Ok I disagree. My vision, is to have the stages look like the old ones but HDified. I don't have the time, processing power or patience to do it all in one scene. I'd have to retopologize each and every object, export maps for Ambient Occlusion, Specular, Bump, Diffuse and so on for each and object. I'd need to do that because right now I have 1.2 million poly objects in the scene (after decimation, if you are familiar with zBrush) and 3ds Max would crash. Could I do that? Absolutely. And I could slave away trying to get the perfect realistic lighting across the entire scene. But early on *I* decided not to do that because it wouldn't stay true to the original. I decided not to do that because *I* don't have the processing power to render it. If that's the requirement or the standard you are expecting, then prepare to be disappointed. The objective is not incredible realism like a movie set. Sorry, it's not Mortal Kombat anymore then. It's something else entirely, a different game.
The original looks like a collage of imagery and so will this version. Yes the lighting is somewhat schizophrenic. But that's all part of the accepted cheesiness of the original. You are asking me to throw out 100s of hours worth of work to make the backgrounds have consistent lighting. Yet Bleeds characters will be lit one specific way which won't match any of my scene lighting at all, but for some reason that would be OK?
So now we're discussing creative direction. A friend of mine works in the Special FX industry, his level of skill and talent is mind blowing. His zBrush sculpts make the best of the work you've seen here look pedestrian (not meaning to offend anyone, but it's true.) He looked at my levels and said the same things you are saying. It's not that I don't see the lighting inconsistency, I'm actively and purposely ignoring them. I'm trying to light each object so that it stands out best. A lot of thought time and re-rendering goes into this. It was NEVER the objective to make these scenes look anything other than HD version of the original, which have inconsistent lighting.
Again, I think it's odd that you'd dismiss Bleeds characters lighting not matching my environments yet my environments need to have consistent lighting to look "correct" in your eyes.
So that's all I'll say on the subject. I won't argue this or stand trial. If you disagree, you are welcome to redo the stages as you see fit. Ultimately it's not up to me. It's up the community. This is the direction I've chosen to go for all the afore mentioned reasons. I think it's the "right" direction. I'm sorry if you disagree. I respect your opinion. Your portfolio, while not wildly impressive to me, does seem to indicate you know what you are talking about. So please don't misunderstand my response. You are technically correct in what you are saying, it's just that creatively I think we have different ideas about what the best direction to take this project is.
Sorry, I'm an idiot. Also I guess I'm a double idiot because the full-size version I saved is barely big enough for you to make out the arrows, but I hope it's somewhat helpful at least.
Well, like I said - calactyte is of course more than welcome to finish the stage and I'm sure it can and will look better than it does now. I don't know for a fact that me or anyone else could do a better job. However I do stand by my opinion that creating a consistent and realistic lighting (which is infinitely easier in 3D than doing it "manually" in 2D) will make for a markedly better looking end result.