Super Regency Deluxe - Our tribute to RTS - WIP

Hey all,

I briefly went to one of the MGSA meetings a year or two ago. Me and my brother Sam are the two halves of Knife Media, a small dev in Constantia, Cape Town.

We'd like to introduce you guys to our new title, Super Regency Deluxe! Right now we are approaching alpha stage and I figure the best place to start showing our progress is here at home in SA.

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Super Regency Deluxe is an RTS game with (we hope) exceptionally beautiful graphics, fast paced gameplay and a competitive focus. Instead of relying on complicated tech trees and buying patterns, SRD is a game of simple, effective strategy and outmaneuvering your opponent. There are a few other crucial gameplay elements we are working on, but they aren't yet fully developed enough to talk about.

Below are some screenies, we are hoping to have a playable alpha sometime in the new year. Let us know what you think!

WIP screenshots:

Characters:

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1. Swiss level theme set

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2. Arabic level theme set (very early WIP)

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3. Armageddon level theme set (very early WIP)

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Comments

  • Nice renders, are you using Maya?

    You don't perhaps have any ingame screenshots yet?
  • edited
    pieter said:
    Nice renders, are you using Maya?

    You don't perhaps have any ingame screenshots yet?
    These are all realtime screenshots in the Unity engine :) no Maya renderings!

    Running 80-90fps at 1080p max settings with an R9 280x. Obviously performance optimisation comes later but we are happy for the moment.
  • edited
    I love the environments. You're giving them a sort of hand-crafted feel, which I feel is very charming.

    I'm less fond of the WIP soldier character. He's got floating pieces which don't feel hand-crafted (because things only float in animations and video games). For example, Besiege had a similar sort of well rendered/hand crafted feel, and but they had a different solution for the characters which I feel might suit your environments more: http://i.imgur.com/8ca7h0h.gif

    I know keeping the character in pieces is a way to reduce the cost of content creation and animation, but I feel that if you're showing so much love to your environments you can't reduce the fidelity on the characters as far as you have in the WIP without them sticking out.

    Disclaimer: I'm not a fan of floating limbs in general. I know Rayman Origins got away with it recently, and there are a couple Minecraft clones that do it, so my opinion about disconnected body parts definitely has a bias.
  • edited
    I love the environments. You're giving them a sort of hand-crafted feel, which I feel is very charming.

    I'm less fond of the WIP soldier character. He's got floating pieces which don't feel hand-crafted (because things only float in animations and video games). For example, Besiege had a similar sort of well rendered/hand crafted feel, and but they had a different solution for the characters which I feel might suit your environments more: http://i.imgur.com/8ca7h0h.gif

    I know keeping the character in pieces is a way to reduce the cost of content creation and animation, but I feel that if you're showing so much love to your environments you can't reduce the fidelity on the characters as far as you have in the WIP without them sticking out.

    Disclaimer: I'm not a fan of floating limbs in general. I know Rayman Origins got away with it recently, and there are a couple Minecraft clones that do it, so my opinion about disconnected body parts definitely has a bias.
    Thanks! Yes, I want it to feel a bit like a game board.

    My biggest issue right now is I have no formal graphics training. Making people is really hard for me because they are so complex. My goal with the characters is to make them look like toys (as in the besieged gif you posted). Maybe adding some little rods between the limbs would make them look like dolls?

    I really like the besieged characters now that you posted it... perhaps I should aim for a different style? I want to retain the general design for them, which is along the lines of a chess piece. I'm not sure how to have limbs without bastardising the original intent. Gonna have to have a think about that...

    Maybe I should go for the little green army men approach? Could look quite cool. It might detract from the characterisation of the current models however.

    The other soldiers:

    image
    Thanked by 1NickCuthbert
  • Nice shader work! The lighting is spot on and the use of DOF/tiltShift is awesome. Keep us posted!
    Thanked by 1jackshiels
  • Looks fucking stunning.
  • SUGBOERIE said:
    Looks fucking stunning.
    I can agree
  • Thanks guys :)

    Maybe I could do a tut on getting your scene lighting in this style someday for you all? Would you guys be keen to see my workflow?
  • edited
    Maybe I should go for the little green army men approach? Could look quite cool. It might detract from the characterisation of the current models however.
    Trying a lot of things at the start is probably a good idea in any case. Especially if you expect this to be a project that might take several months, it makes sense to do a fair bit of prototyping to find the right feel.

