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In this tutorial we will apply some basic principles to game lighting.
Now that we have our model completely textured, it's time to apply some proper lighting to it.
With the model open in showtool, I will turn lights on. Let's have a look:
This is how Torque will light the geometry with the default settings. Not much of an improvement if you ask me.
Let's have a look at the Synapse Lighting Kit:
The Lighting Kit does a great job of pushing the highlights on the texture, but we don't want this overblown look. We don't want to simply darken areas that need to be shaded, or lighten geometry facing our light source. What we want to do is create a lighting setup that will pull our characters into the scene and be an extra weapon in our arsenal to make this game visually appealing. We want our characters and environments to have a level of coherency that is convincing and interesting. The solution is actually pretty simple.
The source of the problem:
The core problem is that objects in the real world recieve color and light differently than you might expect without looking into it. We tend to assume that shadows are black and that "shaded" areas are simply darker. The truth is, objects recieve light and color from their surroundings. If we assume that our object is fleshy, and that it recieves light reflected from the ground, we will choose a tinted reddish-brown color for our shaded areas or in the case of Torque, ambient light. Directional light (recieved from the sky) should be a blue-ish tint. Our untextured model might look something like this:
Stock Torque lighting will darken the whole model when the texture is applied. The Lighting Kit won't make a difference on the geometry shot, but when we add the texture, it should look like this:
This lighting solution looks far fleshier and believable. It also causes an interesting color combination because of the application of color theory. This is covered in the 2d skin shading tutorial. (when it is up)
Now let's change our default middle gray background to one that better fits the type of environment we might find our character in.
I've chosen a dark desaturated red with a hint of purple. This really helps the character to pop out of the "scene". Playing with lighting and backgrounds in this fashion is a quick way to get a good idea of what you can accomplish with the engine, since this is all rendered with Torque in Showtool. I would strongly discourage you from simply copying the values I am using. In no way do I intend to just "tell you what to do". Rather, I hope that you take the principle of light and color reflection/refraction, and apply color theory to come up with your own interesting lighting solutions for your characters and environments. Have fun!