Pikipedia:Sandbox

Lighting

Lighting is the arrangement or effect of objects that produce light, in order to depict a lit environment with depth and color. In video games, this specifically refers to any calculated light source that illuminates and shades 3D objects, as well as fog that obscures distant objects. In the Pikmin series, lighting is extremely important to achieving realistic-looking environments and objects, as the designers try to create as much realism in the Pikmin world as possible.

In this article:

• "Light" is any object, seen or unseen, that illuminates an environment.
• "Dynamic" lights are lights that move or cause visible highlights or reflections on objects, while
• "Static" lights are lights that simply add brightness to an area without interacting with other objects.
• "Shading" is the contrast of color on an object because one side of it is illuminated by a light.
• "Shadows" are shapes of low light on a surface, created when an object stands in between light rays and that surface.
• "Materials" are the compositions of objects that interact with light in different ways.

Sunlight

Sunlight is the primary source of light in the Pikmin series, and plays an important role in conveying the passage of a day. When a day begins, the color and brightness of a landscape try to suggest morning. As the day progresses, the sun gets brighter and the environment more colorful, until late in the day when it begins setting and colors become more orange as in a sunset. Each game in the series has a unique way of handling sunlight and the shadows it casts, and as the games progress, this arrangement gets closer to simulating real sunlight.

Pikmin

The only dynamic light is sunlight, that shades all objects but does not actually calculate shadows. This light moves throughout the day, beginning foggy and bright in the morning, clear and at average brightness for the majority of the day, and fading to yellow to orange and finally to very little light as sunset approaches (except in The Forest Navel; sunlight is still present there but does not move or change color). All objects in an area have shading based on this light, but none of the scenery casts real moving shadows based on this light. To help players perceive Pikmin and leader locations, Captain Olimar and up to 50 Pikmin will cast soft shadows that move throughout the day, even when there is no sunlight. In order to optimize processing power, shadows cast by Olimar and Pikmin are not drawn if more than 51 Pikmin are on the field; instead, they will all have faint shadows directly underneath them. Enemies always have this sort of faint shadow, except for the Beady Long Legs. Environmental objects like plants never move on the map, so one large texture accounts for all their shadows.

All other forms of light, such as Common Glowcaps, the light beams coming from the Onions, and even the light around Captain Olimar in The Forest Navel, are static lights. They do not cast any shading or shadows on objects, but simply brighten the area around them to aid visibility or provide light effects, such as the powerful exhaust from the S.S. Dolphin.

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  Typical passage of sunlight on a day in Pikmin.

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  Leaders and Pikmin cast directional shadows, while enemies cast simple soft shadows.

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  With 51 or more Pikmin, shadow directions are not calculated.

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  The unique shadow of the Beady Long Legs.

Pikmin 2

Sunlight in Pikmin 2 behaves very similarly to that in the previous game, except the color of sunlight varies by area, and fog is generally less pronounced. Around noon, the brightness of the sunlight generally increases. Yet at any point in the day, when a leader nears an incomplete hole from above ground, the lighting always mixes a very foggy green color to its current color. All objects are shaded by this sunlight, but most of them (including static objects) do not cast accurate shadows. Instead, most moving objects cast circular shadows directly beneath them, and those shadows never move. However, unlike the shadows in Pikmin, these circular shadows can actually dim other objects, and their simple shape allows many shadows to be rendered at once. Several objects have uniquely shaped shadows for specific reasons, such as:

• Boulders, as they fall from the sky and use a growing shadow.
•  Segmented Crawbster, for the same reason.
•  Empress Bulblax, since it has a long body of circular segments, has multiple circular shadows.
• Arachnorbs, Snavians, and the Titan Dweevil, since they have extremities that reach beyond their usual shadow.
•  Waterwraith, since its rollers appear from the sky before its body.

