Unlike my study with Bind at night, I actually have material that I can reference to for this case, as there is already a map aptly named “Sunset” which takes place in Los Angeles. With this map, I can make observations on how Riot approaches sunset lighting and apply these concepts to my relight of Haven.

Here are some of my main initial observations of how Riot Games lit Sunset:

1. Main colour tones are pinkish/orange for the highlights (Sunlight), and a mix of blue and purple for the shadows.

2. Shadows are long due to the low position of the sun in the sky

It’s also worth noting that Sunset and Haven share many characteristics, such as the blue and red trimmings on buildings, which really pop in this type of lighting.

Because B site on Haven is indoors, I only had to worry about how C side and A side were being lit by the sun. Since Haven is more dense than Sunset with its taller buildings and less open space, I didn’t want to position the sun too low, otherwise the shadows from the surrounding buildings would cover most of the map.

I settled on a lighting setup that lights up back site of both A and C, with the light source following the attacker’s side, just like on Sunset. This was most likely done to cater towards spectating in esports, seeing that the flow of the game begins on the attacker’s side.

From this point forward, I went a little deeper into the physical reasoning for certain colours to appear in specific lighting scenarios. Skip to the next part if you don’t want to read all of this :p

A more involved reason for using vibrant pink/orange hues for the sunlight is due to Rayleigh scattering. This is a term used to describe the reflection or re-direction of light by small particles. More specifically, the scattering that varies with the wavelength of the incident light; particles are good Rayleigh scatterers when they are very small compared to the wavelength of the light. Air molecules are about a thousand times smaller than the wavelengths of sunlight, making them excellent Rayleigh scatterers. At sunrise or sunset, the light takes a much longer path through the atmosphere, resulting in an increased amount of violet and blue light being scattered, leaving more of the warmer lights available to observe. When dust and air pollutants are introduced, these particles are much larger and are thus not good Rayleigh scatterers. Therefore, polluted/hazy environments will result in muted colours in the sky. You can read more about Rayleigh scattering here.

In the world of Valorant, Haven (Taking place in real-world Thimphu, Bhutan) is a remote location with lush environments surrounded by an abundance of greenery and mountains. It’s probably safe to assume then that this version of Thimphu has very clean air quality, lending its sunsets to be more vibrant in colour.

Since Haven most likely takes place immediately following the radianite-events, dust and smoke from fires and buildings crumbling have most likely settled in the evening, creating a hazy look with visible light shafts. The destruction seems to only be concentrated in one area of the environment though, meaning that the pollution from the event probably does not have a significant impact on the overall air quality of the atmosphere.
For this reason, I bumped up the fog density and and extinction scale of my exponential height fog, and increased the volumetric scattering of ONLY the sunlight to give off that hazy look (Although this should probably be lowered in competitive play for optimal visibility).

“Okay, that was a lot of information. Wouldn’t it just be easier to say that the world of Valorant is a cartoony fictional setting with vibrant colours?”

While directly copying Sunset’s lighting would definitely be easier, it’s important for me to understand WHY I’m using specific colours or lighting in the environment. It’s obvious that the artists at Riot Games put a lot of research in crafting real-world locations in their games, so it only feels right that I do my due diligence and apply learned material to stylized lighting. It also allows me to make informed decisions for future projects too, which should improve the quality of my work. In the end, a sunset in Los Angeles will not look the same as a sunset in Thimphu.

In contrast to a night time variant, a sunset lighting setup does not require as many motivated lights to brighten up corners of the map. However, we still have some flexibility in how we can manipulate existing lights.

Ever since the Alpha reveal of Valorant, I was always a fan of the moody lighting on B site, with the light spilling out from the grates on the ground. Needless to say, I was a little disappointed with the official release of this map, as they brightened up all of B site and got rid of the underglow lighting from the grates.

I wanted to reintegrate that sci-fi feeling by reintroducing those lights under the centre platform, and making the lights blue to reflect not only Kingdom Corporation’s high tech, but also their cold tactics and operations. I also set the attenuation radius of these lights to a lower value to really emphasize the underglow hitting the metal boxes in the middle of the site and create a clear gradient which I think gives it an interesting look.

Additionally, most indoor light fixtures have been set to a temperature of 3500k to provide contrast with the blue shadows and accents on this map.

Putting everything together, along with applying the concepts learned from my relight on Bind, here is Haven at sunset!

Lighting detail only, an aerial view of A site

Scattered throughout the map, there are a ton of overhanging lights. Though in the original map, these lights are off, I’ve decided to turn them “on” by creating an opaque yellow plane that is always facing the camera and attaching it to the lightbulb, giving the illusion that the lights are on with a bloom effect. Since the map is already plenty bright enough, there isn’t any reason to actually emit any lights from these overhanging lights.

This method is extremely performance friendly as there are no actual lights being used while still giving the environment a “pop”.

FPS Counter included