Noa Belfer -GDC Visit

Post date: Mar 29, 2014 1:5:27 AM

1. Lighting as a means of Informing Texturing

I found the talk about Lighting of the Last of Us very insightful. One of the things that was interesting to hear was that they start the lighting design extremely early in the process, and the lighting decisions are used to inform texturing decisions. By lighting the space first and getting a sense of mood, they determine first the value and then the colors of the models in the space. Each time value/color/texture on model is updated they make another pass at the lighting to determine it is to their liking.

2. Indirect Lighting

The other thing that was a big focus of the lighting talk in the Last of Us was indirect or bounce lighting. Most of the scenes in the Last of Us were lit without a large directional light like the sun. The lighting has a softer affect and they paid a lot of attention to how light and color from one wall or object will bounce and affect the area around it. This also tied into this idea of no room being completely dark, there is always light. When they designed the flashlight for their game they used programming to create bounce lighting in the room from the flashlight, and demonstrated it changing as the player went near different colored walls. Although I don't have their lighting tools I think that the focus on and awareness of bounce lighting can affect my lighting decisions in the future when I design my spaces.

3. Negative Space in Design

One of the takeaways I got from the Negative Space in Design talk (which was very interesting) was the notion of how to concentrate details. When you want someone to focus on something, you keep the area surrounding it emptier so that it draws attention. It was also interesting to here about how the mind automatically groups certain things together, often if they are similar in color/and or shape. As game designers we can try to take advantage of this purposefully. If you want something to pop you don't place it near other similar items, but also clumping objects together can become a way of reducing visual noise. The overall takeaway I got from this talk is that detail for details sake can detract from gameplay experience by overwhelming the player or distracting them from being able to make quick decisions. The world can look beautiful, but the set dressing should be purposeful to advancing the gameplay.

GDC was awesome, had a great time

-Noa