Before & After Lighting: Marvel’s Spider-Man 2

Lighting is one of the final steps in the game development process, and it is important for many reasons: it sets the mood with colors and contrast, directs the player to where they need to go or look, and makes the game as visually appealing as possible. The following are examples of cinematics with and without lighting to illustrate the impact good lighting can have on the overall visuals of a game. This is an example of what a lighter may receive and what a shot could look like after they finish their work. Lighting makes all the difference! It’s in the details that you get the most magic— from little things like eye highlights to big things like key lights, lighting can really bring life and depth to a character or environment. In the case of these cinematics, I did not start from scratch; I took the environmental/atmospheric lighting that was put in by other talented lighters and then lit the characters in the context of these specific cinematics, adding shaping, colors, highlights, and shadows to help tell the story. For various reasons, the “before“ images could not be a one-to-one replica of what I received at the beginning of my lighting pass; but, they do convey the dramatic difference and overall feel of how it used to look vs. how it turned out. :) I definitely stood on the shoulders of giants as I lit the work of fantastic environment artists, animators, VFX artists, and more. I love what I do because I essentially get to make other peoples’ work shine and look really pretty :) Thanks to all the Insomniacs and vendor partners that helped create these beautiful cinematics; a big thank you to the art directors and concept artists for creating the overall color direction, as well as providing feedback to take the cinematics where they needed to go. And of course, a shout out to Insomniac Games, and our friends at Marvel Games and Sony Interactive Entertainment for making all of this possible. Thank you for taking a deeper look into lighting with me! I hope you enjoy seeing the difference good lighting can make 💖