Lighting

buncieboy343

L1: Registered
Jun 25, 2013
9
0
Hi,
I am trying to do lighting in my map, and have encountered a problem. I am using spot lights with a model above it, and obviously it goes down but above it it is pitch black. I have copied the lighting settings from CFT 2 Fort blue resupply room and its lighting is fine. What am I doing wrong?
Thanks for any help,
Buncieboy343
 

henke37

aa
Sep 23, 2011
2,075
515
Ensure that you are running vrad.
 

xzzy

aa
Jan 30, 2010
815
531
Spotlights only send light in the direction they're pointed. The game does "fake" radiosity in the sense that light doesn't bounce around the way it does in the real world.. a ray of light coming from a lamp tends to only light the first surface it hits and dies there.

To avoid the black hole above the spotlight, you either need to create some ambient lighting with a low power point light, or make a second spotlight pointed upwards towards the first spotlight.
 

buncieboy343

L1: Registered
Jun 25, 2013
9
0
At the risk of sounding like a noob what is VRAD, when I go to compile my map I have the option of RAD, which is set to normal, is that it?
 
Sep 7, 2012
638
500
Yes, vrad is the program that compiles your lighting. Unless you're making the final version of your map, setting this to normal should be fine.
 

buncieboy343

L1: Registered
Jun 25, 2013
9
0
So why is the lighting set up the same as in fort but when I run it it is different, is it settings or lighting set-up?
 

Pocket

Half a Lambert is better than one.
aa
Nov 14, 2009
4,694
2,579
Spotlights only send light in the direction they're pointed. The game does "fake" radiosity in the sense that light doesn't bounce around the way it does in the real world.. a ray of light coming from a lamp tends to only light the first surface it hits and dies there.

Um.... what? VRAD does too bounce light off surfaces; it's the whole reason the engine uses precompiled lighting in the first place.

However, it's not nearly as accurate if the map is compiled in normal mode. Ask anyone who tried recompiling 2fort from the SDK copy and noticed that the spawn room ceilings were almost pitch black. Compiling in expert mode with -final enabled gets much more even lighting.
 

xzzy

aa
Jan 30, 2010
815
531
"The way it does in the real world" is the key statement there.

Reflected light in TF2 doesn't fill areas nearly as well as lights in the real world.. spotlights in particular are really bad at illuminating things 180 degrees behind it.

I wasn't trying to state that TF2 lighting doesn't bounce at all.
 

buncieboy343

L1: Registered
Jun 25, 2013
9
0
I've tried adding more lights but it does not look as realistic, anything else? Also how does valve compile their maps?
 

xzzy

aa
Jan 30, 2010
815
531
You don't really have any choice in the matter.. if a room is too dark, you have to add light.

Valve compiles their maps just like we do.
 

buncieboy343

L1: Registered
Jun 25, 2013
9
0
If it helps I get the error "No vis information, direct lighting only", I assume this will affect the reflection and how do I fix this?
 

buncieboy343

L1: Registered
Jun 25, 2013
9
0
Resloved, did not realise there was a very very small gap in my skybox as no warning popped up, thanks for all the help!