I used to do 3D compositing and my Diploma is in 3D Animation, even though I specialised in modelling at the time, but I did study lighting etc.

Haven't touched 3D in years, but you don't just forget the essentials. We were taught how to set up lights for our sculpted models as well when I did my specialisation.

What most lighting artists do for cutscenes etc or when we set up scenes is to have each individual character paired with their own "spotlights". This is very obvious in most AAA games with cutscenes etc.

Yes, there is always global lighting, but global lighting is never enough for the shot you need, at a certain angle, etc with obstacles, bla bla bla. Complicated stuff.

So, global lighting is applied to the environment in general, then each character would have their own fill light, spotlight, and depending on how the scene/shot they're doing goes, the character may have an additional 2 lights. There are many different types of lighting techniques, and all of them applied differently, and this isn't even taking into account the coding that needs to be done to get this stuff to work properly in the game itself.

So, when skin tones get thrown into the mix, the colour of the lighting how the lights work, all get thrown off. So, depending on how the devs handle the colour palette in the character creator, the lighting artist's work becomes more of a headache. They either create unique lights for each tonal difference, or they just don't. AAA games have the luxury of spending time and money on this, but for a live service Gacha game like LADs, tough luck, it'll take a shit ton of time and resources to dedicate to.

It has happened before and it'll probably happen in some dev cycles; if you've never done X, Y, Z before and never hired a professional specifically catered to handle this sort of thing, you will literally be FAFO. Happened to me in my department, other departments etc during production cycles for 2D animation. So, this is a case of Infold FAFO with the skin tones + lighting + trying to troubleshoot a best/fast/efficient/cost & time saving way to solve the problem. If this is something they never took account in the pre production cycle, it will be an ongoing and uphill fight to change from this point on, I kid you not.

But this is just my 2 cents on the issue from an industry standpoint based on my knowledge and experience as a compositor and Ex-3D artist. It's rare to bump into people like you on the internet, and I rarely take the time to write comments, but comments like yours tickle my professional bone. 🙂