Lighting a Voxel Planet - PlanetSmith Episode 8
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- čas přidán 30. 04. 2024
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This episode is all about lighting. I talk about some of the choices made when it comes to lighting and how I added player placed lighting blocks. - Hry
One thing I'd like to say is that I love how dark the night is. It gives it a cozier feeling when you place down a torch and light up your surroundings.
Indeed. If you like dark nights, check out VintageStory :)
This totally might not work for other reasons, but -
One of the best ways to improve performace by decreasing the number of rendered light sources would be to not incentivise the players to place a bunch of them in the first place. If you make the torches brighter, players naturally won't feel a need to place as many. From your footage, they seem very dim to me. That might be realistic for a torch, but it will contribute to people wanting to place many of them to properly light a room. You may want to consider making them brighter to reduce this tendency.
In addition, while theoretically realistic, inverse-square lighting falloff doesn't take into acount light reflecting off of surfaces. Real light sources, especially ones in confined spaces, appear to drop off more slowly than inverse-square. While the amount of light directly from the light source is indeed dictated by physics, much of the rest of the light reflects and propagates to all corners of a room rather than being immediately absorbed, so a given point will tend to receive more light than what is calculated by pure inverse-square. If it is possible, which it may not be, having it drop off at more like x^(1.6) rather than x^(2) might, while technically less realistic, look better and more realistic to our eyes. It would also help lights cast their glow further without brightening them signficantly.
I forgot to talk about this but lights falloff at x^(1.5) currently. I rewrote the lighting calcs for URP.
I don't know if it's easy, but maybe the light shoud also be a bit dimmer on the block the torch is placed on, as it is now there's an almost white spot right under the torch @@IncandescentGames
Minecrafts light travelling around corners isnt necessarily unrealistic, it is just a crude approximation of soft bounce light
True but it should be weaker than direct light
@@IncandescentGames that's a reasonable stylistic call, but don't feel like other directions wouldn't be just as good! I do like how it's looking now though :)
One think I don't like in all light renders, is how insultingly bright they are near the source, but they lose that effect almost a block away and light up barely anything, in this case around 4 blocks radius.
Dynamic lighting would be cool like in Minecraft optifine when you carry a torch in your hand it lights up around you
I love the lighting, but I have seen some people complaining about the realistic lightning, I personally like it, because is a semi-space game, and not having a realistic lightning in a space game would feel werid, anyways, What I suggest is to leave it as an option, or make the lightning gradient more limited. Either way, i like how it looks. But pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease Ken, make it so when 1.0 comes out, make an option to activa thec urrent lightning system as an option 🙏 Because block lighting can be weird sometimes 😅 And honestly, I like the realistic one better xD
But only if you have time 😅 don't feel forced :)
Agreed, I don't get the hate towards more realistic lighting. I think people are just still salty about stuff like raytracing existing.
@@draco6349 ?
I love the night lighting, but during the day everything looks very flat, especially early in the video as your flying around with the shadows from the trees
I think it's partly due to how the textures are mostly flat colors.
I believe later on they will be prettier.
i think it's because of the lack of ambient occlusion, i suppose it's an easy fix
The new lighting looks great! That was a fantastic breakdown of different lighting techniques.
I love the game so far!! One thing that I've noticed is that the jumping has always seen very floaty, not sure if that's because I'm watching through a screen, or if the character is something you are going to fiddle with later. Anyway please keep up the good work!! /pos
Character controler is just thrown together very quickly. Just good enough for me to test the world with. It needs completly remade!
I think some fog would look nice
That will come when I improve the atmosphere. On the very long TODO list!
@@IncandescentGamesNice! Keep up the good work!
And here I though there was too much atmosphere fog already! I feel like everything is washed out too much, or like sunlight is hitting my monitor.
Some local fog during the morning would be neat though.
@@TlalocTemporalI think it's just that the textures are just a bit low contrast. Or desaturated. I don't know shit about color theory tho. I'm just thinking fog would give some depth to the image.
I'd completely forgotten about forward+ so thanks for the reminder! Also very interested to see how you might go about a hybrid approach.
That being said, the building in the center of 15:43 (and just the general feel of the town) looks very flat to me, and looks like you've not added or mentioned (though admittedly I may have forgotten if you have discussed it previously) ambient occlusion. It's harder to spot on the very good-looking forest scenes, due to their noise as the geometry is more complex and thus casts more interesting shadows, but is sorely missed in the city scene, with many areas of the screen having almost the exact same colour. Will you be adding some kind of AO or do you think you'll try the hybrid approach first? Looking forward to seeing either.
AO is already written into the shaders but its not in the artwork yet.
