Technically this should be a Feb24th blog
entry because it's just past midnight but fuck it, we ball.
I keep rambling at people about how
reflection probes are so good at setting the light-vibe of a
scene. But how about I show you.
Take a gander at this video:
Sorry for the mess that is the Audio.
I didn't think OBS would be picking up me watching Salty Bet and the
parcel audio that was tuned into nectarine demoscene radio. Sooooo
two audio streams playing at once yay!
Anyway that's a single windlight.
There's a ton of reflection probes in this scene. They are
replacing the ambient light with their probed light data. You can
see the transitions as I walk through doorways (You can actually see
this in other games too. In Final Fantasy XIV go to gridiania's
market stalls and move between the 3 chambers that make them up and
watch what happens to the lighting on your character as you walk through
the doorways real closely.)
Each of the rooms has different light
levels and therefore has different levels of ambient light thanks to the
various probes. This isn't done by any settings on the probe
beyond setting its ambient to "1.0". The rest is driven by simply
how well lit the walls are in any given scene. The end result as
the lighting on my avatar looks very natural regardless of how the light
levels are.
You can see a bright patch where there's a
small bit of unprobed territory in the door leading to the
kitchen. I patched it after the video but I didn't reshoot the
video after patching it because I'M FUCKING LAZY. But that bright
patch is what you'd get in much more intense light without a probe that
doesn't jive with the light levels being tossed in the room.
Rather then give instructions on how to set
up reflection probes, someone else gave much better instructions then I
could ever give. So go read that. A lot of what I know
about reflection probe technique and playcement I picked up from that
document. It was eye opening.
