FMP - Lighting and Composition

After the previous post I continued to work on different layouts and compositions I have moved more and more towards the idea of a industrial factory area. After going to Sheffield I got some good reference of small roads with abandoned factories which could fit quite well with the work I had already done and help to push the reworking forwards. Unfortunately I was going to a festival and such didn't have my DSLR with me (next time I'm going to need to get myself a press pass somehow) but I managed to get this one picture which slightly shows the kind of smaller buildings I'm meaning.

So after reworking the layout a couple of times I settled on one and feel better about the composition and layout both in terms of single shots and in terms of wandering around the level. However I really struggled for the past few weeks with lighting and the precise composition I wanted. Here is where I was at the beginning of this week.

Here are a selection of the paint overs that show the progression this week.

Using a technique showed to me by Mike Kelly I used a posterise adjustment layer set to 6 levels to separate the different values from each other. This really helped me to visualise what is working and what is not. Using this technique it becomes much easier to see the way the foreground, middle ground and background are reacting to each other. As you can see the value range in the top image is very confused and the background area seeps into the forground space without much distinction. the next few images worked on this without quite hitting the right value ranges and the last image is almost there. Still work to do but the value ranges and distances are definately improved.

This is where the lighting is at the moment:

All of the lighting is straight out of engine, there are a couple of things painted in (police stripe on the breakwater wall, no stopping sign, traffic light and pavement material).

Please bare in mind there are lots of assets currently in progress and this isn't a fully fleshed out paintover of where I want to get to but more of a indicator of the lighting and scene, there will be more clutter and human elements.

This shot is at the very beginning of the walk through of the level and needs some work in all respects (its very yellow at the moment and I don't know how to feel about that)

Here are two other vantage points which may be used for the final screenshots... (WIP) 

Lots to work on and push forwards. Unfortunately the composition isn't quite sitting right and the eye seems to get a bit stuck around the no stopping sign so this is something I'm going to be looking into over the next couple of days.