Lighting Part 5: Super Advanced Lighting in GameGuru

This is part 5 of a long running series on lighting techniques in GameGuru.  It's advised you read the previous four if you haven't already so you have some fundamental understanding on lighting techniques used up to this point before taking this on.
Seriously advanced lighting (aka lighting, part four)
Advanced lighting, (aka lighting, part three)
GameGuru interior lighting (aka lighting, part two)
GameGuru Lighting Lesson (aka lighting, part one)

extra credit, Wolf's lighting thread: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219206

I should mention that this work has taken me a considerable amount of time and is of significant length.  Please take the time to comment on it if it's beneficial to you!

Before I begin

Obviously I've been busy with my book.  Much of these posts will be revisited in the book itself in varying forms, but I was going through my old data and found this post I literally wrote a year ago and I feel a fool for having never actually posted it.
Hopefully it's not a question of too little too late and that many of you can find some use from it. Be aware the book has about 3x the amount of information on GameGuru lighting

Illumination mapping

I've discussed illumination maps in the past, though not in any great detail.

An illumination map is an interesting addition which is, in my opinion, underutilized in Game-Guru games.   Effectively it is an additional step beyond to add luminosity to your levels. Take for instance this screen:

Courtesy of: https://blog.3dexport.com/making-of-final-stand/

Add an illumination map (which is simply a copy of the 3d model's texture with the bright spots lit up in white and the rest in black, renamed to texturename_i.dds):

Yes, this is my hackneyed attempt to make a point.

And you get this amazing difference in visual fidelity:

Courtesy of: https://blog.3dexport.com/making-of-final-stand/

What's important here is that while as of this writing Game-Guru lacks an 'emissive' lighting system such as Unreal/CryEngine has, it does however have a certain little bit of fudge.

Left - regular texture, middle - illumination mapped, right - emissive lighting

Emissive lighting is effectively self-illumination mapping which also spreads to the environment.

Bright lights really cause a sort of bleed-over with the bloom shader built in.  So if you put illuminated lights in and you turn up the bloom it gives the IMPRESSION that they are giving off light (note, this WILL EAT SOME FPS):

From my lighting tutorial #3

Now at some point I wanted to  see if I could control the level of brightness in a game-guru illumination map.  Unfortunately it doesn't appear to have any granularity to it.  I had expected the ability to control 'how bright' something was, but alas it's either completely on (255/255/255) or completely off (anything else).  So be aware that when you're using your illumination mapped objects you need to go with an all or nothing approach.

Updated 11/27/2018 - Per Wolf this has been changed and it DOES function with gradients on the illumination map!
It's a fantastic find and I'm really happy to see it's functioning. He's also provided some great screenshots below.

As you can see the illumination mapping clearly supports gradients so make the best use of them.  Thanks again to wolf.  Make sure you visit his page over at seragalacaffeine.com for more great screenshots, tips and tutorials!

Static Light Mapping to Fake Light Emission

Going back to our previous example - what if you want that same scene to have an emissive effect around the lights?  Sure, you can crank the bloom up, but that only does a fudge on the lighting to make it appear like it's glowing.  The real trick here is to use a static light map.  For example here I have a simple room with a table and a lamp on it.  The lamp has  a static light under it and it should cast a nice 'normal room light glow'. 

See the little lighter spot on the table? That's all I really wanted!

Hey... wait a minute!  That lamp object is casting a massive shadow now! What gives?  Well, if you're like me you spent hours trying to tweak your lights and configure them in such a way that it provides the best experience for your levels.  One little trick I have is to cut out unwanted shadows by placing clutter objects *AFTER* I place my lightmapping.  This way I can produce a much cleaner effect, especially in a well-lit room like this. 

Now we've got the circle on the table and no shadow!

After I place my light and bake it using F3.  Now we no longer have a ridiculous shadow.

Note: the darkness on the lamp is a result of my poor placement of a dynamic light. 

Now simply adding bloom will get your room to look more 'emissive' by blending the colors to provide a more natural effect.
Unfortunately, I cannot show this as I lost this level between when I wrote this a year ago and when I released this today.  So here's an example from an older lighting document:

 

And another courtesy of Wolf

Note the subtle blending of the colors in the textures.  That's due to the quasi-aliasing effect being performed by the bloom shader at lower levels.  Even having at 50 can provide a pretty nice blend though I don't recommend going above 70 in most cases.

Colors, combinations, and why your lights look like crap.

You might be wondering why some lighting examples look phenomenal, while others look lackluster.  There are several reasons for this.  The first (and foremost!) is that the stock color choices in Game-Guru are quite literally HOT GARBAGE.

