HL2 style lighting/Demaking HL2 maps? Created 8 years ago2015-12-09 17:26:23 UTC by PikaCommando

I've been trying to recreate some areas from HL2. So far the only HL2 to HL1 map I've seen is a recreation of Traptown.

Original:Demake:Obviously HL1 maps can't do impressive lighting as most of them just feel plain and blank. Goldsrc is a dated engine so it can't do too advanced lighting, but I'm talking about how far it can emulate HL2's level of lighting. Something with multiple tones of light, like this:

The lower your texture scale, the sharper your shadows. I use 0.50 texture scale and get pretty decent results.
A more directional environment light would help as well.

Make sure you're not compiling with too many light bounces - 3 or 4 is plenty and also compile with -extra.

Avoid the light entity - it's garbage. Use textlights for subtle ambient tones, and use light_spot for the majority of your lighting. Ideally, your spots should contrast the textlights for a more stylised look.

Finally, don't ignore your skybox tones. Grab some RGB values from the sky texture and use them to properly blend your geometry with the skybox. Look at ravenholm - the moonlight is almost completely white, allowing a stark contrast with the extremely blue/green spotlights and orange tungsten interior lighting.