Buliding Cubemaps made my room dark

Chromatose

L1: Registered
May 10, 2012
33
0
So recently I rendered an update for my map, and I built the cubemaps neccesary for this one room by following this tutorial: http://gamebanana.com/tf2/tuts/10629

This appears to have gotten rid of my purple checker reflections, but now my room is pitch black. If I find the light button in the room everything seems to be just fine, but this causes a problem and i'd rather not re-render the map again as it takes a good few hours. Any way to fix this darkness?
 

grazr

Old Man Mutant Ninja Turtle
aa
Mar 4, 2008
5,441
3,814
Are you seriously taking mapping advice from gamebanana? My god, no wonder it's not working.

Assuming you run HDR on by default:

-mat_specular 0
-map <mapname>
-buildcubemaps
-disconnect
-mat_hdr_level 0
-map <mapname>
-buildcubemaps
-disconnect
-mat_specular 1
-mat_hdr_level 2
-reload map and enjoy

We change the hdr and specular settings before loading the map because they have a tendency of breaking overlays on displacements (plus the specular command can freeze your game for a few moments when in game so it's faster and easier to type it into the console before doing anything else, then it doesn't flood your cache/RAM). This wont show in your "map" when you release it, but it will appear in your reflections, it wont be a huge problem so you may not wish to worry about it in alpha as it'll only really be noticable in the snipers scope and a couple of the jar unlocks (milk/jarate).

Specular turns off reflections so the purple checkers aren't baked into other reflections as reflective surfaces reflect other reflective surfaces (such as windows opposite each other). HDR should speak for itself, you need HDR and LDR cubes (although HDR isn't always necassery as it will default to LDR for most people).
 
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Chromatose

L1: Registered
May 10, 2012
33
0
Damn cubemaps are frustrating, did all this, it looked fine on my pc. packed and uploaded the map etc, and now for some people lights are way too bright and blurry, some people described it as being similar to having a migraine. Im thinking Im just going to remove all reflective surfaces because this is a real pain.
 

henke37

aa
Sep 23, 2011
2,075
515
Sorry, but you can't skip cubemaps just because you don't have any textures that use them. Player models and weapons can and do use them.
 

Crash

func_nerd
aa
Mar 1, 2010
3,315
5,499
It sounds like you don't have HDR properly set up. That said, I wouldn't bother compiling with HDR just yet and after compiling do the following:

-mat_specular 0
-map <mapname>
-buildcubemaps
-disconnect
-mat_specular 1
-reload map
 

xzzy

aa
Jan 30, 2010
815
531
Is the 'mat_reloadallmaterials' necessary or not to get the game to register the existence of the new cubemaps?

I've always done it that way because that's how the first tutorial I found explained it, but it would be nice to ditch because the command takes a rather long time to do its job.
 

grazr

Old Man Mutant Ninja Turtle
aa
Mar 4, 2008
5,441
3,814
mat_reloadallmaterials is unreliable. It works for some people and not others, it used to work for me but then i modified my config files and now it doesn't for some reason. Best to just disconnect.

If your lighting is insanely bright then you need to change your bloom and exposure settings with an env_tonemapcontroller. Recommend you look at official maps for reference values (but .8 to 1.1 are decent guesses, it all depends on your environment, how much is outside and what ambience you have (night/day/dusk, etc)). They are available in your SDK maps folder (2fort, badwater, lumberyard to name a few available examples).

If you're having trouble seeing your results, it's a good idea to load a different map to clear your cache, often the engine/your RAM will cache information for the previous level, so you have to clear that cache this way and then load your map to see your results.
 
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Chromatose

L1: Registered
May 10, 2012
33
0
mat_reloadallmaterials is unreliable. It works for some people and not others, it used to work for me but then i modified my config files and now it doesn't for some reason. Best to just disconnect.

If your lighting is insanely bright then you need to change your bloom and exposure settings with an env_tonemapcontroller. Recommend you look at official maps for reference values (but .8 to 1.1 are decent guesses, it all depends on your environment, how much is outside and what ambience you have (night/day/dusk, etc)). They are available in your SDK maps folder (2fort, badwater, lumberyard to name a few available examples).

If you're having trouble seeing your results, it's a good idea to load a different map to clear your cache, often the engine/your RAM will cache information for the previous level, so you have to clear that cache this way and then load your map to see your results.

Yeah this is really odd, some people are having the issue and others are not, for example the map looks fine on my pc but a friend of mine just sees superbloom, do you believe this entity is the fix for that?
 

tyler

aa
Sep 11, 2013
5,102
4,621
Are you renaming it after building cubemaps, or taking the bsp from the mapsrc folder? Renaming it will break the cubemaps--you need to rename before compile--and the cubemaps are built into the map in your tf/maps directory, not the mapsrc one.
 