    It might be possible to outsource the art style if you don't feel confident yourself. Following an art style might be easier than trying to invent one. I mean, your team has released commercial games before, so you might be able to leverage some of the talent in this community to search for a style. I know artists like @Pomb would kick ass at this type of thing, and Retro Epic has produced brilliant game board style art for their game "A Day In The Woods" (which if you haven't looked at you should definitely check out). I have no idea what your plans are, but if spending a bit of money finds you a good direction that might be worthwhile?

    I also might be wrong in thinking the game would feel more cohesive with a different art style for the characters. Please don't assume I know what I'm talking about.

    Also maybe have a look at Armello http://armello.com/ , just for reference for board-game come to life video games. I honestly think that the environments you are producing are more appealing than Armello, especially your grassy fields and hills (although again, I might not understand this audience).

  • Just a quick question: What view does the player spend actually playing the game in? I'm assuming that an RTS game plays pretty zoomed out? If so, your textures are really detailed and that's not going to be seen most of the time - if you're not careful about your mipmaps, you might even lose a ton of detail and definition at the regular camera distance... I have similar reservations about DoF blurring in a game when the camera isn't going to be actively looking at a horizon.

    The art style looks really cool, but is this the best setup to play with?
  • edited
    Maybe I should go for the little green army men approach? Could look quite cool. It might detract from the characterisation of the current models however.
    Trying a lot of things at the start is probably a good idea in any case. Especially if you expect this to be a project that might take several months, it makes sense to do a fair bit of prototyping to find the right feel.

    It might be possible to outsource the art style if you don't feel confident yourself. Following an art style might be easier than trying to invent one. I mean, your team has released commercial games before, so you might be able to leverage some of the talent in this community to search for a style. I know artists like @Pomb would kick ass at this type of thing, and Retro Epic has produced brilliant game board style art for their game "A Day In The Woods" (which if you haven't looked at you should definitely check out). I have no idea what your plans are, but if spending a bit of money finds you a good direction that might be worthwhile?

    I also might be wrong in thinking the game would feel more cohesive with a different art style for the characters. Please don't assume I know what I'm talking about.

    Also maybe have a look at Armello http://armello.com/ , just for reference for board-game come to life video games. I honestly think that the environments you are producing are more appealing than Armello, especially your grassy fields and hills (although again, I might not understand this audience).

    I think for now I'll be using these. We'll release about mid next year, so I'll make an executive decision then as to whether or not they fit the theme of the game then. I will be participating in an online modeling course at the beginning of the year so that could help a bit.

    Armello has a way more cartoony look than SRD - I think that using that style on the characters wouldn't really fit with the overall style. Really beautiful looking game though!

    Right now the development is at a bit of a crossroads - I can go completely realistic or so unrealistic that it fits in an oddball kind of way. I'll see how things go over time and adjust accordingly...
    dislekcia said:
    Just a quick question: What view does the player spend actually playing the game in? I'm assuming that an RTS game plays pretty zoomed out? If so, your textures are really detailed and that's not going to be seen most of the time - if you're not careful about your mipmaps, you might even lose a ton of detail and definition at the regular camera distance... I have similar reservations about DoF blurring in a game when the camera isn't going to be actively looking at a horizon.

    The art style looks really cool, but is this the best setup to play with?
    The camera view is actually quite different to the screenshots (these were purely for presentation purposes). In the real in game camera we have a top down rotational view with a tilt angle of about 45 degrees. Kind of like World in Conflict but with less overall freedom of movement, because I think that if users could literally fly all over the place it would be confusing towards casuals. A more strict control scheme will be applied.

    In terms of zoom level, you can go all the way from a few feet above ground to a view of the entire map. We want this to be completely immersive in terms of detail - you can literally see the grass stalks extruding from the texture on the terrain and sticking out with Parallax Occlusion Mapping (POM), it's quite beautiful :)

    What's great about the project right now is that the performance is quite good. Regardless of how close or far you are the framerate stays somewhat steady. The terrain has a good LOD system and it doesn't have any problems with the mip maps/POM at midrange viewing. Our goal with this game is to employ as many AAA rendering styles as possible into an RTS as this is not commonly done.

