lights.rad in Source Hammer Created 20 years ago2004-11-09 02:17:48 UTC by Ripper

I've been trying to teach myself to map with Hammer the past few days, but I've been having a problem with texture lighting and the lights.rad file. I've been trying different solutions for a while, and I think it has to do with the lights.rad file not being loaded by the vrad.exe compiler. No matter where I put and how I change lights.rad file it always give the message:
[1 texlights parsed from 'lights.rad']
This even happens when I get rid of all of the lights.rad files in the steam folders. Is the SDK somehow loading lights.rad from somewhere in a .gcf file or something, or what? Has anyone successfully used texture lights in the Source SDK, and if so how?

There is indeed a lights.rad in the source SDK GCF, don't know if that's what's being used though. Maybe try -lights drive:pathlights.rad?

Where have you been putting your .RAD?

I think Source texlights are defined from within the vmts - there are some textures in-editor with a little sun flag on them, which I assume means they're illuminated.

Well, I had been putting the lights.rad file in the same directory as vrad.exe. However, I took your suggestion and used the -lights parameter to load my custom lights.rad, and it processed it. Since it has no effect on the final compiled map, I'll just leave the other lights.rad alone and use the secondary file.

As for the sun flagged textures, I was using one and it didn't emit light until I added it to lights.rad, even though it was possible to see it in complete darkness until then, but then so were some of the non-sun-flagged lights, so who knows?

Thanks for all the help. Time to run around in my texture-illuminated cube.