Tales of The Adventurers Inn

In this article we’re joined by EXP’s own Damian Gerrits as he enlightens us on how he created his stunning lighting doodle, Tales of the Adventurers Inn. We discuss all things related to lighting, composition, adding depth and how to direct the scene as well as working with lighting references, his experience with mentorships and his advice to anyone thinking about doing one.

Intro

Hi! I’m Damian Gerrits, a graduate Environment Artist from the Netherlands. This September I’ll be graduating from the University of the Arts Utrecht with a Bachelor's Degree in Creative Media & Game Technologies. I have previously worked at Ninja Theory as an Intern after winning one of the The Rookies categories last year. Besides that, I am the Marketing Manager of Experience Points, which includes all the marketing related work, from articles to tutorials and mentorship content.

Tales of the Adventurers Inn was the practical part of my graduation project from university, which I worked on from March to August 2022. After getting started with Unreal Engine 5 during my internship at Ninja Theory, I wanted to take this experience with me into my graduation project. During this project I’ve set up a collaboration between The Mentor Coalition and my university. It was a great experiment to see how external mentors can help guide graduating students where university teachers lack the knowledge or time to guide students during their final project. I was very fortunate to have Lucas Annunziata and Peter Tran as mentors during this period of time and I can’t thank them enough for their input, time and effort into guiding me.

Setting Goals
For me it is always important to set certain goals before starting a project. I’ve been working on learning all I can about the different aspects of Environment art production and with each project I’m trying to tackle something different. Tales of the Adventurers Inn has been part of my journey to better understand lighting as I had no prior experience with lighting environments. It was important to me to create something which showcases a good understanding of fundamentals and lighting.

Utilizing Marketplace Content

For this project I’ve used the Stylized Village pack by MESHINGUN STUDIO and assets by William Tate. Besides that I’ve used a great cloud pack by DF Productions and Fog Cards from the “blueprint” free demo map on the UE4 launcher.

As this project was primarily focused on lighting I chose to only use assets from the Unreal marketplace. It is important to understand that you don’t always need to make everything from scratch, it all depends on what you want to showcase with that project and the constraints you’re working with. Ideally as an Environment artist you want to make sure that your portfolio showcases all the necessary skills. So I’d only advise you to use marketplace content if you’re already showcasing the skills to build things from scratch.

For me the main constraint was time, as this was my graduation project in which I only had a couple of months to get to the end result. This meant that if I would make everything from scratch, I probably wouldn’t have had any time to focus on the skillset I was trying to get better at, which was lighting.

Gathering References For Different Lighting Scenarios

You ideally want to look for references that match your scene. The reason for doing that is that you’ll have an easier time analysing the references and then matching the lighting, values and mood of your project with them. This is by no means a golden rule, but just something that will help make your life easier.

For this scene that means that the references need to give off a feel of an open world
A big part of the concept should be filled with a sky
And finally they should have something like a building as the main focal point

These are just some pointers for myself to narrow down what I’m searching for but I also deviated from these eventually. After this I had to decide what kind of lighting scenarios I wanted to go for. This project was all about lighting so having different types of lighting scenarios was definitely going to help me improve. I settled for 3 different lighting scenarios:

Day Time Lighting
Night Time Lighting
Eerie Lighting

For each individual one I then picked some references that were going to be the main guidelines in terms of lighting and mood and I used the other references to brainstorm for ideas as I wanted to have some artistic freedom and not have all 3 lighting scenarios be a replica of the references.

Composition

As showing an understanding of fundamentals was one of the goals of this project, it was important for me to find a good composition. I knew that I wanted to create a small cinematic for each of the lighting scenarios so it was important to decide beforehand what kind of aspect ratio I was going to use.
Personally I’m a big fan of widescreen presentations as these give more of a cinematic feel to them. Therefore I chose to use a 2.39:1 aspect ratio. I’ve used a great blog by Alec Tucker in which he showcases Cinematic Post Processing Tips & Tricks to set up my camera and I tweaked this accordingly to my liking.

Then I started to work on the camera placement and main composition of the scene. I started off by creating leading lines throughout the environment. These lines should then work in each lighting scenario creating a solid base to work from.

By using props to fake shadows you can create more depth by darkening the foreground in comparison to the midground and background. Especially in the day lighting scenario, I’ve used trees to create shadows that help guide the eye to the focal point of the scene. I’ve used the silhouette of the house on the left together with the shadows I’ve placed on the centre building to guide the eye towards the focal point of the composition. You can place the trees both in view and outside of the view of the scene but make sure to mark them as “hidden shadow” so they aren’t actually visible.

These same shadows can be used in combination with the architecture to form triangular shapes in the composition to create tension. The tension is created because we are used to seeing vertical and horizontal lines. It gives an unbalanced, unstable feel to the image, which makes it more interesting.

On top of this I’ve used the vegetation to create a natural frame. By placing these around the edge of the composition you prevent the viewer's eyes from wandering off the canvas and you help isolate the main subject from the outside world. The result is a more focused image which draws the eye naturally to the main point of interest.

Using Lights To Guide The Eye

For the night lighting scenario I used a completely different angle for the directional light. This time it came from the back acting like a moonlight. Because of this it was harder to use the shadows as a guide for the eye. So this time I wanted to use lights in the scene to guide the eye to the focal point. By creating a clear contrast in colour between the lights and the scene, it was easier to use them to help guide the eye. To create this contrast I used complementary colours because they work well.

The moon was going to be the main focal point of the scene, but even without the help of leading lines or other composition techniques, it was going to grab a lot of attention due to the size and the difference in value as it’s so bright. Therefore I decided to focus on the second point of interest which was going to be the main door of the Inn. Here I use both lantern lights and faked highlights to create a contrast to guide the eye like shown below.

Using Fog Cards To Create Aerial Perspective

One of the neat tricks I’ve learned during my mentorship with Peter is how to use Fog Cards to create depth in your scene. For all the lighting scenarios I’ve used Fog Cards to layer the depth, by placing them between, behind or in front of elements to brighten them up or make them darker. This creates Aerial Perspective (also called atmospheric perspective) which creates the illusion of depth. It’s more of a technique that is known in painting in which colours become weaker in proportion to the distance from the person who is looking at something or in this case the camera. During the process of placing these cards I started to look at it more like I was creating a concept art piece in which I layered the depth of the painting. The benefit of this is that you have a lot of creative freedom to push values and create more separation between the foreground, midground and background.

The pitfall of using these fog cards is that they are very expensive in terms of Shader Complexity and using a lot of them will become heavy. I’m sure there are enough smart technical people out there that have great solutions for this, but sadly that is not me (yet). One good tip that I didn’t know about in the first place when working with fog cards, is being able to toggle translucent selection on and off by pressing T in Unreal Engine.

Below you can see the difference in depth with the Fog Cards on and off:

Using Local Lights To Fake Bounce Lights

To have more control over the bounce light in the scenes I’ve used point lights to paint in the lack of bounce light. I’ve done this purposely to have more control over which areas I’d like to have lit more than others. By doing this you gain finer control over your values and it makes it easier to separate elements in your scene.

The down side to this is that it is absolutely not performance friendly to use that many point lights. In both the night time and day time scene I have used a lot of point lights which could have been optimized a lot better. At the start of the mentorship Peter advised me to definitely focus on the artistic side of the project, rather than worrying about the optimization and how I should be doing it. His famous words were: “Just do it first and worry about the tech side later”. It’s definitely worth knowing how to properly optimize the lighting but I personally think that for a portfolio piece it’s alright to have something less optimized. You can always come back to it and optimize it properly. In the end every company has its own constraints when it comes to optimisation, so you can never really tailor it towards one.

Below you can see the difference in each scene with the painted bounce light turned on and off:

Coloured Lights and Shadow Gradients

Peter gave me a great example of how he tackled lighting in his own personal work in which he creates gradients on the edges of harsh shadows. This is done to create a more subtle transition between colours and values. Sometimes you have harsh shadows in places where the lighting needs to guide a player or eye and by using this technique you can open up the areas where these harsh shadows stop guiding the eye.

Creating Gradients On The Edges Of Harsh Shadows

I’ve tried to mimic a similar effect in the day lighting scenario where I’ve used coloured point lights to create a gradient along the harsh shadow line on the house on the left for example. This was not done to help guide the eye but more of an artistic choice as it gave a nice gradient in colour and values in some areas.

Below you can see an example where I’ve turned the blue lights and the orange coloured lights on and off. Using both cool and warm colours gives a nice transition where the shadows feel colder and it gradually turns warmer towards the areas which are lit by the directional light (sun).

LUTs (Lookup Tables)

For the colour grading/correction of the night time scene I’ve used a Lookup Table (LUT). Before this project I had no idea what they were and how to use them but therefore it was nice to give it a try. Unreal Engine has a nice documentation on how to create your own LUT Texture. I’ve basically just followed the steps in there so I won’t bore you with all the details on how to create your own, but I’ll show you how I’ve used them.

So basically I started off with taking a high res screenshot of the main composition as this is the most representative of my scene. Then inside of Photoshop I used adjustment layers to tweak the colours, brightness and anything else I might want to tweak to get the desired result.

Then I applied these adjustment layers to the LUT texture which is also provided in the Unreal documentation and applied it in the Post Process Volume inside of Unreal. Although the changes that I’ve made were really small, it was fun to try out. Next time I’ll probably try DaVinci Resolve to do any correction if needed, as this was something others recommended.

Below an example of the scene with and without the LUT:

Working From Reference

The main goal for the Eerie lighting scenario was to get it as close as possible to the reference in terms of composition in lighting, values and colour. It’s important to go back and forth between your references and artwork and also check the values in grayscale to make sure you’re getting close to the result you want. It was a bit more tricky to get close to the reference because of the lack of foreground in the concept. Because of this I focussed more on the midground and background as that was easier to compare.

This scene relied heavily on the fog and depth so it is important to spend enough time layering these properly. I honestly could spend hours tweaking every single fog card and never feel like I’m done, and this is also how I felt at some point during the process of creating this. It is important to understand that the difference it would make compared to the time it would take to get there, sometimes isn’t worth it and at some point you need to call it done.

Narrative Layers

During my mentorship with Lucas we spoke a lot about pushing Environments further than just your regular renders. We talked about not only making a beautiful environment piece, but also focussing on world building. Adding layers of narrative to your scene by using VFX, sound and movement in the environment.

For each of the cinematics I’ve added multiple layers of narrative by adding VFX/Shaders like falling leaves, flying pollen, waterfalls and foam.
I’ve added movement in the Environment by having foliage and water move through their shaders and I’ve animated the door very subtly in the last shots in the cinematic above.

On top of this I’ve used some great music by Alexander Nakarada and some free sound effects like waterfalls, wind blowing and birds to add another layer of storytelling to the cinematic. Finally I used a really great pack called Cinemotion which contains some really great camera animations by Cinetexture. By adding subtle camera movement you make the motion of the camera feel more believable. All these layers create a more believable world and push your environment just a bit further than just the pretty renders.

Renders and Presentation

Although cinematics are great you also want to have your renders look good. Not everyone has the time or wants to take the effort to sit and watch every video you put in your post on Artstation. So here are some simple tips to make your renders look good:

Before I take a screenshot of my camera render I make sure to adjust the Screen Percentage. I generally just crank it all the way up too 200% to make the image look nice and sharp.
On top of this I use the Console Command r.Tonemapper.Sharpen and put a value in from 0.5 to 1 depending on what works best for that render. Sometimes it’s nice to not have all the details be extremely sharp so play around with the value and see what works best for you.
Then finally I use the High Resolution Screenshot and I multiply the screenshot by a max of 2. Most of the time I go lower and set it to around 1.8/1.9 as I’ve gotten some artifacts when putting it too high.

Screen Percentage and Screenshot Size Multiplier

If all of these options don’t give the desired result or you want to go for even higher resolutions, I just use the Movie Render Queue and stop the render process early and grab one of the first renders as I’m always rendering a .png sequence. Do make sure that you’ve added all your commands like the Sharpen we just talked about in your Console Variables in the settings.

Mentorships

For anyone not familiar with mentorships, they’re basically one on one calls you have with an industry professional to help guide you while working on a project or while developing a set of skills.

Now both Mentorships and traditional education have their pros and cons and this has been talked about by many people in the industry. For me it was important to have professional guidance during my final project and because university teachers most of the time lack the knowledge or time I therefore decided to look into a collaboration with an organization that provides mentorships.

I personally think that these two can go hand in hand and by working together can give the students the best out of both worlds. Luckily my university agreed with me on this after pitching the idea to the director and they now have a fund to help pay for mentorships or resources for students in their graduation year.

Mentorships Advice

First of all before purchasing a mentorship I think it’s good to be self aware on what level you’re currently at. If you want to get the most out of a mentorship I think it’s good to realize when 1 on 1 feedback is the most valuable in your development process. A lot of beginner's knowledge is available online for free so it’s kind of a waste to spend a big amount of money on a Prop art mentorship for example when you still need to learn basics in modelling.

Preparing for Mentorships

I’d say it’s always good to be proactive and make sure you’re well prepared from the get go. This means that you should be prepared even for the first session. Write down specific things you’d like to learn during your mentorship.

An example of what I had written down prior to my first mentorship lesson with Peter was:

Lighting for different moods (storytelling)
Lighting for different day times
Composition
Lumen
Lighting for games

If you haven’t started any production on your environment, character, material, VFX etc. prior to your first mentorship session, make sure you come prepared with references or concept art examples of what you want to create. Make a PureRef board with all the images so you can go over these things during your first session.

Then write down all the questions that you have and write them all down. Don’t care about whether or not you think a question is stupid or something you should already have known. Just write it down because a mentor will always help you out and explain anything about the things you don’t know. It’s totally okay to not know things, because we’ve all been there.

Make sure to add a section where the mentor can write down the answers and don’t be afraid to ask the mentor to add the answers afterwards or to let them double check if you’ve written their answers down correctly. It’s better to double check and ask again so you can write it down and look back on it while you’re working towards your next session.

Finally set goals for your next session together with your mentor. This will help you push yourself to at least get these things done and checked off and this way you will always have things to talk about in your next session.

Finding Mentorships

Luckily there are a lot of places where you can find mentorships these days with a lot of amazing artists. Here are some places where you can find mentorships:

Areas Looking To Grow As An Artist

There are a lot of areas that I’m still looking to grow in as an artist but I think creating environments completely from scratch and making as much as possible on my own is what I want to grow in the most. Other than that I think I’m going to dabble a bit more into lighting as I’ve really enjoyed working on this project.

Inspiration

There are so many ways to get inspired but I think I get inspired the most by the work of other artists. I personally really enjoy seeing work that is just really well done. Also seeing work in progress art on twitter from artists that are learning new skills or trying out a new medium, can really inspire me to try out new things and experiment. I can really get lost in browsing Artstation and adding things to my collections to then not being able to decide which concept I want to recreate in 3D when deciding on a new project. Other than that I really enjoy watching movies and looking at photography. Sometimes I’m just browsing through Instagram and getting lost in the work of photographers.

Feedback

Receiving good feedback is one of the most useful things for anyone that is looking to grow. For this project I primarily asked for feedback from my mentors as I had a session with them every other week. But in between these sessions I would share it with close artist friends to get some input on things If I wanted to move on a bit quicker. But my go-to place for feedback is definitely Discord servers like Experience Points, the private Mentorship discord with The Mentor Coalition and The Club Discord. I would definitely recommend anyone to join these amazing servers out there as there are so many artists willing to help out. As long as you’re willing to listen to feedback there are enough people that are keen to help.

Additional Advice
Plan time to have fun and relax! This is something I personally try to do. It is totally okay to want to work hard and get those extra hours in to develop a new skill set, finish a personal project or start a new one. But it is also important to step away, have a good time with friends, socialize and try new things outside of game development.

Sometimes trying new things can also help inspire your work so don’t be afraid to go out and relax.

Future Work

There is still a lot I want to tackle and want to do but first I’ll be moving countries so that is probably going to take some time. After that I’ll finally be done with university so It’s going to be a mix of working on my portfolio, doing freelance work and job hunting for a full time position!

Outro

If you’ve made it all the way here I would like to thank you for taking the time to look at my work and read through all of my ramblings about my experience and thought process behind creating this piece. I hope that you’ve learned something or at the very least enjoyed looking at the pretty renders.

My DM’s are always open to anyone who might have a question or need any further clarification on how I’ve approached the lighting of this environment. You can find me on Artstation, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram. Lastly I would also like to thank Experience Points for the opportunity to write this, it has been a blast!