Hey,
So i’m making a cave in my game. My question is how do i go about this in preticulairly lighting. If i use a directional light it looks bad and unrealisticly. If i use ambient lighting it looks better but still not “great”. Any ideas on how to improve or are there any image effects that look good in darker areas? The cave will have some plants that emit light but this wont be enough to light up the cave. I’m not sure if i should use a flash light as light source or if i should just go with the unrealistic option and just add random light point to make the game playable? Any ideas/tips are welcome.
Could you give the player a torch/flashlight? That would probably enhance the ambience, too.
i was thinking about that but i dont know it just looks so ‘cheap’ it looks better if i combien it with a little ambient ligth but it stil looks bad. Im thinking of adding so more cracks in the cave so light from the outside can get in or something.
My inclination would be to put a soft light on the player in addition to the low baked ambient lighting, so that when the player gets closer to things they seem more visually distinct. If you don’t use a flashlight / torch, have shadows turned off.
Since the lighting isn’t realistic anyway, maybe you could get some interesting effects from using faint but highly colorful lights.
Do you have any reference images? There are so many ways you can go with a cave, and it’s all about lighting – colors, shadows, contrasts – since there’s usually no default ambient light. Don’t worry about optimization. Just get the look you want first. You can worry later about technical details like baking lights, using light probes, etc.
What mood do you want to set? What do you want the player to feel?
How was the cave made (in terms of world/story background), and what’s in it?
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