Light 3 (Value)

Guide info#

Short: 5-7 minutes

TLDR - What this guide covers#

• The concept of value is how light is distributed and placed in a scene, and is integral to making designs legible while also looking clean.
• We understood how Value Structure functions.
• We managed to take our knowledge from Value Structure and apply it to Lit form, to make colors stand out better than others.

1: What is Value?

As light is what enables us to view things, knowing how it works and the terms that go with it is essential. Value is one of the 7 elements of art, and it determines how bright a color is. Value is best represented as a scale or gradient, usually from pure white to pure black. When an artwork has several tones between these two colors, it is considered “low contrast”. On the contrary, “high contrast” art would have fewer tones between black and white. The shape and texture of an object are also important when considering how value works. For example, when looking at a hand, the veins in the hand create areas of dramatic contrast between light and dark. Meanwhile, a banana would have low contrast of values due to its smooth texture. This is crucial because the human eye is most sensitive to value, making any change quite noticeable. However, the eye does not easily pick up on hue changes. This is why it is vital for value to be set correctly before continuing to more complex concepts.

2: Value Structures

Now that we understand what value in its basic form is, we can use it to understand a value structure. A value structure is a means of organizing objects in your art by grouping them into specific values. In Geometry Dash, if the blocks of your level are the main focus, then they should have more detail and contrast than the background, to draw the eye to more important aspects instead of the background. This is achievable through a “123” process which involves simplifying art down to 3 grayscale values: white, black, and gray. This shows which objects are in high contrast with the atmosphere around it.

Bli is a prime example of this as he does a good job of creating clear contrast, and defining the main objects in the level. In these photos, we see how the objects that interact with the player stand out in contrast to the background.

Koma also has a good example of value structure because if we take this part and apply the “123” process we can see the important aspects.

In contrast, here are 2 bad examples of a value structure:

See how the background almost blends in with the main ground? This makes it hard for the player to distinguish gameplay. But you do not need to go into any photo editing software each time to do this. A simple way to fix low contrast is to create a general sketch of the part to pick which objects should stand out before adding colors.

Notice how difficult telling the ground apart from the background is? It makes it hard to pinpoint the correct path.

Here are some examples outside of the game:

Take note of how the character stands out from the background, as well as the high contrast within the character and the low contrast in the background. This is what you should aim for when working with value structure.

The foreground is high contrast whilst the background is low contrast. This is also distinguishable.

3: Value Range

When creating gets chaotic or complex it can be hard to keep value in mind all the time, especially when you go to add details to your decoration. This is where value range can help.

Value range is like any other range: it is the difference between brightest and darkest areas in designs, and those which create high contrast. And like all aspects of light, the object that the light falls upon matters. A bright block of marble under intense lighting will have a fairly large light value range, while a block of obsidian or any other naturally dark object will have a very small range.

When detailing your work, it’s best to keep your value ranges in mind. Even when you’ve laid out a strong value structure, ignoring value ranges in that structure when decorating your work will clutter the design. One way to prevent this from happening between the foreground and background is to use atmospheric perspective; Objects in the foreground should contain high contrast and a large value range, while background details should contain a relatively low contrast and smaller range.

We can quickly discuss how to actually find the values you’d choose after using a shadow construction using the chart above. The first step would be to find the true value of an object, which is the actual color of a structure or shape without anything added to it. Then to find the value range of the object you would simply find the midpoint between that true value and black. From there you can do whatever you please as you now have the value range in which you should pick from.

4: Coloring Lit Forms

Before diving into assigning values, you should understand the relationship between value and color. The issue most people face is when trying to colorize grayscale images, they can’t seem to achieve the saturated colors in mind, which results in pastel colors that have values too light for the saturated colors needed. When working with grayscale values, the tendency is to increase the value range in order to make the object appear artificially more dynamic, making the form of the object stand out more without any thought as to how this affects the values themselves. To pick a value that isn’t too pastel or desaturated, you need to find the first value of a color that you want to use. Once you find a suitable color, you can then enable blending to correctly convert it to grayscale, where you can then plug in your value scale to the colors you are trying to use as well.

As you can see, the drawing begins with the “123” grayscale color value chart to map colors to their respective areas. More variations of values are added, then the first bits of colors are introduced using our method of color blending mode and matching the true shade to its greyscale counterpart.

This video goes more in-depth on how Lit Form and other light properties covered in this guide works, so it would be best to watch if this is still difficult to understand. In-depth Lighting Video by LifeCheck.

Sources#

Scott Robertson: How to Render, Ch.3

Changed the channel name: Light 3: Value

Credits#

Created by @LifeCheck and @NotAModerator