@@IncandescentGames Great - I'll keep an eye out!
THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS
Two issues: first, no shadows on block-lights. that's a major problem IMO, it means that light can just go straight through blocks and therefore in caves and other closed environments you will be able to see light from outside that physically should not be able to reach there. Aesthetically, it also just looks kind of messy and unfinished, and makes it harder to distinguish 3D forms. Per-block lighting may not be preferable with its liquid-like propagation, and I don't prefer it either as it would definitely make this look too much like a Minecraft clone, but something must be done for the shadows.
Second, ambient occlusion would be good. Currently anything in shadow from sunlight just looks very flat and uniform, but having shadows in cracks and smaller spaces would make it look much more natural.
AO is already done, just not may textures are using it yet. Yes definatly changes to those lights to come i have an idea for block type lighting that will be more "realistic" as it will allow for shadows. But it may end up being to coslty performance wise! I don't plan on doing that until after a bunch of gameplay updates first.
I wonder if that hybrid system he mentioned is something about only rendering block light in the light fluid, which would just barely spill around corners like ambient reflections.
Neat! However, it would be nice if the camera gave off some lighting of its own.
For the first planet you add, you should make the moon
i think a slight shortcoming of the shadowmapped sun GI you're using is that the lighting is very binary -- texels are either lit or not, so shadows look very harsh, and you have to increase the base ambient value to avoid just having pure darkness in the shadows, which makes the dark sides and caves of the planet look...not all that dark. this is overall what gives it the "default unity lighting" look, i think. it might be interesting to explore using something like voxel block lighting combined with shader effects to do a little better with sky lighting too, perhaps by creating some kind of crude estimate of radiosity based on surrounding blocks to make shadows in open areas lighter and shadows in closed areas darker.
I wasn't expecting to like the lighting as much as I did. The way that it can actually light up an area well without complete spam, how a lit area projects the light into its surroundings, and how it stands out against the darkness of the rest of the world all look very nice.
I love this project so much. In every video you somehow manage to make me feel even dumber, then explain it in a way that I feel smart again. For that reason, this is probably my favorite devlog series at the moment. I'm excited to see the game progress, keep up the amazing work!
Can't wait for episode 9!
i love the space thing, but like. planet smith. i hope there'll be a way to just 'smith' a giant, peaceful 'planet' and live on it by the end of development.
also, looking great so far
Great video. Very mildly disappointed by no block lighting, as I like how it looks in voxel games, and the realistic lights with shadow casting and such feels slightly out of place to me, but I'm sure it'll go a long way towards making the game look pretty. Especially with this game's current cartoony art style, versus something like Vintage Story's more realistic and rustic looking art style.
My biggest concern about it is that it can make a voxel game look more like a Minecraft knock-off, as it's a pretty common sight for a lot of the quick and dirty minecraft clones to just slap in some default unity lighting or something and call it a day. Under the hood, this isn't the same thing, but to a layperson's eyes it might look similar and contribute to that kind of feel.
The flame effect for the torch looks great though. Especially colored flames + colored lighting. Can't wait to see this kind of effect in a campfire or furnace.
Lastly, as far as the whole "each light affects every mesh in a scene, and thus each light adds another entire scene's worth of complexity" problem, I'm *sure* you already thought of this but figured I'd mention it: Can this be limited to a specific distance? 50 blocks radius, or the block's current chunk + surrounding chunks, or some other similar method. That way instead of meshes really far away being calculated for a block's lighting, even though visually you couldn't tell a difference at all with a naked eye, those blocks can just be entirely ignored?
I agree it looks a bit too realistic. I don't think I want it to look like minecrafts, and I like the real time lighting, just something needs to be done to make it feel more coherent in the world
Will be a hybrid version in the future. Torches may become fully block light but sun will always be real time.
@@IncandescentGames that sounds like a good plan
Maybe the chunk limit can be applied in a way that I think is a decent idea to try. It goes like this: The earth is in a sphere-istic shape in this game so you can know what could be seen from where and what couldn't. You draw a tangent line from the light source to the earth (count it as a sphere in theory) and no chunk further than the tangent point calculates that lighting. I don't know how can this affect it or is it even a good idea but this is an idea that has come to my mind after this comment.
Maybe a weird idea, but hear me out: what if the lighting kept a semi-realistic quality, but spread out in a hexagon rather than a circle? forgive me if this is totally unfeasible as I have no experience working with lighting haha
Gotta let @piratesoftware know about this. His community would love this!
Great video! Ive been really enjoying keeping up with the devlog so far. I think there are a bunch of wonderful game mechanic implications that come with having spherical worlds. Im very excited to see what you come up with, keep up the great work!
