Some Fog Lighting/Photoshop help.

[Bt255]

I'm back in the business and trying to create some lighting fogs for my maps. What I mean is a fog that darkens some areas and leaves light in some areas, such as cave entrances etc. I've been using Calibre's Cosmetic Lighting Tutorial (Not sure if I'm allowed to post the link.) Which helped me out a lot. I'm coming into problems when I add the fog to my game and set it up in the event. I'm not sure if I'm just creating it wrong or doing the event wrong.

Alright so to start I'm actually using Gimp not Photoshop, since Gimp is free and has basically the same features. The tutorial was made using Photoshop so some of the steps are different and I tried my best to figure them out in Gimp. Figured listing what I did step by step will help figure out what I did wrong...

Here's the map I'm trying to add lighting effects too. A cave, standard size 20x15 map.


Step one from the tutorial:


1. Open up your photo-editing software.

2. File > New

3. It should say a size of 640 x 480, click OK.

4. If it doesn't, but does have a resolution size then still click ok, we'll just need to crop the image.

5. Press paste and you should just see your screenshot.

6. If you see a screenshot with any kind of border do the following:

7. Select the marquee tool, thats the top left tool. Drag it from the top left corner to the bottom right corner of your screenshot. Copy that, then File > New, make sure it is now 640 x 480, click OK and paste into that.

No problems there.

Step two: ADDING THE COSMETIC FOG LAYER:

1. Make sure you can see your layers tab, if you can't go to Window > Workspace > Reset Pallette Locations

2. On the layers tab, add a new layer by clicking the folded paper icon.

3. Click in the top left colour box that is on your toolbar

4. Select the darkest black by entering the number "0" into the R, G and B fields.

5. Now select the paint bucket tool, if you cannot see it, hold down the left clicker on the gradient tool next to the eraser and select it that way.

5. Fill the new layer with the black. The whole image should be solid black now for the time being.

6. Back on the layers tab, we need to set the blend mode to darken. Pull down the menu that says normal and select darken. Next to that, lower the opacity to whatever you see fit to. Remember though, the image you can see as you decrease the opacity is exctly the same as it will appear in the game.

So now we effectively have a new dark film layer that will be the new fog, now we need to start taking away from it to leave the light there.

Here's What I did:

Layer----> New Layer, but wasn't entirely sure what to select for The Layer Fill Type. I ended up picking Foreground Color.


Then On the Layers Toolbar I slid the Opacity slider down so that the background map was seen through and changed the mode to Darken Only, giving it the dark cave look.


Step 3: CREATING THE COSMETIC LIGHTING:

1. Select the eraser tool from the toolbar.

2. As it stands, you are likely using a hard edged brush, that can sometimes be useful, but more often than not we need a faded brush. In the top panel, select the pulldown menu where it says brush and select a faded brush. Place hardness to 0% and select a pixel size of around 90, but this can vary greatly depending on your desired lighting.

3. Place the top of the circular brush just a little below the top of the window. This ensures that light only travels across the room and not up to the ceiling. Click the left click down to begin erasing our black film. Click it down in the same spot around 5 times to see what you get. This is the most basic lighting you can get for a window.

Now we have made a dynamic fog layer. But this type of window works best for darker rooms on darker days, I want bright sunlight coming through the window. If you want to leave your lighting like this, skip to STEP 8.

Here's what I did:

I unchecked Hard Edge, checked Fade out, set the px to 90, also under Brush Dynamics I unchecked the "Hardness" option (not seen in picture). Not really any trouble making the lighting effects. I'm content with my work.


Step 8: ADDING IT TO THE GAME (Think this is where I may have gone wrong...)

1. Select all the layers below the film layer we have been working on and delete them with the trash can icon in the layers tab.

2. FILE > SAVE AS > A .PNG FILE (This is crucial)

3. Open RMXP and your project, add the film image as a fog (note: 20 x 15 rooms can also be added as pictures)

4. Place it on the map using a parallel process as 255 opacity, 100% zoom, and normal blend.

5. That's it! Test play and admire your work.

Here's what I did:
After deleting the unwanted layer this is what I was left with. I saved it as a .Png, merged layers/flattened image, and exported.



Now after importing it into the game (Setting the light gray background to Transparent and leaving the Semi-Transparent black), and setting up the event as told, this is what I have.



As you can see, not correct. Any thoughts on what I did wrong or how I can fix this? If there's any information I left out let me know and i'll post it. Thanks in advance!

[konterganon]

i didnt read the whole tutorial since i think its way too long and much too complicated for what you're trying to achieve but everytime i add light effects, i set the blending mode to add and not to normal. also i wouldnt set the opacity to 255, thats much too high for light effects.
you might also want to try setting the Semi-Transparent colour to the colour of your light.

[Bt255]

Well, it looks better then before but still pretty bad compared to what I've seen in other games. I assume it's the way I created it.



Any tips?

[konterganon]

well, i dont use gimp, but from what i can tell your brush settings seem incorrect.
the edges are still much too hard. dont know how the option is called in gimp but in photoshop its called "feather". it fades out the edges of your brush so its much smoother.
here a screen of one of my light effects (quite heavy)


as you can see, the fadeout is much smoother.
try to achieve something simililar by playing around with the brush settings

[Bt255]

Yeah, that's exactly what I'm looking for. Hahha alright cool, I'll try to search for the option (if there is one.) Thanks!

[Lunarea]

Look at the brushes selection window on the bottom right. You want to use the brush directly under the one you've currently got selected - and increase the size accordingly. It will give you that soft glow you're looking for :)

[Bt255]

Thanks Lunarea, I feel really dumb :l

[Lunarea]

Don't feel bad! It's one of those little things that's really easy to miss. And I'm glad you've asked because it turned out to be a simple fix. It's much better than wasting a couple hours looking at tutorials to get the same effect. :)

[Bt255]

Hahha wish I knew that before I posted all of those pictures :) Figured it might have been a bigger problem so I wanted to be as detailed as possible...