Rec Room: Make It To Midnight Lighting
In 2023, I was tasked with doing a lighting pass on a level used for an upcoming in-game event (Rec Room Original). My work included the following:
- Outdoor lighting (directional and ambient sky lighting)
- Reflection Probes
- Fog (also worked with the design team to set its density dynamically through gameplay)
- Skybox Material (and tuning placement/materials of distant background elements
- Motivated light sources (fixtures, string lights, ride lights, etc.)
- Unmotivated fills lights to maintain minimum visibility throughout the level
- Accent lighting for various gameplay objects
- Post Processing
See the official trailer for the event here:
One thing to note for context: the entirety of this lighting was done without the use of cast shadows, mainly due to the performance constraints of shipping for multiple platforms. To account for this, I put extra work into controlling the attentuation of light sources to minimize bleeding where possible and creating the illusion of soft shadowing. Without further ado, here's a couple of beauty shots from the level:
And while this isn't the most glamorous angle to look at this from, here's a couple of shots from above the map:
