Why do we do all that [computing indirect lighting for the whole planet from the atmosphere]? Why don't we just mail it in?
TL;DRIndirect lighting from the atmosphere is computed because otherwise shadowed areas would be black or have a single flat ambient color; it also saves artists from placing environment probes on planets.
Because otherwise everything would be black. If you put a shadow on it, black. There'd be nothing there, because what shade, what amount of lighting would be there? I shouldn't say every other game, but a lot of the current and previous generation games had one level of ambient term. And that would mean that if it wasn't getting direct light, this would be the color that it was getting shaded with. But it's like one color, one setting, that's it. I mean, you might animate it, you might color grade it, but yeah, it's not a great solution.
How awesome is that for us as an artist?
Well, it's essential. It's essential to make things look right and to look good. It was great that it got implemented, because people are commenting on how great that planetside stuff looks. And what Sean's saying, there's a lot to it. And it's the little things like that that become very big things visually.
And it saves them time. Otherwise, it sucks right now, because now when you're in a station, like we're working in stations and things, we have a system called environment probes that we use for the ambient lighting everywhere else but on a planet. But when you're working on a planet, it's like, oh, forget about the probes, we've got the irradiance here. No worries about probes. But then when you're up working on the stations now, it's like, oh shoot, I've got to put probes back in.