Butt-ugly lighting Created 18 years ago2006-07-03 16:56:35 UTC by srry

There's really no better way to say it, my lighting looks like absolute crap.

I'm working in this wide open, fairly boxy room with two skylights, and some other windows next to a door on the wall. All the windows have a SKY brush right outside them, because there's no outside area yet.

The problem is that the lighting is really blotchy and spotty looking. You'll just have to look at this picture to see what I mean, as it's kind of hard to describe.

http://img280.imageshack.us/img280/6783/destucco00003ms.jpg

I've tried raising and lowering the texture scale, placing little light entities around certain areas to even it out, and trying different colored textures that would hide it better, but nothing is working very well. Is this just something I'm going to have to live with? Is there some ZHLT setting that'll even out the lighting for me?

At this point, anything would be great help.

Bounce the Rad about 5 or 6 times to blur the edges on the sunlight on the floor.

How is "bouncing the Rad" done, exactly?

-bounces 6 I believe.

Get a batch compiler, you can do a whole lot with it to improve the lightning.

I already have one actually, but I didn't think to use it!

By the way, that -bounce 6 thing didn't really seem to do much...

I'd say it was more of a colour thing than a lighting thing.

I'm surprised nobody mentioned this, but your textures are the cause of this lighting effect. Just look at what happened in some of my maps.

Structure

Tokyo Museum
Try using a darker and less monotonous texture and post the resulting screenshot.

Natural lighting is never the way to illuminate a room. It looks like you are relying on sunlight to bring your room to life. Sunlight is an accentual thing at best. At worse, its a nuisance.

Any architect would fade out when reading that sentence!

even your lighting with more of a subtle bounce by increaseing the number of light bounces. defulatly 1, i think. try 2 or 3. also, run -extra and use -smooth 180.

http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/4240/destucco00017fg.jpg

Here's the map with a "darker and less monotonous texture". You're right, it does completely destroy the problems I'm having... But it also destroys the feeling of the room. I want it to feel simple and modern, not old and run down, and because of this, I have to keep the texture I was using before.

I still have a few things to try before I give up on this.

Try really using really big custom textures, preferably even 256 by 256. I don't know if this will change anything but it might.

Wow, I actually got the whole problem all cleared up with just one little parameter! I just turned -chop to 32, and now it looks almost perfect.

Thanks for all the extra little tips given here, I'll be sure to make use of them in the map. Hopefully It'll be one of my few that gets released!

WCD: How would that change anything?

I have no idea, honestly. I just usually work with big textures and I've never had this problem.

You coud use other colors and still give it a modern or minimalistic look:
http://img152.imageshack.us/img152/8277/srry6ma.jpg

Or you could try using a big, distant and invisble texlight brush to replace the light enviroment. Textlights give smoother lighting.

Edit: glad you solved it! I'll use the tip for my maps too.

Yeah, I thought chop would do that too, but I didn't notice any difference when I looked at the r_speeds. It might effect it a little bit, but I'm pretty good at keeping my r_speeds down anyway.

what does chop do, exactly?

Changes the lightmap resolution, I believe.

The batch compiler says that lighting is based on a grid projected onto world brushes and that grid is divided by the chop size. Reducing the chop size reduces the grid size making lighting look better. At least, that's what the compiler says.

Cool map Srry, though I thought the first pic looked fine.

Where's the side-by-side of the one with the reduced chop?

Good idea jimmi, I was looking for ways to improve my skylights. Where did you put the entity in the map?

The worst is to use a light_env.

Very true, especailly if you have a big skybox--the lighting using a light environment will look flat as hell.

Here's some new screens of the map. They aren't side-by-side comparisons, because a little too much has changed, but you should get a good enough idea of the improvement.

http://img211.imageshack.us/img211/2325/destucco16yx.jpg

http://img462.imageshack.us/img462/4126/destucco20tf.jpg

My skylights are a little bit different than most people seem to think, so I'm not sure these tips here would work as well with this.

I should really just create a new WIP thread for this map, instead of showing pics of it in a thread named "butt-ugly lighting".

Ask the mods to rename the thread.

Nah. WIP stuff belongs in Maps and Mods.

Then move it to the maps and mods forum, silly!