I Hate Lighting >:|

Candy_Man

<div class="IPBDescription">help....franch</div> Sure I can do brush work like a madman, special effects and everything else everybody loves, but aye, I never took the time to learn proper lighting, especially with custom light textures and good ol rads file.
Well heres a snippit of a random section of my map and this is how my light always shows up: the texture is practically the only thing illuminated, clearly distintable from everything else and sticks out like an eye sore-i can never get the flush gentle full lighting others can achieve so well. So what may be the problem here? I still use Q2BeaVeR to compile my maps which shouldnt be a problem should I keep to date with ZHLT's and the like. Possibly extra command lines for the VIS and such which i dont have any checked or added. I'm just not sure what would be best to get the results I want, get a new compiler or new command lines or new tools any feedback appreciated
thanks in advance.
CM

note: franch is the word of the day

Candy_Man

franch:

The_Real_Quasar

I'm no master of lighting, but try using a few light_spots. that green light and the white one over the door would be good places for them to come from.
If you aren't sure how to use light_spots, Put the light_spot entity directly on the light, and an info_target where the light will be shining. Set the light_spot to target the info_target and muck around with it till it's right.
good luck!
PS: franch.

taleden

Basically your problem stems from two facts:

<ul>
<li>First, the lights you are using in that screenshot have corresponding lines in your .rad file; these lines should look kinda like this:
"lighttexturename 100 110 120 200"
The numbers are the same ones that you generate using the "pick color" tool in VHE; the first three are RGB values (0 through 255), and the last one is intensity (0 through.. I don't know, 32k maybe?). I am guessing this last value is rather low for both of those textures - probably 200 or 300 - which is why the surrounding area is rather dark, even with several lights present.
<li>When you use texture lighting, any texture on any face which emits light (by which I mean has an entry in your .rad file and an intensity which is higher than 0) will be lit at 100%, or fullbright - you'll notice if you shine your flashlight on the walls, they will get brighter, but if you shine it on the light texture itself nothing will happen, becuase the light texture is already at full brightness. There is no way to avoid this - faces with texture lights on them will ALWAYS be lit at 100%.
</ul>

Obviously there must be some way around this, or other maps wouldn't be able to sport such smooth lighting effects, like you mention. The solution is what's called an 'overlay', and is discussed often here; search the forums for more information. The basic idea is to create a func_illusionary or some other non-solid but visible brush-based entity to place on top of the light texture, but which has an identical texture; this hides the full-100%-brightness light emitting texture, while still providing what looks like a source for the light that is cast on the surrounding area. Like I said, search for 'overlay' for more on that.

Of course, another solution is just to use all point lights, but you eat up entities real fast that way, so its best to use texture lights whenever you can, even though each overlay also uses up an entity - it ends up being more efficient in the long run because you can often combine several overlays in one area (like a room or a hallway segment) into one func_illusionary, which means one entity instead of one for each point light.

If you don't want to use overlays, another solution is to increase the intensity of those texture lights, so that the surrounding area is lit more and the bright light textures don't stick out so much; of course, if you want the area to be darker, this is not a solution, so you'll have to go the overlay or point light route.

Hope that helps.

Candy_Man

Yes thanks that helps quite a bit. It would explain something I witnessed while lagging really bad on eclipse and i was looking at some lights and when the flush entity came around the lights disapeared and there were lights under it, I thought it was pretty weird at the time. Anyways I did a search for overlay in the forums and I didnt come up with anyone except for some posts of map screens and no information, so if someone could give me a link to something about overlay or from an external source online thatd be great <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo-->
Ive always kinda banned myself from using light points because I thought that decreased FPS dramatically and other things, I'm not sure if thats still the case or not but ill see how the rest of the mapping goes

thanks again
CM

Candy_Man

Okay I think im starting to understand overlay, first you have your light brush lets say its not pointing down but towards you from a wall, in WC (Hammer) you create a brush flush with the light thats the texture blue (or black?) that disapears when set to addictive- where the new brush touches the light face of your light-you place the light texture thats identical to the the light texture on your light, but isnt set to give light off in rad. Then set it to func illusionary and addictive 255 and voila no more light at 100% bright <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo--> This also explains the nature of what I saw in eclipse and also why in alot of the offical ns maps wads, there was always the a copy of the light texture in it even though ns.wad had it and it was a different name.
I so smart <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo-->
nur!11!one one ! 1117
just need someone to confirm this please
thankies
franch
derp
fuggles
PS: MS paint owns you!

Redford

Don't forget that, in NS maps, you can set the gamma to whatever you like for when your map is played. For that reason, don't go crazy over lights just to make an area brighter. You can simply increase gamma and make the whole map brighter all at one time.

Candy_Man

Yeah I know about the gamma ramp, I was just looking for some other alternatives to go hand in hand with that.
thanks anyways