Areaportals and light_spots

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Zabidenu

L1: Registered
Oct 6, 2010
26
7
So I'm having a problem with areaportals and lights... I'll start with the areaportals:

When I'm going to a building that I have areaportals in the doorways, it looks very strange from the outside, like this:

1o2iib.png


When I go inside, it looks normal except that the next doorways (that also have areaportals) have the hall of mirrors effect, like this (you can barely see it but it's there):

2jab5oo.png


And how light_spots should be used? In most of my buildings I have 2 or so brightness 800 light_spots, but they're still very dark.

Help? Thanks.
 

309blank

L1: Registered
Nov 19, 2009
24
5
I'm very new to hammer myself, but I think your areaportals are closed and they should be set so that they are always open, I could be wrong though
 

Zabidenu

L1: Registered
Oct 6, 2010
26
7
I'm very new to hammer myself, but I think your areaportals are closed and they should be set so that they are always open, I could be wrong though
How can that be done? Their intial state is open if it has to do with that.
 
Apr 13, 2009
728
309
Areaportals are always open by default. Most likely you have an areaportal leak (2 faces of the same areaportal brush can see each other). Go in map->load pointfile in hammer and follow the line to see where the problem is.

light_spots : it depends how far they are from the surfaces you want lit. Generally you could use 1000-1600 values for brightness and put 3-4 or more in a room depending on its size.
If you have lights that are quite far from the ground, you may consider changing their falloff from quadratic to linear instead of increasing their brightness (simply put, it makes them light things up from much further away).
It can be a good idea to open a valve map with a similar theme and copy one of their lights (complete with props and glow while you're at it) into your map to get yourself started.
 

Zabidenu

L1: Registered
Oct 6, 2010
26
7
Areaportals are always open by default. Most likely you have an areaportal leak (2 faces of the same areaportal brush can see each other). Go in map->load pointfile in hammer and follow the line to see where the problem is.

light_spots : it depends how far they are from the surfaces you want lit. Generally you could use 1000-1600 values for brightness and put 3-4 or more in a room depending on its size.
If you have lights that are quite far from the ground, you may consider changing their falloff from quadratic to linear instead of increasing their brightness (simply put, it makes them light things up from much further away).
It can be a good idea to open a valve map with a similar theme and copy one of their lights (complete with props and glow while you're at it) into your map to get yourself started.

Thanks for the both of those answers! I'm trying to fix the areaportals now.

EDIT - No more leaks! It works now! Thanks alot :D
EDIT2 - My lights are also much better now. Thanks again.
 
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