Heresy Lighting Mod - A Novigrad Lighting Project (WIP)

HERESY LIGHTING MOD

PROLOGUE

The Witcher games have always had exceptional atmosphere but I personally feel the Witcher 3 kinda dropped this ball really hard. Novigrad was hit pretty hard after the downgrade and it felt like all the atmosphere it might have had was simply drained. Unshaded grass, yellow putrid foliage, too much blue smoky fog and the lighting had this sorta ugly haziness too it which was off putting. It didn't feel right. Haziness can work for a place like Toussaint but not for Novigrad imo.

I wanted Novigrad to feel like a depraved medieval city surrounded by beautiful countryside (the game has too many trees and it doesn't feel like a true countryside but you get the idea) with rolling hills, beautiful foliage and clear lighting. At nights, the torchlit streets should feel dank and cold, as was intended by the devs. The nights outside the city even more dark for the less privileged.

All in all, this is just my attempt at a simple lighting mod which tries to inject some atmosphere and some semblance of an artstyle into Novigrad and it's surroundings.

The mod's primary aim was to bring out the surrounding vistas and terrain with a mix of fantasy inspired and realistic atmospherics. RDR2 does this exceptionally well (the vistas and distant terrain) and this mod takes a lot of inspiration from it. The bloom at night is also inspired by RDR2 and also W2.

The sunlight is clear, complimented by dark skylighting, cinematic tonemapping and W2 inspired bloom.

The cutscenes are probably the highlight of the mod with subtle cinematic tonemapping and reworked lighting. The characters won't glow and if they are in shade they will appear as such but the same time similar to films and cinema, their faces and expressions will still be visible, even in darkness.

Cutscenes are one thing the vanilla game actually excels at and is the primary shortcoming for a lot of lighting mods. I've experimented a lot and tried to make both gameplay and cutscenes look good as opposed to just one.

All in all, the lighting for Novigrad has been completely redone with most interiors being overhauled. The nights should feel atmospheric with bright torches and bloom. The moon's silverlight illuminating the various buildings housing dark secrets.

The mod still goes for atmosphere over realism. With Heresy, Novigrad should truly feel like