Tuesday, 5 May 2015

Multiplayer Map Design - Post-Processing Volumes

Among the three mandatory light functions to be put into my level alongside lens flares and basic flickering/pulsing lights are post-processing volumes, these allow me to control multiple elements of the viewport such as lighting, screen blur and more, they make use of colour lookup tables to alter the lighting.


The main element I want to control within my post-processing volume is the lighting, making it dimmer whilst the player is navigating the upper tier of my level, to do this I had to make a copy of the original colour lookup table and modify it in Photoshop as accordingly.


I started by taking a screenshot of my level in UDK and transferring it over to Photoshop, followed by the above colour lookup table, making separate layers and creating an alpha channel with which I could control the selection for the lookup table.
Merging both layers of the PSD allowed me to modify the colour lookup table and the level screenshot at the same time, letting me achieve a desired shade and light value, taken from a perspective in my level which would be directly affected by the post-processing volume. 


Once a desirable level was achieved, the alpha channel was used to load the colour lookup table selection and export it to its own document, this was saved as its own table and the outcome was a much darker colour lookup table in comparison to the table above.


This was then imported into UDK in a modpack and added to the post-processing volume through its attributes, the lighting rebuilt accordingly and then tested, a comparison of positions inside and outside of the post-processing volume can be seen below.



This was designed to be a seemingly subtle change whilst impacting the lighting a fair amount when accessing the higher tier navigational walkways. The colour lookup table is yet subject to change, as any upcoming peer feedback sessions will give me opinions on the lighting and post-processing effects, but for now I am happy with my post-processing volume.
Others may also be added at some point further in development, dependent on any level design features added or subtracted from the level.

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