How to fix Madden 16 lighting

[jackrubay]

I agree with what others are saying regarding lighting and colors being off. Here I took a few of their newly released screenshots and edited the levels of the background and the players separately. As you can see their lighting is very muted and muddy. The players don't pop from the backgrounds. Overall the players are very dark. On the Gronk image I corrected colors because it seems like the daylight warm color was overpowering the greys and blues. I think the stadium lights would naturally correct this issue. The last thing I did was to edit the ball. EA's ball was just looking terrible. It should be much darker and have a sheen to it. What do you all think?

[SeattleSeahavvks]

Great post!

I agree with everything 100% except for the ball. I think the ball is a little too shiny in the new images, but that's just a minor detail.

didn't realize the importance of lighting

[Pokes404]

I like the darker backgrounds and darker ball. The sheen is probably a little too pronounced, but it works.

I think your brights are a little hot though. You can especially see it on Sherman's numbers. They're practically glowing. Also, I think you went a little heavy on the green RGB channel on the Gronk picture. Warm that up just a bit with some red.

Overall though, looks pretty good.

[JRT2006]

100% improvement.

EA - take notice

[cthurt]

I guess the lighting cant help the cartoony look of madden, but its an improvement over the original pics.

[CM Hooe]

It doesn't look better to me

The orange on the Manning image now looks washed out (admittedly the original image is a bit dark, but I think this is an overcorrection).

The Gronk image now has an unnatural greenness to it which shouldn't be present given the original context of the image (an afternoon scene). If the aim was to shift the scene from an afternoon to a noon scene, mission accomplished, but that's not how an outdoor scene should look in the middle of the 2nd quarter of a 4 PM game. In addition, the NFL ball simply is not the dark unsaturated color it has been adjusted to, that's simply wrong.

The Sherman image adjustment is the most problematic of the three. It is incredibly oversaturated to the point of losing detail in the uniform textures. White light simply doesn't overpower the source color in that manner illustrated in the adjusted image. Further, the light source in this case is above Sherman, so his back should be darker and shadowed relative to the bright lights above him.

Admittedly I'm not a computer graphics expert, I only took a course on the subject in college and it's been a little while since I've done anything with 3D graphics extensively, but these adjustments don't make the game look better in my opinion.

[JetLife6]

Quote: Originally Posted by CM Hooe

It doesn't look better to me The orange on the Manning image now looks washed out (admittedly the original image is a bit dark, but I think this is an overcorrection). The Gronk image now has an unnatural greenness to it which shouldn't be present given the original context of the image (an afternoon scene). If the aim was to shift the scene from an afternoon to a noon scene, mission accomplished, but that's not how an outdoor scene should look in the middle of the 2nd quarter of a 4 PM game. In addition, the NFL ball simply is not the dark unsaturated color it has been adjusted to, that's simply wrong. The Sherman image adjustment is the most problematic of the three. It is incredibly oversaturated to the point of losing detail in the uniform textures. White light simply doesn't overpower the source color in that manner illustrated in the adjusted image. Further, the light source in this case is above Sherman, so his back should be darker and shadowed relative to the bright lights above him. Admittedly I'm not a computer graphics expert, I only took a course on the subject in college and it's been a little while since I've done anything with 3D graphics extensively, but these adjustments don't make the game look better in my opinion.

the ball may not look better... but the ball in madden now looks terrible. like shiny plastic. should be darker with much less shine. More of a leather grain

[jackrubay]

Admittedly, the whites are blown out and should be perfected. The point of the post is to show how off the current screenshots are and how they could look if adjusted. If I were a paid artist on the project, I'd take the direction I spend 20 minutes on and then spend a lot more time dialing it in.

The Gronk image is a bit too green. Ideally there would be green bounce light from the grass. Green would be more on downward facing polygons and increasing in green intensity closer to the ground. Here I did a green shift to the shadow color balance in PS. This is dependent upon the time of day and lighting conditions. I think astro-turf bounce more light, as well. I'd fix that if I were on the project.

The NFL balls change in color and in shininess depending on the amount of moister in the air and ground. Realistically, I would direct the artists to make 3 or 4 different ball looks in the game.