Zombat, Weepul, Matrix... that means you.

In the image gallery there's been a lot of advice about how to properly light a scene (which zombat should stick on his site, by the way). But I've started laying out the sprite for Sephil Saga, and I need to know how to light a sprite render so it looks good in the game.

I know the first step is going to be "turn off ambient light", but I'm using Bryce 5, and if there's a way to do that, I don't know what it is. The ambient light appears to be the "sun" in the Sky/Cloud settings, and it's controlled by a trackball-like thing. I know how to change the direction and color, but not how to turn it off. Bryce also limits my light selection to different shaped spotlights and radial lights. How would I go about properly lighting them?

Also, I'm rendering them at 45 degrees, and I'm using a template file that I'll copy my ships into, so they'll all be lighted the same.

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The key should be (if I remember correctly) 45 degrees to the left, and 30 degrees up. Either that or it's the other way around. Other than that, I really can't help you because I've never used Bryce in my life so I don't know what's available.

Matrix

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Well a good source for lighting tips is of course (url="http://"http://www.ap3d.com/betterspace/")betterspace(/url), but generally just turning off the ambient (I'm sorry I can't help you out with that, I have no idea about bryce) and putting in a 'key' light and some highlighting lights for other detail is fine. Just play around for a while until you get something that looks realistic and not overdone.

You'll do fine, experimentation is the key.

~A~

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Don't know bryce, but since the plugin is a TC, and there is no need to mesh in with the origional Nova, just get a good looking lighting setup and keep consistant for all the ship renders. No biggie. And while the betterspace tutorials are good, they refer more to lighting spacecraft in scenes, for a sprite, I recomend a simple 3 point lighting setup. (If you render with just one light, much of your sprites will be obscured, and the shadows will be far too harsh). I would recomend a white main light, and maybe very slightly hued fill and kick lights. Sorry I can't really help with the Brycian specifics, It has been far to long since I even touched the progoram (though I think it may be in sun and sky controlls, you just have to turn everything off and put in standard lights).
Joe

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the light in bryce is not ambient... i think...more like a distant light...been a while since i used bryce....playing around with the sky and clouds is what i always did....if you want to turn all sun light of....isn´t there some kind of sun strenght option.... try putting this at minimum....

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And then there were silence.................

I believe that in Bryce ambient lighting is actually a texture/material property. If so, you'll just need to open up each of your textures/materials and set their ambience to zero. The "sun" is a distant (or parallel) light, which IMHO is probably best for your main light. But you can in fact turn it off as modesty_blaise_us suggested if you'd prefer.

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