Ambient Light too dark

[00000000000000000000000]

I set my ambient light to 10,000 I'm pretty sure that's a huge number, seeing as I usually use around 300.

This is what it looks like in game though:

The shadows look really dark, am I doing something wrong?

 

[A Boojum Snark]

Do you have a leak? They prevent light bounce calculations which ends up with really dark shadows.

 

[Uriak]

I think a leak would remove the visible water surface, but it does look like a lack of light bounce indeed. Keep your ambient value to a more logical number, but don't use a pitch black for color, if you did.

 

[00000000000000000000000]

Don't use a pitch black for color, if you did.

I changed the ambient to an orangy colour but I didn't like it, and I couldn't remember what the old colour was so I changed it to black. I think this is the problem then.

 

[Uriak]

Use a desatured dark color, but not totally black. You may set up precisely the shadow color through a shodow_controller later.

 

[Sgt Frag]

Typically shadows should be in the blue range. I'm sure all of Valves are. (Not real deep blue, the hue should be blue but the saturation should be low)

Black really only works well for after dusk shadows or really dark games.

 

[frothy]

According to the sky list (http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Sky_list) over at the developer community, the shadows are a purple color. I've used the colors suggested and they work great for most maps.

 

[Sgt Frag]

According to the sky list (http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Sky_list) over at the developer community, the shadows are a purple color. I've used the colors suggested and they work great for most maps.

lol.

Was taking a painting class onetime and the teacher said 'shadows should be blue' (I've heard it other places too).

So I painted a matchbook I had and used purple shadows. She looked at it, got a puzzled look and said 'that looks pretty good'.

Guess I should've said generally cool colors are best.