Experimental lighting: Caves

ovaltine74

I am nearing completion of a map I have been working on for some time and I am now working on the lighting of the cave. I experimented with fogs. Most of the fogs make the cave way too bright, almost like being outside. For the heck of it I tested out the black fogs. Now of course heavy black fog is going to make the cave way too dark. Medium is also pretty dark. Very light fog though does very little to darken the cave. In fact I think the presence of fog may actually diffuse the light some, spreading it further across surfaces and softening it. What really made me like it though was what it did to the water.

The plane of water is the default plane. In the cave it was the only one that looked half way decent in low levels of light. The clear water plane was way too bright, and the murky looked way to dark, almost like the surrounding rock. I settled for default water, but I was never really satisfied with it because it still appeared brown.

Adding very light black fog completely changes the appearance of the water. Now It has the color I was hoping for. I thought it was interesting that a little very light black fog would do that. So if you are working in a cave or a dungeon and the lighting just doesn't look right to you, throw in some very light black fog and see what it looks like. You might be surprised by the results.

Here are the before and after images.


water with no fog at all


water with very light black fog

saerrael

Oooh, now that is interesting. Thank you for sharing.

ovaltine74

saerrael wrote: »

Oooh, now that is interesting. Thank you for sharing.

The accismus reply. Very coy. Thank's for replying to my post, but you really shouldn't have.;)

saerrael

ovaltine74 wrote: »

The accismus reply. Very coy. Thank's for replying to my post, but you really shouldn't have.;)

Actually, I find it helpful as I too am currently working on a cave.

ovaltine74

Well pardon me then. Glad you find it helpful. The exaggerated OOOOH at the beginning is what made me suspect.

saerrael

The 'oooh' was the epiphany. I'm quite new at Foundry work and I light-bulbed at that moment.
Makes you wonder how many other strange/ helpful/ not so helpful combinations are out there.

ovaltine74

If there weren't so many lurking trolls, I would never suspect anyone. My apologies.

saerrael

No worries, I tend to do about the same. The population of trolls is indeed quite large.

Again, thank you for the tip. I'll try it out in my own cave to see how it works with the rest of the setting.