Congratulations for getting sponsored by the US.
I'm so excited to see what I can build in this :D
I definitely think this kind of game would benefit from an early access release, even a paid one. Given how incremental the content and bigfix updates will be, getting that feedback would be superusful.
It will. But i want to get survival mode working first at least up to the point where you would fly off world
@@IncandescentGames how far is the crafting and combat content planned? do you build a spaceship or is there magic?
I love the way you breakdown your code is so well done. For sure I'll buy it on your kickstarter !
🦁
que capo
que capo
Based
🦁🐯🐅🐆🐱🐈
Petición para dividir la comunidad de Planetsmith en:
"Libertario", "no libertario", "persona cuyo pais de residencia no ganó el mundial 2022"
I am more and more wanting to see some voxel tracing to help with the lighting as well. Could even make it more stylized by changing how light fall off works or how blocks are lit
I'm very curious about what the survival part of the game is going to be, the mob generation, etc
Work on that starts soon!
Impressive rate of development
we need a fireplace
The light look awsomr but i would like to see the lighting be spred out more so it lights up a bigger erea and so it has a weaker light in the center
For alpha access, you could possibly add custom accessories for contributors, such as capes, similarly to how it is done in Minecraft.
It doesnt even have player model yet but it would be cool, I recomment adding a glyph system like warframe so you can have avatar pictures.
@@635574 true
So hyped to start creating structures for this game the modding tools are looking so nice!
Love the art style
Every video I get more and more hyped
You should make it possible to place torches on the walls as well if possible
definatly
Love this project. Do you have any plans to add weather and/or seasons in the future?
Both! Not soon though other things to do first
@@IncandescentGames It's going to be awesome once you do add them. Can't wait
lots of people are commenting that the lighting looks weird, I think that's mostly a tonemapping issue
also, i don't think you need to walk us through your code almost ever, its more interesting to talk about the solutions you came up with in the abstract.
Love this! Can’t wait for release
very nice looking torches
When the title said”Lighting a Voxel Planet”, I didn’t think you meant it in “Keeping the Lights On” via KickStarter.
Not a complaint, just a funny word association that came to mind. If I have the money at some point, I’ll chip in.
I think the bright area round the torches would look better if you were using a tonemapper.
Love it! Just one thing: I started noticing the footage you are showing to us appearing in the announciment trailer. That was 3 months ago...
Yes these viedos have been going over stuff i have done in the past year, we are nearly at the same point as the game now, once that happens expect video releases to slow down.
@@IncandescentGames That is great! Just wanted to clarify that.
it would be cool, if torches, flames and light from them were hexagonal
I would love to see grass blocks with grass on their sides if they are only one block up from another in order to give a "smoother" hill look
The hi-res flame texture looks kind of weird between the pixel art blocks
Are you planning on making some sort of soft light that lights up the the faces that the torches aren't casting towards?
Do you plan on adding a moon? If so, you should make it emit a certain amount of light based on the phase of it to make the night look a bit more interesting.
Definatly. Night time definatly need a lot of tweaks, but i definatly want to still have some nights that are pitch black making it slightly scary and requiring you to make lights.
@@IncandescentGames I like that idea. Keep up the great work!
it would be nice to habe some shadows for the lights
I don't know if you're planning on making mobs but I'm curious how they'll look in a hexagonal world
Oh so thats the forward+ mode default in Godot 4 I never heard it explained before.
This game is Ultra awesome🤩🤩🤩I love every thing about it. But please fix this sharp light edge on the fist block a torch is🙏
If you want, I would totally help. Very much not the most experienced with Unity, although I do have experience with game design and programming in general.
at first i thought the torches seemed too dim, but now im ptetty sure i was only thinking that becuse minecrafts torches are just really bright. These torches give a cozier feel i think, what with most of their light being concentrated but still casting a glow for pretty far.
I think it would look amazing if the lights and shadows caused by the sun changed color depending on the time of day, maybe it could be measured by something like the position of the sun relative to the players Z axis? dunno
you should talk with one of the many amazing shader developers for minecraft! i’m sure they have lots of great ideas!
🔥
I feel the flame texture and light break the artsyle a bit, they're too detailed and smooth respectively. Maybe a pixilated shader on top of both will fix that?
Loving watching this develop! Iut of interest, why does the sky not seem very blue? Especially around the horizon it seems the atmosphere is almost see through, is that because of the raleigh scattering is only on a much smaller planet than our own? If so is there a way to increase it? Might be less realistic but would really improve the visuals i think
Yes the scattering is hard to get right because the planet is so small compared to the size of the atmosphere. I plan to work on this again, but other things to do first
unsure what exactly you mean by minecraft's lighting being linear, but iirc, each light level below 15 is 80% as bright as the one above it.
