven.

The house is supposed to look like a run down cheap house that was not built by that great of architects. thus some things come out badly. (although, some things look worse than I intended them to)

At this point I'm mainly concerned with lighting.  I like the way it looks but it almost feels unrealistic to me.

I'd love to know what you all think!

As always, thanks for your time and help!  

[Grim]

It's pretty good. What it needs now is deeper shadows and more highlights. Contrast please!:)

[Ethan D]

It's pretty good. What it needs now is deeper shadows and more highlights. Contrast please!:)

Should the deeper shadows be cut off as cleanly as the edge of the lighting is here?  Or should I use a gradient from photoshop? (I'm assuming the answer to that one is no.)  I'm assuming that darkening every pixel by hand is the incorrect way to do it too though. 

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Some things that may help you:






The more exits we see, the less tension so you might want to turn the room on its side and just show it from the perspective of the door toward the creepy window (or move the stairs down to where the window is).  The first picture should give you some help with natural light and how it hits surfaces and how dark other areas look by comparison and the second should give you an idea of how artificial light like lightbulbs tend to make spheres of light that quickly lose intensity in otherwise dark areas.  Making the parts of the door where the light hits orange  or the wall (depending on the natural wall color) and sharply darkening the rest of the areas will make things more spooky.  If that window is open, unless they are in a very rural area there would probably be some kind of light source as well.

[Questionable]

even the worst architects can't defy perspective... it might help cleaning up the lines a bit.

[Khris]

Yep, both stairways use their own perspective point so the side walls aren't parallel. Right now, the room is triangular, with one corner at the camera's back.

The lighting is very off; first of all, a naked bulb wouldn't produce a cone. Secondly, the right side of the room is supposed to be much darker, especially the parts in shadow.

[Ethan D]

Hey, thanks for all of the feedback everyone. It's helpful as always.

ProgZmax:  Thanks for those pictures they have helped, as well as the advice

Khris:  I was thinking that it would be fine to have two different vanishing points but now that you mention it, it does look off.  *sigh* thanks for pointing that out though!

I guess I'm off to totally redesign this background, oh well!
It will probably be a few days before I get anything up but we'll see. 

[Khris]

It is fine to use two VPs, but if you do, the hallways aren't parallel. So if they are supposed to be parallel, they must both use the same VP.
There's no need to completely redesign it, fixing the perspective is just a matter of moving a few lines here.

[Ethan D]

Alright!  I made some huge changes to this thing.  I was having a bunch of trouble figuring out blurring, lighting, and such but I've learned a whole bunch of tricks now.

Possibly to dark version:
Edit: I looked at this one on another computer and it is definitely too dark. (For some reason my laptop makes things brighter...)




Lighter version:


I want to thank Ben304 for his awesome guide for background drawing I found some really useful stuff in there!  

Anyway, I made a whole bunch of changes.  
-1-point perspective.
-Made shadows much darker to emphasize the light. (I think it may be too dark at this point though.....
-Add light from the window. (Although, I'm not sure if it is right....)
-Changed how the light fell from the light(Which may still be wrong.)
-Took out the door on the left.

Thanks to everyone for the comments so far and I'd love more criticism if your willing!  

Thanks in advance!

P.S.  Here is the original so you don't have to scroll up a bunch to compare!

[LRH]

Do you plan on making some sort of horror game with this? Looks like it would be REALLY fun in that kind of setting

[Ethan D]

Do you plan on making some sort of horror game with this? Looks like it would be REALLY fun in that kind of setting

Sort of...  It's not exactly a horror game.  At the point where the player is in this room he should be scared for his life though.  The player actually is going to enter this room from the bottom of the screen and is for (reasons I won't say) restricted to going only downstairs, not down the left hallway.

Thanks!

BTW: Now that you all know that you enter from below this room don't worry that there is no door there I have an idea for what I'm going to do.

[Danman]

This looks good. But is way too dark. Just to say that has to change even though you already said. Like if I played a game that looked like that it would get me to look very close to the monitor to see what is there.

