halo MAAR DÚN | Unleash The Demon

[Jake Stegmeier | MartianMallCop 161]

https://jakestegmeier.wixsite.com/portfolio/maar-dun

 

 

 

DOWNLOAD AND DETAILS AVAILABLE ON MY PORTFOLIO WEBSITE

 https://jakestegmeier.wixsite.com/portfolio/maar-dun

 

CREDITS

J A C O B  S T E G M E I E R  |  LEVEL DESIGNER @Jake Stegmeier | MartianMallCop

LEVEL DESIGN | LEVEL SCRIPTING | UX | LIGHTING | ASSET CREATION

C H R I S T I A N  F I L I P  |  LIGHTING ARTIST  @MultiLockOn

LIGHTING | ASSET CREATION

W E S T I N  K O E S S E L  |  ASSET MODELER @Westin

ASSET CREATION

Edited December 7, 2019 by Jake Stegmeier | MartianMallCop

[Soldat Du Christ 3,223]

freaking outstanding, it looks amazing, as with all AAA maps im going to run around on this for like an hour and figure it out, looks way better than sacrament. Sick trailer too

[Jake Stegmeier | MartianMallCop 161]

2 minutes ago, Soldat Du Christ said:

freaking outstanding, it looks amazing, as with all AAA maps im going to run around on this for like an hour and figure it out, looks way better than sacrament. Sick trailer too

Thanks man! yeah with Sacrament I was rushed to put that out for college. Maar Dun has been a major passion project for me

[S0UL FLAME 1,611]

You've released it.

 

Well done.

[a Chunk 2,795]

This makes me want to design something.  I think that's about the best compliment I can ever give.  Really awesome level!  It's clear that you put a lot of thought into it, and tested thoroughly.  I think I'm in love.   

[Jake Stegmeier | MartianMallCop 161]

9 hours ago, a Chunk said:

This makes me want to design something.  I think that's about the best compliment I can ever give.  Really awesome level!  It's clear that you put a lot of thought into it, and tested thoroughly.  I think I'm in love.   

That means a lot man. If I can inspire people to get back into designing more levels that's a plus to me. We def gotta get a lobby put together some time to run it

[Buddy Jumps 265]

Yo, I didn't have the chance to check back this week until now as mentioned in my post. Hence, I didn't see any replies, unfortunately...

 

 

On 12/15/2019 at 5:41 PM, Jake Stegmeier | MartianMallCop said:

I think the discussion on realism vs artistic lighting is still helpful for me. But on the feature seems to be misplaced

 

Realistic vs artistic lighting is not the comparison I would make, as realistic lighting is artistic and artistic lighting can be (in my opinion should be) realistic to some extent, too. However, if someone is heavily leaning towards artistic lighting, then it is still important for it to be consistent and have the very basic priniciples of lighting, as we know them, applied.

You could say, this map featured "artistic" lighting, however it also was just sloppy in many spots. That's okay, too, if someone only looks for the overall feeling; what most likely was the case when designing this map, I suppose.

 

To me, artistic lighting would imply way broader, colourful and stronger colours than what was featured on this map. More fantastical. Some things simply can't be excused as artistic, say what you want.

 

 

My original post for reference:

Without beating around the bush, I'll show you screenshots and my explanations below. With both of us living in different time zones, this is probably the easiest way to do this. Furthermore, I can present my points better to you.

 

Spoiler

 

Disalignment of the obvious light source and its light rays - an issue that is even more recognisable from the side (this screenshot is taken inside the playable area, though). In addition to that, the light rays appear out of nowhere, even though the light source is constant. Generally, these light rays wouldn't even appear, as they could only be seen, if the light source was covered or partly covered in relation to our position. We would get even brighter light rays into the eyes compared to the ones on the right side.

 

Obviously, this editor doesn't have much freedocm in terms of lighting, however I would play it way safer and not include light rays there or put them more into the building, so they can't be seen so well from the outside.

Because, if you go your route, you would have to extend the light rays for them to almost reach the light source (with few cuts in-between to maybe show the existence of the fog covering parts of the light rays) to make it more believable. However, then comes another problem. "Why would the light rays be centered in one cylinder instead of branching across this whole side of the map? Or is the light source actually partly covered? Then why do I completely see it without any black spots?"

