[REQUEST] Full Lighting Tutorial

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phatal

L6: Sharp Member
Jan 8, 2008
259
21
I have looked high and low for a complete lighting guide. This is so complicated to me for some reason and is causing my level creation to slow to a crawl. I've looked at Valve maps and others custom creations as well and I can't find a pattern to follow.

Please would someone develop a COMPLETE lighting guide for us.

What I'd like to see included are light_spot, light, light_dynamic, light_enviroment, point_spotlight, env_lightglow, and func_illusionary (as used in cp_badlands).

What I'd like to know about these is how the Inner (bright) angle, Outer (fading) angle, 50 percent falloff distance, 0 percent falloff distance, Focus, and BrightnessScaleHDR are used. Also how does not using a 50 percent falloff or 0 percent falloff affects the lighting by these entitys.

I'd also like to know is more effective and which are more expensive (maybe in a highest to lowest expense type list).

I'm more of a visual learner so images and a vmf would be nice as well.

I have a friend (texture genius to me) who makes textures for a living (Architecturaltextures.com) and has just recently started helping me with some custom textures for tf2. I'll reward you, if it's a great guide, by providing you with a few of these customs made to order. :D
 
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A Boojum Snark

Toraipoddodezain Mazahabado
aa
Nov 2, 2007
4,775
7,669
The percentage falloffs are completely self explanatory. :/ They are for manually specifying the distance at which the light is half brightness and where it completely ends.

What isn't entirely obvious is that using them is a replacement for, and overrides, the usage of CLQ settings.
 

HoundDawg

L1: Registered
Dec 18, 2007
48
2
Yeah, that's what I was figuring, and had been testing with it. Some sort of tutorial that provides some various samples would make more sense. Also, I had to learn-by-trial that the movie icon will set it to whatever your 3D view is.

For example, you can hit the button and it may set it to 115. In the 3D view, take a few steps back, hit it again, and it's up to 250. So, you could send the boundaries easily this way. Still, it takes quite a bit to get used to understanding just how far these numbers should be.

I'm just stating that there are these new features to the lighting that were made after most of the lighting tutorials, which would be nice to have an updated lighting tutorial that covered them.

/me ducks and goes back to mapping...
 

Pink_Panther

L3: Member
Dec 14, 2008
129
45
Its not a tutorial, but this may help. Its an effort to focus on only lighting instead of the map.

oh...I recommend ignoring most maps out there. I have yet to see a valve map that I thought was even close to being lit correctly. They are ok, but may as well be full bright to me.

so here goes
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Here is an idea that makes playing around with colored lights sorta fun and you can learn a crapload in a couple hours. Make a couple simple rooms and take 2 different color lights. Pick 2 that should never go together like purple and yellow(or whatever) Find a way to place lights of those colors in the same room together so that it actually blends together and looks nice. Dont be afraid to think outside the normal light positions either. Put some low on walls, some high, whatever...just make it look good. To speed it up, try a couple different arrangements in different rooms then compile. When that works, try changing the textures so that each wall is something different and see how the textures effect the appearance without changing the lights.

another fun thing to try is playing with shadows. make a point light in the exact center of a smallish square room. change the lightmap size on each brush to like 2 or so. then make objects around the light and see how the shadows appear on each wall/floor/cieling. Then change/move around the brushs blocking the light to try and make designs with the shadows. This will help you understand how to control shadows and put them where you want them instead of accendental randomness.

Hope that helps.