Lukas Koelz is a Senior Lighting Artist for Playground Games, a Xbox Game Studio and one of the UK’s most pre-eminent AAA developers. He originally started his career as an environment artist and worked on Horizon Zero Dawn at Guerrilla Games before joining Playground in 2017 to work on Forza Horizon 4.

Playground Games is an Xbox Game Studio and one of the highest rated video game developers in the world, with two AAA studios based in Leamington Spa.

Famed for the critically-acclaimed Forza Horizon franchise, our latest release, Forza Horizon 4, is the highest rated Xbox exclusive this generation with a 92 Metacritic. In both 2017 and 2018 the studio has awarded Best Place to Work in the UK games industry by gamesindustry.biz.

The Art of Lighting for Games

A lighting artist is constantly challenged with setting the tone for a games visual identity; they create mood and atmosphere that shape the player’s perception and bring the game world and characters to life.

In this entry level talk Lukas Koelz, Senior Lighting Artist for Playground Games will explore software agnostic techniques and workflows applied during the production of Forza Horizon 4 that marry the technical and artistic aspects of lighting with the goal to create a living, breathing world with changing weather, seasons and time of day.