Post Effects
The lighting itself lays the foundation for the look of the level or scene, then post effects are added for final polish. One of the differences between post effects in film and those in games, is that post effects in film are usually composited into existing footage with programs like Nuke or Fusion, and then output as final footage. In games, we are either adding post effects directly to the entire game engine rendering pipeline, (screen-based,) or to confined areas of the game using volumes or probes. In both cases the effects are real-time.
But what kinds of things can be changed?
Here are just a few:
Auto-Exposure and Exposure Compensation: Controlling the amount of auto-exposure (simulating what the human eye does when you go from a really bright area into a dark area, or vise-versa) is something you'll see in a lot of games. Example: you're in a very dark cave, and then run out into bright sunlight. It's difficult to see for a moment or two as your eyes get used to the light. Exposure compensation duplicates this condition in the game world by applying a "lag" to the exposure as it reaches correct exposure levels again.
Fog: Fog isn't just used as a heavy effect to obscure areas if you're creating a creepy foggy scene, low levels of fog are frequently used to help visually separate the depth of an image, with objects that are farther away being more hazy. It also helps by reducing the black levels on distant items, again helping to separate the characters from the background. Characters near the camera will have a higher contrast than objects in the distance.
God rays: Very popular in building interiors and forests, etc, god rays (or crepuscular rays) are used to show where the sun or other bright source creates rays or beams that pick up dust or atmospheric haze to become visible.
Bloom: Used to create a sort of glowing soft edge to the brightest elements on screen, bloom is often used to create hot spots that can help emulate lens realism. You can't go overboard though, or it just looks like your lens is dirty.
Lens Flares: Best kept subtle (unless you're J.J. Abrams,) lens flares are "accidental" results of extremely bright lights in a scene that are in view of the camera. Ironically, in real life the camera operators are usually trying to get rid of lens flares by flagging lights when they can.
LUT: Look up table. A LUT is an image that's had exposure and color balance modifications made to it, and is then loaded into a game level to propagate those changes to the game level. Think of it as a custom filter.
There are actually a ton of different post effects that can be applied, and you'll find different capabilities and different workflows among the various game engines.
So now that we've gone over the tools and some technical bits, let's talk about how you, the Lighting Artist, fit in to the bigger picture in the workplace.