In caves, light is very limited, and sometimes completely absent beyond a certain distance, due to very dark distance fog. Objects are still shaded by some dynamic light to give them depth, but they are barely or not visible until a leader comes close enough with the static area light around them. This static light's radius, color, and brightness vary by sublevel, depending on what mood is being set. Once the Solar System is obtained, however, caves are always fully illuminated and everything is visible. Some sublevels behave this way anyway, such as metal or outdoor areas where backgrounds are visible, and the final sublevel of the Glutton's Kitchen. The Solar System does not affect the final sublevels of the Canyon of Chaos and the Dream Den.

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  Typical passage of sunlight on a day in Pikmin 2.

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  Visibility is poor or impossible beyond a leader's radius in caves.

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  Caves with metallic layouts are more visible, since they have illuminated backgrounds.

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  With the Solar System, most dark sublevels become fully illuminated.

Pikmin 3

The Wii U can process a great deal more data about lighting 3D objects than the GameCube, and so Pikmin 3 presents a much more accurate representation of physical lighting. All objects in Pikmin 3 cast accurately shaped shadows, including the terrain itself. However, these shadows and lights do not follow the sun depicted in the sky. Sunlight in Pikmin 3 remains the same bright yellow for most of a day, and only changes to a dim orange at the last portion of the day. Shadows only start elongating to reflect this change with seconds left in the day, and they elongate at an extremely fast rate. The reason for keeping shadows consistently underneath objects is most likely to keep depth and location easy to recognize. Background shadows now dynamically shade objects in an environment, and their movement behaves similarly to in-game objects' shadows. Although no other lights in the game cast shadows (shadows in caves remain directly under objects), many lights can now cast diffuse and specular highlights on objects, and objects have bump mapping which allows area lights to be seen. Electrodes light up the inside of a cave, leaders' beacons and whistles dimly illuminate a radius around them, and most lighting effects (such as bomb rock explosions) throw realistically calculated light onto other objects. In addition, objects themselves now simulate a variety of interactions with light, such as realistically reflecting a world environment (or with the Plasm Wraith, dynamically reflecting images of the leaders and Pikmin), refracting light with realistic transparency, and subsurface scattering. Water also calculates realistic reflections, refractions, and caustics on the ground.

During rainy days, sunlight is generally darker. Rough specular highlights are more pronounced and smooth surfaces have a procedural glossiness to them, to simulate wetness.

Camera Effects

In all three games, the camera through which the player views the game is imperfect, and especially bright lights have effects on it.

• In Pikmin, bright lights have a halo of glare around them; Olimar's spacesuit beacon in particular creates light streaks, as do some particles produced by the S.S. Dolphin and Onions.
• In Pikmin 2, this effect is reintroduced and adds flare artifacts to the Hocotate ship's exhaust. The Piklopedia also uses a different kind of camera that shows glare even on particularly bright highlights of objects, and zooms with an adaptive depth of field.
• In Pikmin 3, camera imperfections are much more pronounced. Lighting is additive, so any source of light can produce intense glare if added to a brightly illuminated object. Most lights in the game produce artifacts on the camera lens, with the sun flare being the most prominent. The camera also constantly has a shallow depth of field (objects far in the distance are blurry), similar to how a real macrophotography camera would behave.

Gallery

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  Shadows drawn under Pikmin in Pikmin, when fewer than 51 are active.

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  The shadow file for all of The Impact Site. The small separated bits of leaves are the shadows of plants in the field.

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  Pikmin's reflection texture used on the #1 and #2 Ionium Jets.

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  Many simple shadows in Pikmin 2.

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  Glare in the Piklopedia.

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  Anisotropic light on the Mystical Disc.

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  The Omniscient Sphere refracting light.

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  An example of a sun lens-flare in the Garden of Hope.

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  Darker colors, stronger highlights, and glossy surfaces during rain in Pikmin 3.

• Distant Tundra Cave Flare.jpeg

  The Pikmin 3 sun flare on its own.

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  The Plasm Wraith realistically reflects leaders and Pikmin.

Full area map test