Opinions on good lighting?

[Iceykiller]

I'm a pretty new mapper, but I find that I spend a lot of my time trying to get the lighting and other atmospheric elements just right. Especially with good lighting, I've always found that a good atmosphere can really enhance the gaming experience in Doom maps (of course, the raw game play for the map has to actually be good for this to work!).

I was just wondering what most people think about good lighting. It's one of the most tedious and time-consuming parts of creating maps for me. I'm wondering if I'm entirely wasting my time, or if I'm wisely spending my time on a flavorful part of a good Doom level.

Thoughts?

[esselfortium]

I spend hours and hours on lighting scenes in some of my maps. It's totally worth it to go above and beyond with lighting; it can really make or break your atmosphere.

[Iceykiller]

Ahhh, it's good to hear that I haven't been beating my head against a wall for nothing!

I love smooth gradient lighting, too: it makes the lights look SO much more realistic! On my current map, a work in progress, I set most of the level in a tech base that's embedded into a mountain. I set the entire base's default brightness level to 80, and I'm going to strategically place smooth lighting throughout to give it an ominous and creepy atmosphere.

[Joshy]

Agreed, excellent lighting can make an otherwise simple looking map actually look incredible. Alien Vendetta had a lot of emphasis on lighting, and that's no wonder why a lot of people love the megawad.

[Iceykiller]

I remember this one WAD in Skulltag. I think it was a Hide & Seek map, it was so long ago though, so I can't be sure. Anyways, it had the most beautiful lighting I had ever seen. It didn't just capture the forward smoothness of the lights, but it also caught the left and right smoothness. So when you looked at the lighting, it was almost as if it were straight from real life or something, that's how good it was.

[kmxexii]

Iceykiller said:

I'm a pretty new mapper, but I find that I spend a lot of my time trying to get the lighting and other atmospheric elements just right. Especially with good lighting, I've always found that a good atmosphere can really enhance the gaming experience in Doom maps (of course, the raw game play for the map has to actually be good for this to work!).

I was just wondering what most people think about good lighting. It's one of the most tedious and time-consuming parts of creating maps for me. I'm wondering if I'm entirely wasting my time, or if I'm wisely spending my time on a flavorful part of a good Doom level.

Thoughts?

To me, good lighting is as important (if not moreso) as physical detailing when making maps interesting and it really helps to build atmosphere. Having just played the Raven series, I noticed how boringly fullbright a lot of the maps were, especially compared to the stuff Willits and Chasar did for the Master Levels.

[RjY]

I also say you are doing the right thing. I strongly believe that all you need to make a map look great is to light it properly. I'd much rather play a clean map with proper lighting than something literally drowning in filigree linedef soup.

[printz]

I've never been terribly keen on lighting my maps in great detail. Maybe this is why I get bored mapping them.

[Phobus]

I prefer lighting to work as a means of highlighting things, or providing a lot of contrast or even to hide things in deep shadow.

Then again, I've been quite lazy from a detailing perspective as of late and just prefer the easy way out :P

[pavera]

Lighting is definitely very important in map making. It's definitely an aspect of mapping that I need to work on. While I never flatly light my maps, I have a hard time creating lighting that actually adds something to the atmosphere of my map. When I have too many sectors devoted to lighting I have a tendency to get really confused.

[EarthQuake]

Well, good lighting doesn't necessarily mean adding tons of sectors. In fact, I think lighting tends to look better when you have a sharp contrast between light and dark. The important part is making sure the light reaches areas and casts shadows in a way that makes sense. If you make your lights cast sharp shadows, it can still look realistic, yet you don't have the banding associated with smoothed shadows because of Doom's colormap.

Some sharp light casting.

[DeathevokatioN]

Joshy said:

Alien Vendetta had a lot of emphasis on lighting, and that's no wonder why a lot of people love the megawad.

There was alot more to AV than good lighting. :P

I usually focus on getting lighting contrast on a larger scale rather than going into minute details with it.

[Iceykiller]

Nice to wake up and see some mixed opinions on the subject.

I might have to redefine how I go about the atmospheric piece of a Doom map, although I'd still like to see how this "precision" lighting works out for me :)

[gemini09]

I'm not very good at lighting, and sometimes I omit it entirely. I do feel it's essential, but it's awfully time consuming. I'm comitting to good lighting on my current maps, and the reason is because it's totally worth it.

Earthquake's image makes a perfect example of lighting bringing the environment to life.

EarthQuake said:

Some sharp light casting.

By the way, Earthquake: where is that lamp sprite from? Would it be possible to borrow it? I could use some, myself ;)

[Iceykiller]

What WAD is that, Gemini? I'd sure like to check it out. I don't know if I've ever played one of Earthquake's WADs.

[gemini09]

I have no idea. We'll have to ask Earthquake :)

If you meant my maps, it's Xmas Doom, and its ETA is about within two years :) I just restarted the base-theme map. It's very enjoyable when you have a draft with about 1200 sectors to go by, hehe

[Iceykiller]

EarthQuake said:

Well, good lighting doesn't necessarily mean adding tons of sectors. In fact, I think lighting tends to look better when you have a sharp contrast between light and dark. The important part is making sure the light reaches areas and casts shadows in a way that makes sense. If you make your lights cast sharp shadows, it can still look realistic, yet you don't have the banding associated with smoothed shadows because of Doom's colormap.