    The DOF is of course also for presentation.
  • edited
    Some small updates:

    POM (Parallax Occlusion Mapping) and triplanar mapping on the terrain:

    image

    Our favourite software at the moment - Substance Painter (highly recommended and being used in a lot of AAA titles these days): image

    And of course, really basic prototyping to get the feel of the game before introducing graphics. One of the best processes to learn when making a complex title - prototype, prototype, prototype!

    image
  • The environmental river + bridge screenie is my favourite and already makes me want to play this, whatever game type.

    Curious to see how you fit RTS into this view...

    Some kind of strategy 3rd person game is appealing to me in concept.
  • Boysano said:
    The environmental river + bridge screenie is my favourite and already makes me want to play this, whatever game type.

    Curious to see how you fit RTS into this view...

    Some kind of strategy 3rd person game is appealing to me in concept.
    It has elements of RTS, tower defense and one more we aren't ready to show just yet... Glad you like the screenshots!

  • edited
    A little more work:

    Grass with SSAO

    image

    A castle interior for use in the main menu (still very much WIP)

    image
  • Update: an interior for the main menu. I studied a lot of Romanesque imagery and style to try and mimic the era appropriately.

    image
  • That looks cool, but if I understand correctly, the player will be spending a fair bit of time zoomed out above the building level. How do you plan to present it so that they still get the feeling you're going for with that angle, but from a view that might have to cut out a bit of the roof?

    I'm just curious how you're thinking of handling this, most of the previous things have been quite open at the top with a lot less focus there.

    Still on track to have something playable early in the year? I'm keen to see things in action :)
  • edited
    That looks cool, but if I understand correctly, the player will be spending a fair bit of time zoomed out above the building level. How do you plan to present it so that they still get the feeling you're going for with that angle, but from a view that might have to cut out a bit of the roof?

    I'm just curious how you're thinking of handling this, most of the previous things have been quite open at the top with a lot less focus there.

    Still on track to have something playable early in the year? I'm keen to see things in action :)
    I have always made fairly overambitious main menu scenes - this is one of them! I'll just be using the above models for background graphics in the menu. The overall goal for the in game models is much more scaled back than this ;)

    Right now we are integrating Photon networking into the backend. From there the user interface and full functionality will be put together. I'll host an alpha for local players sometime soon after that (as soon as the first two or three levels are functioning). No ETA but working our asses off! Two man teams can only go so quickly unfortunately.

    EDIT: one more just because POM is the most beautiful shader ever! image
    Thanked by 1roguecode
  • One more little update for the main menu scene - going to start playtesting a pre-alpha soon.

    image
  • Pretty nice, I would remove the back 2 red flags though.
  • This is looks really nice!
    I would love to see how the gameplay is going to look!
    Do you have a playable version of this or not yet?

    Either way, well done so far!

    Karl
  • karl182 said:
    This is looks really nice!
    I would love to see how the gameplay is going to look!
    Do you have a playable version of this or not yet?

    Either way, well done so far!

    Karl
    Yes and no - a very very early prototype is currently being worked on. We need to get the gameplay balanced before making the levels, as it saves time.

    We'll have a playable alpha ... Soon! I'm trying to manage studying, working a job and also making a game. Not exactly easy!

    Thanked by 2karl182 Wes_Matthews
  • edited
    A couple more beauty shots...

    image
    image

    And because everyone loves chicken...

    image
    Thanked by 1roguecode
  • Are you making a game, or the worlds prettiest menu simulator? ;-)
    Thanked by 1Wes_Matthews
  • roguecode said:
    Are you making a game, or the worlds prettiest menu simulator? ;-)
    Because of the exorbitant costs of living I have decided that my work for the main menu can also be work to create a 3D model pack for the asset store. I need some cash to pay for my tuition fees and the game isn't out yet... necessity is the mother of invention and all that. Of course I'll only be using some of the assets here for the menu - the rest will be sold.
  • Some small updates:

    POM (Parallax Occlusion Mapping) and triplanar mapping on the terrain:

    image
    If I recall correctly Tri-Planer mapping is like rendering the object three times (once for each axis), Do you have stats on the performance impact ?

