My final task: Lighting realtime horror game scene.

More interesting part of my task are the pictures and the scene itself, but I will talk a little bit about why I chose this as my task and how I did it. I have always been both big horror fan and video game graphics enthusiast. Lighting has been my favorite subject as it can change the feel of scene so dramatically. I chose to light my scene in a manner of moody, ambient horror experience. Something that doesn't rely on jump scares but mysterious atmosphere. Old Silent Hill games are my main influence for this project and I try to emulate their feel with with adding something of my own.

Building all assets from scratch myself would have been a monumental task, several full work weeks. That's why I chose to download props from internet and place and light them myself to concentrate what is really important in my task. Unfortunately, many textures were not good quality, or the materials didn't behave as I would have liked so I remade them.  My scene work is currently static screenshots, as uploading and downloading a game project for presentation would be long task. What took most time was baking the lighting in the scene. I did countless iterations until I found something that I was OK with.

So, her are lighted scenes I worked on:

This would be the first room player experiences when entering the house. I want the player to have certain mysterious inviting feeling, while still being a bit spooky.

This is the living room. I wanted the foggy view from window to be the focus, while warm lamp would invite player to investigate.

The bathroom is grimy and looks like there is water damage. I wanted it to be bit disgusting.

The bedroom upstairs is warmest place in the house. There is perhaps some kind of puzzle for player to solve or it is otherwise safer than rest of the rooms.

A horror game needs a staircase.