Texture Lights

HellBringerHellBringer Join Date: 2004-02-17 Member: 26641Members
for some reason one of my textures lights isnt giving off any light. the texture is bright and easily seen but it doesnt give off any light. the same was for another texture except it would give off light but only if the brightness value was atleast 50 which is too bright for what i want.... so its no light or too bright?

Comments

  • ShadowicsShadowics Join Date: 2002-11-07 Member: 7652Members
    Since you refer to the brightness of a texture you probably know about the lights.rad file and have that set up, so that's probably not the problem. A light with a brightness of 50 is quite dim, if the light isn't bright enough the compiler might simply discard it because the brushs near it are too far away to be significantly lit by it. What setting are you using for the HLrad compiling?
  • HellBringerHellBringer Join Date: 2004-02-17 Member: 26641Members
    i have sparse checked, no opaque entities, and bounce set at 8. no other changes. Do need to change a setting in the rad operation to allow dimmer lights? cause 50 for some lights is dim but for a almost white light its actually extrememly bright ill try changing the color but id still like to fix this lil prob. thx also got any help with a prob with my ambience noise. i have steam and a steam sound linked to a target mulitple and the particle works fine but the sound only plays every other time it should be triggered. :s
  • ShadowicsShadowics Join Date: 2002-11-07 Member: 7652Members
    Here's a few things you could do to help your lighting. All of these as parameters on HLrad.

    First -dscale : A bug in the original tools doubled the direct lighting, making your 50 look like a 100 but only lighting as far as a 50 should. This was left in as the default for backwards compatibility. Using the value of '1' would generate the most correct looking maps, and give you a large range to try in between no light and too bright. If you've already done a lot of work then adjusting all your other lights might be more trouble than it's worth.

    Second is -coring : Coring is how much light has to hit a patch to light it up, any less light and it is considering completely black. I beleive this is 1 by default, setting it to something like 0.01 would let you light up things very dimly where before the would be completely black. Depending on your situation this might help.

    You could also reduce the -fade : Fade is how fast lights fall off. Something farther away from a light is lit less than something near it and this controls how fast that happens. It is '1' by default, lower values will extend lights. This can also be applied to one light individually as the parameter _fade (though I don't think you could do that for texture lights)

    I don't know much about sound entities but something comes to mind. A lot of things in HL are designed to be On/Off. Maybe your trigger is turning the sound on, it plays once, then the next time to trigger fires it turns it 'off' so it doesn't make any sound. Try having a multi_manager fire the sound once when it's supposed to and then again like 5 seconds later.
  • HellBringerHellBringer Join Date: 2004-02-17 Member: 26641Members
    im currently messing with the settings, but so far no luck.... arg this is getting on my nerves.
  • InsaneInsane Anomaly Join Date: 2002-05-13 Member: 605Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, NS1 Playtester, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, NS2 Map Tester, Subnautica Developer, Pistachionauts, Future Perfect Developer
    Try using a trigger_prescence rather than a trigger_multiple.
  • HellBringerHellBringer Join Date: 2004-02-17 Member: 26641Members
    i fixed the steam problem. i just had to check the do not loop flag. the texture im trying to light with right now is still not working.. could it be a problem with the actual texture itself. and are there minimum color values ie cant have 0 255 0?
  • CageyCagey Ex-Unknown Worlds Programmer Join Date: 2002-11-15 Member: 8829Members, Retired Developer, NS1 Playtester, Constellation
    <!--QuoteBegin-HellBringer+Feb 23 2004, 04:22 AM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (HellBringer @ Feb 23 2004, 04:22 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> i fixed the steam problem. i just had to check the do not loop flag. the texture im trying to light with right now is still not working.. could it be a problem with the actual texture itself. and are there minimum color values ie cant have 0 255 0? <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
    0 255 0 is OK as a color choice, but you'd probably be better of with something more like 64 255 64 for aestheic reasons -- even accent lighting can be garish if it's an unaltered primary color.

    The scale for texture lights is different than the scale for regular lighting; the value for texture lights is divided by a multiple of the patch surface area. The light is probably working properly in the compiler but too dim to be noticeable. Try upping the strength to 500; if that still doesn't cast light you can see try 1500. Once it's bright enough to see you can fine tune it.
  • HellBringerHellBringer Join Date: 2004-02-17 Member: 26641Members
    Are you talkin about the brightness in the lights.rad file? i thought it only went up to 255. besides i put it on 50 and thers no light. i put in on 100 and its uber bright everywhere. ill try some middle settings to see what i get. it should still put off light i can stend directly next to it and not be lit up. also i have other tex lights with the same brightnes value that work fine ill upload a screeeny so u can see in a while.
  • HellBringerHellBringer Join Date: 2004-02-17 Member: 26641Members
    also a question about overlays. after u export the texture to wally and make ur overlay do u save it as "texturename_overylay"? or what and then is it included in ur bsp file?
  • ShenTraXShenTraX Join Date: 2003-11-10 Member: 22434Members, Constellation
    <!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->HellBringer Posted on Feb 23 2004, 05:28 PM
      also a question about overlays. after u export the texture to wally and make ur overlay do u save it as "texturename_overylay"? or what and then is it included in ur bsp file? 
    <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->

    You can make it whatever you want. By the looks of the design of the NS Wad files, they made it easier to find the overlays with the naming convention; fx

    ex(may not exist, just an example though):
    +0lightA = the light texture you normally would use
    fx_0lightA = the overlay texture.

    you dont have to use this standard, you can name it whatever you want. And you can save it in your own wad file if you want... and include it in the final version of your map.

    then you would add the fx_0lightA to your lights.rad or nslights.rad or yourlights.rad...whatever...

    shablam.
  • XythXyth Avatar Join Date: 2003-11-04 Member: 22312Members
    What's your gamma set at? <!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='confused.gif' /><!--endemo--> At strength 100, unless the light texture is huge, should be very dark... I use values around 500-600 and they still barely show up...
  • BelgarionBelgarion Join Date: 2002-07-19 Member: 973Members
    jeeze. i use texture values of 200-400 at most and they're plenty bright for me. course, i havn't changed the coring value or the fade values... i've never understood how people can use such high values. ugh..

    if you ever looked at the values in the original HL lights rad they were in the thousands. craziness
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