 

 

Like I mentioned before, there is only one big light ray zylinder. Contrary to the constant and round light source (I'll just call it 'moon' from now on, correct me, if it's meant to be something different) this side of the complex is not exposed in a continuous and coherent way. Just to nail down the thoughts behind this lighting (as it's presented in these two pictures), I would barely see the moon in front of those two windows, not see it at all on those dark rocks above, but would then see its full brightness inside the round window.

The problem is, you see the moon at its full brightness from everyhwere, it simply does not make any sense. I get that it's a mythical/fantastical type of world, however that does not except all the laws of physics and the light itself, which 'behaves' the same universally, as far as we know at this point in time. Sure, you could explain this weird behaviour of the light by saying that it's a completely different world with a different light, however this map does not look like it needs such lame excuses.

 

 

I zoomed out a little bit just to show this inconsistent allocation of the moon light. Right next to the big light ray cylinder there's even a clean cut from bright to dark, which, I'm guessing, comes from disabling the lighting on the rocks.

 

Let's zoom in again. Apart from these having the same problems as the big cylinder like wrong angle, senseless beginning point, the one on the left also rocks a way different colour than the moon. If you really like these, I would probably move the source of them to the same level as the windows, so they're only visible from the inside (also correcting the angles). Let's continue with the inside:

 

 

The light from the outside seems to be so bright that it has the same brighteness across the entire windows, yet it does not span to the walls and leaves them almost completely black instead.

 

Additional photo to show you exactly what I mean:

 

The bright light looks like it should be filling the whole room with its glory, but instead vanishes after just a few centimeters. You say, it's because of the angle the light comes in? Well, let's zoom out really quickly to see, if the light rays have the angle of the outline in this picture to further complement the direction:

 

 

Looks like they don't. Furthermore, they don't come through the entire window, which contradicts the sameness of the brighteness of the entire window. Either you would have to fix the aprupt outline or the angle of the light rays and the brightness of the light outside to somehow make this seem reasonable.

[This 'new lighting technique' has been used by me for years (in maps such as Mithril and early versions of Scarabeus for example), so it's nothing new. The unlucky thing about this technique is that the light columns turns with you around its axis, which leads to it phasing through objects (like the green pit I talk about later). It doesn't have that problem in those two windows, so good job on checking that.]

 

 

There is such a strong light outside, how does it look like on the right side of the castle at the staircase?

 

Nothing bright, not even a light ray coming from the left side. But we have a broad light ray, that would fit into a window double the size of the window in this picture. Doesn't make sense in this context.

 

Same location from a different angle:

The light ray is the broad one seen in the previous picture. As seen in the previous picture there is no bright light coming in, hence the very bright reflections on these cylinders does not make sense, also if you take the light ray into account.

 

 

There is such a bright light source behind the castle, it should be visible on top 'going over' the structure:

 

It actually is seen! But... in the wrong colour, intensity and direction. As seen in the previous pictures, it should be kind of white, right? There's also a clean cut on those two light rays, which I don't really understand, as well as the non-radial directions of the light rays. I get it, limitations. Still, you could make it way more believable and better looking than this.

I could nitpick at this area for being such black despite being in the line of the moon light (the columns with little roofs in fact are, if I remember correctly), however it's an area the players don't usually look too often, as it's above them, so whatever.

 

 

 

The moon light is filling out this upper part of the building (though wrong angles again)...

 

...but is not filling the room below with almost the same intensity (even thought the first floor does have gaps, which the light would fall through!). Again, uniformity problems (I took the picture including the moon to show off the inconsistency more):

 

 

Light rays do not have a comparable colour to the light source. Additionally, the light rays don't fill out the whole circle despite the light source not showing any less brighteness on the edges than in the middle.

 

 

 

In the following I'd like to cover 'bending lights' problems, where light seems to go around corners despite it not being able to:

Something like this is an rookie mistake, which could be easily fixed by decreasing the range of the light. We have a bad situation with lighting in Halo 5, as something like this unfortunately happens and didn't get fixed by 343, however there are still ways to manouver around most issues, especially such a mistake.

 

Same problem. Could be fixed through placing the light in a different position for it to brighten the rock and ground correctly (could be placed further away to take the corner of the rock into account).