Some sharp light casting.

So it's not actually necessary to gradient all of your lights to make them look good? I usually only gradient lights that are out in open spaces. But if there's a column or wall in the way, I'll usually cut the light off a sensible spot.

[EarthQuake]

gemini09 said:

By the way, Earthquake: where is that lamp sprite from? Would it be possible to borrow it? I could use some, myself ;)

It's a modification of the wrought iron lamp sprites from Grove, which in turn are based off of the torches on BSTONE3/BRICKLIT. Go for it.

Iceykiller said:

What WAD is that, Gemini? I'd sure like to check it out. I don't know if I've ever played one of Earthquake's WADs.

It's an unreleased survival-horror wad for ZDaemon.

Iceykiller said:

So it's not actually necessary to gradient all of your lights to make them look good? I usually only gradient lights that are out in open spaces. But if there's a column or wall in the way, I'll usually cut the light off a sensible spot.

No, it's not necessary, and can in fact ruin the illusion. Real shadow lines start off very sharp and begin to fade the longer they travel. Some people graduate their shadow lines in Doom, and it can look pretty, but doesn't necessarily look real. Sometimes, with the wrong texture choices it can look plain awful.

Here's a test wad showing 2 graduated lights, and one without. The first one has a poor choice of textures that makes the colormap banding very apparent. The second is the same, but with textures that have a bit more detail to them, that looks much better. The third doesn't use graduated lighting at all, and arguably looks just as "real" as the second, but without any worry about what textures you have on the walls.

The screenshot I posted above uses that method. The type of lighting you use depends on the mood. If you want a more harsh and spooky look (think the E1M2 maze), go without the gradients. If you want more of "oh, hey that's pretty" effect, go with gradients, but be wary of the banding problem and texture accordingly.

As for light fading off with distance, I try not to do it unless it's in a wide-open outside area, and the light source "appears" somewhat dim.

Edit again: seems I forgot to switch to Doom format when making that test wad. Run it in ZDoom or Skulltag or something, sorry.

[Marnetmar]

Are there any DB plugins that do gradient lighting or do I have to get off my lazy ass and do it the hard way?

[EarthQuake]

Do it the hard way. It helps when you suddenly decide to take on speedmapping.

[Iceykiller]

Would it be a bad idea to combine graduated lighting with solid lights? The map I'm creating right now starts the player out in a sort of canyon-like setting, and you quickly end up in a tech base that's sort of underground. I have a few lights outside that I'd like to graduate to make them prettier / more realistic, but then I'm going to have a ton of lights inside that I feel don't really need to be graduated (most of them, anyways).

The base is meant to be very cramped and close-quarters to give a sort of adrenaline feel to the player, so a lot of the lights would be pretty pointless as graduated lights. But I feel like if someone notices they'll judge my map based on that, haha.

[esselfortium]

If it looks good (and it's not inhibiting gameplay), it is good. This isn't really so much about a right or wrong way to handle lighting, but just different options that can work well in different situations. Even in reality, sharp and smooth shadows coexist with one another.

[Koko Ricky]

Good lighting can make a movie look like a bland student film, an overly polished Hollywood product, or something naturalistic and authentic.

Similarly, in games, good lighting is an extremely important part of setting the mood. It's not just about approximating realism, but about aesthetics. The shadow shouldn't just look appropriate, it should immerse the player. Of course, how interesting (or even threatening) your shadows have the potential to look is mostly dependent on how slick your architecture is.

[40oz]

jumping on the bandwagon to say good lighting is awesome. Often times you can disguise underdetailed doom levels with awesome lighting. Also lighting doesn't affect gameplay with clunky sectors that interfere with player/monster movement and what not.

[printz]

But how do you do it? Doom only has about 16 light levels available, and about 6 of them are very dark. Even more so, outdoor skylit areas are expected to be uniformly lit by the sun, especially in diffused light (cloudy) weather.

[deference]

basically printz, what you do is, you just go and play a doom map. go ahead, pick one.

[Iceykiller]

printz said:

But how do you do it? Doom only has about 16 light levels available, and about 6 of them are very dark. Even more so, outdoor skylit areas are expected to be uniformly lit by the sun, especially in diffused light (cloudy) weather.

16 light levels?

I was convinced that the brightness value had a range of 0 - 255. Wouldn't that be considered 255 light levels?

EDIT: ahem, excuse me, 256.

[deference]

yes, but note that the colormap lump only has values for up to 16 "actual" light levels.

[Iceykiller]

Sorry, but I don't really know what a colormap is ;( I'm a pretty newbish mapper, I only just started doing it seriously like four days ago. I don't know much about the technical stuff, or any of the details. I don't even know how nodebuilders work; I just know they do something with the geometry or something to make the map playable.

[Vermil]

In the original Doom, 1-15 produce the same light level in game. 16-31 produce the same light level in game etc etc.

Certain ports may change this though so that there is 255 different light levels, but it's not really something worth worrying about as the difference between say 124 and 127 is probably all but unnoticeable.