It's true.  Due to the way the system 'adds' color to each texture, what you end up with if you use the stock White, Yellow, Blue, Red, Green, Magenta, Cyan, etc lights is a train wreck that is simply too much or too little depending on what you are attempting to accomplish.  You almost always will want to modify the colors to be something more realistic.  If you've read my previous articles you know that white translates to a 'brightness modifier', basically a clear color with a scale of how bright the individual texture's existing colors should be are!  Details make the difference, folks.

As some of you know, I have an artist as a wife (www.messinastudio.com) and she's very particular about her lighting.  As such, I've learned a good bit more than I expected and it's been quite telling!  For instance, did you know that natural/artificial lighting is measured on a 'kelvin' scale indicating how 'hot' it is?

 courtesy of: https://ledcorporations.com/kelvin-aka-cct-correlated-color-temperature/

This coloration varies from a deep orange to a cool blue.  A little past the middle (Approximately 6500 kelvin) is natural lighting.  This is the reason I have special 200w 6500 kelvin florescent bulbs in her art studio.


This translates to the following tables from pixelemporium.com:

Light Source	Kelvin temperature	R G B Values	Color
Candle	1900	255, 147, 41
40W Tungsten	2600	255, 197, 143
100W Tungsten	2850	255, 214, 170
Halogen	3200	255, 241, 224
Carbon Arc	5200	255, 250, 244
High Noon Sun	5400	255, 255, 251
Direct Sunlight	6000	255, 255, 255
Overcast Sky	7000	201, 226, 255
Clear Blue Sky	20000	64, 156, 255

Light Source	R G B Values	Color
Warm Fluorescent	255, 244, 229
Standard Fluorescent	244, 255, 250
Cool White Fluorescent	212, 235, 255
Full Spectrum Fluorescent	255, 244, 242
Grow Light Fluorescent	255, 239, 247
Black Light Fluorescent	167, 0, 255

Light Source	R G B Values	Color
Mercury Vapor	216, 247, 255
Sodium Vapor	255, 209, 178
Metal Halide	242, 252, 255
High Pressure Sodium	255, 183, 76

In Game-Guru you'll find that often the best results can be achieved by simply blending and letting the engine handle it for you. Despite whatever adjustments you might make, or if you use all the coloring charts on the reference page that I have ... it really helps to simply put two different colors in a room and let them blend together when you compile the static lighting.

From Wolf's WIP Game:Shavra

As you can see in the above example, you have two separate light colors.  One a sort of magenta while the other is a 'hot kelvin' type orange color.  While either of these could be used to set the tone by themselves, by shifting the color dramatically he's achieved a very unique effect that clearly separates the room for a person's eyes to see.

Also from Shavra

In the above picture you can see a more subtle delineation, allowing a cleaner combination of two similar colors.  It also helps draw attention to a critical point, where something vital is hiding (near some glowing mushrooms). 

use previous example to show blue/white colors and combination from lamp and overhead lamps.

In this example we've taken the lamp from the previous segment and put in a white overhead light for general room illumination and then underneath the lamp put in a bright blue light to give the simulation of varied lighting.  The result, I think, pays dividends.

This Week in Game-Guru - 04/30/2018

OFFICIAL GAME-GURU NEWS:

Game-Guru has officially updated!  Queue the fireworks, beer, and cheers people!  It's the full DX11 release with all the associated Github and PP releases that we've come to know, love, and sometimes despise.

This represents a huge departure for Game-Guru and as such you will want to really give your stuff a thorough once-over before you test.

In the meantime we have a new pack to help celebrate, with full PBR models - https://www.thegamecreators.com/post/gameguru-construction-site-pack-released

There's some really nice looking stuff in those kits so give em a look!

NEW PRODUCTS IN THE STORE:

The store has a massive smattering of new products this week and while many are great (nice to see Tazman experimenting with PBR, for instance!)  - I have to say BSP shattered expectations with some damn fine looking stuff.

As you can see these are some top shelf products!  There's also some really good stuff by GraPhiX, that model guy, and relative newcomer mechanic.  Pasquill has also added some new cars, which are always worth a look.  These appear to be the first PBR enabled vehicles so give them a double take!

I also have to chime in that I love Shadow Man's style.  So I follow him on the store (amongst others) and while he's not a super-prolific author his stuff is top notch and worth a look if you're into cyberpunk/sci-fi/modern styles.

Of course most of these are available in well priced packs so spend wisely:

FREE STUFF:

Not much going on here, but we already have lots of nice new shinies to play with so let's hold off either way for next week!

THIRD PARTY TOOLS:

The latest version of the Heightmap 2 GG program is out and available for download here:
https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/218876?page=3#msg2599966

RANDOM ACTS OF CREATIVITY:

Cybernessence did a great job with some coolscripting in his upcoming game 'The Cogwheel Chronicles'.

