Post #2647237

2026-04-03 07:43 UTC

But damn, I don't know how to escape a never ending process of trying to tweak different elements more or less blindly. Even with references, it's super hard to figure out what elements (or relation of elements relative to each other), are vital and which are merely circumstantial. I feel like I'm missing some fundamentals in process.

Replies (5)

@runevision@mastodon.gamedev.place 2026-04-05 15:23

Okay, after a lot of experimentation, I got a result I'm fine with, as a result of: - Darkening grass a bit (and cliffs and paths to match) so it's darker relative to the trees - Darkening the auto exposure so it doesn't make things (especially grass) quite as washed out - Brightening the sky considerably I had thought I needed to make the grass less yellow, but it actually needed to be darker. Before/after images attached.

Open ##2647239
@jonikorpi@mastodon.gamedev.place 2026-04-03 08:15

@runevision@mastodon.gamedev.place What I’ve found is brightness and saturation are way more important than hue, for the object colors. But hues are super important in light, shadow and fog colors. And so are the exact ways you mix them together, and how you apply them to the object colors. It’s definitely a problem that’s a tangled web of dependencies, and there are as many right answers as there are art styles.

Open ##2647241
@jonikorpi@mastodon.gamedev.place 2026-04-03 08:52

@runevision@mastodon.gamedev.place It might help to look at illustrations or paintings instead of screenshots or photographs. Definitely does for me. In a way traditional artists have solved these kinds of problems many times over already. They use different tools than we do, but some of the solutions still apply. I learned a lot of tricks for depicting nature from Bob Ross videos. Can't use them directly in realtime rendering, but they inspired me to look for equivalents.

Open ##2647243
@toerror@mastodon.gamedev.place 2026-04-03 09:53

@runevision@mastodon.gamedev.place I've got similar problems rn - I can completely carpet my terrain in trees which may be X colour, but the ground looks completely discontinuous with the canopy. Part of it's technical - I need to have some sort of light occlusion under the trees, and part of it's to do with levels of detail in the surface data - you cover the surface in detailed objects, and suddenly the baked out low res surface detail lacks continuity.

Open ##2647245
@jkaniarz@mastodon.gamedev.place 2026-04-03 14:01

@runevision@mastodon.gamedev.place If I were to attempt to make a Maxis-style (oversimplified but feels correct) SimGrass game… The map would have two parameters, sunlight and moisture. Then I would have different models of ground cover selected based on how well those grasses thrive in those locations. Blending happens naturally because the conditions could be halfway between the ideal conditions of two grasses. You could add a third variable of foot traffic/toughness if you want natural paths from wildlife.

Open ##2647247