I didn't know that thanks
Can the current lighting system support block-level spotlights, casting very directional light with a harsh shadow? I found it hard to notice casted shadows in the castle build shown.
I think the squared light falloff is too harsh for our display technology. Our eyes of course like it in real life but monitors cant reproduce the effect
the torches are way too dim, but they also feel too bright at the source. Maybe change the falloff to look nicer but be less realistic? I read another comment saying the inverse square law isn't really true in real life because of complexities and imperfections, so its more like 1/(x^1.6)
Would it be possible to create held light sources with this method? Such as a lantern you can carry around so you don't need to place torches literally everywhere?
NOOOOO, I HAVE ZERO WAY OF GIVING THINGS TO ONLINE SITES! I CAN'T HELP IN MAKING PLANETSMITH REAL!
What does it happen if a player tries to go to the core of the planet?
Does any block shape brake?
why not use block light like minecraft for light coming from blocks, and directional lighting for the sky? most custom minecraft shaders work like that, and they look pretty good without totally tanking the performance
yes something like this is my plan. Altough i have a slightly difrent approce for block light planned that will allow for shadows
Maybe you could make a config option to switch between realtime light and per block for slower PCs
just out of curiosity, are you gonna do particles?
Yes. torches have some particle effects already
@@IncandescentGames oh cool are there gonna be block particles too then?
wait if the flame animation is always billboarded towards you, how does it look when you stand directly above it? when showcasing it at 15:10 i notice you avoided that angle, whether intentionally or unintentionally
I decided it shoud stay aligned with the planet so if your directly above you can't se it. I may in the future make it so it tilts slightly at high angles but havent decided as seems to work well as is
@@IncandescentGames makes sense!
Have you looked into doing colored lighting? FinalForEach describes how he does it in m.czcams.com/video/edaaFUflusk/video.html
Lights can be any color. The troches have a yellow tint. Difrent to FinalForEach does it though,
You said that deferred lighting can’t do transparency when I know BOTW uses deferred lighting and it has water. It would be great if you could clarify what you meant cuz I’m really confused.
Cool game btw
I'm not an expert on how botw did it but it's very hard to do good transparency with deferred. I think the most common solution is to render water a post pressing effect.
Thanks. Can’t wait for it to come out!
Is this game going to be a bit more futuristic or more like Minecraft
Probly a bit more like Horizon Zero Dawn
Can you theoretically chase the sun around the entire planet for constant day time?
you can! Depends on your lattitude and planet size. 20 minutes is day night cycles and at the equator its 18km to run around so you run to slowly to keep up with the sun. But you can at higher latitudes or on a smaller world
That rly cool
Can you add scripting api to make mods for the game?
definatly
I'm very exited, but i don't have money 😕
Watching helps! Also don't worry the demo for Kickstarter will be free for everyone
@@IncandescentGames oh thank gosh! Thank you! I look forward to playing the game!
Will it run smoothly on Linux?
No reason it shouldn't... but I don't plan to release a Linux build until we have a stable 1.0 release
Are you planning on making a mobile version??
Eventually if the game is popular. Would love to have cross play with mobile but don't expect a mobile version for a long time!
How can you manage upload these videos that often?
Can you fly off your planet?
Not yet but thats the plan
@@IncandescentGames cool, once you do get to it you should give the planets a bit of variety like some have different mobs and stuff
How would water even work?
Probably similar to MC but 6 directions. Infinite water solves a lot of lag issues
I need to know the minimum requirements, my pc is 12+years old most likely 4 GB ram is not enough?
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7:15 Good because anti-aliasing is garbage.
This isn't greater than the Minecraft approach - it's much slower and doesn't scale. And shadows are also missing.
i really hope you dont take this the wrong way but i felt i should mention it since it has been consistent. it feels like youre leaving a tab between each of your sentances throughout your videos. this isnt a big deal bc i can just 1.5x speed in the player, but it has been quite jarring from a viewing experience perspective.
Ur lighting texture pack on Minecraft is out of date, as it's now been changed to light level 0 makes mobs spawn, and it shows 7 and below as red, which I very much guess it means that's where mobs spawn. Out of date for several years now.
True! but it was where the overlay mod worked and the data is still the sae in terms of light
additionally, maybe you should hire an artist to give the game a new art direction. Right now it looks somewhat generic.
you know, i like the simple and blocky look of minecraft, i wouldn't like this game to be too realistic, it's like minecraft with shaders, it kind of ruins the game.
📌 ?