That's the kind of inventive stuff that keeps people interested in your product, people.

IN MY OWN WORKS:

My own products will need a thorough 'going over' for the latest revision of Game-Guru.  I will need to take some time this week to set aside and test it thoroughly then bug-fix whatever new problems cropped up from the latest revision.

The book continues to slog along though I literally got NOTHING done due to my day job's total focus last week along with my family getting sick upon my return.

Keep an eye out here for more updates.  If you are encountering any problems with the Time of Day and Weather system please let me know ASAP via this blog or via the ticket system on http://en.tgcstore.net

This Week In Game-Guru - 2/5/2018

ENGINE UPDATE PROGRESS REPORT

If you keep an eye on https://github.com/TheGameCreators/GameGuruRepo/issues you can get an interesting sense of what is being looked at and what isn't. Currently there isn't a huge amount of 'buy in' for the github repo but it is coming along and in 6-10 months I expect it to be trucking along fairly well.  There's a good body of issues being brought to the attention of Lee and company.  So we'll see but for now, mum's the word.

NEW PRODUCTS IN THE STORE

What you see above is the whole of it.  Gtox is adding new weapons (this knife apparently has an alt-attack, which is pretty cool!) and M Stockton has done some great work making a skate parka nd some parking blocks.  High quality models are always good thing!

FREE STUFF

https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219294 - DuchenKuke has offered a really great variety of free music from his old fallout work.  I love this type of thing and highly encourage people to use it to help differentiate their product from stock offerings.
https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/215012?page=15 - Bod has given us a great deal of things over the years and he continues to deliver.  This time it's a Mallard train, carriage, and a really fantastic looking train station (check out the picture below!).  Make sure you tell him how much you appreciate his work - I think he's getting fatigued a bit and it always helps to hear some encouraging words. 

This is a really brilliant new piece, in my opinion!

https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219211 - In HonkeyBoy's thread about his survival system, there's a new Lathe that's been added by GraphiX which is pretty impressive and definitely worth a download.

THIRD PARTY TOOLS

Nothing really new and exciting here.  Preben did make an interesting change to GG Loader which apparently improved framerates significantly by reducing draw-calls.  Hopefully this will have some future implementation in Game-Guru.  I have more to do for my notepad API but it's going to be a bit.  I simply have too much on my plate at the moment..

RANDOM ACTS OF CREATIVITY

https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219296 - DuchenKuke's new project looks promising. 

I love post-apocalyptic games and this one looks like a solid piece.  It's interesting, I've asked him what his method is and he mostly just wings it.  I guess some do have a natural talent for level-building.  Lucky bastard was apparently gifted with it more than I was, apparently. 


https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/217908?page=3#msg2595102 - Dimoxiland has done some major reworking to his "Space Losers" game and I think it's really going places. 

Check out the above video for details.  Very cool stuff.  Check out how clean the scripting and game play is!  Definitely one to keep an eye on.


https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219258 - Honkeyboy's latest creation - Death by Daylight shows a remarkable increase in level design and proficiency for Game-Guru's most prolific author.  He's got rapid development down to a science at this point and it's really starting to make strides.


https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219277 - Teabone has done some... very curious...  things with scripting and automobiles in Game-Guru.  Definitely worth a look.

IN MY OWN WORKS

I've made some progress on the Camera system I'm working on.  I have 3 out of 4 of the major pieces I want before I release it.  Once I get the last piece in play, I will build a demo level, zip it up, and sell it (for about $4).  It'll start off on sale at 3.50.  The camera kit will have some very interesting components which I believe most will appreciate.  I may add some niceties to it but that's not required at this point so it may get added down the road. 

After that I have to finish my other two kits.  So keep an eye out for some interesting news there.

Latest tidbits

So lately I've been exceptionally busy preparing for my house to be sold.
That said I've found time to complete my lightkit, place it on the store and begin selling it.
I also made a tutorial video.

Warning: I'm a terrible video editor.

The item on the store is located here:  https://www.tgcstore.net/product/30936

Also I've gone through the trouble of collating important information on Game-Guru (as I've found it) into a reference list.  I used to keep this as a sort of 'private page' but now I'm opening it up to everyone else.  It can be found on the sidebar but here's a direct link in case you can't find it:
http://gamegurureport.blogspot.com/p/reference-list-for-gameguru.html

I've also added 'sparckman.com' as a site in my sidebar list as well.  He's been around a while and has some good scripts as well as tutorial videos on youtube.  Definitely check him out!

Beyond that there's some interesting stuff coming but we are all waiting with baited breath for the latest GG update.