Beautiful light that I don't want Created 16 years ago2007-07-22 19:58:34 UTC by Soup Miner

Those kooky light_environments, always bringing up trouble.
The light_environment I have set up in my project is doing something that would normally be considered desireable, only I don't want it to be doing what its doing. What's happening is the light_environment is lighting models directly, instead of the models being lit uniformly in correspodndence to how the world is lit beneath them. Here's 3000 words to explain what I mean. You'll know it when you see it:
http://img402.imageshack.us/img402/742/case1oy8.jpg
http://img402.imageshack.us/img402/5741/case2zs7.jpg
http://img402.imageshack.us/img402/584/case3ar0.jpg
When the light does this, it overrides any shadows and/or pointlights that fall in the light. This is a bit of a problem because my project is pretty heavy on both, so I keep running into shadows or point lights without any visible change in the lighting on my weapon.
The light_environment is at a 15 degree yaw with a pitch of -40(but have tried -30, -45, -75, and 320), and uses default ZHLT values for fade and falloff. I've screwed around with RAD settings to no end, but they haven't fixed anything. My current settings are +extra, bounce 2(but have tried 0 and 1), smooth 180(but have tried 50).

Maybe -noskyfix would work? It disables light_enviroment being global, so you'd have to add multiple light_enviroments to light the map properly. That might disable the pointlight override.

-Noskyfix didn't do the trick. But here's something to think about:
http://img507.imageshack.us/img507/1143/dmskytower0013kx6.jpg
^Here I am standing at the bottom of a ramp. This is the only place I know of in the map where models are lit uniformly the way I want. The light_environment shines from the right to the left, which essentially puts me in a sort of pseudo shadow there because of the ramp's height and the light's angle. There is no shadow on the world, but the direct model light isn't happening here.

http://img507.imageshack.us/img507/253/dmskytower0014uv9.jpg
^Now I'm at the top of the same hill, facing the same direction. As you can see, the problem is back now that I'm standing right in the light.

I don't know if this will help but I studied how a light_environment works and came up with the following:

The light_environment with no modified settings starts at horizontal level and shines at 0 degrees (in hammer that's right). Changing the angle (the black circle) chooses which way the light of all sky textures shines, no bending, directly that line points. The pitch value chooses how high above or below the horizon the light sits from. A number here is an angle. A 45 value will make the light shine 45 degrees BELOW the horizon (unnatural except in a level like yours) and a -45 value places the light 45 degrees ABOVE the horizon. So maybe add a slight angle to your light environment, maybe 5? Hope that helps

Considering that World Crafter here has been mapping for at least four years, I'd have to assume he probably knows all that by now. It's pretty common knowledge.

Hotdog, that might have helped if I hadn't posted that exact information in my first post.

Well I found out exactly why skylight does this, and now I feel like I should have known this years ago.
If nothing stands between you and the light, then you are lit up with that direct, volumetric effect. Otherwise, if a world brush stands between you and the sky, you take on the light from the world beneath you. And when I talk aout something being between you and the light, it only needs to be between you and the light's yaw. The pitch has nothing to do with this.
So basically I'm up shit creek here, since I obviously can't just slap a giant word brush up on the left part of my map. If ou have any ideas, please do tell.

how about a giant null brush?

You could...maybe...use a powerful invisible texlight but that would work like normal light...unless you spread really wide above your map? Probably a bad idea though. I wouldn't do it, sounds too dodgy but I've always considered it as an alternative if something went wrong. :