light control...

[Spamdini]

hey guys another good question for you. im putting together a map that has a really deep pit lets say. its really wide as well. what i want to do is make it dark, so the player cant see the bottom. ie player looks down and he can see the pit walls for a while and then they slowly fade to black and it just looks like an endless hole.

any ideas on how this can be acheived?

thanks in advance.

 

[ZargonX]

You know, I'm having the exact same issue. I've been doing some experiements with fog down the pit to simulate the blackness, with mild success. I'll see if I can come up with anything better...

 

[trackhed]

in HL2 single player in one pit they used 4 blocks with a black texture on one side and nodraw on the other, they were non-solid as well (was playing synergy last night and fell in the pit, synergy has a wall jump mod, so i landed safely at the bottom, getting out was another thing, which is why i saw the black textured blocks)

 

[Spamdini]

im looking for more of a fade effect though trackhed. i understand how that works though. did it fade along the sides from the texture of the pit walls to the black?

lemme know what u find zargonx and ill do the same...

 

[trackhed]

well thats all in the textures
you see... light isnt really light in its proper sense in the game
it only provides luminosity to textures and various graphic layers.
so making a texture along the sides of the pit that gradually fades to black while adding a light that fades at a similar rate will give the illusion of light actually becoming non-existant.

 

[Spamdini]

ya except i dont have a texture that fades to black. i would imagine there would be a brush ent that can be made to reduce the light exposure in certain areas by a mapper determined value. like a func_blocklight that i can place in my pit where i want.

 

[poopster101]

see you have to take the texture that you have applied to your pit and open it in photoshop or w/e you use and apply a gradient to it fading from transparent to black going down the side of the texture, then make the vtf/vmf and put into your materials folder, then you apply it to your pit and adjust your lighting

 

[Fyfey]

Put black fog in... then when it get's more filled with fog... it will eventually turn completely black.

 

[Koei]

And make the bottom that tool texture. There is a black texture under your tools that reflect no light.

 

[l3eeron]

Yep...

Black fog and black texture at the bottom...

How detailed does the pit need to be? Is the pit game area?

My worthless advice is to keep it simple

 

[Koei]

Yep...

Black fog and black texture at the bottom...

Yep, that will work. I did that at a part of my upcoming map and it looks fine (at least in low light, haven't tested it in a completely 100% lit room.)

 

[trackhed]

yeah mainly i was just trying to keep it simple, if it is quite a wide and deep pit that you're filling with fog, it could reduce performance on slower systems

 

[trackhed]

ill try to make some alpha to black textures as overlays and see if those work

 

[Spamdini]

ok, but yes the pit is huge. its atleast 2048x2048 units and i say atleast because its not a square, its longer than it is wide.

 

[Spamdini]

maybe ill just have to make my own blend texture with the cliff i want to use and black and play with it.

 

[Earl]

You could put a series of func_brushes in the hole with about 10% alpha each. Give the brushes the black texture, and stack them horizontally. If they're thin enough, or the alpha shift is very small, if you add enough of them it will give a good fade to black effect as you look down.

 

[trackhed]

i think thats how they did it in the HL2 map i was playing, i just didnt understand the alpha properly