Do props take shadows well?

[XFunc_CaRteR]

Do shadows fall well onto models?

(I'm having t-junction issues because I have a lot of func_details. Problem is I don't want to convert that geometry to props because I want nice shadowing falling onto it.)

 

[StickZer0]

Props are vertex lit rather than lightmap lit, so essentially, it depends on how high poly the prop is.

A prop like this will recieve shadows poorly like this (note the almost complete lack of shadowing on the snow)

Even with just a little bit of subdividing, the shadow quality increased to a much better standard of this. So it all depends on how many verts there are and how high density they are - the higher the density the higher the quality shadow, but also think about how expensive the prop is to render.

 

[Terr]

Just for completeness, note that certain VRAD compile options need to be present in order for props to receive those per-vertex shadows Sticker's talking about, particularly -StaticPropLighting and -StaticPropPolys .

Turning that option on affects all props in a map and increases file-size, but individual props can have this "fancy shadowing" disabled as necessary.