Design/graphics cheat #2 - Mobile gaming

Mobile gaming is all the rage now, and companies are showing their latest phones, tablets, phones the size of slippers and chipsets for 3D graphics on-the-go.
Everybody are now showing off some awesome looking shaders, effects and high polygon (for mobile) models making sure you realize that it's rendering in real time. There's something that they don't show a lot though and that's real time - level wide shadowing. And there's a good reason for it as well; it's probably one of the more resource intensive stuff to pull off well enough, so people making games are resorting to all sorts of trickery like "baking" lighting, drawing the details in the textures instead, using shadow "blobs" for stuff that's moving... in general cut using realtime shadows in mobile gaming as much as possible.
(It can be done of course, but most of the time you'd be better off faking it and pushing your savings on making the game run at more fps or implementing some more resources into your enemies.)

So where am i going with it? 

Be smart in hiding things and using simple geometry to make shadows. Like the image on the right; those two things are just some of the obstacles in a game i'm trying to make that spew snow balls. 

I really wanted to have some slight shadowing/ darkening effect in those barrels. Light mapping wouldn't work of course because ... that's not how it works... and real time shadowing would be no-no. 

On a game you are trying to include as many devices as possible after-all to potentially have a larger install base. So it's back to old-school tricks, back to basics if you like. The barrels simply have 3 simple planes, with just 2 polygons each, and a simple black texture. Then the texture's alpha channel is set as semitransparent. Each plane will progressively make it look as if it's darker and darker the deeper you look. Of course this will only work for stuff that aren't out in the open.

For things that are out in the open, what someone could do is mark areas with simple trigger boxes that are placed in shadowy areas. Then have a simple script that would smoothly make the texture of the object that enters the box's volume darker, and lighter as the object exits. A poor man's light probe if you like. These things do require tweaking though, but the plus is that your game's speed won't suffer and you'll get some nice looking stuff.

Quick heads up for perspective and people

If you are taking pictures of people while standing, it may be a good idea to try and lower your point of view just a bit, especially if you have a really wide lens. If you are sitting in a table with friends, then you really don't need to pay any special attention.
If you are standing and trying to snap something with a wide lens, then most people have the tendency to point their camera a bit downwards to have as much of the object as possible in the frame.
That will distort your perspective; it will make your subject appear as if it's being sucked towards the center of the since the top of the subject will be closer to the camera's focal plane than their feet/bottom part.

By lower your view point, you'll be able to frame your subject with the camera in a more level position in relation to your subject and avoid as much as distortion as possible.

Small cheat #1

There are some things that may be considered by some to be cardinal sins and in most cases it's how i feel about them as well. However the keyword phrases here are "in moderation" and "when in a pinch".

One of those sins is to use an image of a certain size in a situation requiring a bigger size by resizing it and in the process make the image blurry. However what can you do in a case where you have no other choice than to use said picture? It doesn't matter if it's too small or anything, there is a reason that you just have to use that specific one and you can't get it bigger. Well there is a cheat that you can do to try and hide the blurriness. Again this works if the image is slightly blurry, CSI magic is just that; magic in a TV series. The "cheat" isn't about making the image sharper as there is already a sharpening filter in Photoshop (which sometimes introduces sharpening artifacts). Instead it is to make the image look as if it is sharp enough or more specifically trick the eye into seeing more resolution and details than it really has.

So what is this semi-solution to blurry image sin? Noise filter. No wait, don’t hang me yet, I’m not talking about uncontrollable amounts of noise and yes; it’s not a silver bullet, it doesn’t always work nor does it have a standard amount of noise that works. It’s really easy to pull it off in Photoshop though, you set the noise filter in monochrome as you want to add false detail, not color blotches. Then you play around with the noise amount slider to find the value that works for your image, starting from the very left to just add a tiny bit amount of noise making it look more like fine film grain than noise. For my taste it's the point where the noise barely starts to get visible. Oh and btw it works better with photos that are in monochrome. (And that means any colour, not just black and white.)