Lights and Shadows

Phewww... the crunch time is over and we were able to submit the demo for the Otto game on time...thanks to the 24 hours effort shown by the team .... this demo was quite challenging and a big area to play with was dynamic lighting. There is a sun system which uses a directional light, there are full day night cycles so the sun can be at any position, and there are 12 spot lights used as street lights. Setting up the proper light and shadow arrangement is quite challenging and no wonder why static baked shadows are used in many games with few light sources.
After focusing on lights for a long time I begin to admire the beauty of every thing you see daily in the real world. I've found a feeling about how every light source affects the final image that we see using our brains, in the day or in the night....

We need to work on this area a lot more since it is really important in generating the look and feel of the game.