Light Fade On Created 14 years ago2010-01-20 23:30:20 UTC by hlife_hotdog

Howdy all.

It there a nice simple way to have a light 'fade' on. basically, it starts off, when triggered it gently fades on and stays on permanently.

EDIT: Or if not, what's the easiest way to fake it?

I've often wondered that myself, I've never tried it, but the best I can come up with is trigger a light that fades on and off, and have it so that at the point where it's brightest, it turns off and a regular light turns on at the same time. It would probable be hard to get it to look right though.

You could try creating say five lights all in the same place each with a brighter setting than its previous and all starting dark. Name them 1-5 and have a multimanager triggering 1 than a few milliseconds later 2 etc. Its worth a shot.

Too many dynamic lights on the same surface will cause compile errors.

It really sucks that the Source engine can't do a simple light fade, at least not without some kind of trickery, coding, or that ugly low-frequency dynamic lighting.

I just did it in gold source with 5 lights and it looked ok but prolly needs 10. They were spaced starting at 50 and increasing my incriments of 5 every .2 seconds.

Edit: Yea with ten I get the error too many direct lights on surface. I'll try making the mm turn off each previous light at the same time the next brighter light turns on and see if that works.

Edit: Well that technique failed. Atleast we learned that it doesn't work...

It would help to know what size/type area your trying this with.

It for a small garden light. With light travelling in about 512 units. I started getting the same error in source but thankfully I can ignore the 50+ 'too many lights on surface' error. I think I'll try creating a custom fade light.

EDIT: Nope, unbelievable...I cannot do it any way, I even tried creating a custom appearance, but it still didn't work right. Oh well, nevermind...

You could probably make 10 glow sprites all in the same splace that each get a little bigger than the last and all start off. Than each is triggered as its previous is triggered off. Or maybe even with a few env_renders that trigger one sprite to get brighter and brighter. Wouldn't really emit light though...You could also have a few lights that get brighter the way I desribed but try putting them really high above everything so the effect doesn't look bogus.