Bloom-like lighting highlights for Spring maps

Author Argh
Date 11 June 2009

Check this out… I figured out a fast way to do bloom-like map highlights- feature highlight lighting that actually reaches true whitepoints with OpenGL lighting.

It's really easy, too.

  1. Make yer heightmap (duh).
  2. Make yer texturemap via L3DT / WorldMachine. Do not render any lighting at this time.
  3. Take yer heightmap into L3DT Pro, render a lightmap at 8X.
  4. Export said lightmap as a JPG to Photoshop.
  5. Shrink the lightmap the few pixels it takes to get it the same as the texturemap.
  6. Open the texturemap, and put the texture layer over the rendered lightmap.
  7. Turn on Hard Light or Overlay as the texture layer's blend setting. They produce different effects, in terms of final saturation- Overlay is more “physically correct”, but Hard Light can produce a more dramatic look.
  8. Adjust the contrast and brightness of the lightmap layer, using Curves, until you hit what feels right, in terms of brightness on hill edges facing your sun angle, etc.
  9. Compile yer map.
  10. Make your map's lighting angle the same as your rendered lighting angle in L3DT.

Voila. Bright highlights on everything. Best part is that if you want to do paint-over or details or cleanup or metal-sports or whatever… you can do that on that texture layer, without screwing up the lighting :-)