Lighting Issues Created 8 years ago2016-03-21 01:16:13 UTC by Half-Rats

What's causing these nasty hard, black shadows?

The screenshot is so dark I can't even tell what shadows are you talking about.

BTW, you used the wrong link so the image doesn't show in your post.

This work?

EDIT: Arrrgh.

what are your RAD compile settings?

Looks a lot like some of the bugs in Zoner's tools when you set brush entities to Opaque (cast shadows).

What compile tools are you using?

How many lighting bounces are you using?

do you have multiple switchable lights in one area?

Indeed I do, Bruce. I'm running rad on full. I have no idea what a lighting bounce is. I'm using Vluzacn's Tools.

See, the way I have it, is that all of the candles can be lit and extinguished.

Quote from Zoner's Half-Life Tools website and to be more precise, the "Command reference" section :

HLRAD -bounce #

Set number of radiosity bounces.

This option sets the number of times light bounces in the radiosity pass. By the time the code gets to this point, all the data is precomputed, and extra bounces are very fast. It will make the shadows less harsh using more bounces, but can help light up dark areas much more naturally.

"See, the way I have it, is that all of the candles can be lit and extinguished."

Given that, it looks like you have too many light styles on the black faces.

As a test, remove the names of every light in that scene and recompile (this will make it so the lights cant be switched on/off).
This will reveal if all thos switchable lights it the culprit.

I think Trempler posted and made this guide, i might be wrong:
https://sites.google.com/site/svenmanor/tutorials/advancedlight
If you`re not familiar with rad comp. parameters and options, take a look into it.

Also, here's the old one for ZHLT, still valid for VHLT:
http://zhlt.info/command-reference.html

P.S: Is it just me or the ceiling is really low for that type of chandelier?

you can only have 4 switchable lights on one face, if there are more, vhlt excludes those faces and makes them black instead of giving an error. You could try giving those candles a smaller radius so they dont overlap and wont reach 4 on a face. All this stuff was posted on the VHLT thread in sven forums

Checked out the VHLT tutorial. Wow! Thanks, guys!

While we're on the subject of lighting, though, I noticed some of the valve prop models that come with the SDK aren't being lit. They are monster_furnitures with clip brushes around them. Should I just go ahead and mess with the default light level?

make sure the root bone is getting light. That's how model's light is sampled.

Worked when I run it on extra!