    Our favourite software at the moment - Substance Painter (highly recommended and being used in a lot of AAA titles these days): image
    Can you give some feedback on your experience and usage of Substance Painter/Designer? (you can PM me if you don't want to "pollute" your game thread with such a response.

    And, Good looking game.
    Keep it up.
  • edited
    If I recall correctly Tri-Planer mapping is like rendering the object three times (once for each axis), Do you have stats on the performance impact ?

    Our favourite software at the moment - Substance Painter (highly recommended and being used in a lot of AAA titles these days): image
    Can you give some feedback on your experience and usage of Substance Painter/Designer? (you can PM me if you don't want to "pollute" your game thread with such a response.

    And, Good looking game.
    Keep it up.[/quote]

    1. Triplanar mapping does that as far as I know too... I'm not the shader programmer, unfortunately. I have no stats on performance for you, sorry! We use RTP (Relief Terrain Pack) for this. I'll try let you know once we do performance testing later on the year...

    2. OK, so I can only state this in one way: Substance designer and painter are, by a great margin, the best software suite I have ever used in my entire life (I've been using computers since I was three years old). I know it's very hard to convey urgency in a paragraph of text, but if you are doing any form of 3D work you need this software. Notice the fact that it's a need - I cannot go back to using bitmap editors for texturing ever again. Do yourself a life-changing favour and buy this software as soon as possible.

    They do pretty much everything you could ever want; Designer allows you to effectively visual code textures from scratch. No bitmaps required. The learning curve is a little tricky, but the results can be incredible. Add to this the fact that substances are dynamic, meaning you can perform real-time modifications to your game without adding more bitmaps into the memory. Want to rust a metal frame over time? Easy. Want to make vines grow on a broken wall? Already been done. They take up very little space and are performance optimised. Beautiful.

    Painter is my favourite, however. Previously my texture workflow involved GIMP, sweat and trial and error. It was an arduous task to make anything remotely complicated because of the constant errors, problems with filling space correctly and the time consuming nature of it all. Painter is the exact opposite. It has effectively cut my work time to a fraction of what it used to be. Just today I made some stone steps. The texturing process took, I kid you not, 5 minutes. Here's the result:

    image

    The sheer ease of use and speed at which one can make clean, realistic and beautiful textures is simply mind blowing. It does this by treating the model itself like a canvas, filling the model via layer masks that can be changed easily and effectively. There are post-processing filters (hue/saturation/lighting, blur, distort etc.), dynamic masks (highlight edges, rust, metal scratches) and a library of universally applicable premade substances to use. If you can't find the one you want, share.allegortihmic.com has a community portal where users distribute AAA quality substances for free. I love this software!

    You cannot go wrong with any of their software. It's an absolute must-buy. If it's too costly, wait until the Steam sales. They almost always take 33% or more off.
  • If I recall correctly Tri-Planer mapping is like rendering the object three times (once for each axis), Do you have stats on the performance impact ?

    Our favourite software at the moment - Substance Painter (highly recommended and being used in a lot of AAA titles these days): image
    Can you give some feedback on your experience and usage of Substance Painter/Designer? (you can PM me if you don't want to "pollute" your game thread with such a response.

    And, Good looking game.
    Keep it up.
    1. Triplanar mapping does that as far as I know too... I'm not the shader programmer, unfortunately. I have no stats on performance for you, sorry! We use RTP (Relief Terrain Pack) for this. I'll try let you know once we do performance testing later on the year...
    [/quote]
    Looking forward to that :)

    2. OK, so I can only state this in one way: Substance designer and painter are, by a great margin, the best software suite I have ever used in my entire life (I've been using computers since I was three years old). I know it's very hard to convey urgency in a paragraph of text, but if you are doing any form of 3D work you need this software. Notice the fact that it's a need - I cannot go back to using bitmap editors for texturing ever again. Do yourself a life-changing favour and buy this software as soon as possible.

    They do pretty much everything you could ever want; Designer allows you to effectively visual code textures from scratch. No bitmaps required. The learning curve is a little tricky, but the results can be incredible. Add to this the fact that substances are dynamic, meaning you can perform real-time modifications to your game without adding more bitmaps into the memory. Want to rust a metal frame over time? Easy. Want to make vines grow on a broken wall? Already been done. They take up very little space and are performance optimised. Beautiful.

