Introduction

Hello! I’m Adam Alexander, and I am a lighting artist at Hardsuit Labs. This year I made the switch from environment artist to a lighting artist, and have been working to develop a stronger understanding of what makes good lighting. Titles I have contributed to as an environment artist include Blacklight: Retribution and Tacoma. I recently completed CGMA’s “The Art of Lighting for Games” with instructor Omar Gatica to push my skill set in lighting further. Omar did a great job of laying out a curriculum that stressed lighting theory and techniques that were agnostic of any one game engine and focused on theory and composition. The weekly lectures built upon each other in a way that was both accessible and deep. Each week we were tasked with taking a scene developed by Epic and re-lighting it.

Lighting in games

Lighting plays a critical role in setting the mood for any given level and showing off the work of all the other art disciplines. Different studios have different approaches to how and when lighting is introduced into the pipeline. At Hardsuit Labs, I generally will do an initial lighting pass at the grey box stage. This pass will include setting up global lights and skydomes and sketching out some early compositions. This early lighting pass can be really useful! Working with environment art and design, I can help define what the focus or mood of any level should be. Lighting is an important tool for directing player attention, so getting this in early helps the whole team. I try to work broadly and quickly; a lot of stuff can still change at this point.

Once environment art and level design have moved on, I usually begin a 2nd lighting pass. The focus here is on polishing the work I roughed in earlier. Meshes now should be unwrapped for lightmap UVs, so I can start dialing in my light bakes. I focus on making sure spaces are readable and interesting. When lighting for games, it is important to remember that gameplay always comes first! There have been several times I will light a high contrast map that I think looks great, only to find that my areas of shadow are too dark to clearly see enemies in combat. It’s important to constantly test your lighting set up as a player would approach it. I usually end my 2nd pass by creating a color grade and setting my post process effects for the map. After this, I’m almost done! I may still be asked to revisit sections to polish or fix certain areas as a response to feedback from QA or design.