Chromatose

L1: Registered
May 10, 2012
33
0
Tell you what, if someone wants to help me and do me a big favour. go into TF2, in console enter in:
Connect 27.50.70.5:37515

That will download the map, when you get in, just look around and report back here telling me whether the lights look normal, or if they are overly bloomed. There are screenshots of the map here for comparison: (to show you what they should look like) http://www.tfmaps.com/details.php?file=547
 

karlosio

L1: Registered
Sep 28, 2012
6
1
I had a look and can confirm that it is far too bright, the lights seem to be fading in and out from the blue spawn (and outside), don't know if that's intended or not but its sure sore on the eyes. Plus they're seems to be a strobe light effect when I opened the door in the small building outside blue spawn, and everything on the outside of the map is VERY green. Also they're seems to be very bright white balls in some areas (blue spawn for one) although the inside areas where the dispensers are seem to be a bit toned down, the lights are still far too bright. IMO (I'm only a noob mapper) you need more lights however they need the brightness turned down, and if you have a tonemap controller and have set the bloom and exposure settings, I'd try toning those down as well because it certainly looks over-bloomed.

Plus the sound of the sawblade is loud and constant in every area and quite irritating tbh.

Apart from that, nice minecraft style map :cool1:
 
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Chromatose

L1: Registered
May 10, 2012
33
0
I had a look and can confirm that it is far too bright, the lights seem to be fading in and out from the blue spawn (and outside), don't know if that's intended or not but its sure sore on the eyes. Plus they're seems to be a strobe light effect when I opened the door in the small building outside blue spawn, and everything on the outside of the map is VERY green. Also they're seems to be very bright white balls in some areas (blue spawn for one) although the inside areas where the dispensers are seem to be a bit toned down, the lights are still far too bright. IMO (I'm only a noob mapper) you need more lights however they need the brightness turned down, and if you have a tonemap controller and have set the bloom and exposure settings, I'd try toning those down as well because it certainly looks over-bloomed.

Plus the sound of the sawblade is loud and constant in every area and quite irritating tbh.

Apart from that, nice minecraft style map :cool1:

Yeah I was concerned this was the case. The lights are not intended to be bloomed like that at all. (see the screenshots) I'm a little peeved shall we say because this problem only started happening once I started trying to get cubemaps working. (with those console commands and whatnot) which is what messed my map up. What I don't get is that this version of the map was made on a new save file with all env_cubemaps removed, i.e a brand new .bsp as well, so its frustrating me trying to figure out how I can now get rid of these issues if creating a new map file and .bsp does not reset these issues to a default stage. (i.e lighting without these env_cubemap related issues)

Yeah I seem to be different to most in regards to sound, the sawblade is fine when I am playing the game but a few others have mentioned it before, I'll fix that when I release another patch, which will be done once I can figure out how the hell I am meant to revert my map to its default, non-blooming status. :angry:

Thanks for the help btw.
 

Chromatose

L1: Registered
May 10, 2012
33
0
Bloom is caused by HDR. Just don't compile with HDR on if you don't want it yet.

I believe that you are suggesting that if I unmark HDR on my map when I hit 'run map' this will solve the issue? I attempted this some time ago but it made my compile times take 4+ hours so I gave up in the end upon the circumstance it might never compile.
 

Chromatose

L1: Registered
May 10, 2012
33
0
HDR checked on should make your compiles take longer, as it has to do the lighting portion of the compile twice, once extra for HDR.

How curious, could anything in my map be causing it to take longer without HDR? Such as these rather odd issues my map is experiencing as of recent?
 

karlosio

L1: Registered
Sep 28, 2012
6
1
regarding your lights, I thought (and I hope you don't mind) I'd try decompiling it, opened it up in hammer and clicked on one of your lights and the brightness setting is set to 25600 (on all 3 lights in the image below) :eek:hmy: also using slow pulse (no black) appearance:

01.jpg


Plus you have fluroesent flicker appearance (in the little room on both lights, while it might be good in a L4D2 map I wouldn't really suggest using that for a tf2 map) my opinion ofc

02.jpg


Also I cannot find any light_ environment entity, you have a skybox however there's no light_ environment (in the decompiled version at least)

Also, this may be due to decompiling but I cannot find any env_cubemaps, they need to be scattered about your map in order for buildcubemaps to even work, although they may not be appearing for me in hammer for some reason :confused:

Edit: I did find 1 cubemap, but your map needs more: (I found this tutorial quite helpful regarding cubemaps)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tcvP9fg98E

I hope that helps a bit :mellow:
 
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