Neon Light Bunching Issue

[Yo Yo Bobby Joe]

Hey there again! I'm here because I'm working on a map that uses quite a lot of neon, or emissive textures like the PASS Time Neon. The issue I'm running into is one that I've somehow never run into before with neon. The lighting from the neon bunches up into the center of the brush. For really long brushes like the one on the right, it does it in two different spots, but it's not even remotely distributing it evenly throughout the volume. I tried following some suggestions from other people to raise and/or lower the emissive texture size as well as raise/lower the luxel volume of the emissive brushes, but none of those have done anything except make them brighter.

 

[worMatty]

According to the SDK wiki, texlights are not spawned on Unlit surfaces because unlike Lightmapped, they have no 'subdivions'. But it also says subdivions are created by visleaf splits, and VBSP creates leaf splits every 512 units. Maybe you only have some lights because there are leaf splits in those areas. Load the portal file to check.

It could also be the case that your surface's luxel scale is so large, that the lights are very sparse. I suggest setting it to the default 16 and going from there.

I think it would probably be better if you just inserted your own light entities. You would have direct control over the position and intensity. Your surfaces are so slim that it is difficult to properly align them to get what you want.

An alternative to lighting the surrounding walls is to create an Unlit gradient overlay which simulates receiving light cast from the neon strips. You don't actually need to have light entities there because there is nothing that needs illuminating. It's just for visuals.