Ultimate Game Design : Building game worlds

FIGURE 3-5
Somber castle
C H A P T E R 3
the Ring movie from The Lord of the Rings trilogy. The magical sunlight and color
treatment in the scene really helped transfer the emotional ideas of wonder and enchantment.
I would then use two strong spotlights to highlight terrain features, like
an animated flower patch, a talking tree, or a happy creature’s hut. I would also scatter
some light shafts coming from the direction of the sun using a directional or tunnel
light. You could also add some dust particles in the light path. That would look
very cool. We’ll see how you would begin to do that in the section, “Particles,” later
in this chapter.
How might you light the scary forest? Again, for a section of the scary forest (I normally
light section to section), use a single “choked” or minimal ambient light.
Weight the ambient light color toward blue and orange. Since I’ve only used one
global light, I’m going to use three spotlights. I would orient them toward red and
blue and place them at the base of gnarly trees or other fantastic props in your scary forest.
Use the spotlights pointed toward the sky at the base of your gnarly trees (or other
props) to create drastic and intimidating shadows. Fear lies in the shadows, right?
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Lighting, Texturing, Particles, Effects, and Audio