 

This one even goes through the level. I think, I don't need to further explain this.

 

Another one I easily found:

 

 

Last one:

The light goes through the ground on the left and hits the upper wall with the same intensity as the lower one. Could again be fixed with lowering the range and eventually put another light further up to highlight the green light branching a little bit.

 

Another obvious problem right here is the steam (I'll call it like that) coming from the liquid below. It touches the structures above in an unnatural way when manouvering through this part of the map. Additionally, it comes from the inner part of the pit instead of the whole plane. I took a video to show you what I mean: https://gamerdvr.com/gamer/buddy-jumps/video/83346860

In the video you can also see that there is no reflection from the walls/arches onto the floors beneath as seen in the picture above. It's not really convincing.

 

To stay at that location, I took a photo above one of the arches:

If the brightness of the top of the arch is coming from the lamp on the right side, I don't understand, why the right side isn't brighter, even though parts of the lamp actually looking towards the enclosing walls? Accentuation is good for readability and leading the players to certain spots/weapons on the map, however it's important to not forget the principles of light and the surroundings of the accent (in this area the top of the arch).

 

 

While navigating through the map, I couldn't oversee the small lights that would often dissapear and then reappear again from a different angle:

 

That makes it a weird experience. For example, you walk through towards this door and see the light without seeing the light source. Then, after walking through and turning around you see a light all of a sudden. I don't know, if that was on purpose (I wouldn't understand why), however it would be easy to fix, if you turn the invisible light objects upside down, so it would be always visible in this specific location.

If you have one that's also visible from below, than put another light with the opposite direction on top of the same one to make it visible from all angles.

 

There is one light of this kind on the front open area before the smaller side structure, which only lights in one direction and is dark on the other. Didn't look good to me. I missed taking a photo of it.

 

 

 

Well then, to wrap this up. I do think, the mystical/fantastical theme is done very well. The dark and mysterious look together with the architecture is the selling point.

The lighting is done better than on the majority of maps, however I wouldn't call it outstanding. You saw my explanations, it would have to go through a lot more finetuning to make it more believable and immersive. Like I said before, accentuation is a good tool to immerse the players and help them navigating through the level, but if it's discarding basic rules it easily breaks the built immersion again. It was simply underwhelming when I loaded up the map for the first time, I want to see it done better from you/Multi.

 

Lighting is as important as other portions of level design, it should never come short and always needs a meticulous cultivation. Simply said, without light you can't see.

 

/Sorry for any grammatical mistakes

 

I've got a stressful week ahead of me, so pardon me, if I don't reply in a short manner. Later.

 

[Jake Stegmeier | MartianMallCop 161]

51 minutes ago, Buddy Jumps said:

Yo, I didn't have the chance to check back this week until now as mentioned in my post. Hence, I didn't see any replies, unfortunately...

 

 

 

Realistic vs artistic lighting is not the comparison I would make, as realistic lighting is artistic and artistic lighting can be (in my opinion should be) realistic to some extent, too. However, if someone is heavily leaning towards artistic lighting, then it is still important for it to be consistent and have the very basic priniciples of lighting, as we know them, applied.

You could say, this map featured "artistic" lighting, however it also was just sloppy in many spots. That's okay, too, if someone only looks for the overall feeling; what most likely was the case when designing this map, I suppose.

 

To me, artistic lighting would imply way broader, colourful and stronger colours than what was featured on this map. More fantastical. Some things simply can't be excused as artistic, say what you want.

 

My original post for reference:

Waiting for Chunk to copy/paste or make it visible to me only, so I can paste it

 

Yeah let me know when I can get that post because I'd like to reference it soon.

 

@a Chunk

[a Chunk 2,795]

36 minutes ago, Jake Stegmeier | MartianMallCop said:

Yeah let me know when I can get that post because I'd like to reference it soon.

 

@a Chunk

 

Sent it to Buddy via PM, but I will just edit it into his post above, since he seems to be okay with me doing that from what it says in the post.  ?

[Jake Stegmeier | MartianMallCop 161]

9 minutes ago, a Chunk said:

 

Sent it to Buddy via PM, but I will just edit it into his post above, since he seems to be okay with me doing that from what it says in the post.  ?

Thanks man