chad greene 

​

My Approach to ‘Gotham City's Moody Warehouse District’

​

I set out to transform a warehouse district in Gotham City into an environment brimming with tension and discomfort. My goal was to create a moody, dark atmosphere punctuated by stark pools of light, making the space feel unsafe and foreboding to any everyday person daring to wander through.

• I wanted the overall mood to be oppressive and heavy, with the lighting amplifying the sense of unease. The shadows are deep, and the rare pools of light offer no comfort—just a heightened awareness of how exposed you are in those moments. I think most people would instinctively avoid walking through this area, sensing the danger that lurks in the darkness. Also, I wanted weather to be part of this, so I added rain and lightning to further oppress the location.

• The pools of light were especially important in my design. Isolated patches of illumination allow for dramatic storytelling, suggesting hidden threats just out of view. They serve both as traps for the unwary and as brief glimpses into the warehouse’s secrets.

• To achieve the right atmosphere, I used narrow-beam spotlights, low-wattage industrial lamps, and dim uplighting (and indirect lumen lighting). The spotlights created focused areas of brightness, the industrial lamps contributed to an authentic urban grit.

• Shadow and contrast were my primary tools for cultivating a sense of menace. By maximizing the difference between lit and unlit spaces, I was able to suggest danger lurking everywhere—never allowing the eye to rest, always keeping the viewer on edge.

• Strategic placement of my lighting sources controlled what could be seen and what remained hidden. I positioned lights to create corridors of illumination leading into deeper darkness, guiding attention but never offering full clarity.

• For areas involving mafia thugs, I kept their faces partially obscured in shadow, using backlighting to hint at their presence without revealing too much.

• One challenge I faced was maintaining enough visibility so the environment still felt real and navigable, without sacrificing mood. I solved this by layering my lighting—subtle ambient glows in addition to the pools of light—to suggest the shape of the space without ever fully illuminating it (I purposely downplayed the moonlight’s contribution, as I didn’t want to ‘wash’ everything with uniform direct light).

• Imagining a character walking through this district, I see them pausing nervously under each light, heart pounding as they scan the shadows. The lighting makes every footstep feel risky; with each step forward, they question what’s lurking just beyond their sight.

• While I didn’t sketch out the design, I envisioned pools of light scattered throughout the warehouse zone—under streetlights, spilling out of grimy doorways, and slanting through broken windows. Between these, darkness reigns and movement is uncertain.

​

Creative Breakdown

• I used 10 shadow casting lights.. and supported that with the Direct Light from the Moon (very faint influence). I also used numerous non-shadow casting spots placed to shape areas or when an overhead wall-mounted light fixture didn’t require a shadowed light (no props underneath it). Finally, I placed small point lights around the LEDs on the girder structures, with a very small falloff and no shadows, just to illuminate some of the structure.

• I only lit the areas visible in the fly-through.

• LED fixtures were added and placed on girder structures and in the far distance.. these were colored blue in the foreground and red and white in the distance.

• Materials and Lighting go hand in hand.. making sure to have correct PBR values is huge.. striving to have no texture values above 240 and nothing lower than 30 will help ensure that your light(s) illuminate correctly and uniformly. Shaders should follow the PBR workflow, as well.. ensuring proper values are being used for the Metal/Roughness workflow (which I prefer over Specular/Glossiness)

• Various optimization techniques for performance to consider: Attenuation radius – only use the size you need.. avoid large values, if possible.. Limit the number of shadow casting lights in your level. Outer cone angle to limit the lighting needed and help with overdraw when close to other lights. Lighting overdraw – avoid having too many overlapping lights and using the Light Complexity view mode to debug. Controlling your lighting via distance.. both light and shadow; using controls to fade them off at distance. You can also disable meshes from casting shadows whenever possible.

• Virtual Shadow Maps (VSM) were used as the default and well as Lumen. The version of Unreal used was 5.6.

• My PPV was used for exposure, bloom, various settings were altered for toe, slope, color correction and shadows, helping push the moody/contrasty look to the final visuals.

• Weather was added using Ultra Dynamic Weather (rain and lightning)

​