But looks quite a scary looking background. Without any characters or anything. Just slightly brighter and I think it will be good enough. I like the style quite a bit too.

Anyway good luck. I would like to see your game

[Captain Ricco]

it doens looks do dark now, maybe you could make the lamp flick in and out, because that lamp looks like is working on low power or something, that would give a nice effect

[Ethan D]

it doens looks do dark now, maybe you could make the lamp flick in and out, because that lamp looks like is working on low power or something, that would give a nice effect

I like the way you think,  I'll definitely try that.

[Ali]

The last image is very dark, I wasn't even aware that you'd painted individual floorboards. The geometry is much better now, so I suggest you look at the composition and lighting.

I was at a loose end on a Saturday morning, so here is a sketchy paintover raising a few points for you to consider:




I haven't done much to the composition, because I don't know what function the room plays in your game. I've simply tried to remove the flat area of wall because it is boring to look at, and put the door on the right in a more compositionally powerful place.

Since the player can use that door, but not go down the hall to the left, why not use the lightbulb to draw attention to the interactive area of the screen?

Applying the geometric principles of perspective to lighting can help you work out what should be in light and what should be in shadow.

Flat surfaces tend to reflect light flatly, except when the light source is very near when you get hotspots. I've created a hotspot near the lamp, but the lighting on each surface is much more even. In fact I could have flattened it further in this paintiover, and introduced shadow-casting objects to break up the flatness.

The patch of moonlight could have gone anywhere to draw attention to something interesting, but not knowing the purpose of the backdrop, I stuck it on the wall a bit arbitrarily.

Using different subtly different colours for the light can help create a sense of place (warmer for the bulb, colder for the moonlight and colder in the shadows).

I hope that's helpful!

[Ethan D]

Wow, that looks nice. 

Although, I chose where I want the light for a reason.... so....
[justkidding]Can you do it again that way?  [/just kidding]

Really though, I am curious how you pulled of the lighting so nicely.  If it wouldn't bother you too much would you mind summarizing it? The way I did the lighting was to just take the color of the lightbulb and then darken it as it went out only to the point where the light cuts out, and of course adjust the opacity a touch, and it doesn't look very smooth at all.  Although, it looks better than my first attempt obviously.

If you don't have the time to impart your wisdom upon me then I suppose I can try and figure it out myself.   :

I have a question for you all though.

For this room what I am going to have happen is that you are in a room beneath this one at first and the door to this room is open.  If you are standing straight in front of the doorway you can only see out into the hallway but if you stand to the right of the doorway near it then you see everything on the left side of the room and the same vice versa.

So!  If this is the case, is the lack of stuff on the wall a problem.  I'll go ahead and ruin something for the game here. There are two men standing on the left side of the room so either side will have things on them.

As always, I love the helpful comments and tips you all give here, I would probably still be on out of perspective stick figures without you!  [cheesysmile][/cheesysmile]

[Ali]

Really though, I am curious how you pulled of the lighting so nicely.  If it wouldn't bother you too much would you mind summarizing it? The way I did the lighting was to just take the color of the lightbulb and then darken it as it went out only to the point where the light cuts out, and of course adjust the opacity a touch, and it doesn't look very smooth at all.  Although, it looks better than my first attempt obviously.

My lighting is nothing special, but it follows a few rules based on the way light works in reality. This mini tutorial by Loominous will be helpful to look at andthis tutorial by Arne Niklas Jansson is extremely useful.

Just remember that light travels in straight lines and it doesn't stop unless it bounces off a surface. So there is no point where the light "cuts out" per se.

If you're using the left lightbulb as a source, its rays of light should reach every corner of the room. To work this out, simply trace imaginary lines radiating from the bulb to see that there is nothing to stop the light reaching the corners.

The light will get more intense near to the bulb, as more rays of light hit the ceiling and walls around it. Further away from the source the lighting becomes a bit less intense and more even. (It's not that even in my paintover, which makes the walls look badly plastered.)

And I chose a much whiter shade of yellow for the light. The only lights as highly saturated as that are streetlights.