V2 - Lighting

[StarFire]

Been setting up the default scene lighting, coming up with a good set of properties that work well with all lighting types. This is the beauty of a good PBR system , in that once you get your tones correct then no matter the type of hdri environment map and additional light level everything should look good.
First step was to overcome the sRGB color space that is required to correctly use the HDR lighting, second is to ensure that any images used as materials are clamped to approx 30- 245 range rather than the 0-255 we normally use.
Eg white = 245,245,245 and black = 30,30,30 By doing this we prevent any blow out of the whites and potential banding in the black range when seen in the engine.

srgb tone.jpg (17.81 KiB) Viewed 17692 times

Here is what the tones look like now in a render:

srgb tone image.jpg (46.95 KiB) Viewed 17692 times

The next image shows the new proto typing texture and how good basic colors look with the new lighting set at full sun light:

srgb colors.jpg (211.55 KiB) Viewed 17692 times

Whilst doing this task I did set up a pallet of base colors for a few standard real world materials, by using these colors and tones you can easily set up realistic material, but more on this later

pbr colors.jpg (26.89 KiB) Viewed 17692 times

[monkeyfrogstudio]

It's awesome to see posts like this. This is looking very good. I like reading about WHY and HOW this is being done as it will, ultimately, help me as a game level/object designer when using Skyline. Thanks for taking the time to post this.

[Sage1969]

Veeeeeery nice!

Quick question, will it be possible to create presets in a series of clicks for the asset manager?

Great job.

[StarFire]

Thank you.
Presets can be easily created already. You can create presets very easily: Set up you entity with all its actions, scripts etc so it is fully dynamic (including attachments such as guns, armour) then name it in the scene list then you an either simply drag and drop the entity from the scene list to a folder in the asset manager and Skyline will create a preset of this for you. The same is true if you select multiple entities in the scene list drag n drop and Skyline will make a multi object preset.
Alternatively you can right click on an object in the scene and from the context menu select save as preset.

[Sage1969]

Thanks for the info but I can not get previews to show in the "Game Object UI" section of the editor. There must be a file I need to edit or something.

[StarFire]

Ok, For most of the standard game objects such as meshes with physics set them up as you would a preset but instead put them into the Game objects folder in your asset library eg \GO Library\Default\Nature\Rocks or which ever folder you wish and the new object will be visible in the GO panel. Now on the pther hand if you want a new folder or for the object to have a specific placement behavior then you will need to edit sopme files. You could check in the plugins menu as there is a GO editor we made but not sure it got released?

For now the easiest is to add the object to an existing category unless you have the editor, if so let me know and I will guide you through it.

[Sage1969]

Thank you, will do.