Question How can I fix the "dull" and overly flat look of my scene?

I hope a thread like this is okay here, I'm not really sure where else to ask this.

I've been playing around with light settings for quite a bit of time, enabled GI, tweaked lightmapper, played with postprocessing effects, but my scene still looks extremely uninteresting, especially shadows.

I thought adding Ambient Occlusion would help, but all of the shadows generated by it are extremely blurry, and adding AO postprocessing effect to the camera also didn't really help. The whole thing is complicated by having a top-down indoor scene, which seems to limit how I can place lights in the scene, since there is no ceiling.

I feel like the image really speaks for itself, there's just something missing, but I can't figure out what to change. The current lighting setup is one directional light pointing straight down, and quite a bit of environment ambient lighting.

 

First find a similar reference and study it, what you need is probably stuff like greeble and decoration props with intents

 

Okay. Put some detail on the white floor texture, like some square tile outlines, or some other cool looking pattern.

 

Some suggestions:

• Try angling the directional light instead of having it straight down. I know this is not realistic, but will help add depth (and it doesn't seem like you're going for hyper-realism here)
• Try adding a second directional light with a different angle and shadow parameters. 2 directional lights can go a long way in top-down games.
• Try setting the black wall to be white (same color as the floor) and distinguishing it via shadows/lighting, if it doesn't break the art style
• Try setting up some other lights around eg some baked spot lights every few feet. Just because the ceiling isn't an actual object doesn't mean you can't put lights there.

 

Thanks for the tips guys, so far I've managed to only do some of them, namely floor tiles & walls with less distinguishing colors and some more natural lighting



Still not really sure about the camera angle and wall height though. I thought about switching to an orthographic camera, but it didn't work much better.

 

To be frank, we have been beating around the bush to help you.

The truth is there is no easy fix, nor easy to express solution, because it's an art sensibility thing, a proper easy solution is you either start investing on art education, which will takes time, or pay an artist to do a beauty pass. You obviously don't have yet the proper sensibility depth to see how it's wrong and fix it optimally.

I'm glad you have reach a more satisfying state, but i would say you to just move on if it's first entirely functional and then good enough. Else you'll waste time tinkering endlessly.

 

Aye, it's looking nice. I like the white floor a bit more, but the darker floor looks nice too. And putting those people in the scene, makes the scene look more lively.

 

Thanks for the tip. To be honest I'm not looking for a quick fix, I'm trying to work on my art skills (including even classical drawing). The point of this thread was more about getting some input from people with experience in 3d level design so I can work off of that.

But I have to disagree that tinkering endlessly is a waste of time. I feel like I've been learning a ton about how lighting in 3d scenes work. Sure it is not AAA quality, but comparing to what I've had a couple of weeks ago it seems like the difference is significant.

Though I don't understand why you have to word it in such a hostile way. Getting feedback on one's work from more experienced people is literally part of any kind of education. It seems you expect I want you to do my scene for me, which is not true. I'm simply looking for tips on how to improve or paths to take in learning more. Even your first comment about finding a reference helped me a ton since I made a list of 20 different top-down games (mostly 3d) to study their graphics and see if I can learn something useful from them.

 

You could do two things. Add some props on walls like windows, lamps, pictures, posters, evacuation directions. On a floor some trash-bins. Randomize some items on the desks. And layout on the desks.

Do the light mapping this will immediately make the difference. Also add the ceiling with plane normal directed downward, than everything will be visible from the top and the light will bounce from inside the rooms.

 

I didn't meant to be hostile, english isn't my first language i must have missed some nuance. But it was more of a production tip, getting better over multiple project is more effective than a single one, but that was if your goal was to ship the game first. My reaction is brought mostly by the volume of people starting games alone and getting bog down by details endlessly, it was meant as an encouragement to move the project along and not be insecure about a part that's probably good enough. Having an habit of getting shot done first is the best habit for anyone making games. It looks like you were getting stuck on details, now you clarified you want to get better at art that's good. As reference don't just look at other games, look at real place, pay attention to edge and transition, learn about composition and gestalt.

 

One more quick tip: Add a door to the bathroom so that the smell doesn't get out.

 

Thanks for the tips! What is sad though is that both screenshots are already with lightmapping on

I do need to play with the light setup and settings a lot though. There are also a few issues on some of the models with shadows being generated where they shouldn't be, but if you look closely there's also baked ambient occlusion.

 

Both with light map ? But there are no shadow on a first one.

Also as I see it now, there is only one light. With direction straight from above.
What you need to do is to put lights in every room as it is with normal office. And some non directional ones for nice shadows.
I do not know what style you are aiming but some specular on some materials could add some dynamism.
And don't forget about Light probes for dynamic objects.

Btw. What is your ambient light ? Why your walls are so bright when you use only directional lights ?

 

I guess my lights are set to be to weak, but there is one directional light and 18 more point lights spread around the ceiling in the whole level. They're more visible in the shadows in the first level, and also I've disabled cast shadows on some of the objects (like monitors) as they ended up casting huge shadows for some reason. Specular is a great idea, I definitely have to play with those hehe.

I've also set the point lights to not cast shadows. Not sure if this is the best idea, but the way I imagine it large ceiling lights in an office environments produce such diffused lighting that there aren't really any directional shadows. Or maybe I was at just too brightly lit offices

As for the style, I kinda to get something "realistic" in terms of low poly. Nothing super stylized, just a believable lighting setup.

 

This is old, but I want to add a comment since it's come up in my Google search. I too was looking to refine my light setup, but I'm a bit further on that this original poster was.

The problem with the lighting in this scene is partly how the scene has been constructed. There are no clear sources of light or light directions. The shadows are amorphic, they lacks any clear structure.

Simple fix - light comes in two forms - natural and artificial. Where are the windows? Light should stream in through those windows, creating shadows. Use render layers or light layers so that you can put spotlights near the window but not have it reflecting like a car headlight off the surrounding surfaces outside the window. I cannot see a single window in that office, which seems odd.

Next, some of the internal offices will have to have artificial lights in the real world, and same applies here. Apply some point lights and just hover them over the scene, two if it's a bigger room, then you can have two sets of shadows, which will help a lot dynamically.

Check your shadow range, environment lighting settings point light settings etc. to fine tune the look.

You can use a bit of post-processing bloom to create extra shiny reflections on metallic or reflective textures. Ambient lighting tends to be the flattest, so just work to get those point and spotlights in your scene in judicious places. Emissive lights will help create the illusion of light sources, but they won't cast any light, so combine with point lights for the proper effect, but be aware of the limits (will be fixed in the next LTS).

Light is very dynamic. It tends to be concentrated in some areas and weak in others. When your scene looks flat, it's because you haven't any real concentrations of light from specific light sources.