    Painter is my favourite, however. Previously my texture workflow involved GIMP, sweat and trial and error. It was an arduous task to make anything remotely complicated because of the constant errors, problems with filling space correctly and the time consuming nature of it all. Painter is the exact opposite. It has effectively cut my work time to a fraction of what it used to be. Just today I made some stone steps. The texturing process took, I kid you not, 5 minutes. Here's the result:

    image

    The sheer ease of use and speed at which one can make clean, realistic and beautiful textures is simply mind blowing. It does this by treating the model itself like a canvas, filling the model via layer masks that can be changed easily and effectively. There are post-processing filters (hue/saturation/lighting, blur, distort etc.), dynamic masks (highlight edges, rust, metal scratches) and a library of universally applicable premade substances to use. If you can't find the one you want, share.allegortihmic.com has a community portal where users distribute AAA quality substances for free. I love this software!

    You cannot go wrong with any of their software. It's an absolute must-buy. If it's too costly, wait until the Steam sales. They almost always take 33% or more off.
    Those stairs look like I could walk up them :)
    I have tried Designer a bit, And I think I need to look up some of the stuff on there doc's or make custom functions.
    I will go and check out the release on Steam, I got the trial from there web site.
  • edited
    Substance Painter 2 launches in 2 weeks - it might be a good time to buy...
  • Substance Painter 2 launches in 2 weeks - it might be a good time to buy...
    @jackshiels Can you explain this? Do licenses get upgraded for free, meaning that it would be best to buy v1 now and upgrade for free to v2?
  • roguecode said:
    Substance Painter 2 launches in 2 weeks - it might be a good time to buy...
    @jackshiels Can you explain this? Do licenses get upgraded for free, meaning that it would be best to buy v1 now and upgrade for free to v2?
    If you buy between now and then, the upgrade is free. I guess there isn't a whole lot of benefit - it's just that the program is becoming a bit more mature now and it's definitely something you'll want to learn for your skill set.

  • roguecode said:
    Substance Painter 2 launches in 2 weeks - it might be a good time to buy...
    @jackshiels Can you explain this? Do licenses get upgraded for free, meaning that it would be best to buy v1 now and upgrade for free to v2?
    If you buy between now and then, the upgrade is free. I guess there isn't a whole lot of benefit - it's just that the program is becoming a bit more mature now and it's definitely something you'll want to learn for your skill set.

    Ah OK, thanks!
    On your recommendation we actually started using this a few days ago, and it seems to already be making a great difference to workflow :)
  • roguecode said:
    roguecode said:
    Substance Painter 2 launches in 2 weeks - it might be a good time to buy...
    @jackshiels Can you explain this? Do licenses get upgraded for free, meaning that it would be best to buy v1 now and upgrade for free to v2?
    If you buy between now and then, the upgrade is free. I guess there isn't a whole lot of benefit - it's just that the program is becoming a bit more mature now and it's definitely something you'll want to learn for your skill set.

    Ah OK, thanks!
    On your recommendation we actually started using this a few days ago, and it seems to already be making a great difference to workflow :)
    Glad I could help!

    Latest work on the throne room (3D pack about 4 days from completion!):

    image
  • Just a bump to keep this relevant. Dev work resumes in the next week or so. we'll be putting up an alpha build as soon as is possible for you guys to test. Likely to be very primitive and have a limited feature set... but it's better than nothing :)

    The timeframe has shifted a bit, but I want to get it out before year's end.
  • edited
    Glad to announce we have started up again this week!

    I'm busy doing some foliage concept work for the level set. My brother is busy with the menu coding and alpha test.

    The selection circle for tower units and some nice lighting:

    image
  • Added some realistic lighting and GI.

    Today we hook up the menu frontend to the prototype gameplay scene. Testing can begin very very soon!

    image
  • edited
    Added some realistic lighting and GI AND weather FX!

