Advanced Lighting Effects
Parasite
Join Date: 2002-04-13 Member: 431Members
Join Date: 2002-04-13 Member: 431Members
Can anyone direct me to any tutorials for advanced lighting tecniques?
Mostly what I want is to know how to do lighting like seen in parts of ns_nothing.
Also I have a grate (func_wall with solid transparency) over a light and I want the light to cast shadows from the grate onto the walls without adding (much) geometry.
and any other lighting tutorials/tecniques etc..
Thx.
Mostly what I want is to know how to do lighting like seen in parts of ns_nothing.
Also I have a grate (func_wall with solid transparency) over a light and I want the light to cast shadows from the grate onto the walls without adding (much) geometry.
and any other lighting tutorials/tecniques etc..
Thx.
Comments
<a href='http://www.vlatitude.com/tutorials.php?tutID=30' target='_blank'>http://www.vlatitude.com/tutorials.php?tutID=30</a>
make the roatating red lights from parts of hl single player
which is where you will need to start to get amazing lighting action
A really good way to do this is to have holes into the cieling where the ligh is, then coat the inside of the whole thing with the NULL texture. Then place your shadow casting bars going accross the light inside that whole, and place the light somewhere up above the bars. Now just make a func wall entity fitting inside the hole, also coated in the NULL texture apart from the bottom face, place the desired light texture on that face.
Now you have some interesting lighting, with hardly any impact on r_speeds....sorry if you didn't follow that, I might post something with pics later on...
No need, with the tools we have today usually the bars will cast shadows.
<img src='http://www.imagemagician.org/images/kombot/animation.gif' border='0' alt='user posted image'>
The only sort of light I used to create the streaked lighting in ns_nothing were several light_spot's. I <i>wish</i> I could have put a single light up there above the bars, or used texture lighting, but it really didn't work out all that well that way. :)
Each streak you see on the walls is actually a light_spot with a very compressed, or thin, cone of light coming out of it. The bars, which are completely world brush based, serve the purpose of sharpening out the edges of those cones of light, and occasionally, to create a "sub streak". Sub streaks (being the tiny little beams of light in some areas) are the only instance of the bars actually creating a streak on its own.
The reason the light above the bars is lit up, giving the impression that texture lighting was used, is because of the massive amount of light_spots up there, "bouncing" off of the bar brushes. Note, that I would have simply converted these bars to func_walls and used the zhlt_lightflags 2 option to allow them their forming of the light, but it dramtically increases compile time... and with that many brushes to convert, it made compiling all but impossible. Even MonsE's <i>Shodan</i> wasn't able to compile it. :X
This will cause the entity to not cast shadows, as usual.
<b>Embedded fix</b>
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The technical explanation:
The 'EmbeddedFix' is for telling hlrad to not used the complex light bleed fix on the entity, as sometimes when creating a brush entity that sticks through a wall, it will be lit incorrectly from the other side of the wall due to the bleed correction
The more normal sounding explanation:
The lighting on the affected solid seems to be brighter, and if the brush goes through a wall, you won't see the light from the other half 'bleeding' through the wall. In the below picture, the pillars are both lit with a blue light underneath, and the one on the right has embedded fix applied:
<img src='http://www.snarkpit.com/userimages/tuts/Leperous_tut72_2.jpg' border='0' alt='user posted image'><!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<b>Opaque</b>
The entity will block light and cast shadows; it'll still be lit as a normal entity though.
<b>Opaque with embedded fix</b> (Brush casts correct shadow anywere):
A combination of the above two effects, recommended if you want objects to cast shadows.
<b>Opaque with concave fix</b> (special fix For "U" shaped brushes):
Sometimes when making arches, faces of the inner curve may turn pitch black. Selecting this option will solve that problem.
In the below image, from right to left, you have pillars lit as;
default, embedded fix, opaque, opaque with embedded fix.
<img src='http://www.snarkpit.com/userimages/tuts/Leperous_tut72_1.jpg' border='0' alt='user posted image'>
Notice that opaque/embedded fix looks the best.
Using ZHLT lightflags makes RAD taking MUCH longer.
Just use "<b>-nopaque</b>" in RAD for no final compiles to ignore zhlt lightflags.
Glad to have you around <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
Congratulations to Ken20Banks for going to all that work on his map, I'm really impressed.