[Tutorial] Make a map brighter (beginners)

martijntje

L8: Fancy Shmancy Member
Aug 2, 2009
539
334
Team fortress 2 maps are ment to be bright. However some people (including) me have the problem that their maps are usually not bright enough. I have been frustrated and I usually just ended up putting more lights in the map.

A quick note: night maps need to be bright aswell.

What we will do is make every light source more bright. It takes a while, but it makes your map a lot better. The entities we will be working with will be light, and anything that begins with light_.

It is recommended to use light_spot instead of light in your map. light should only be used in the very first stages of your map. (aka you are too lazy to do proper lightning), or when it's a special kind of light source. (fire for instance)

to begin you search for a light entity
attachment.php

now double click on it to change it properties


now this window appears. click on where it says "Brightness" (circeld in red)
now on the right of this window 4 numbers appear. the first three numbers represent what color the light is, now the fourth number (circled in green) represents how bright you light will be. change this to a higher value.
attachment.php

the default value is 200. I changed it to 500 in my map, but you should experiment a bit on how high you want it to be

very simple, but very useful

now for some amazing side by side comparison

before
attachment.php

after
attachment.php


(the map used in this tutorial is my awesome map rockbottom)
 
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grazr

Old Man Mutant Ninja Turtle
aa
Mar 4, 2008
5,441
3,814
...(fire emits in all directions)

Well, a lot of lights do..

If an area isn't recieving enough light, then just use an additional source to illuminate what the first does not. It is not uncommon for one light to overlap another to illuminate more surface area. Valve only ever use light's in area's where models recieve bad vertex lighting or have particularly dark corners in need of a small ambient boost. Such as Gravel Pit's Blu spawn.

Or alternatively increase the amount of bounces the light performs during the compile process via the command line. If you have a particularly dark map (such as a tomb, as you have here (a result of dark material's, particularly brown's, rather than a lack of a skybox)) this would be an effective solution. But baring in mind this process is "world wide" and effects all area's and light sources. So if you have a dark area that needs more lighting you might find another area in your map that is lit plentifully, suddenly too bright. The point of light bounces is that your light_spot will illuminate the area around it (including behind it) provided the material it reflects off is bright enough to bounce enough light back. Meaning you wont get dark patches behind your light_spot's like you might otherwise assume.
 
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