HDR Update Created 18 years ago2006-01-18 09:23:06 UTC by Playbus

Does anyone know much about the techniques for using HDR in Hammer, or know where there's a tutorial on it?

I'm sitting waiting for the update to finish now, and I'm wondering if the changes will affect 'old' maps. I started on a mapping binge* two days ago and I've done a lot of work on Day 14 already. Am I going to have to re-do anything?

I haven't been using the beta SDK, which in truth I only found out existed five minutes ago, so I'm hoping that had the HDR in it, and someone knows how to use it already.

• I go through phases of not mapping for months, and then doing nothing but mapping for weeks on end. I usually complete one project per phase......

It's going well, I only began it a few days ago. I'm aiming for spookiness and to make it quite puzzley, and to expand the story a lot. I've completed the "intro sequence", and I'm just getting to the first real puzzle. There is still a heck of a lot to do.

HDR is suprisingly simple to utilize. Firstly, you'll want to use an env_tonemap_controller, with a logic_auto to fire some inputs to it. Then, you need to run RAD with either HDR parameter -hdr or -both, -both compiling both LDR Fallbacks and HDR while -hdr compiling only HDR light.

As for the details for the logic_auto and the controller - The values are SetContrastScaleMin and SetContrastScaleMax, and you have to play around with different values to get a desirable result. Try something like 1 and 10 for great contrast range. You can adjust it ingame with the ent_fire system too.

damn Rabid you're like source genius or something..

Thanks Rabid, I'll make a little test map to play with it. Do I only need one env_tonemap_controller for the whole map? Or one in each contrasting area?