    Today we hook up the menu frontend to the prototype gameplay scene. Testing can begin very very soon!

    image
    image
  • The crispness of textures in the environments looks fantastic! Excellent work! If you're using Unity, what Image Effects or Cinematic Effects are you using on the camera in the last 4 screenshots?
  • edited
    Landman said:
    The crispness of textures in the environments looks fantastic! Excellent work! If you're using Unity, what Image Effects or Cinematic Effects are you using on the camera in the last 4 screenshots?
    Thanks! I'm working with a couple of post processing techniques.

    Our main FX stack is currently:

    1. Scion Post-Processing (https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/41369)

    This one is nice because it renders all the costly PP in one call. Saves on performance. I'm also using some nice LUT colour FX grading to bring out the darker tones.

    2. Unity SSAO
    3. Global height fog
    4. Sun Shafts (likely to be ditched for performance reasons and overdraw)
    5. Post Anti-Aliasing (render path is deferred, which means no native AA).

    As for the crispness, I am using Substance Painter at 2048x2048 for most textures. Where possible I'm adding detail normals to increase scalable detail.

    Snow and rain shaders are handled by UBER: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/39959

    A test map:

    image

    I'm quite keen to write up a good colour balance guide for MGSA. One of the hardest things for me to master was grading and management of texture colour in a pleasing manner. I reckon everyone should focus on this during development and it doesn't seem many indie devs are aware of the theory behind this.
  • OK, so I'm trying to move away from the purple-black tone of the previous attempts. In terms of game development "fashion", the trend right now is vibrancy and variation.

    take the Witcher: Blood and Wine as an example:

    image

    I've tried to bring out some of that rich cyan in the fog. Remember that because this is an RTS, there isn't a skybox (at least not one that is planned). I'll have to paint in broad blue and cool temperature colours in the ground to keep the overall composition moderate. (with fog, in this case). Obviously this is a WIP for now.

    The next step is producing a test map. We should be live by the end of the week, with a potential playable demo sometime next month... let's see!

    image
    Thanked by 1Wes_Matthews
  • Level design - working through this one is gonna take a few days. So many objects to place :/

    image
  • Growing in size...

    image
  • Wow Jackshiels, this looks really amazing! You must have a lot of experience to be able to make the High-quality artwork you are using? I am mostly a programmer myself and dabbled a bit with 3D modeling and can really appreciate the work you have done. I'll be following your progress and keep supporting your work. Good luck with further development!
  • edited
    Wow Jackshiels, this looks really amazing! You must have a lot of experience to be able to make the High-quality artwork you are using? I am mostly a programmer myself and dabbled a bit with 3D modeling and can really appreciate the work you have done. I'll be following your progress and keep supporting your work. Good luck with further development!
    Thanks a lot!

    I've been developing games since I was about 13 years old. It's only in the past year that I've gotten good at graphics :)

    We should be hitting Greenlight sometime later this year. But before that, we'll likely have a South Africa focused test alpha for people to play.

    Here's a (very early) shot of the first alpha test level:

    image

    Also, main menu UI!

    image
  • dynamic lighting for day/night cycle.

    image
  • OK, so we are finally putting the environment/gameplay together. The screenshot below is entirely modular, meaning there is the possibility of procedural levels. This is six segments stuck together. We realised that doing a full terrain for each map was going to be a major pain for development.

    image
  • @jackshiels - looking good, loving the colour palette!
    Thanked by 1jackshiels
  • edited
    Psyinx said:
    @jackshiels - looking good, loving the colour palette!
    Thanks!

    Would be cool if some people could give feedback on how they feel about the blue tone in this shot:

    image

    I'm not sure where to move the colour direction to, because too much warmth can be a little garish. Personally I'm quite fond of it, but after spending many hours staring at a project your opinion can become quite biased!
  • @jackshiels - perhaps post up a few side by side shots with varying colour tones? I know you mentioned in a post a while back that you are trying to move away from the purple and black tones - but personally I find it a bit difficult to imagine the scene with a darker tone without actually seeing them side by side.
    I'm also quite fond of the warmth, but I guess it's also highly dependent on the mood you want to set for your game.
    Perhaps you could also show the same scene at different times in the day / night?
    Thanked by 1Wes_Matthews
  • Compare this to the above:

    image

    A little more orange in the overall shot.

    In other news, I managed to integrate volumetric lighting from a free shader pack:

    image
    Thanked by 2Ross petrc
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