Abyss Darkness illusion

zornor

L4: Comfortable Member
Jan 14, 2009
195
23
[QUESTION] Abyss Darkness illusion

Good afternoon/evening/morning mappers,

I'm making a map where there's a pit you fall down. It needs the illusion of, well, a bottomless pit. Thus I need it to be black or at least really dark. I used vmex to extract a couple of maps that did something similar but I have not a clue as to how they did it. Then again those were indoors environments, and as you can see here, mine isn't:

[old image here]

Any ideas on how to make that cliff darker without it looking horrible?

EDIT: Thanks to Ravidge for the answer (page 2). Adding it to OP so it's easier for people to see.

I tried :/

{Click for showcase}

behind the scenes: http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn220/Ravidge/tf2/pit0004.jpg
made of 50 (overkill, actually 10-20 should be enough) or so func_illusionary (black tooltexture), each with less opacity than the previous one and a block light somewhere in the middle.

Falling into it engulfs the player in darkness very quickly but not instantly.

I have no idea how much this would cost to render in a larger scale and/or more detailed environment but I noticed no fps troubles in this small test map.

Note: to set opacity of a func_brush, set its Render Mode to Texture. Then use a range from 0-255 to set opacity (0 is invisible, 255 is opaque)
 
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TotalMark

L6: Sharp Member
Feb 13, 2008
331
78
It's situations like this, I wish the source engine had negative lights.
 

zornor

L4: Comfortable Member
Jan 14, 2009
195
23
heh, I tried that just for the hell of it, but got nothing.

I always tried some dust particles and all those similar effects. Some looked ok but all of them were really processor intensive (I could hear my cooling fans work harder whenever I looked at those areas).
 

HojoTheGreat

L5: Dapper Member
Nov 11, 2008
206
34
Why not simply make a really deep pit heh. The most obvious way that comes to mind is making more of a small valley than simply a cliff, and making sure the brushes are oriented against the sun, so that you have cliffs or something in the way. I think the reality is though that if it's outdoors you're at the mercy of the sun, at least lighting-wise. You need darkness to give off the illusion you're looking for.
 

AWESOME-O

L10: Glamorous Member
Mar 20, 2008
779
132
where you want the pit to be, make a hole, and put nodraw in it, but for the effect you still have to go a great way down.
 

Zeewier

L9: Fashionable Member
Sep 20, 2008
619
262
Tools/tool_black (just type black when searching it) Absorbs all light :)
 
Aug 19, 2008
1,011
1,158
all i can think of is making a custom texture, something like blendgroundtoblack, so it merges at the edges of the abyss, and blends to black further down. additionally orientating the pit so it doesn´t receive much sunlight might do the trick

give it a try
 

zornor

L4: Comfortable Member
Jan 14, 2009
195
23
Thanks everyone for the replies, I'll give them a try later :D
 

Spike

L10: Glamorous Member
Feb 13, 2008
716
82
You could use some fog there so you can't see the end of it
 

zornor

L4: Comfortable Member
Jan 14, 2009
195
23
Oh crap, I just found a solution. I didn't even know, I just typed "tools" into Keywords while looking for playerclip or something :O

A material called
tools/toolsblocklight

Screenshot:
abyss30001.jpg
 

Ravidge

Grand Vizier
aa
May 14, 2008
1,544
2,818
I tried :/

pit0003.jpg


behind the scenes: http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn220/Ravidge/tf2/pit0004.jpg
made of 50 (overkill, actually 10-20 should be enough) or so func_illusionary (black tooltexture), each with less opacity than the previous one and a block light somewhere in the middle.

Falling into it engulfs the player in darkness very quickly but not instantly.

I have no idea how much this would cost to render in a larger scale and/or more detailed environment but I noticed no fps troubles in this small test map.
 
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zornor

L4: Comfortable Member
Jan 14, 2009
195
23
Good god man, that's...

that's...

genius!

Much better than my blocklight idea (which i'm not even using anymore, VDC suggests something else). It actually FADES too, while mine almost instantly turns black :|

TY
 

Zeewier

L9: Fashionable Member
Sep 20, 2008
619
262
tools black is a texture that's made to improve the performance, so I think that's a good option ;)
 

Spike

L10: Glamorous Member
Feb 13, 2008
716
82
I tried :/

pit0003.jpg


behind the scenes: http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn220/Ravidge/tf2/pit0004.jpg
made of 50 (overkill, actually 10-20 should be enough) or so func_illusionary (black tooltexture), each with less opacity than the previous one and a block light somewhere in the middle.

Falling into it engulfs the player in darkness very quickly but not instantly.

I have no idea how much this would cost to render in a larger scale and/or more detailed environment but I noticed no fps troubles in this small test map.

It won't cost to render if all the brushes are nodraw(except black face) and you're only rendering one face per brush so it's Numer of brushes * 2 = triangles rendering. If you make 20 brushes you will have 40 triangles rendering which is nothing for a game engine.
 
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zornor

L4: Comfortable Member
Jan 14, 2009
195
23
It won't cost to render if all the brushes are nodraw(except black face) and you're only rendering one face per brush so it's Numer of brushes * 2 = triangles rendering. If you make 20 brushes you will have 40 triangles rendering which is nothing for a game engine.

Sure that's true but they're all transparent. Generally if it has an alpha channel it takes a little more to render it.
 

Ravidge

Grand Vizier
aa
May 14, 2008
1,544
2,818
I used Rendermode 'Texture' and set FX amount between 0-255 (0 is fully transparent, while 255 is fully opaque)
 

Ravidge

Grand Vizier
aa
May 14, 2008
1,544
2,818
Make a brush using the black tooltexture.
Tie it to a func_illusionary.
Set redermode to texture and FX amount to anything between 0 and 255.
Don't touch the FX color option.
I also disabled shadows for mine (both casting and receiving). So you need another brush with the blocklight texture somewhere in the middle of all the 'black layers' to make it dark down there.

You should experiment with your settings, a lot of tweaking is possible to make it look nicer.

I just wanted to try and see if this technique worked or not, I'm sure there are several other ways to make a cool death pit that will look even better (mine looks like it's made for a hl1 map :))